#his pale toneless legs

[pithyorangecurd]

Cali boy swag #looks

#his pale toneless legs #his 3% torso #his boxer briefs that are the design of boxer briefs that are #categorically #ancient #a glimpse of lower back where his pale sallow skin bulges just a bit #nigh on flat with how cakeless he is #😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 #cali boys

[macfrog]

sweet child o' mine | pt. i

purely just some fun and games putting big grumpy joel miller slap bang in the middle of a romcom. i hope you guys enjoy. dedicated to big sis @mrsmando, who is the light of my life, let herself be completely swept away by this idea into unhinged, whimsical mania with me, and who inspired so many lil details for this story. love u, zhort x

pairing: neighbor!joel x fem!reader

summary: you strike up a deal to attend a wedding with your neighbor as his date. what could go wrong?

warnings: age gap (late 20s reader, late 40s joel), grumpy!joel initially finds reader mildly infuriating, cursing, alcohol consumption, discussion of a car accident (non-graphic) & dead parents, softdom!joel as per, fingering, handjob, comeplay, spitting, drunk unprotected one night stand, creampie, praise kink, one mention of nausea (but nothing happens, my little emetophobic angels), someone falls pregnant and it's not joel miller i'll tell you that much. honk if you love cats!!!

word count: 9.8k 

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🩵

It’s just gone seven on a Saturday night when his knuckles rap on your door.

The sun casts tall, angled shapes on your living room wall. Lights the pages before you in a glow of tangerine. Refracts through the glass tumbler on your coffee table and bleeds the amber liquid onto the pale wood surface. Everything lit in some variation of gold, everything bowing its head quietly as the day begins to turn its back.

The house is still. The world feels still, as though transitioning. Like you’re sat in a waiting room, leg bouncing, anticipating something you don’t know to look for yet.

Perfect, comfortable, still – until he’s on your porch. And he knocks again.

You snap your book shut and slide it across the table, nudging the heavy glass. The ice clinks, irritated.

“You mind fastenin’ your…delicates to your clothesline a little better?”

His voice shoulders its way into your hallway before you’ve even pulled the door back enough to see him. Not that you need to see him to know who it is. You’ve lived in Austin three years now and met only one person with a voice as low and toneless as Joel Miller’s. Slung in sarcasm, dripping with disdain. All that.

You cross your arms and slant against the doorframe, unable to mask your amusement. “Excuse me?”

He answers by lifting his left hand. From his pointer finger hang a tiny pair of white panties, lace pattern fluttering in the late summer breeze. You glance over his shoulder as you steal them from his grasp, balling them in your fist.

“Uhuh. They were sitting on my back lawn. I have company tonight, y’know. I can’t have women’s underwear just – lyin’ in my damn yard.”

Your head tilts. Ears prick. “Company? You hostin’ somethin’?”

His shoulders drop with a sigh. “No. I am not hostin’ anythin’.”

“Good. ‘cause I’d want an invite.”

“If I were hostin’, you’d be the last person I would invite. And you know that.”

“Ouch,” you pout, “that hurts, Miller. I watered your plants while you were off visiting your brother last month. They woulda died without me there.”

“And I am grateful to you,” Joel grumbles, “but that doesn’t mean I need those anywhere in view of my kitchen window.” He throws a pointed finger to your elbow, where your panties sit scrunched in your fist.

You look down to the froth of frill spilling between your knuckles, and back up to his dark features – his glower casting a shadow over the hazel eyes and deepening the creases between his brows. You smirk, a realization dawning.

Company – that he doesn’t want seeing a pair of someone else’s underwear.

“You have a date.”

Joel’s tongue flicks across the inside of his cheek. He glances over his shoulder and speaks through his teeth. “No, not a date,” he quietly tells the street.

“But you have a lady comin’ over. Or at least – someone you don’t want seeing these.” You unfold your arms and twirl your fist. The gentle wind lifts the lace.

He grunts. A low hmph. Agreement, you think.

“Sounds like a date.”

He hisses, “’s not a date.”

Your stare doesn’t slip from his. Not when his brows tighten, not when his jaw does, too. Not even when he sucks a breath between gritted teeth. Your smile widens.

Finally, with a sigh, he concedes. “It’s…it’s somebody Tommy ‘n Maria are tryna set me up with. Alright?”

“So – a date.”

“If you don’t –” Joel’s head flicks over to his own driveway at the same time his hand lifts, a pointed gesture you read as – shut the fuck up. “We’re just having a few drinks. Just – hangin’ out.”

“Just hangin’ out,” you repeat, eyes widening. “One-on-one. With some woman who – Wait, Tommy’s in Wyoming. How the hell do he and his wife know someone way the hell down here?”

“From before they moved. And – Maria ain’t his wife. Yet. They’re getting married next month.”

Suddenly the sun reappears over the dark horizon. The evening begins to clear up, make sense again. You lift your chin, nodding.

“Right, right. So, she gonna be your plus one, or…?”

The understanding raises his heckles again. Exasperated, he asks, “How many damn questions are you gonna –? I’m only here to – to return your –” He nods once more to the pale fabric in your hand.

A laugh shoots from your nostrils. “What’s the matter? You don’t like – whatever her name is?”

“Laura.”

“Laura,” you breathe.

“And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with her. She just – she…”

“She…?”

“She has, like, five cats, and it’s just…hair, everywhere. And at their engagement party, she spilled an entire margarita down me. Right down my –” He sweeps a hand down his front, balling his fists again once they reach the hem of his shirt.

Your lips turn, amused. “Five cats. Cat lady Laura. Well. Have fun, I guess. Thanks for these.”

He acknowledges your raised fist with a bashful glance. He’s already halfway down your front steps when he says, “Keep an eye on your laundry from now on,” and strides off back to his own place.

Joel has lived here his whole life. In Austin. You’ve no idea when he moved in next door, just that he was here when you did. You don’t know much about him at all – the fact he even filled you in enough to tell you about his date is shocking enough.

The day you first arrived, U-Haul truck squealing to a halt by the curb, he found himself unlucky enough to be stood in his front yard watering the blond patches of his grass. He saw you struggling to open the rear door of the truck, and with a grumble and a glance across the street for a more eager rescuer, he tossed his hose and came over to help.

He unclicked the heavy latch and pushed the door up with enough ease to put you to shame. And he seemed to feel some obligation when he saw the mass of belongings stuffed in the back, to help you unload them. Didn’t seem overjoyed by the thought, mind you, what with the sigh he let slip when you hopped up and held out the first box.

He indulged you for no more than one hour. Answered every question you had about the neighborhood, dodged every one about himself. He told you about the couple across the street with the newborn baby, told you about your neighbor on the other side who pretends to garden just so she can snoop on everyone else’s business. And as soon as the last box thudded down on your gleaming living room floor, he nodded, and paced back over to his own property.

He's a good guy. You know this much. He’s a dick to you most days, but he’s honest, and he’s kind when you catch him in the right light. He takes deliveries for you when you’re not home; he once drove Diane to the vets when she showed up on his doorstep in the dead of night, Fred the Jack Russell ailing in her arms.

He’s observant. Noticed just this summer the three different plumbers who showed up to your house in the space of two days, and came over as the third guy was leaving – his shining bald head low between his shoulders.

‘s the matter? Joel asked, watching the navy overalls sink into the rusted vehicle.

Kitchen sink’s leakin’. Fuckin’ – nobody can fix it.

He shouldered you out of the way with his then-trademark sigh and left twenty minutes later, your kitchen finally free of the dripdripdrip you’d been plagued with for a week straight.

He’s good. He’s a good neighbor. But, man, is he private.

You’ve never seen the inside of his place. His body blocks it anytime you’re on his doorstep. He has a brother, you know that – though, only since last month, when he asked you to keep an eye on his garden – and you know, now, that the brother is getting married.

You know that he likes country music, know he plays guitar – accidentally. You heard him one day in the spring, when he left his window open and you were lounging by your pool. When he looked out and noticed how you’d angled your sunbed to listen, really listen, he slammed it shut.

You know he’s single and childless and has been for at least the three years you’ve lived next door to him.

You know little fucking else.

The words on the curled pages seep into one another. You’re staring through the book now back in your hands, the shape of your living room blurring around you: the brick fireplace, the still, red light of the TV. The lulling sway of the sheer curtains, pushed like the tides by the air through the open window.

You cross your ankles on the coffee table. Your lips purse. Tongue dabs at the smoky-sweet singe of whiskey on the flesh of your cheeks. From here, you can see the street outside Joel’s house. If – when – Laura pulls up, you’ll know. And you’ll be here to watch. Survey. Observe.

See what kind of woman a guy like Joel Miller takes to his brother’s wedding.

It’s nine fifty-two when she eventually leaves.

She’s been in there two hours and seventeen minutes. Her car – a kind of rotten green Chevrolet with one tail light out – sits patiently out front, like even it can’t wait to help her fucking disappear.

You’re hoisting a swollen black bag down your drive when his porch light flickers on and his front door opens. The glossy plastic exhales as it slumps against the trashcan. You dust your hands. Joel hasn’t noticed you yet.

“…so nice gettin’ to properly know you,” Laura’s crooning, sidestepping as Joel walks calmly down to her car. Ushering her. You hold back a laugh.

“Thanks for comin’,” he says, his voice falling flat in the windless evening. He’s a step ahead of her, like a parent leading their child away from the park. She’s still babbling about his six-string.

“Maybe next time I can hear a little somethin’…” she says, and you know from the way he halts that Joel hears the same questioning tone you do, the way somethin’ curls up at its end.

“Maybe,” he says, curtly. His words curl down. And then nothing else, and Laura – who, now that she’s a little closer, stood on the curb by her car door, you notice has sweeping golden hair which flicks away from her plump cheeks, and bright eyes which dazzle in the dusky glow – is forced to cough up one last chance.

“I gave you my number,” she says, then, “I didn’t get yours?” and this time, it’s definitely a question.

Joel pretends to pat down his pockets. “I musta left my phone in the house.”

You can’t help it. A scoff bursts from your lips. But he still doesn’t look over.

“Well,” Laura tugs on the handle, “thank you for a lovely evenin’. I’ll hear from ya.”

Joel smiles but puts a hand on the door, like he might slam it shut for her if she tried to backtrack. But she doesn’t. She swings both legs in, pulls it closed, and the engine spurts to life.

As she pulls off, Chevrolet jolting a little, you notice the bright yellow bumper sticker plastered squint beneath the license plate. You walk silently over to Joel, grass prickly under your socks.

“Honk If You Love…Cats,” you murmur, shoulder brushing off his bicep.

He sniffs. Tightens the grip his arms have on his chest. His eyes are fixed on the one red light, slowly shrinking into the distance. “Don’t even.”

“Good date?”

“I said don’t.”

“She talk much about her cats?”

“Goodnight.”

“Did you ask their names, at least?”

He’s backing up, crossing the dark lawn towards his front steps. He looks you up and down, his lips a flat line. Your sweat shorts. Your bare legs. The tight vest top molded around your breasts. His eyes shoot back up. “No more questions. No more pesterin’ me.”

“Nothin’ about the cats? Seriously, dude?” You lift your arms, grinning after his dark figure, swaggering up the porch steps.

Joel ignores you. He disappears through his front door and the light is snuffed. You slink back up to your house, grateful for the blanket of darkness covering the skip in your step.

Eleven hours later, you’re stood in front of your bedroom mirror.

The day melts against your window. Brilliant blue sky, cradling soft puffs of snow-white clouds. Crows on Diane’s roof cawing, slowly yellowing trees rustling. The bright, hot square across your front where the sun forces her way in.

You turn, taking the loose hem of your sleepshirt in your fingers, and pull it over your body, tossing it to the foot of the bed as you examine the pattern of colors hanging from inside your closet.

You take them one by one, tug them free, slot them back in. Eventually you settle for a gray hoodie, cropped and loose. As you haul it from its hanger, there’s a whine from the wooden cabinet. A squeal. The top shelf rips from either side, dropping to the closet floor and taking the pole with it.

“What the f–? You gotta be fucking kidding me,” you growl, stepping forward to run your fingers along the splintered wood where the nails have ripped themselves free. Four black holes, jagged insides of the closet pricking your fingertips.

The crumple of clothes and hangers sulks up at you pathetically. You fall back onto your bed with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling. The fan whirs slowly, scooping your gaze and throwing it in lazy circles.

The closet was old, anyways. Was here when you moved. It’s probably about time you had some new ones built. But fuck, that’s gonna cost. Ripping the old ones out, building them from scratch. The fan pulls your eyes back around to twelve o’clock.

Joel’s a contractor. He could do ‘em. Might give you a discounted rate, too, for all the times you move his newspaper from his front lawn to his doorstep for him. Either that, or he’d want something in return. And what handy skills do you have? You once knitted a scarf for you grandma for Christmas. Maybe not Joel’s thing. You can cook mac ‘n cheese – though one lousy meal isn’t payment enough for an entire wall of solid wood, two panes of glass and two days’ labor.

A favor, maybe. An IOU. What the fuck kinda favor does Joel Miller need–?

You’re hopping over the tiny burst of hedge between his yard and yours before the thought is finished, bending to scoop his newspaper up and slotting it under your arm. He answers just as you lift your fist to pound on his door for a second time.

You slap the rolled paper into his chest. “I have an idea.”

He squints at you in the summer light. “Wh–? Didn’t I tell you not to p–?”

“I’ll be your date.”

Joel blinks.

“I’ll be your date,” you repeat. “I got a wardrobe needs replacing. You do it, for free, and I’ll be your date.”

“Your wardrobe?”

“Crapped out on me this mornin’. I don’t want to pay for some stranger who’ll overcharge me ‘n do a half-assed job. Fix it, ‘n you don’t have to take cat lady Laura to Tommy’s wedding. And you can fix my kitchen sink, too.”

“I already fixed your kitchen sink.”

“It’s back at it. Drippin’ all through the damn night. Drip drip drip –”

“Alright.” Joel’s palm is up again. He does that a lot when he’s talking to you. “Alright. Wardrobe ‘n sink.”

“We have a deal?” you ask, extending your hand.

His chest fills with a thoughtful breath. His eyes scan you up and down, lingering somewhere a little lower than your jaw for a second. And then, the heavy weight of his palm against yours. The tightening of his fingers around your wrist. One sure shake.

Deal.

Two weeks before the wedding, you’re at Joel’s door again.

He’s in a black tee, dark sweatpants slung low on his hips. His hair is damp, fringe still dripping onto his forehead. He runs a hand through the gray-singed brown and stares at the tangle of fabric slung over your arm. “The hell is this?”

“Do you know what you’re wearin’?”

His eyes roll up to meet yours. “Do I know what I’m wearin’?”

You nod. “You’re the best man. Guessing Tommy has you covered?”

“Black suit,” he says, after a beat.

“That’s it? He ain’t got no theme?”

Joel’s head cocks. “I don’t do themes.”

You roll your eyes, ducking under his arm fixed against the doorpost. He manages three words of protest and then shuts the door in resignation, turning to watch as you take his stairs two at a time.

“You are so damn annoyin’, you know that?” his voice echoes behind you.

“You want this date or not, Miller?” you call over your shoulder, following the route through the identical house to your own bedroom – thankful when you nudge the door and it opens to reveal his bland, colorless decor. “Very…gray,” you note, feeling the shadow of him over your shoulder.

You throw the dresses down on his bed, satin and lace and pink and green swimming between one another on his sheets.

“I’m not wearin’ a dress.”

You glower at him. “Ha. We have to match.”

He rubs the towel against the back of his head, drying the dark hair. “Match how?”

“Y’know, your suit ‘n my dress. If I’m your date, we have to match.”

“Already told you. I’m wearin’ a black suit.”

“Right. But, like – what color tie? And can it be any of these colors?” You hold your hands out, surfing over the sea of shades. “Maybe,” you lift your eyebrows, eyes darting to the pale teal color, “this one?”

Joel entertains you for all of five seconds, lifting his cheeks in a false grin before they deflate. “No. Black.”

“Joel.”

He slings the towel over his folded arms, and looks at you plainly. “Black,” he says again, in a tone of voice which sounds something like a door being slammed shut.

Your eyes thin, and you gather your dresses up in one swipe. “Can you just –? Will you make sure that you match my corsage, at least?”

“Why the hell are you so hung up on this?”

“I’m not. I’m just tryna make it believable. You turned down cat lady Laura, this is what you get.”

He sighs, tossing the towel over to his laundry basket. “I will make sure I match your corsage. Happy?”

“Happy. Are you ready?”

“Give me five minutes.”

You huff, head rolling back. “You are so prima-donna, Joel Miller.”

With a sarcastic chuckle, he shoves you out of his bedroom to get dressed. You saunter down his stairs, drinking in every detail of his home as though it’s the only chance you’ll get to see it.

It probably is, when you think about it. You don’t imagine he’ll be inviting you over for drinks anytime soon.

Your eyes move along the wall as you slowly thump down his stairs, thrown from framed photo to framed photo – a black and white photo of a man with a tousle-haired boy on his lap, the kid’s tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth as he wraps his small hand around the neck of a guitar; an out-of-focus Christmas photo, a family of four sat in front of a million multicolored orbs dotted along the branches of a tree; a kid with skinned knees crouched by a German shepherd, his lanky arms hooked around the dog’s thick neck.

One brown suede jacket hangs from a coat peg at the bottom, Joel’s boots sat loose and unlaced beneath. A dark blue blanket draped over the back of his couch. A painting of a moose over his fireplace. Shelves lining one entire wall decorated with carved-wood animals, with more photographs of times gone and memories made, with books and DVDs that lend your fingertip with a heap of white dust as you drag it across their spines.

Enough to paint a picture, not quite enough to show you the colors. The tones, the depth. Despite your best efforts, the man remains a mystery. You settle with the fact he will never be fully revealed.

The creak of his stairs turns your attention from the guitar on the wall around to his tall figure, fixing the collar of the loose flannel over his shoulders.

“You ready?” Joel asks, bending with a groan to reach for his boots.

“Yep,” you reply, leaning forward to glance into his kitchen while his head’s down. The most you manage to observe are the light drapes, the sunlight shooting through and bouncing off of a white-topped island.

“’s go,” he says, keys dangling from his finger.

It takes twenty minutes to drive to Home Depot.

You chitter in Joel’s ear the entire time, reading from his handwritten list of measurements and supplies needed for your new closet. ‘n how do you know this is all enough? Because I know. What if you get started and it’s not? I won’t; it’s enough. You sound so sure. That’s ‘cause I’ve done it before, kid. You take many closetless girls out on fake wedding dates, Joel?

“What’s our story, then?” you ask in the store, fiddling with hanging packets of door hinges while Joel reads thrice over his note. Your hand dives into the bag of M&M’s he begrudgingly bought you at a gas station on the way.

“Our story?” he mumbles back, the words slipping under the mental math you can see going on behind his eyes.

“Like, when people ask how we met. What’s our meet-cute? Both reached for the same door hinge, our hands touched and lit aflame? That kinda thing?”

He doesn’t laugh. Your smile dampens instantly. You kick his boot. “Joel.”

“’sec,” he frowns, “I’m focusing.”

You lean close, pushing on your toes to study the folded slip. His scrawled numbers, the pencil lines blunt and smudged in the creases of the paper.

“Twentytwofortysixeightyninetyfivesixhundredelevenfourtwelvenineteen–”

Joel’s lips seep a maddened sigh; he glances down the aisle like a store attendant might separate you from him if he demanded with enough passion, or maybe if he slipped them a twenty.

“Do you mind?” he barks, his expression a brick wall for your giggles to fall flat to the floor against.

“Home Depot’s your stomping ground. Why the hell do I gotta come watch you pick hinges and timber?”

“Because it’s your damn closet I’m fittin’. Just –” he swipes two packets from their peg, tossing them into the shopping cart, “– come on.”

Joel makes off down the muck-colored floor, the overhead lights reflecting harshly in the shiny surface. The front right wheel of the cart trembles as it rolls, nervously leading the two of you down an aisle lined with cylinder tins and pamphlets on Choosing the right finish.

“So, are your parents gonna be at this wedding?” you ask, taking the cart from Joel’s hands when he drifts off to study a shelf of wood varnish.

His jaw turns towards you, and then back to the tin in his hand. “Yeah. Why?”

“Do I get to meet ‘em?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. You’re not gonna introduce your date to your mom and dad?”

He scoffs, stealing a handful of candy. “My fake date?”

“They don’t know that. Let me meet Mr. and Mrs. Miller.”

He holds two tins up, offering them to you like answer to your question. “Matt or gloss? Guess it don’t really matter if I’m painting ‘em after.”

“Stop fuckin’ ignoring me. I hate when you do that.”

He leans in close, lowering the matt varnish into the cart. “You think I’m gonna introduce you ‘n your potty mouth to my mom?”

You smirk, eyes narrow. “Dick.”

“Funny. What color paint you want? You said something about duck egg?”

“Planning on repainting my room that color, yeah. Hey, you could –”

He swats your pointed finger away, taking the cart back. “We shook on new wardrobe. No changin’ the deal,” he mutters, wandering over to the rainbow of paint tins on the opposite side of the aisle.

You follow him over, eyes moving from blue over to green, the tins plastered with the fake smiles of families and fluffy pet dogs on the front. “Where are your mom and dad from?” you ask.

“Austin,” he replies, eyes squinting to read the small print on the back of one vibrant shade. You shake your head and guide his wrist back to the shelf, where he obediently sets the heavy tin back. “Never known anywhere else,” he adds. “What about you? Where’s Mr. and Mrs. Potty Mouth?”

“Uh,” you swipe at your nose awkwardly, “they’re up in Allandale. That’s where I grew up.”

“That so? I got a cousin who used to live that way. Used to take my bike up every Saturday. He lived right by this old car shop, all these old classics they used to fix up ‘n resell.”

“Yeah,” you say, “right next to the cemetery, right?”

“That’s the one,” Joel says, lifting paint tins to the light and setting them down again. “They live nearby?”

Your breathing shifts, starts to claw its way up your throat. Your chest heats, skin lighting with an irritating anxiety. “They’re, um,” you gulp, “they’re in the cemetery.”

Joel pauses, letting the tin slip from his grasp with an echoing thud against the wooden shelf which reverberates in your ears a second too long. “Oh,” he says, set on your expression.

“It’s okay – I don’t mind. It’s – it was a car accident, back when I was eight. I wasn’t in it, or anything. I grew up with my grandma. Really, Joel, I don’t mind,” you add, when his face falls and he begins to apologize.

“I had no idea,” he says, and you break the eye contact before you break a fucking sweat.

“’s all good,” you murmur, lifting paint tins of your own now, focusing on deblurring your glossy vision, “I got to buy a big house with the money they left.”

It thaws him a little. He snorts, and taps the lid of the tin you’re holding. “That one’s nice. You, uh – you okay?”

You finally turn back, the world clearer, colors no longer bleeding into one another through sharp tears. “Yeah. I’m fine. We got everything?”

Joel nods, and wheels the cart around. “You can meet her, if you want. My mom. She’s a little full on, but I reckon you can handle her.”

You smile, following him down the aisle.

A month after he delivered your underwear back to you, you’re back on Joel’s doorstep.

Your hand flicks nervously at your side as you wait for him to answer, petals of your corsage quivering. The clip of his footsteps echoes down the stairs, a deep sound growing louder and louder until the door clinks open and you’re separated only by air.

Joel’s eyes scan down your body at the same time yours scan down his. Black suit, sure enough, just without the jacket, and with his tie slung around his loose collar. You both freeze when your eyes meet again, your lips silently forming the shape of an avalanche of words that refuse to sound until Joel’s do.

“Wow, you –”

“– look great, I –”

“– nice dress, is that –? Sorry –”

“– no, I’m sorry, you were – sorry.” A laugh pushes from your throat. “You look – you look good. Scrub up well, ‘n all that.”

“You too. You – Yeah. That’s a nice color, after all. You suit it.” His eyes linger on your chest, your breasts draped in lustrous silk, decorated with the glint of golden jewelry. You notice.

“Thanks. After all?” You snort, and Joel’s exterior seems to crack a little.

He steps back, ushering you in. “Alright,” he says, taking the tote with your change of clothes from your wrist. He watches across the street as you step over the threshold, his fingertips light on your back as you pass by, like little shocks of lightning up your spine. “You know what I meant.”

Your dress swishes around your ankles, your heels clicking along his varnished floor. Your arms lock around your torso, holding your pashmina in place while Joel totters around, tossing his jacket over his shoulders. His shirt stretches from his tight waistband, fabric flattening against his tummy. Your eyes shoot north again when he speaks.

“You mind doin’ my tie? It’ll end up squint if I do.”

“Sure,” you reply, stepping forward.

He buttons the top of his shirt and lifts his chin, staring at the wall behind you as you tug on the black fabric, the silk slipping through your fingers. You steal glances at the trim of his beard, his pink lips beneath the dark bristles; the slope of his nose, the lines on his worn skin.

He’s rough around the edges, sure, a man in his late forties. But there’s something soft about him, something familiar and…comfortable. The pages of a used sketchbook, the lived-in material of a favorite dress.

You pull the knot higher until it’s sitting in the notch below his Adam’s apple, smoothing it down and giving his chest a light pat before stepping back again.

“Thanks, darlin’,” he mumbles, and a spark lights in your chest. “Oh,” he says, holding a finger up and disappearing into the kitchen. He returns with a little white box, holding it out for you to see.

Your cheeks swell, eyes flitting up to acknowledge the proud look on his face. “Very nice. Good job.”

“You can do the honors,” Joel says, handing you the boutonniere by the stem.

You pin it through his lapel, straightening it with a focused glance. Joel’s eyes are on you, watching the flutter of your eyelashes, the tilt of your head. “There,” you whisper, leaning back.

He extends his elbow, something of a smile on his lips. You don’t see it often. It beckons a mirrored expression.

Arm in arm, Joel leads you out to the truck, where he helps you up and waits for you to scoop your dress into the footwell before closing the door. You watch patiently as he locks the front door, slings both your bags over his shoulder and jogs back to the truck, tossing them in the backseat before joining you in the front.

“How come he didn’t send a limousine? Or a Jag, or somethin’?”

“You think we’re made a’ money?” Joel asks, smirking.

You return the smile, wrapping your shawl over your body. “Can I pick the music?” you ask, earnestly, a tinge of sweetness to your voice.

Joel glances over again, reaches behind your headrest to reverse out of the drive. He runs his tongue along his top teeth. “No,” he says.

Three hours later, Tommy and Maria are married.

The wedding is…big. Joel’s family is big. The venue – a rustic hotel suite, fairy lights draped from the rafters, blooming flowers sprouting from crystal vases, lace tablecloths and tied chair cushions and wax dripping from thick, naked candles – is big.

Joel’s been good about it – that friendly neighbor you see all too little has been kicked into high gear. He delivered you by hand straight to his mom – a small woman with silver hair neatly twisted into an updo at the back of her head – who took your hand and held it tightly all the way to your seats.

Kind and warm, she asked where you were from, how you met Joel, how long you’d been dating. She offered you some tissues before the ceremony started, then winked and nodded in Joel’s direction as the bridesmaids swept down the aisle.

You lingered behind the photographer while he took photos of the wedding party, instructing them to shuffle a little closer, that’s it; ma’am, with the red hair, lower your bouquet a little; alright, now, everyone: big smiles!

You worried that Joel had kept the same placated smile frozen on his face for so long that it might never melt away, might never return to the stoic scowl you’re so used to seeing on him. You didn’t even realize you were staring at him, until he waved you down, flicked his hand, and beckoned you over to the group.

You hesitated. I don’t know if I –

Get over here, girl, Tommy had called, grinning alongside his big brother.

The two Millers slotted you in like a jigsaw piece between their bodies, two arms wrapped around your back – Tommy’s, loose on your shoulders, and Joel’s, tight around your waist. He held you close, squeezing you into his side while the photographer praised the party and snapped photo after photo, the flash burning into your eyes by the time he clapped his hands and thanked you all for your patience.

Drink? Joel had asked, and you’d responded with one thumb up, the other massaging your eyelids. He squeezed your shoulder and disappeared into the crowd of bodies.

He’s still over there – by the bar, a wooden structure draped in ivy and studded by steel bolts. His beer in one hand and your wine in the other. A lean, poised figure stood opposite him – her dress a royal purple, her hair a wave of brown spilling over her bare shoulders.

She’s beautiful – a striking charm which draws your eye to her like an arrow directly through the sea of bodies between here and there. Her languid movements, the slow roll of her neck to sweep the hair from one side of her body to the other.

Her head falls back in laugher, her bejeweled hand falls softly on his arm. Your throat closes sharply. Joel nods, angling as if to make off, but she holds onto him and leans in. He laughs, then, at whatever her full lips whisper into his ear, and he finally breaks off from her and returns to you.

He pushes the glass by its base across the smooth tablecloth. Your fingers brush over one another as you trade, the stem sitting between your index and middle. He’s warm, his knuckles kissing yours.

“How was it, then, talkin’ to my mom?” Joel asks.

You smile, propping your chin on the heel of your palm. “I like her. She’s funny.” And then, when he tosses his head in response, “Who were you talkin’ to?”

Joel follows your eyeline over to the woman in the purple dress. The glint of white crystal on her neck. The drama of dark hair on pale skin. “Uh,” he wanders around your back to his chair, “we used to work together.”

Your nails tap against the glass. “Oh, yeah?”

He sniffs. Doesn’t meet your eye. “Yep.”

“You were talking to her for a long time.”

He watches a blue orb dance over your head on the wall, a spot of light from the disco ball over the dancefloor. “Lotta memories.”

“Why won’t you look at me?”

His eyes plummet. Fall from the string bulbs straight to your face, sparkling in the rainbow lights. “You want me to look at you? There.”

You grin. “’s better. If you stare up there long enough, they might stick.”

“Safer to have ‘em stuck on you, is it?”

“Mhm,” your voice echoes around the curve of your wine glass, “better view. So, who is she?”

Joel shifts uncomfortably. He twirls the bottle in his fingers. “We…we were together for some time. A few years.”

“An ex,” you muse, stain of lipstick left on the rim of your glass. “How many years?”

“Eight.”

You almost choke on your drink. “Eight – eight years?”

Joel nods, waiting for you to catch your breath. Expression never changing. Bottle still twirling. “Haven’t seen her in a while. We were just catchin’ up.”

“Eight fucking years. Why the fuck aren’t you married?”

He scoffs. “That’s a fifth-date question.” He lifts the bottle to his lips, tongue pushes against the glass.

“I don’t need five fuckin’ wardrobes,” you quip, and he laughs. Like, genuinely laughs. His head tips back, his teeth show. Your chest swells, confidence and relief blooming there. She didn’t make him laugh like that – not from where you were watching.

It becomes something of a mission in the back of your mind – tallying up how many times you can make his chest shudder, his shoulders jerk. How many times he leans in closer and repeats whatever you said, eyes closing over and hand hitting his thigh. How many times he looks at you and your stomach flutters, the blood cartwheels through your veins, the bones of your ribcage readjust and make room for the swelling of your heart.

Within four rounds, you’ve lost count.

The thudding beat of the music muffles in your drunken ears, like it’s coming from the next room. Your gaze fixes on the vase in the center of the table, the bouquet spilling over the glass. The wide burst of speckled lilies, the humble blush of tulips between. The colors soften and blur the longer you stare at them.

The jerk of Joel’s shoulders stirs you from your daydream. That’s one more.

“What?” you ask, head rolling to look over to him.

“You still in there?” he asks, one word slurring into the next like waves lapping.

You scoff, looking back to the pink flowers. “You know who has tulips?” you ask him.

He lifts his eyebrows. Who?

“Alice.”

“Brown?”

Your head nods heavily. “One time, she was out getting her mail, and I had just pulled up in my car on the phone to my best friend – he’d just broken up with his girlfriend, it was a whole thing…” You bat your hand. “Anyway. She pretended to tend to her tulips for forty-five minutes while I sat talkin’ to him in the driveway.”

Joel’s head tilts back with a burst of laughter. “She hear every word?”

“Every – damn – word. Stood by the fence listenin’.”

“That woman is som’ else,” Joel says, shaking his head. He stares down at the bottle between his fingers. His thumbs play with the curled corner of the label. “Didn’t I warn you about her?”

“Mhm.” You smile, realizing he has the same memory that you do, locked up somewhere in his mind. The sweat running down his temple, the dark patch between his shoulder blades. His hands gripping the heavier boxes, leaving you to carry the linen, the base of a lamp. Nodding as he wandered back over to his own porch, calling back for you to Holler if you need anythin’.

The high squeal of the Sweet Child O’ Mine intro snaps you back to the wedding reception. Tommy and Maria are playing air guitar on the dancefloor over Joel’s shoulder. You unstick your gaze from his white shirt, unsure how long you’ve been fucking staring.

Joel sits forward, drags his chair across the polished floor closer to you. He fixes the strap on your dress, untwisting it before settling back again. Your eyes follow his fingers as they leave your shoulder and sit back on the curve of his thigh, lifting when his voice breaks through to your eardrums.

“What room number did you say you were, again?”

Your shoulders roll. “Thirty-four, I think.”

Joel nods. Points to himself. “Thirty-six.” And then he glances over his shoulder, watches as Tommy kneels before Maria and rocks his head, his messy mop of hair tossed across his shoulders. The older Miller brother turns back. “Think they’ll miss us if we call it a night?”

“We’re callin’ it a night?”

“Figure if I’m headin’ off then you won’t wanna be sat here by yourself,” Joel says, and he’s right. He stands up, sets the half-empty bottle on the tablecloth and stares down at you. “I’m callin’ it a night,” he tells you. “You comin’?”

The colors in the room spin like the reels of a slot machine. Your fingers sit lightly in his outstretched palm, and you pull yourself up alongside him.

“’s a good girl,” he mutters, looking over your shoulder to the doorway, and your eyes sober up long enough to catch the flicker in his eye.

You totter along the hallway, arm in arm, anchoring yourselves together. Whichever way one sways, the other inevitably follows. You’re laughing, and Joel’s hushing you, warning that there are folks tryna – tryna sleep, we’re in a fancy place, hey, da-rlin’, no – you gotta shhhut up.

“Great party,” you decide, finally docking against your door.

“Yeah,” Joel agrees, leaning a little on the wall. The gentle glow of the hallway lights him perfectly; the strong angle of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones. The hazel pools that make up his irises, the swollen circles of black in the middle. And the twinkle in them, like the moon reflecting on dark water, every time his gaze lifts to you.

He’s different tonight. Maybe it’s the alcohol. The way it colors everything in a peachy film, all objects softened and rosy and shapeless. But he feels different, too. You suddenly realize, shoulder pressed hard against the cold doorframe, that you’ve never touched one another more than you have today. His elbow in yours, his arm around your waist, his hand through yours as you danced together.

“Are you tired?” you ask, head rolling.

“Tired? No. Drunk, yeah. Not tired.” He laughs again. It’s infectious.

“You wanna come inside?” you ask, words leaping from your giggle.

He takes ten seconds to consider it. Slumps into the wall, steadied only by his forearm pushing him back upright. His watch face catches the light behind him.

“Yeah. Fuck yeah, I do.”

Your hand fumbles in your clutch for the keycard, swiping the handle and pushing down heavily. You spill into the dark room, light sneaking in from the sconce outside your window, and spin back to face him, his hand locked tight with yours.

Joel follows you slowly as you back towards the bed, kicking your heels off and tripping over the skirt of your dress. When your legs hit the plush mattress, his body leans into yours. Your lips ghost across his, your words pushing them apart one by one.

“This ain’t – part of the – agreement,” you murmur, the coarse hair of his beard scratching your chin. You pull apart his tie, loosening the knot.

“Changed my mind,” he replies, collapsing on top of you on the bed.

Your head rolls back when his lips suck into your neck. You wrestle with his belt, with the waist of his suit trousers. “No changin’ the deal, remember?”

“Tell me to stop.”

If you had any intention of answering him, your body overrides it. Words lassoed and dragged back down where they came from, your throat opening only to gasp when Joel’s teeth graze the flesh of your breast. His fingers tug on the straps of your dress, letting them fall from your shoulders until your chest sits exposed.

He drags his tongue along your skin, dipping between your tits while his hands massage them, fingers pinching your nipples. Your back lifts and his hands move beneath, following the curve of your spine to where your dress pools loose around your waist. He pushes down, slinking the smooth fabric from your body.

“You fuckin’…” He clicks his teeth, laughing behind them. Another flush of heat washes over your skin.

You giggle, bending your knees to cover the lace panties he knows all too fucking well. Joel stops you, pushes your legs back down with two heavy hands.

“Don’t get shy now, baby,” he murmurs, opening your body up again. “You were so happy about me seein’ ‘em a few weeks ago, no?”

“’s different,” you reply, tang of alcohol fueling your words, “now I just want you to take them off me.”

He cocks his head, drinking every word you’re handing over like it’s water from an oasis. “Such a dirty girl, ain’t you?”

You pull him closer by the collar and line your mouth against his, the tip of your tongue wetting the inside of his lips. “You got no fucking idea,” you whisper, whipping the shirt from his torso.

Joel growls, flipping you over and pulling you by the shoulders flush against his chest. You hook an arm around his neck, turn to grant him access to your lips. He kisses you like a starved animal, savoring every taste, teeth nipping at your tingling lips.

His hand curves around your hips, pushing beneath your underwear to cup your mound, middle finger pushing on the spongey hood of your clit. Your head falls limp against his collarbone, back arching as Joel holds you steady with an arm around your waist.

“’s alright, baby,” he coos, his tongue licking the shell of your ear. “I’m gonna take good care of ya. Gonna give you what you need, alright?”

A strangled moan unravels across your tongue, echoing into Joel’s mouth. Your hips begin to gyrate, meeting the rhythm of his hand, his finger massaging rough circles into your clit. He smirks, peeling the panties down your thighs.

“Attagirl,” he breathes, “you want it bad, huh? Gettin’ so worked up so fast. Here.”

He removes his hand from between your legs, ignoring your moan of protest and replacing it with two fingers on your bottom lip. “Open,” he instructs, and you obey like a fucking dog. He slips them in, thick and heavy, and waits for you to coat them with your wine-stained tongue.

Joel pushes down, forcing a muffled gag from your throat which lifts the corners of his mouth. He shakes his head lightly, whispering, “You got it, ‘s okay.”

A thread of saliva strings between his fingers and your lips when he lowers his hand again, trailing his fingers through your folds until he’s dancing along the seam of your cunt. You jolt forward; Joel hauls you back.

“Just fucking – do it,” you whimper, your walls clenching around nothing.

He holds his fingers together, curling and inserting them in a painfully slow motion. Your knees widen on the mattress, body sinking down by instinct to meet his fist, to feel his thick fingers and wide knuckles as deep as they’ll go.

You gasp when Joel begins hooking them inside you, nudging against your walls like your heartbeat against your clit. Your hand lowers, slipping beneath his loose waistband, beneath the elastic of his boxers and around his already solid cock.

Joel groans, fucking you harder on his hand. “Fuck, just like that, baby. You feel what you do to me?”

“Uhuh,” you reply, voice wanton and broken.

You squeeze him, your fist moving up and down, his warm skin following the movements of your tight grip. His tip is already soaked, precome staining his underwear, dribbling down your thumb.

Joel uses his free hand to shove his pants down, crumpling on the floor at his feet when they free his cock. You carve your mouth around his, the two of you exchanging breath and flicking your tongues together as you fuck one another’s hands, the room slowly filling with the hot, muggy smell of sex.

Joel’s the first to cave. With a jerk of his hips, he takes you by the wrist and frees himself from your clutches.

“You’re gonna make me come, darlin’,” he murmurs, pulling his fingers from your cunt.

“That’s kinda the point here,” you reply, teeth bumping into his in a grin.

Joel shakes his head, lifting his hand, glistening with your arousal. “Gotta feel this fucking pussy first.”

You smile, parting your lips for him for the second time, suckling on his fingers and licking them clean of your own salty slick. His cock draws sticky trails on the seam of your thigh.

“Yeah,” Joel breathes, eyes fixed on the place where you close around him, “that good, baby? You gonna let me taste you?”

You release his fingers and he pulls you in, tongue slipping against yours with a groan which vibrates against your jaw. When your lips part, you hold your mouth open, your tongue sat on your bottom lip.

Joel reacts instantly, collecting a bead of saliva in front of his teeth and letting it drop into your mouth. You moan and swallow it, a cocktail of beer and whiskey and slick. Joel watches as you lick your lips, the stained-pink coated in a thick, white shine.

“Alright,” he says, letting you fall forward onto the bed. He jacks himself a few times, spitting into his hand and using it to coat his cock.

“Want you to come in it,” you whine, wiggling your ass for him as he lines up at your slit. You can feel the arousal gathered on his tip, dripping down your cunt.

“Yeah, baby,” Joel growls, a smirk on his lips as he watches himself slowly disappear inside you. And then –

You both fall silent, mouths hanging wide open as you each feel the width of his cock and the tightness of your cunt. The way your body opens up to accommodate his size, the direct pain and ethereal pleasure of Joel pushing into you.

“Fuck,” he groans, your pussy drawing him in with a sweet, wet sound. “Been thinkin’ about this all fuckin’ day, baby. So damn gorgeous in that dress.”

You slowly move your hips back to meet him at the base of his cock; dark, trimmed hair bristling against your lips. Joel’s hands lock around your waist, holding you steady with his entirety buried inside, letting you adjust to him.

He’s so fucking big, so wide and deep that your breath tears rugged from your lungs, barreling up your windpipe. Your walls squeeze tight as he pulls out like your body refuses to let him go, like your cells understand better than you do that you were made for this – made for him. Like the only place in the world that he belongs, is somewhere deep inside you.

So big that it hurts, each time he fills you up and stretches you wide open. The pain an eye-rolling, lung-closing, limb-shaking sensation.

Your elbows give, falling chest-first onto the mattress while Joel fucks you hard, his hands gripping your hips. Your cheek and breasts flat against the sheets, your back arched. He slams into you, edging you closer and closer with each meeting of his warm skin against yours, each sopping slap of come and saliva.

The mattress shifts above your head, two valleys where his palms push down heavily, then the weight of his body at the back of your thighs. He towers over you, hips hammering so hard that you’re forced to hook your fingers around his wrists just to stay on the same fucking planet.

“Gonna – fuckin’ – come – baby,” he spits, his jaw locked tight. “You want it in this little pussy? You think she can take it all?”

“Mhm,” you whimper, the edges of your words rounded by the silk sheets. “Joel, I – fuck –”

“Yeah, she can,” he agrees, playing with the hair spilling across your shoulders and taking it in a fistful.

The hazy drunken blur begins to turn over in favor of something sharper, something electric pulsing through your veins. Every part of your body alive, everything rising to meet the same high, the same release. You cling onto him, body beginning to melt beneath his.

Joel’s lips press between your shoulder blades. “Don’t fight it, baby, let go. I got you.”

You moan his name in one last pathetic attempt before the world whitens. You clench around him as a deafening orgasm shocks through your body, curling your back and forcing your nails deep into Joel’s wrists.

“Fuck, baby, fuck me,” Joel gasps. He slams into you one final time before you feel the staggered pump of his come flooding between your walls. “Ahh,” he groans, pushing apart your ass cheeks to watch the trickle seep from your cunt. “Good fucking girl. Take it, baby. That’s my girl.”

He turns you over onto your back and you wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling him against your body as he thrusts into you again, tenderly pushing his spend deeper inside. It draws a strained moan from your throat.

“’s alright,” he coos, hips slowing against yours, “just feel it, baby. You feel how deep I am?”

“Uhuh,” you cry, nails digging into his skin, damp with sweat.

“So fuckin’ full of me,” he says, more to himself, before collapsing alongside you, holding your thigh on his hip, his tip still sheathed inside you.

You lie like that for a while, listening to the distant hum of music from downstairs, the party still raving in the belly of the hotel while you two lay in content bliss somewhere in its ribcage. Tracing one another’s features, learning the lines on Joel’s face, the flecks of gray in his eyebrows – all the parts you’re never close nor brave enough to get to know.

His right hand massages your plush waist, his left arm a pillow to rest your heavy, dizzy, drunk head on.

“I wanna do it again,” you whisper, the words sneaking out between heavy breaths.

Joel nods. His bottom lip sticks with sweat to yours. His hips push a little neater into you. “I wanna do it again, too.”

“I wanna do it all night.”

He hasn’t stopped nodding. He shrugs, tightens his grip around your shoulders, and tilts his head. “Then let’s do it all fucking night,” he says, and his lips slam back into yours.

The morning after the wedding, Joel drives you home. The truck soars down the highway, the two of you an uncomfortable distance apart. The same sobering distance you’ve kept all morning – the unreal aftermath of sex.

The rolling waves of bedsheets between your bodies; the sun sifting her long fingers through his hair as she peered through the curtains. The way you’d silently pushed yourself from the mattress, fragmenting your movements and allowing the spring to dip a fraction at a time so not to wake him. The spongey feel of the hotel carpet under the balls of your feet as you’d tottered to the bathroom. The sharp shot of the lock sliding into place, echoing like a bullet.

He waited until you finished showering to get ready himself. Sat on the edge of the bed patiently and watched your shadow beneath the door, the to-and-fro of your silhouette breaking the sliver of golden light as you dressed your sticky body. When you pulled on the metal lock again, he was sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, pinching the bridge of his nose. His bare shoulders were curved, and tanned. You blinked twice to store the image and turned away as he stood.

He says he feels hungover. You say you do, too. It’s the closest you come to talking about it. You hop out of the truck in his drive, your tote bag hooked on your shoulder. The canvas gnawing at the silk inside. Joel tells you he’ll see his end of the deal through in a couple weeks.

“Real busy with work,” he mutters apologetically, his wrists still balancing on the steering wheel.

“That’s good,” you tell him, nodding. “I ain’t in any rush. I know where you live, so.”

A relieved laugh pushes from his lips. “I will get to it,” he assures you.

You shrug casually. “Whenever, Joel.”

You don’t talk for a few days. A few days bleeds into three weeks. You find yourself stood by his front tires, throwing his newspaper onto the porch and scampering when it lands. The noise like a bomb dropping.

Slowly, as the month draws on, you become braver and braver – daring closer and closer to his front door, until you’re back to marching up the steps like you own the place, depositing the roll on his doormat. Rubbing your thumbs against your fingers to feel the ink like satin.

The door cracks open as you make your way back down his steps one bright morning.

“Hey, kid,” Joel murmurs, reaching down for the paper with a groan.

“Hey.”

“You doin’ okay?” he asks, leaning his forearm against the door.

Your head tilts back and forth, your hand lifting to shield your eyes from the sun. “Think I ate som’ bad, maybe. Weird stomach this mornin’.”

Joel’s chin angles. “Hope it ain’t contagious. Was thinkin’ I could get that closet started for you, maybe tomorrow?”

The offer takes you off guard. You buffer for a few seconds before answering, “Sure. Sure, just, uh – just come over whenever, I guess.”

“Nine work for you?”

You nod. “Nine’s good. See ya then.”

It’s something like nine when you find out.

You wake feeling groggy. Tired, sluggish. A heavy ache pulling on your breasts as you rise from bed, tender and swollen. You stand in the bathroom, milky morning light filtering in through the doorway, and your stomach lurches. Waves of nausea deep in your belly, rocking back and forth, swirling and spiraling.

You’ve a box under your sink. It makes sense. Before Joel was some date from Hinge, who fucked you against the wall of his living room and who snored so loud that you left before the sun came up. Negative. Like always.

But it never hurts to be sure.

The pack tears like it’s liquid in your hands. Peels back to reveal the plastic white test, the bubblegum pink cap – like it’s something fun and sweet to place the direction of your future into this little device. A clinical compass needle.

Three to five minutes. You set it down on the counter and drag yourself back through to your room, lifting your bedsheets, tucking them under the mattress, heaving your pillows back into place against the headboard. An uncomfortable heat boiling under the surface of your skin, a prickle of sweat clinging to the nape of your neck.

A sickly taste harboring on your tongue, you pad back to the bathroom and swipe the test up. Your eyes scan past the result window to the counter as you reach for your toothbrush – and then snap abruptly back to the tiny oval. Your outstretched hand freezes in midair. There’s no fucking w–

Your arm swings back to reach for the light cord. The bulb hesitates – flickers, like it’s unsure whether to reveal the truth to you. It knows something you don’t. It’s seen something it doesn’t want to show you. You stare at the pregnancy test.

Two little pink lines stare back. And Joel knocks at your door.

#forgive me for it not being clm or sof #they're coming very soon i promise #this was too fun an idea not to chase #i have the attention span of my labrador retrievers (nil) #joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #the last of us #tlou #macfrog #neighbor!joel miller #neighbor!joel #babydaddy!joel miller

[voxofthevoid]

Double Noncon Wednesday #2! With a shocking lack of noncon actually. The initial plan was one Sukuna chapter, one Kenjaku chapter, and one Gojou chapter, but I had to split the Gojou part into two because it got too long (who's surprised?) and reached an organic breaking point. So the first part is very soft and the second one is very softly fucked.

I haven't tackled the second part yet, so here we go!

CWs for implied recent rape and obsessive attachment, plus the usual goyuu stuff:

“Sukuna wanted to break Megumi,” Gojou says and it’s toneless, but Yuuji recognizes that he’s being prodded.

He opens his mouth and finds himself tongue-tied.

He tightens his arms around his legs, squeezing until the muscles tremble. All of him still feels so weak.

“It’s alright, Yuuji.” Gojou squeezes his shoulder again, unspeakably gentle this time. “You don’t have to say anything.”

But you know, Yuuji doesn’t say. Except Gojou doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t know the right things.

“Sukuna could feel everything I felt, see everything I saw, hear everything I thought,” Yuuji says in a rush. “I didn’t care about it. Whenever he yapped about it, I just called him a pervert, and he’d shut up. He’d get so genuinely offended by what I said, as if he hadn’t done a hundred worse things.”

“People that powerful have powerful egos. Strange ones too.”

“Are you speaking from experience, sensei?”

Gojou barks out a laugh, sounding surprised. “Maybe. I’ve been called egotistical and worse. Do you mind it, Yuuji?”

“It’s you. I don’t mind.” Yuuji shrugs. “Hate it on him though.”

“That’s fair,” Gojou says softly.

Yuuji swallows, trying and failing to cling to that moment of levity. “He knew what I wanted too—who I wanted.”

“Oh?” Gojou’s hand travels from his shoulder to the center of his back, a damp palm pressing to his spine. It’s oddly comforting. “I assume he didn’t approve.”

Yuuji snorts, not feeling very amused. “Who the fuck knows. He said I was unfaithful—implied it, I guess. As if he had any right.”

“Unfaithful?” Gojou echoes, clearly curious.

Yuuji considers his answer for a moment. But it’s nothing Gojou doesn’t know. “Because I wanted both of you.”

“Both of us?”

“Don’t pretend, sensei. You knew. I wasn’t subtle.” Yuuji turns his head, resting his cheek on his knee. The angle doesn’t let him see Gojou, but he’s at his periphery, a pale specter. “I was never gonna do anything about it. You knew that too.”

“I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

Yuuji knows that. He never clocked Fushiguro’s interest, but Gojou let him know. And Yuuji liked that—the freedom to look and want as much as he liked, knowing it wasn’t unwanted.

But—

“You’d have had to kill me one day, and Fushiguro wouldn’t have been able to do anything.” The change in the tense tastes sour on Yuuji’s tongue. He runs his hands down his legs, absently counting the scars. “It’s cruel to make a friend do that, but I accepted I’d be selfish like that. But it’s worse, isn’t it, to make a lover do it?”

“Yuuji…”

“Sukuna didn’t care about any of that. He knew what I wanted and what Fushiguro wanted too. He just wanted to use it. And he knew how to…taint it.”

“Did he?” Gojou asks quietly.

Yuuji thinks of the words that spilled from Sukuna’s mouth—Fushiguro’s fantasies, his own fantasies, all wielded like weapons. Not just words, but his mind shies away from the touch that accompanied them. It’s probably good that he remembers the pain best, even if it was the opposite at the time. Yuuji focuses on the memories of his skin splitting, drumming his fingers on the raised scars along his forearms.

“I don’t know,” Yuuji says. “But he got what he wanted. Fushiguro… Fushiguro was suffering, sensei. And I couldn’t reach him. I tried. I promise I—”

“I know you did,” Gojou cuts in, not unkindly. “This isn’t the movies. Love won’t save anyone’s soul.”

Yuuji flinches. “I—”

“We’ll have to rip Sukuna out of Megumi first. Or bury them both.”

Yuuji straightens up, whipping around. Gojou’s reclining in the tub, head turned to the side to stare straight at Yuuji.

“We can’t do that!” Yuuji tells him, reaching out to grip a wet, slippery bicep. “Gojou-sensei, it’s Fushiguro. We have to save him.”

Gojou blinks, slow and somehow dangerous. “Tell me something, Yuuji. Would you have expected me to save you?”

Yuuji’s hand falls limply into the water. “What?”

“If the roles were as expected and you were the one Sukuna was wearing like a sleeve, would you expect me to save you? Or just kill you?”

“That’s…” Yuuji wants to look away from Gojou’s searing eyes, their blue turned lethally molten. It’s like the colors are swimming, chasing each other in Gojou’s irises to form a vortex of violent color. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” Gojou asks mildly; Yuuji doesn’t trust that tone. “Are you in love with Megumi?”

An instinctive no is swallowed.

Of course Yuuji loves Fushiguro. But that’s not what Gojou is asking.

Is he in love with—

“Does it matter?” he asks, and he sounds desperate and knows it, but this isn’t where he thought this conversation to go. He doesn’t want this.

For a long moment, Gojou’s silent. His eyes don’t waver, and their color only grows more violent, till Yuuji feels like he’s drowning just looking at him. Gojou’s never made him feel like this before. His eyes were always something beautiful.

A hand cups his cheek, and Yuuji sucks in a startled breath.

“I guess not,” Gojou says. “Are you scared, Yuuji?”

Yuuji closes his eyes. “You’re acting strange, sensei.”

“I am, aren’t I? I usually have more self-control than this.” A thumb swipes across Yuuji’s cheekbone—a wet, dripping touch. “Those skeletons were boring company, but my thoughts were the worse evil. Still, I thought a lot. I wondered how all of you were faring. I thought of the kinder days. When I came out and saw you in that bloody bed, do you know what I thought, Yuuji?”

“That I was dead?” Yuuji ventures, tentatively opening his eyes.

Gojou’s gaze flits across his face, trailing radioactive blue. “Yes. And then I thought, I should never have let him leave that basement. Those days were nice, weren’t they, Yuuji? Just you and me. Nothing and nobody to hurt you. It feels like it all started falling apart when I gave you over to Nanami.”

Yuuji swallows thickly, his thoughts all scattered. It’s hard to think when Gojou’s looking at him like. Even his voice is…strange. It’s calm and even, but there’s a furious, frantic undertone that squirms under Yuuji’s skin.

He sounds a little mad. He looks it too.

But his hand on Yuuji’s face is very gentle.

Yuuji raises his hand out of the water and lightly lays it over Gojou’s, which presses more firmly against Yuuji’s face in response. Yuuji touches him more firmly too, and there’s something grounding about the way Gojou’s skin feels against his palm, from the line of knuckles to the obscenely long fingers.

“They were good days,” Yuuji admits. “There were times I didn’t want them to end either. But it doesn’t work like that, sensei. You know that even better than me. And I’ll never regret meeting Nanamin or Junpei or the little time I got to spend with them. I’ll never regret all those days with Fushiguro and Kugisaki and our senpai. And all those times we spend together outside of the basement or your house, outside of missions—those are precious too. I’ll never regret those either.”

It’s Gojou who closes his eyes this time. His hand stays on Yuuji’s face—gentle, warm, devouring.

“Halcyon days, huh?” Gojou murmurs. “You’re right. I do know better. Forgive your old teacher his foolishness, Yuuji.”

Yuuji pries Gojou’s hand away from his face and presses his mouth to the ridge of his knuckles. It’s bolder than anything he’s dared with this man, but it feels right. And he hopes Gojou will forgive the tears dripping on his hand. Better now, at least, when Gojou still has a chance to wash himself clean.

“I’ll forgive you anything, Gojou-sensei.”

#famous last words yuuji #goyuu #jjk snippets #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #wip wednesday #my fic #fic: i could keep your bed warm

[whirld-of-color]

"Dad?"

Except- there's something wrong. There... that isn't him. There's something wrong with his tongue, with the teeth, like- like Purple can see the worms squirming from inside the gums.

"Come along now."

He thinks of the training room- bloodstained, then clean, then dusty, then with that heaping pile of abandoned bouquets, spilling dirt that was more a clump of insects than soil onto the floor, and then of that... that blurry nothing-thing, that... that...

What was it?

.

Dad leads Purple into the room and the door closes behind him on its own. Purple suddenly feels like a little kid again. Something about Dad always made him feel so small.

Dad says something.

Purple doesn't catch the exact wording, too focused on the way Dad's lips aren't moving quite right. He can't quite pin down the voice, the specific way he said the words.

It's... Dad's voice, of course, except- He doesn't recall quite what Dad sounded like when he wasn't yelling, and even then it's still just...

Mom is singing. He walks into the kitchen, clean and pale. There's something wrong with her hair, clean and pale. shifting.

her eyes are so bright. Her face is

a spider crawls up the wall behind him, legs running over the crackling inner peritoneum of the walls.

He asks, where did dad go?

Orchid instead says, hello, dearest. i missed you and she is sobbing into purple's shoulder, all a fleeting mist.

.

she says, please don't leave me again. I missed you so much, it was so lonely, never go again and Purple-

purple says nothing.

It tastes like bile.

He glances out the window: it's all wildflowers out there and he is almost back,

back outside,

it is almost raining again and he can smell the stench of sickness and the dirt under his nails, dark brown crescents staining his skin, itching.

He wants to throw up.

Instead, he hugs his mom. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

she cries more, at this, whispering some small thing purple cannot discern. Is it angry? Is it sad?

.

it runs in the family, the way they cling to each other until nails tear and skin breaks. and yet they are always leaving, always going, never happy to be here, tearing away from each other- skin breaking, nails snapping, sickness festering in the blankets. always leaving, always coming back.

coming back, too.

always coming back like a sickness always coming back like a fever she came back she came back and now he is back too and it is again happening again always leaving always always

she just wants to be happy. all she wants all she wants it's all she wants

the plates shatter again, dripping down the wall in a puddle

it's happening again

he flees

flighty thing

but that's alright.

she can fix it

.

dad is in the hallway, staring at Purple with nothing eyes. The air is thick and cloying, the dust motes are heavy with pollen. Purple pins himself to the wall by instinct; dad watches him with a toneless expression.

dad's saying something, maybe- or the sound is emanating from him, noise like a muffled speaker. it isn't words, just noise, a mumbling groaning noise. a noise like grinding teeth. like crumbling bone or hunger. (Like the scratch of ants in the walls- he can hear them- but maybe this too is fake.) he can't

the noise says that dad will be waiting, that he can't escape it.

he can't

Purple turns tail and retreats into his old room. The door creaks accusations of cowardice as he shuts it.

that runs in the family too. after all, dad left first.

.

in childhood bedroom

Purple stops his recording- it's about a half hour's worth of audio (it feels longer). If he replays whatever Dad was saying, would it show up? or would it just be howling wind and static noise, like Mom?

would it even be there?

He skips through the tape to find a time where Dad speaks. It's- the noise is real, thank god, not imagined at all but sounds in a mimicry of words, wrong, sticky with flesh. It changes each time he replays it, like...

The noise doesn't mean anything through the recording. It's like... The tape won't- can't- pick up on the whole noise, can't parse the meaning like a human can. It hisses and grinds, spitting out fragments of words that have been chewed up and thrown away, butchered carcass of a sentence.

"I- k- he/ shhhh- c- an/ hello, purple: hell/ooooooo-"

says the tape

it begins to smoke and burn; suddenly the whole thing is alight in his hand: acrid and searing as Purple jumps so badly his heart nearly hits his ribcage: Now he is scrambling, breath coming in short and thick as he frantically ejects the tape, as the entire thing melts into burning: it isn't plastic that isn't plastic: how is it still talking!?- stomps out the noise with his foot, tries to suffocate it in his hands, as quiet as he can- at last it lays still at his feet.

Smoke fills the room, foul and choking and burning teeth. The corpse of the tape is burst onto the carpet now, all stretched out like a spider's legs, on the verge of twitching again. purple doesn't have his shoes on, he thinks numbly as he stares at the remnants of the tape. it's going to worm its way into his lungs through the air, he thinks. his hands are sticky it's under his nails he can't touch anything, he thinks. does the house still have bleach?

Is dad still in the hallway? oh, god- did he hear?

.

purple used to sneak out of the house at night as a kid- feet quiet and making as little noise as possible down the stairs. to get away from it all. once, mom caught him, dead of night when she was up brewing a cup of tea. he was slipping back inside, past the light of the kitchen, but she turned her head and caught him. neither of them said anything. after a moment of frozen terror, he sprinted up the stairs and back into his room. no one said anything, but he spent the entire day with the knowledge that she knew.

the next night, his door was locked. purple stopped sneaking outside.

.

1 part bleach, 9 parts water.

one part bleach, 9 parts water and claw at your hands and under your nails and it's everywhere, filth and grime spreading on contact as you dip your hands in and out of the solution (too dilute) even as it burns like hell because that means it's cleaning that means it's working and the filth will be gone it won't be there, clinging to your hands hiding in all the corners soil in your eyelashes making everything unfit, unclean, bugs in your pillowcases and crawling up your legs.

Scratch and scrub 1 part bleach 9 parts water foul foul foul foul still there is more and the floor still has that twitching organic corpse of a tape recorder you need to kill it kill it kill it

.

he uses paper towels dipped in bleach to try to wipe the tape's carcass out from the carpet. then disinfectant wipes on the floor, door handles, cabinets, sink handles, anything he touched. he's tempted to open the window but bugs might get in again. he takes more disinfectant to the walls and almost out into the hallway, picking at his skin absentmindedly, before he remembers the time.

the time, the parameters. The time limit. He has to tell Mom.

.

Recorder's running.

"I... hey, mom."

She says, hello, sweetheart. What is it?

"I."

"There's..."

He should say it. He should. He can't delay, he doesn't have long.

But...

He misses his mom, is all. he misses being home. he misses it so bad, he'd do anything to get it back. and he has it, doesn't he? he has it now.

he has it.

it's hard to describe but home is so good. it's so warm and comfortable and happy, gentle hands and people meshing together, comfortable and warm. a gentle voice and a quiet happiness, sunlight falling through the window.

he just doesn't want to lose it.

and he's already lost it once, and then run from it a second time-

it's like standing on the edge of a cliff, except the problem isn't that the cliff will kill him. how absurd, you know death isn't real anyway

the problem is that once he jumps down, he doesn't have a way of getting back up, and when he does he will be further down in the ground, alone and aimless, closer to the dark.

he doesn't want to ruin this for a third time. he knows in his gut that home won't come back if he does.

things come in threes. chances come in threes

so he should say, we need to leave.

he should say, if we leave before three days pass, you will be free and we'll both be alive.

he should say, i want to go.

but this is home.

where else would he go?

"Can- is... is the stuff in the fridge still... good? Could we... bake a cake?"

she says, of course! everything is just as it's been left, still fresh

That can't be right. It all rots so quickly. Remember going through the fridge and clearing everything out because mold was sticking to the inside? Insect parts in the flour and sugar.

He nods and smiles, pulling open familiar wooden cupboards.

the measuring spoons are just where they should be.

.

Audio log number it doesn't matter

"It's... it's funny. I was so... certain, that I had to go back to get mom, right? I had to save her, get her out of this house, and, make her- make her stop, stop rotting, except- I don't think I really wanted that."

"I just wanted to go back. Because I don't want to leave her there, but I don't want to leave."

"I. I have to leave. This is... it's- untenable. Nothing was- I remember it all going bad, it- it doesn't stay good for long, but-"

"No. No, it can't come back, except it's here, and it should be dead and it's not, and."

Heavy breathing.

"I don't... my head isn't working right."

"It's like... I don't... it's all blurring together. I can't keep hold of everything, because... because..."

"The house, it... I thought it would have gone to hell. Maybe it has. But I can't... the space isn't making sense. And I'm losing time, and, and I don't know where I... where am I? In the house, I mean, I don't recognize this room, I."

"No, no that's not what I was talking about I wanted to talk about-"

Silence for 1 minute, 4 seconds.

"The house. I think it. It was good at first."

"When Mom came back after it rained. She taught me how to garden and sang lullabies. When I went out for groceries, I'd bring back little novelties, right? New recipes, or some weird food thing from the market. New clothes and bright patterns, weird teas. Records and paintings. And we'd listen to them."

Song (https://youtu.be/zgsfWSx9Apw?si=qooA5K-1pj0Ze-R1) plays down the recorder. The noise is fragmented.

"Except... it was rotting, I think. It was always rotting. Even back when things were alright, it was still... decaying."

"Home, I mean. It had already died."

Startled pause.

He whispers softly, conspiratorially into the recorder, like a child expecting to be caught.

"I didn't mean to say that but it's true."

"It died when Mom did. When I had to bury her all alone and no one came to the funeral even though I send Dad so many letters. When I had to bury her alone and I did it and... and it died. Because I was all alone. But I've still... and everyone's here- but it's still..."

"It's still here."

That wasn't Purple's voice. The tape recorder

Crackles

Hisses

melts

.

purple turns and the cake is finished. mom rushes over and takes the whole thing out, hands not burning.

it smells like sugar and caramel, like sweetness. he breathes it in like incense.

the window streams in sunlight, rays curling around his hand and arms like a contented cat.

orchid asks if he wants to frost the cake, sweetheart?

he pulls himself out of his reverie, and says sure, but he hasn't gotten any better at it.

mom says that he doesn't have to be good at it. he just has to like to do it. purple doesn't know if he agrees.

.

purple hears his voice down (down) (get digging) the hallway.

it's a recording.

its

A tape.

On the coffee table.

It's rewinding and playing again, fragments of noise and his voice, caught in the tape.

"Entry number one. Entry number one. Entry. Entry. No- Entry."

It's rewinding and starting and stopping again, on it's own. No one else is in the living room.

Something isn't right- he can feel it now, rising up in his stomach- something isn't right.

----

notes: so the reason the tapes are like clawing purple back into lucidity is because he's been using them to keep stringent track of things for absolute ages, to prove to himself that he isn't, you know, going insane! so he can use them to keep track of time and of what's going on- and the house is very, very disorienting. so it'd be real good to be able to do that!

(also from a meta standpoint- the narration for the house excludes dialogue. you'll note that orchid never "says things like this", using actual quotes. the narration just says she says stuff. and the tape recorder transcripts are entirely dialogue. so there's a bit of at-odds thing going on there, as well.)

masterpost

#animation vs minecraft #alan becker #animator vs animation #avm #ava #wishing well au #original posting

[whumpinggrounds]

BTHB: This is For Your Own Good

For Liam and Delilah, “This is for Your Own Good” from @badthingshappenbingo​! Huge thank to @brutal-nemesis​ for the request :)

Requests are open! Filled means it’s finished, open means requested. Hearts are Liam and Delilah, lightning bolts are for Freddy and T, and stars are for August.

Tagging fairytale friends - @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump, @lonesome–hunter, @diyalogues, @deluxewhump, @hearse-song, @pumpkin-spice-whump, @whumpy-writings, @warm-my-whumpee-heart

CW: male whumpee, female whumper, creepy whumper, forced labor, long term captivity, thinking about death, threats, digging own grave (maybe) (I won’t tell you yet if that’s what he’s doing sorry), big whumpee/little whumper dynamics

Above Liam, Delilah sighs, an utterly disgusted sound. The crackle of the Taser fills the air, and Liam squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the flood of electricity, the pain. Instead, Liam would swear he hears her pause and think about it.

Then she grunts. “Take off the stupid blindfold.”

Not wanting to give her an instant to change her mind, Liam sits up fast and scrapes his fingernails across his cheeks trying to get under the blindfold cutting into his face. “Thank you!” he remembers to tell her, voice fervent, but she just snorts. He nearly draws blood in his eagerness, and when the blindfold finally does slide off, the world around him is too bright. Hissing, squinting, Liam waits, still on hands and knees, for his eyes to adjust. He’s just turned his face toward Delilah when she thrusts her hand out at him, and there’s a shovel in it.

Mouth falling open, Liam gazes mutely up at Delilah. Yet again, she’s dressed in a floral sundress, and he can see the goosebumps standing out on her pale legs. The cornflower blue fabric billows around her motionless body, and it’s eerie seeing the fabric shift and move while she stands so statue-still. Her tiny, little white hand makes the shovel look huge and brutal.

“What…” Liam swallows hard. “What’s that…”

He knows what it’s for. Liam knows.

“Dig,” she tells him, voice toneless. Climbing to his feet, Liam takes the shovel and then just stares for a moment.

It’s still wintry enough in this part of the world that the trees are all bare. They stretch away on every side. The undergrowth is brown, the ground beneath Liam brown, and the sky above, nothing but gray. Is this where his corpse is going to rot? Is this where his bones are going to return to the earth? Liam has never thought about where he’d like his body to lie, but this barren stretch of ground is so impersonal. So far away from everything and everyone he loves.

Behind him, Delilah clears her throat impatiently. The Taser is out in her hand, pointing toward Liam. He wonders briefly if he could get the best of her with the shovel maybe – but he has no idea where he is, and no shoes on. He hasn’t eaten properly in weeks. She has the Taser, and she’s so…small, standing there. Could he really bring down a shovel on her head?

“Dig.”

And Liam does. The work warms him up fast, and he starts to sweat as he buries the head of the shovel and draws it back down. A few inches down, the soil still crunches with frost. His muscles tremble long before he’s used to, and the amount of strength he’s lost makes Liam grimace. This frail, skinny, body hardly feels like his own. Maybe that’s the real reason Delilah is getting rid of him, he thinks, grinning darkly to himself. Without the muscles, he’s probably not very good-looking, anymore.

The smile slides off his face quickly. The idea that he’s digging his own grave – that he’ll never see his mom again, or Katie, or any of his friends. He’ll never eat another cheeseburger, or get drunk, or go for a good long run. His hands start to shake around the handle of the shovel. His breath catches. He doesn’t want to die. The apathy that held him down just a few minutes ago has gone, leaving the familiar, stubborn, desperate will to live that has animated him all these months. He doesn’t want to die. Liam doesn’t want to die.

It takes hours, and more than a few times, Liam stops to heave air into his exhausted lungs, or to stretch, or to rest his aching arms and back. Blisters rise on his palms, and then they burst. Above and behind him, Delilah is silent, watchful. Every time he looks up, he sees the Taser still in her hand. A few times, he tries to start a conversation, but she says nothing in return – except once.

It’s not a real attempt at making conversation. It’s more of an accident when he lets the question slip. Liam is taking a break, wiping sweat from his brow, and leaning heavily on the shovel. His back aches and his hands hurt and even though he knows the answer, he mutters the question in a despairing tone. “Why are you doing this?”

Above him, Delilah lets out a sound that’s almost a laugh. “It’s for you, darling. It’s for your own good.”

Mouth dry, Liam searches for words. “What…” He swallows. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you trust me?” Delilah’s voice is light.

No. “Yes, I…of course I trust you.”

“Good. Keep digging.”

The words are on Liam’s tongue. Are you going to kill me? For a long moment, he hangs there, in the seconds before speaking.

Then, wordless, he picks up the shovel. The smooth, sanded wood of the handle feels like sandpaper against Liam’s blistered hands. His shoulders and back ignite with fiery ache as he bends to the work once more. In the end, he doesn’t ask. It’s not because he’s afraid to, more because he knows that whatever the answer might be, there’s not a damn thing that he can do about it.

#male whumpee #female whumper #liam and delilah #creepy whumper #long term captivity #forced labor #threats #thoughts of death #forced to dig own grave #bad things happen bingo #bthb #bthb: this is for your own good #this is for your own good #bad things happen bingo: this is for your own good #ocs #big whumpee #little whumper

[chihirolovebot]

pls pls pls 8 and 10 w/kokichi !!

drv3 spoilers under the cut.

The hangar doors had long since closed; Kaito was, to both of your knowledge, still unconscious in the bathroom. If he was awake, he hadn't spoken.

The two of you sat against one of the empty Exisals, him fiddling with the remote Miu had crafted, you with your own clothes. You didn't look at each other, both, you thought, afraid to see the truth in the other's expression. The fear. The inevitability.

If you didn't look at him, you didn't have to remember what was going to happen very soon. As soon as Kaito woke up, this bubble of calm would break, and you'd be forced to confront reality.

Only of you was getting out of this alive.

Suddenly restless, you got to your feet and wandered over to the bathroom door; there was a small glass slit in the metal, barely enough to stick an arm through. You peered through the slat of light; Kaito was still pale and limp, cheek smushed against the cold-tile floor, expression and position unchanged. A bright streak of blood had joined the growing pool of drool beneath his mouth; you stared at it, trepid.

"Looks like we'll be trapped for a while," you murmured needlessly, just for something to say. Kokichi nodded, not taking his eyes from the remote in his hands. He turned it over and over, over and over again, holding it for so long the aluminium must've been warm by now.

"Anything you'd like to confess in your final hour?" he asked, still not looking at you. You managed a weak laugh.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." You sat cross-legged beside him, so close your knees touched. For once, maybe in wake of the inevitable truth, he didn't pull away. "Aren't we supposed to not look at each other when during Confession?"

"Mm," he agreed. "Here." He shifted his position to that he sat with his back to you, and you quickly mirrored the position, tentatively pressing the curve of your spine to his. He ran surprisingly warm for someone so light; it seeped through your clothes and beneath your skin.

"Okay," you chuckled weakly. "Um... yeah. I've committed sin, for sure. I, uh, I've lied to all my friends. And it's, um, it's probably a lie that helps them in the big picture, but... it still feels pretty shitty, huh?"

"That's what so great about lying, though," Kokichi said, voice toneless. "It can just be whatever you want it to be. If you want it to help people, then fine. The truth is the tricky one, 'cause there's only one and people can use it however they like. Stick with lies."

"Hm. I guess I get your point," you mused. Swallowed. "Anything you'd like to confess?"

A breath. "I've seen the way you look at me," he said, again with that toneless cadence. "When you think I'm not looking."

A lump rose in your throat. "Kokichi—"

"Shitty thing, the truth, isn't it?" he sighed, melancholic. "All it does is break your heart."

Your lip trembles; tears burned in your eyes. "Do you - tell me, just once, do you—"

A shift, a muffled groan. You caught yourself, wide-eyed, gaze snapping to the bathroom. Behind you, you felt Kokichi tense.

Time was up.

#kokichi ouma x reader #kokichi x reader #kokichi headcanons #kokichi ouma headcanons #ouma x reader #ouma kokichi x reader #🗞; writing tag. #danganronpa x reader #danganronpa headcanons

[chrysalispen]

pursuit/predation (zenoswol)

This was a lot of fun LMAO I hope you all enjoy reading as much as i did writing it! Commission for @noxi-lumi featuring their WoL, Raziela Undeni <3

NSFW under cut. CW for mildly violent imagery (it is Zenos, after all).

======

Two and a half fulms below the angled opening of his makeshift bolthole, Zenos yae Galvus peered up at the sky with a borrowed face to watch the storm that had raged for two days. The levin-aspected aether in the northern hinterlands of Gyr Abania often lent itself to violent thunderstorms, with static bursts that rendered the escarpment too hazardous to cross. There were waypoints in the mountains to seek shelter from the weather but he had eschewed them, thinking that the fewer encounters to detain (and bore) him, the better. 

He had ever chafed at forced inactivity, but all in all, Zenos reasoned, this was but a temporary setback. Man was a beast bred for hunting, a pursuit predator, and he was nothing if not the pinnacle of that ideal. He would do as his ancient ancestors had done: bide his time and await his next opportunity. Once the storm had spent itself, he could go.

He whistled the opening bars of a parade ground march under his breath - a low and toneless sound like loch winds moaning around the corners of sandstone - and let his eyes fall shut.

Seconds and minutes passed as an age. Bereft of aught else to entertain him, his thoughts turned to his memories of the Eorzeans’ champion: that wild creature of sword and spell. Eikon-slayer. Saviour of the savages, so-called. Epithets overheard from idle barracks' chatter, although Zenos set little stock in the distinction between his own kind and the rest of the world as others did. Garleans bled the same, quailed in fear the same, and died screaming the same as any savage, and she had long since proven her mettle to his satisfaction. She strode the world as he did, towering above her fellows, a beast without peer. 

He still recalled with crystal clarity the day they had met. Then he had barely paid mind to her paltry attempts to halt his advance; countless enemies had attacked him out of fear or desperation to stave off the inevitable, after all. Even so, he had seen neither of those things in their hero's magenta eyes. A grim sort of determination, to be sure; the steely resolve he would expect of one well-versed in the path he walked himself- but no fear. 

There had been another emotion which he still couldn’t quite define, the faintest flicker of something. Curiosity, mayhap. His own exultation in the heat of the fight, mirrored in her mien. A reflection of himself, some alternate path he had never chanced to walk. 

Whatever it was he had seen that day, it had moved him to spare her life. 

And how right he had been to do it. She was worth a score of tribunes on her own-- fivescore, if the truth be told. Had she agreed to his proposal, or had he kept his word rather than indulge his lust for violence in that precise moment… 

How very different things might have been. 

Well, perhaps, he amended. They each had their parts to play. But upon the stage of his imaginings, anything was possible. There he could entertain to his heart’s content his fantasies of his friend returned to him, stronger still for her own tribulations. 

He meant to duel her again and had no doubt she would oblige him.  The prospect of it did not deter him; no, he yearned for the excitement of it. The surge of heat through the veins with each perfectly executed step, air burning the throat and whistling in the lungs, the ever-present specter of death looming over one’s shoulder-- what was violence, in truth, but a dance? Were not those dances with the most precarious, most intricate of steps best enjoyed with a partner of comparable skill? 

In the end that was what he had seen in her: a worthy partner, at long last. Whether to stand at his side or to test her blade against his, he would accept both, but to fight his most precious friend once more, to recapture that kindled flame-- that would be a fine thing.

Oh yes, that would be quite fine indeed.

Remembered delight shuddered its way across the surface of his skin, a delicious and almost delicate frisson that bored its way down his spine to curl and tighten in the pit of his belly. Zenos was no stranger to lust; since his majority plenty of his lessers had used their bodies to curry his favor for some petty reason or other, with naught in their hearts save ambition and fear. Carnal knowledge was both prosaic and vulgar, rutting the sole province of mindless beasts, and it had not taken him long to decide that such matters held little of interest or value to him. 

But this sweet and languorous warmth, like honey in a well-steeped tea-- he realized that he did not mind it so very much. It reminded him of the menagerie, and his last sight of her before he had opened his own throat and bled out into the flowers. Joy, pure and transcendent. 

Yes, he decided; this pleased him.

With a soft grunt Zenos shifted his hips. The motion left him keenly aware of the physical evidence of his arousal against the mild rise below his navel, where it strained against twin cages of cloth and leather for freedom. That spreading ache was not a sensation entirely alien to him, but it did strike him strange how very aware it made him of this borrowed body on such a base level. Heat and hyperawareness punctured the fine invisible layers of his detachment with the pinpoint precision of a sewing needle through linen.

His eyes fell shut once more in a series of slow and lazy blinks: a contented feline drowsing atop a fresh kill. 

He settled one hand over the seam of his breeches where the fabric was pulling taut and palmed himself, running his fingers lazily along the firm ridge his cock had formed beneath the thick weave. If he paid heed only to those slow and teasing strokes, he could convince himself that it was her, touching him so intimately---her hand dragging those sharp and immaculate nails he had glimpsed up and down his length. Scratching their points with calculated ease along the underside of his shaft, applying just enough pressure through the fabric to leave tiny trails of fire in their wake. 

A soft groan rumbled deep in his chest, and Zenos tilted his chin back so as to rest his head against the rock, thighs spreading to accommodate his girth. What would she do, he mused, should she chance to see him caught in the web of his own desire? Driven to distraction by the mere thought of her, the very picture of the animal in full rut which he had so scorned? 

The irony of it would amuse her, he had no doubt about that. Perhaps she might grin at the spectacle. 

Perhaps she would even laugh. He presumed to imagine it, a sight and sound he had yet to experience. A wicked, throaty peal of mirth. The toss of short sable locks, the tilt and swivel of long tufted ears, the stretch of her long and graceful neck as she tossed her chin. Grinned at him, feral and dark, that smile he so loved to see before her inevitable riposte. 

Savagery to rival his own, swathed in leather and crimson.

So thinking, Zenos’ fingers drifted upward of their own accord, straying from the insistent need betwixt his opened thighs to work at the waistband of his breeches instead. 

Lashes fluttered like a courtesan’s fan at the edges of angular cheekbones, suffused with color and dewy with a light band of sweat despite the chill within his shelter. In his mind’s eye, she straddled him as her clever fingers worked the buttons and laces that bound him fast, impatient to pluck her prize from its confines. He fancied he could feel the contained heat of her core against his leg even through the barrier of her smalls, burning as though the sun itself had branded him. 

When he raised himself to pull the offending fabric to his knees, it was she who closed her hand about his cock, grasping him just a touch too snugly. Her thumb stroked tiny circles over the foreskin as the shaft lunged eagerly within the cage of her palm; he could almost hear a hum of low-pitched approval. Each stroke she made eased the smooth, hot skin to retract and expose his crown: deeply flushed, its tip already glistening with precum. Zenos sighed, his borrowed body rocking upward to thrust into her hand, seeking friction to accompany that narrow squeeze. Anything would do, really. Except he needed--

Shallow breaths rasped unsteadily in the close space as he slicked his palm with his own saliva, grimaced, then took himself in hand once more. 

Wet heat and resistance alone nearly undid him. His startled inhalation made a sharp and rasping echo that he barely heard, lost as he was in his fantasy. She had shed her duelist’s garb, laid herself bare to embrace him with long and powerful thighs, like velvet-wrapped steel. He shuddered at the effort it took to control himself, to let gravity carry her down to sheathe him in her depths, to let her move atop him to counter his thrusts with her own: a beautiful beast with lips for kissing and teeth for tearing. She laid both to work upon his throat and his shoulders with each upward snap of his hips-- drank deep of him, and he of her, until his stomach ached from ribcage to groin with unrelieved tension. 

Violence in its own sense, he thought. A dance most intimate, and as real and as pure as the day they had parted.

“Yes, my beast,” he hissed aloud. The sibilant sound of his pleasure rose and reverberated around him, a chorus of empty whispers. “Just so.” His free hand fisted in a handful of loose gravel and his mouth fell slack and the spare limbs and lean angles of this unfamiliar vessel, all wrong, not his, arched like a bowstring. His heels dug into unyielding rock rather than bedsheets for purchase. Her fingers entwined with his, sharp nails grazing his knuckles, tiny cuts to blend with the myriad small scars left by 

(hunting. a pale silver-white web of scar tissue in the center of his left palm - his true vessel's left palm - where his fourteen-year-old self pierced it with a crystal. a parting gift to the first man he ever killed. its tendrils radiate outward between each of his fingers like the cracks made in a pane of shattered glass)

arrows and fletching. She was close; he fancied he could hear the labored rattle of her breathing with each small moan she made. Bracing her weight against his torso and balancing upon his thighs to bounce, sounds only he could hear tumbling from imaginary lips parted and glistening, her cunt flexing about him like a silken vise as she approached the edge of release and swept him along like an incoming tide--

--and the pressure in his groin dropped, at last, and when he spilled, his seed splashing over his frantically moving fist and locked fingers and onto the muscled slope of his exposed belly, it was her name which fell from his lips, not hero or beast but Raziela, Raziela.

Long moments passed before he opened his eyes, chest heaving and fingers numb and loosely wrapped about his spent cock, still pulsing beneath his touch. The syllables of her name seemed to echo in his ears, a mantra to recite to himself until he had locked it into his memory to recall at a whim. 

He waited in patient silence, willing his pulse to slow and his lungs to expand in an unhurried rise and fall. There was a low rumble from the opening of his shelter and after long moments, a flicker of lightning. The storm was passing and with it the levinstrikes. He would be able to move soon.

With movements as slow and languid as a sleepwalker’s, Zenos reached for the belt he had removed upon entering the cave and dug through its pockets until he found something that would serve as a washcloth. His gaze, as he wiped himself down and rearranged drab layers of linen and oilcloth into some semblance of order, was very far away, fixed upon the thinning clouds and the wheel of stars beyond. The moon hung low in the sky, bloated and orange.

I wonder where you are, my friend, he thought. If you have given thought to our meeting at all. 

“Raziela,” he whispered once more, as if testing the sensation of her name on his tongue. In the darkness of the cavern, his eyes glittered like a hungry cat’s.

It was only a matter of time before they were reunited; he would make certain of it. Once he had regained his true form, they would have their dance. A grand reunion upon a great stage, two stars to burn bright, and oh, there would be such a burning. To capture this bliss and relive it with her-- he would give anything in his power, and the very star itself would tremble at their union.

When he emerged from the cavern at last to clear skies and a still night, the moon hid its face behind a passing cloudbank like prey that had caught his scent. And within the bounds of his stolen vessel, Zenos yae Galvus smiled to see it.

#zenos yae galvus #zenos/wol #spicy character studies

[mommymooze]

Always Half, Never Whole

Hubert, OC Sarlik, Edelgard

TW: Forced captivity, bondage, starvation

Hubert stands stand outside of the Empire’s stronghold that houses the Black Eagle Strike Force and all of their supports. He silently perceives her presence. A tall dark haired woman stands alone outside of the stronghold at the edge of the woods, staring into the sky. She joined their forces recently, one of the members of his new battalion, the Vestra Sorcery Engineers. He had noticed her during the battle earlier today, she ran a sword through an axe wielder headed his direction, immediately afterward the enemy burst into flames.

He approaches silently. She does not stir from her peering into the heavens.

“What is your name.” Hubert demands, expecting her to jump.

She lowers her head, looking to the ground. “You may simply refer to me as your loyal servant, Lord Hubert.”

“Name.” He requires a proper response.

“Agarthe. I hate it. I would ask friends to call me by my second name, Sarlik, however I have no friends.” She responds listlessly.

“Sarlik. Thank you for your assistance today.” He mutters quietly.

“I take my work seriously. We protect you.” Her voice toneless.

“Why are you out here? Should you not be resting with the rest of the battalion?” He is curious about this one, deciding to continue the conversation.

“The quarters are close. The smells are…strong. I am enjoying the freedom and air of the outdoors.” She answers. For enjoying something, her voice is very unemotional.

“Where are you from? Adrestia?” He asks.

She laughs, however it is dry and hollow. “No.”

“Hmm.” Hubert brings his index finger to curl over his upper lip.

“Have you not seen our pale skin? Do you not feel the darkness raging through us?” She holds up her palm and a small purple flame comes to life in the center, putting her pale skin and black eyes on display.

“Shouldn’t you be with your kind?” He snarls, eyes piercing into her.

“They disgust me.” She fumes, curling her hand into a fist, the light disappears.

“Oh, do they now? Please tell me more.” Hubert refuses to believe much, if anything of what she says.

“I will tell you anything if you don’t force me to go back.” She kicks at a stone on the ground.

“I may keep you around, if nothing else, for entertainment.” He points to the encampment. “Return to your place. Rest. Tomorrow we march to Enbarr.”

As the army marches back to the Adrestian capital, they run into enemy forces upon occasion. Hubert’s battalion surrounds him and protects him well, never allowing an enemy to get within 20 feet of him.

Hubert is extremely busy upon his return to Enbarr, fulfilling Edelgard’s wishes, organizing his spies, and ending those that stand in their way. Silently he emerges from an alley in one of the downtrodden sections of the city when he feels the sudden presence of dark magic nearby. Walking away from him is a woman dressed all in black. Were she not wearing brown gloves, she would completely blend in with the darkness.

“Sarlik.” He speaks low and aggressively.

She turns, her face pale in the little light of the street as she walks toward him. She touches his shoulder, they are warped to the Imperial gardens in the rear of the palace.

“That is a foul place to have a conversation.” She answers before he asks his question.

Hubert takes a seat on the bench that is immediately behind him. She sits on the stone pathway, her dress circling around her.

“Why do you follow me?” Hubert growls.

“To protect you.” She states. “You are useful to me.”

“What makes you think I will do what you want?” He repudiates.

“It is already part of your plan.” She answers, her voice low. “When you are done with them you will seek revenge on those that have injured and tortured your Emperor, murdered her siblings, infiltrating and poisoning the government with their work in the shadows.”

Hubert does not react, does not flinch. His face reflects no emotion.

“They experiment on everything. Even their half breed children.” Touching her hair, it changes from black to white. “They think they are gods. All of them are mad, insane, a perverse blight upon the planet deserving of annihilation.”

“Take them out yourself. Why should I do your work for you.” He sneers.

“I cannot. I am magically prevented from any physical or magical attack to any Agarthan.” Sarlik answers. “But there is nothing stopping me from assisting someone else that can.”

“Curious, but not very convincing.” Hubert comments.

The Emperor dismisses the members of the Strike Force from their daily planning meeting in the Imperial Palace. Edelgard stands, straightening her dress preparing to leave the room.

“Pardon, my Emperor. Where are you going to in such a hurry today?” Hubert eyes her as she is halfway to the door.

“I have an appointment to keep. None of your concern. You are dismissed, Hubert.” She does not turn to meet his gaze as she leaves.

Hubert has a meeting with a spy and cannot follow her at this time, however as soon as he can, he searches the palace for her location. He arrives at the atrium where his Emperor is having tea with another person. He cannot make out their identity as their back is facing him and the thick cloak hides their appearance.

Hubert approaches to a proper distance then bows and announces his presence. “I beg your pardon, Lady Edelgard, however I have some information that I must discuss with you.”

Her lilac colored eyes raise to meet his gaze. “I will be with you shortly, Hubert. I must finish my appointment with my friend.”

“May I ask with whom you are having tea with?” Hubert pries.

“Just a friend.” She waves him off. “Must you know everything!”

“For matters of security, my lady.” Hubert bows respectfully. He cannot deny the sense of dark magic around the guest.

“They are welcome in the palace, so there is no security issue. Please leave us.” Edelgard verbally dismisses him, refusing to look in his direction.

Hubert huffs to himself, quietly leaving the atrium, then stomping angrily down the hallway.

A week later Hubert happens upon Sarlik and Linhardt working in a small laboratory not far from the infirmary.

“You must inspect the pods closely. They cannot be withered. Only the healthy ones can be used. Check first at the stem side, if it is soft or wrinkling, discard it.” Sarlik instructs Linhardt.

Linhardt looks incredibly awake currently, which is quite unusual. He is rapidly writing in his notebook, capturing every word the woman tells him.

“Cut off the ends and measure exactly two feet of pods. You will have the correct amount regardless of the size of the pods.” Sarlik continues.

“What is going on here. Who gave you permission to mix potions here?” Hubert demands an answer.

“Edelgard of course.” Linhardt answers, matter of factly.

“Emperor Edelgard. Mind your tongue. For what purpose is this potion?” Hubert scowls.

“We are brewing this at her request. Why don’t you go ask her?” Linhardt snips, turning away from the seething man behind him.

Hubert turns on his heel and does just that.

Knocking on the door of the personal quarters of the emperor, Hubert announces himself.

“Come in.” Edelgard beckons.

Approaching her with measured steps he bows, “Lady Edelgard, if I may have a word with you.”

“I really wish you would leave the formality out there. In here we are friends, come, have a seat.” She pats the couch next to her chair.

Hubert takes a seat as ordered. “I recently discovered Linhardt and Sarlik concocting strange potions near the infirmary. Of course, I have concerns for the safety and security of all occupants of the palace…”

“Give it a rest, Hubert. Sarlik meets with my approval and has my permission to create any potions she feels necessary.” Edelgard needles him.

“You have no idea who she is, or even what she is. I believe she is quite dangerous and possibly a spy.” Hubert argues.

“I am certain you have been spying on her since you knew of her arrival. What have you discovered?” She looks at him sternly.

“We are still observing her.” He remarks. “She has not committed any acts of treason, yet. She may be waiting for instructions, then when the time is right, she will betray us all.”

“I encourage you sit with her. Speak with her.” Edelgard advises.

Hubert bows, “As you wish.”

Once the potions she and Linhardt are brewing finish, Hubert orders Sarlik to accompany him. She follows him wherever he leads. He takes her to a secluded cell deep below the palace. He is the only person privy to its location. He orders her to sit, cuffing her hands and legs to the rough raw wood of the chair. He places a collar around her neck to prevent her from being able to cast magic. He questions her about her true loyalty. He demands to know what she has done to Edelgard to gain her trust so quickly. He commands her to provide the names of all that she has brainwashed or manipulated to put their trust in her.

For all of his questioning, she says nothing.

Hubert leaves her bound in the cell, returning to his office. He is immediately approached by one of his spies and he must leave the Imperial Palace for an important mission.

Hubert returns three days later. His first objective is to see to the health and welfare of his Emperor. Edelgard informs him that while he was away, when she knew he was away, nothing occurred out of the ordinary. He returns to his office to review spy reports and attend to duties that require his immediate attention. By his calculation, Sarlik has been secured in the cell for approximately 80 hours.

He packs a large basket, heading to the depths below the palace. He stops frequently to check the traps he has set, verifying that none have been tripped. There has not been anyone through here, he notes to his satisfaction. Unlocking the last door, he enters with the light of a single candle.

The light is still too bright for her eyes as she lowers her head and turns away from him. She has been in complete darkness the entire time she has been imprisoned.

“Perhaps now you are willing to answer my questions.” Hubert unpacks the basket’s contents, placing the different items on the floor. Several bottles, items wrapped in paper, a metal cup, other items wrapped in cloth. He unfolds a stool and takes a seat on it directly facing her.

She opens her eyes the tiniest bit when she hears him pull the cork from a bottle and pour liquid into the cup. He holds it to her lips, she drinks. The liquid is foul and bitter, tainted with whatever potion he wishes to use on her. She licks her parched and split lips, giving them moisture that they have not had for days. He brings the cup to her lips again, she drinks as directed until the cup is taken away.

“How rude not to greet me when I have brought you this gift.” Hubert chuckles.

“Apologies, Lord Hubert. Hello and thank you.” She manages to choke out before having a coughing fit. She raises her head fully taking a deep breath. Her breathing returns to quick and shallow.

He can see the signs of dehydration, her eyes sunk well into their sockets, skin dull, the strong smell of urine when she soiled herself. He raises the cup to her lips again, watching her drink.

“Who are you loyal to?” Hubert sneers at her.

“Those that will help me destroy the Agarthans.” She answers slowly, her voice comes out as a whisper.

“What have you done to Emperor Edelgard?” He growls.

“Nothing.” Sarlik gasps.

Hubert strikes her with the back of his gloved hand. “Liar!” He screams in her face as her head snaps back then falls forward as far as the collar allows.

Sarlik licks her bloody lip. “I eased her pain.”

Hubert observes her every twitch and shudder. “Explain.”

“Crest implantation is extremely painful for the victim, causing continued pain for the remainder of their life. The pain is multiplied if they have an existing crest, multiplied further if they implant more than one.” She coughs after such a long speech. “The more powerful the crest, the more damage it causes to the recipient. Every time one of her crests activates, it causes turmoil inside her blood, causing it to fight with itself. Many are driven mad by the pain alone. She is a brave woman that hides her suffering well. She has great strength both physical and mental. All I have done is brew potions to provide her relief from the pain, if only for a short while.”

“More.” He demands.

“The potion relieves the pain and diminishes many of the negative symptoms for nearly a week. You observed us measuring ingredients.” She stops to cough. “She has enough for almost a month. When you interrupted us in the atri-“ she coughs violently, vomiting on herself.

“What a dreadful mess.” Hubert curses as he wipes her face, collar, and shirt. He offers more liquid.

She gulps the bitter liquid and moistens her lips. “Atrium, we were discussing her reaction to the small dose. She said there were no adverse effects and she felt like she was able to sleep well for the first time in years.” She struggles to catch her breath.

“What are the adverse effects?” Hubert must be aware of any dangers to Lady Edelgard.

“Normal allergy symptoms, swelling, shortness of breath, rashes, headaches, numbness, vomiting. It is a healing potion for dark magic poisoning.” Sarlik answers.

“How were you able to convince her to take it so easily?” Hubert glares, staring at the disgusting creature before him.

“We share many of the same experiences. Losing family and friends to their experiments. Suffering the pain of multiple crests forced onto us against our will. Being held in cells in the dark. They take us out to experiment on us or force us to fight, to activate the crests to see if they complement each other or create additional boons. Misery loves company. We are comrades in arms. Been there, understand that.”

“I do not believe you.” Hubert can hardly contain his anger. “You are manipulating her, all of us. You are simply waiting for the right time to hand us over to them.”

“The only thing I wish to give themis death.” She responds. “Poison me, fill me with truth potions, you will not obtain any different answers than what I tell you now. Ask your questions. Leave me alone for a year or ten down here in your deepest, darkest dungeon. You cannot torture me any more than they have already. I am half human, half Agarthan. All nothing. Worthless.”

“Hmm.” He considers her words.

“Truly Hubert, it should not be this difficult to convince you that my goal is to defeat our enemy in common. I ask for absolutely nothing in return. I am willing to provide you every piece of information, weapons, and assistance that I am able so that they can be destroyed. Hatred, spite, and anger are the only things keeping me alive. When they are gone, when they are no more, I will lay down, sleep the long sleep and be at peace.”

“What makes you think I believe any of this refuse spewing from your lips.” He drawls.

“Certainly, it would not be your truth potion, barely diluted, enough to make a platoon of men confess every sin they had ever committed. Yet, had you given me water, I would still tell you the same.” Sarlik speaks with no emotion, her face revealing a suggestion of sadness.

Hubert frowns at the creature before him. Normally his victims would be confessing, the fear from the drugs taking over, as well as begging for their life. How has the mixture of the blood made this one different?

Sarlik finally raises her head to look into his eyes. “Tell me Hubert. How are your hands? The goddess had never meant for humans to cast the spells you do. Dark Magic is the creation of the Agarthans. Humans that use their magic, you have seen the woman in Abyss. Her hands frozen in the shape of blackened claws, completely useless. Have yours begun to shake? How far have the tendrils of blackness traveled up your arms. Have your feet begun to blacken as well?”

“Would you be interested in spells for cleansing the blackness from your extremities?” She taunts him. “To be able to feel the softness of your Emperors hair as you braid it for her. Has she noticed that your work is sloppy because of your lack of feeling in your fingers? Your hands are always cold. Even if your entire body is submerged in the hottest water you can manage, your hands are still cold. Does your lover recoil at the chill of your touch?”

Hubert delivers a stronger backhanded strike as a response. His glove is stained with her blood and spit.

“Your anger is wasted on me.” Is her answer to his strike. “You wish to curse me for telling the truth. Is that not what you want? The truth?”

“I will get what I need from you.” Hubert seethes.

Sarlik returns her line of sight forward, staring at nothing. “You cannot do anything to me they have not done already. You cannot take away anything, I have nothing to lose. I only have knowledge. That is the one thing you desperately need.”

“Then give me the truth.” He seethes.

She recites her knowledge relating to his experience. “Arundel was replaced prior to the insurrection. The Agarthan that holds his form orchestrated the entire rebellion, filling all of the nobles with his lies. He controlled your father.”

“Thomas was replaced at the monastery 10 years prior, keeping watch over Seir-Rhea and her ilk. They have spies everywhere. They make your operation look like a bunch of school children.The spy you know as Lassandra was replaced a year and a half ago. You don’t know her well, however she has been keeping an eye on you for them.”

She takes a breath, “Those in your battalion are Agarthans. They spy on everyone here, sending their findings back to the rest. It is best to be rid of them. I can brew the poison on the blade that killed Jeralt. It prevents healing of any type, turning the blood sour with its poison.”

Hubert is at a loss. In this short time, she has answered many questions that he has been trying to answer for years.

“The Agarthans claim they are the one true race.” Sarlik drones on. “They created Nemesis to defeat the Nabateans. Only a few of them remain. The Agarthans will soon turn their sights to eliminating humans as well. They will darken the skies to blot out the sun then take over the surface world. Their technology has created nightmares you have never dreamed of. Their leader, Thales, believes himself to be a god, the savior of his race. The church of Seiros are amateurs compared to their belief in him. Be careful with your dealings with them. Should they feel you are hiding anything, they will show force with weapons of your worst nightmare.”

“Perhaps you may be of use to me after all.” Hubert ponders aloud. “I still feel you are an enemy. I will be watching every move you make.”

Sarlik slowly turns her head to look at him. “Then you will release me from this place?”

“Yes.” Hubert nods, “I will have a room prepared close to my quarters. If you leave the room, you must leave me directions to your every location.”

Sarlik clenches her hands into fists, pulling at the leather restraints. Hubert faintly sees the flash of the crest of Blaiddyd as the leather tears and her hands are freed. She immediately reaches to her face, wiping the filth from it with her fingers.

Hubert turns to retrieve some of the food he has brought, along with a bottle of plain water. He does not want her to see his face after what he had just seen her do. He did not keep her there, she simply remained. He allows her to eat.

“Regarding your disappearance, one of my spies found you being held captive and brought you here. The captors tried to question you and were planning on ransoming you to Edelgard.” Hubert supplies the story of her disappearance.

“Agreed” she nods.

Once she has finished eating Hubert orders Sarlik to stand. He heads to exit the cell and watches her follow. Her steps are small and careful. She is unbalanced. He frowns. He removes the collar from her, then takes her by the elbow as he warps them to his office. He opens the door and calls out orders for assistance.

Sarlik remains in his office as her room is prepared. Food is brought. She eats some of what is provided. He takes her to her prepared room.

Sarlik collapses on the bed and sleeps. She may have finally found the assistance she needs to destroy the Agarthans forever.

#fe3h #feth #fe16 #fire emblem three houses #black eagles #hubert von vestra #everyone else makes handsome or beautiful OC but not me

[penaltybox14]

Decofiremen: Silky, the Sear, and the fever

@darknight-brightstar @zeitheist @squad51goals Where Silky sweats in a hospital bed, wanting forgiveness, and Birch sits beside him, wanting the same thing. 

Thomas does not really sleep.  The fever pulls him one way and the Sear pulls another, and he lies shadowy and suspended between them, like birds on a telegraph wire.  But while he does not sleep he seems to dream: or maybe, he is simply tumbled back and forth in time, which has no meaning or reason.  Memories burst unbidden from the bubbles in his lungs, they sluice down into the needle from the bottle hanging above his bed.  Lungs, bottle, bed, light, dark.  He struggles to breathe: air in, air out.  It catches inside him, trapped, fights inside his chest and throws outward through his teeth: he coughs, wheezes, coughs again. 

A hand lays on him: his Sear skews out in all directions.  He thinks of the Jesuits, in Rochester, and then the nuns, in Greenwich Village when he was just a wisp still.  He'd been reared on rows of beds and tall windows and the promise of a greater light.  Sisters had sat with him through fever when he was small, tended his body with damp flannels and peaceful words.  But this touch strikes him like a pig-axe deep in his lights, and the fever skitters around it, hissing like coals.

When he opens his eyes the world is blocks of light and humming shadow, blurred, throbbing strangely.  The teeth of the night-time are ground to the root and the day is straining on the horizon.  Who's to sound the waking bell, who's already awake to tend the horses?

He closes his eyes again but the hand is insistent: it is familiar.  It is real.  He remembers. 

If he is dreaming, he thinks, turning his head: it would be a fine dream to stay in.  If he is dead, he thinks, it would be a fine enough welcome to St Peter's dew-damp fields. 

He was not dead or dreaming then and he is not now, not again, not when his vision stills and the sweat stops stinging his eyes. 

"Easy, Silks," says the sight of distant smoke.  "Easy now."

Thomas wants to take in the face: the throat, the stiff collar, the heavy coat with the captain's sigil on the sleeve, the hands, the dirty nails.  That coat looks as if it's never been worn; as if it still has cedar in the pockets.

The face is bent now, in hands, the one scarred - the skin flat and toneless, pale as Irish table-linens.  The shoulders curve and hunch.  He looks as though he is praying, though Thomas knows he never prayed to any God in his life but stubborn will and worn no halo but his own fists. 

He is not real.  How can he be real, be here.

I never guessed I would see you again.  I never had any hope of that. 

I used to pray for it.  Did you know?  How I used to pray to God you would forgive me, what I couldn't do for you?

At the crest of dawn and cradled in the fever's breast he dreams about Saint Florian's Hall and the morning sun, in thick, dusty blocks, breaking in and painting gold the decades of wax and polish on the floor.  Men stood, clasped firmly in wool, white gloves, their hair glossy with pomade, mustaches waxed as the floor, men waited with furtive eyes and firm jaws for their belts, their flourishes, their captain's coat and sigil. 

An empty auditorium, a single wooden chair that clacks when it opens and leans hard on one leg.  Clacks like a laugh.  Lit up by a sunbeam.  Among that room of stoic men, who whispered.  The sun holding up the ceiling, the dust suspended like ash in water in gutters, gulped down by drains and washed away to the river. 

When he coughs, the dust motes dance in the light, and shine like sparks.  It hurts to breathe, but the dream hurts more, he doesn't want to go back there.

Thomas sweats as if he lies in state in embers, watches the coals thrum and throb like the gloss of a gelding's croup at the canter, in the sun, in the blazing scorching half-twilight of a four-alarm blaze.  He sweats in the dark: where the sun and the house have fallen, the rafters stove-in like ribs, where the smoke ate up his tongue like rats and his sear scratched out his outstretched hand and he was too late, and he doesn't want to go back there.

Thomas opens his eyes.  He imagines that he opens his eyes and everything is right-side up again. 

Thomas opens his eyes.  He stares at the high ceiling.  His chest is broken open and all his dreams flown out, scattered and fearful. 

Thomas opens his eyes and turns his head: there is his brother, exactly where the sear said that he ought to be.

"My God," he whispers, his voice as dry as decades.  "You're still here."

Birchy looks at him, his eyes red, as if he has been walking through smoke.  Birchy's mouth moves: opens.  Closes.  His throat bobs hard and his lips grow tight.  He is sorry, says the deep sear.  He is so, so sorry. 

For what?

"I left."

"Oh."

The sear moves around him like a cloak, like something he could sink his hands into, some holy thing that ties him to earth and flesh.  His younger self draped across the flank of a horse, his hand on the muscular arch of its great neck.  God lives in the hands.  God speaks in the eyes.  Listen, Thomas, say the Jesuits.  Listen, Castor, says old Kidder Parson. 

You alright there?  Says a boy, years ago, at Captain Jack Hazel's engine-house.  Lying in bed and reeking as the sweat of their sear dries on their skin.  Feeling tender-skinned and brand new. 

"You're here," Thomas says.  "Now."

"Aye," Birchy says.  "I am, now."

#decofire #decofiremen #found family #forgiveness #there are antibiotics in my historical fantasy thanks

[mainpopgirldean]

fic: devotional

‘but still beautiful. still dean winchester’ really snapped something inside me...

title: devotional pairing: dean/cas summary: I’m not here to perch, Castiel had said, once upon a time. Laughable, now. (ambiguously set in season 5. gen, 1k. you can also read at ao3.)

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Psalm 37:4

It’s snowing when they finally pull into the motel’s half-empty lot, the vacancy sign flickering. Castiel sits wordlessly in the passenger seat and watches, patient, as Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. Around the steering wheel, his grip tightens and loosens reflexively, rhythmically. There’s blood dried under his fingernails, in his cuticles and the creases of his knuckles, visible even in the darkness of the car.

“Dean,” says Castiel, keeping his hands loose, open on his thighs. Waiting.

It takes a moment. Finally, Dean squints one bleary eye over at the passenger seat and exhales. “Yeah.” Quiet, vacant. “You staying?” Toneless. Couldn’t care either way, or at least careful to keep his preference to himself, even as he watches Castiel sidelong.

Castiel says, “For a while.” If you want, he doesn’t say. Hedging his bet. There’s something about it that settles strangely within him — walking on eggshells around the Michael’s sword. Heaven’s most powerful weapon. This body that he pieced together sinew by sinew, this soul that he writ from dust, entirely anew, that he’d recognize even on the other side of this galaxy and the next. That he knows intimately enough to know what not to say because he — hundreds of millions of years old, a soldier of God — doesn’t want to upset Dean. He wants to give Dean what Dean wants. I’m not here to perch, Castiel had said, once upon a time. Laughable, now.

Dean nods, expressionless. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”

Castiel waits near the front bumper of the Impala, hands in the pockets of his coat, as Dean goes to get a room. A handful of minutes, and then there’s the crunch of Dean’s boots in the snow. He holds the key aloft, giving it a waggle as he says, “117.” Castiel turns and then there’s the pressure of Dean’s hand in the center of his back, propelling him needlessly along. “Here,” Dean says when they come to the door. “Home sweet home.”

The room is small and dark, its shape familiar and unfamiliar in equal measure. Another motel in a line of thousands. There’s the smell of dust hanging in the air, mildewed curtains, two full-sized beds, matching floral comforters. A table, chairs. Through the window, the moonlight is shallow and pale, painting the room in shades of blues and grays.

Dean tosses down his duffel near the wall, toes off his shoes, and then sits heavily at the edge of the bed closest to the door. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, checks its screen. Tosses it toward his pillow with a snort, and then subsides, slump-shouldered, weary-eyed. There’s something wounded, almost childish in his expression. He looks lost, Castiel thinks. Still — despite himself, despite all he’s experienced — shocked at the cruelties of the world. This is Dean with his defenses down. Strings cut. Unable to muster the strength to pretend. And, even still, so beautiful, like a statue, a creature of old. His face, always otherworldly, divine, even in a rictus of exhaustion.

Castiel lingers by the door. He is still unaccustomed to feeling uncertain. He watches as Dean scrubs at his face with his palms, fingers pressing into his eye sockets. This feeling, Castiel thinks — familiar. Remembers Dean in the hospital, after Alastair, ripping apart at the seams. There’s that strange pull of new emotion. Staring at the defeated line of Dean’s shoulders, he wants to do something. Can think of nothing to do. It will be okay, he wants to say, except that would be untruthful, and foolish besides. “Dean,” he starts, over-loud in the silent room. Dean doesn’t move. Another aberrant frisson of  — something, deep inside Castiel. He takes a bracing breath and finally moves.

A few short strides, and he finds himself standing right there, in front of Dean, looking down at his bent head, the sweat-dark strands of hair at the crown of his skull. The toes of his shoes between Dean’s vulnerable, bare feet. There are holes in his socks. Dean keeps his gaze down. Worrying at the charm hanging from his necklace.

“Dean,” Castiel says again. Thinks about touching him, and then — doesn’t think at all. Goes to his knees. It’s nothing to fold himself down to the floor, the carpet gritty and rough through the thin fabric of his pants. Almost surprising to look up and find himself staring into Dean’s wide, uncomprehending eyes, at his parted lips, mouth hanging open like he wants to speak but can’t find the words to say.

His face is — well. Dean is always radiant; has always been radiant. Even knee-deep in the pit, mired in the murk of hell. Every moment of the arduous ascent and every moment after. Up close like this, he’s almost difficult to look at. Castiel has to resist the urge to avert his eyes; to bow his head. He wants to put his hands on Dean. Lifts one before thinking better of it, stops just shy of his denim-clad leg. Feels the heat rising off of Dean’s knee against the palm of his hand.

“Cas — ” Dean stutters, just barely audible. “What — ” Gaping down at him. “What is this? What are you — ” Plaintive. Almost a wail, before he snaps his mouth shut, abortive. Castiel can hear the unvoiced questions anyway: what are you doing? What do you want from me? Dean, who is always needed. Who has always been required to give and give and give. So accustomed to opening himself up and handing pieces over. All bluster even as he shatters.

“Nothing,” Castiel says. Plain. Watches Dean’s expression shift, disbelieving. He forestalls the recrimination burbling up with the lightest touch against the socked toe of Dean’s warm foot. “I just want to help.”

The look on Dean’s face: too startled, too tired, to hide the confusion, the anguish. The relief. Dean doesn’t understand, Castiel knows. But it’s all Castiel wants. Palms open and willing, to take whatever Dean hands him. To — be here, kneeling, at Dean’s feet. Until Dean has no need for him. And even then, Castiel wants to sit at his shoulder, at his hip. He doesn’t know how to say it in a way that Dean will hear or understand or want to accept. He settles for dropping his gaze, letting his fingers close, gently, around Dean’s ankle. Just holding, careful.

Above his head, he hears Dean take a deep, shaky breath, and then another. Feels it rustle the tips of his hair. “Cas,” Dean says. Just a murmur. For a long moment, Castiel expects to be sent away. But Dean doesn’t speak again. There’s a shift, a rustle of the comforter, and then — a featherlight touch settles against the nape of his neck, and, head bowed, Castiel has to squeeze his eyes shut against an unfamiliar rush of a feeling entirely unknown.

#deancas #dean x cas #fic #destiel fic #my writing #the way this is the first time i've published supernatural fanwork since 2006 on fanfiction dot net........ #dean winchester #castiel #spn fic #supernatural

[fogsrollingin]

Title: calculated losses, chapter 2 Author: fogsrollingin Fandom: Supernatural Story details: Sam & Dean, rated PG-13, 1.2k words. Summary: my next entry for @whumptober2020! Prompts filled are No 9. “For The Greater Good” and No 17. “Dirty Secret.” This is the 2nd chapter of a 3-chapter story.  chapter 1 on tumblr || chapter 3 on tumblr || available on AO3. || FFnet too

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　calculated losses, ch2　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

Dean woke up freezing, a rancid metal taste in his mouth. He spat as he shakily got his hands on the cold floor to lift himself up. “Holy... fuck. Sammy?” he blinked, vision cloudy. They were in the walk-in freezer? What the-

“Here.” Sam’s voice was dull, low but close. Dean startled and turned, saw his brother lying against the wall, knees up, elbows balanced on them, hands flexing. “You okay?” He asked.

“Yeah. What happened? You take him out?”

“Nope,” Sam said with a pop on the ‘p.’ He was blinking his eyes slowly.

“Well... what the hell, Sam. Wake up. What happened?”

“We died. We got brought back. We’ll get out when someone comes into the store and calls the cops.” He ticked each sentence off with a finger. 

Then he pointed at the freezer’s door. "It won't open. I think Lucas got scared we'd resurrect, so blocked it for time to run. The one smart thing he did."

Dean stared at his brother. Sam flinched. "Oh and I'm coming down." He made a click sound with his tongue.

"Pills?"

Sam gave Dean a careful look. Dean didn't waver.

"Not the pills," Sam said heavily. "He had bad intel. Thought demon blood would make me susceptible to the same stuff as demons." Sam's voice was monotone but he'd turned away, unable to look Dean in the eyes as he explained.

Dean swallowed. "How'd he kill you?"

Sam shivered. "It took a few minutes," he whispered.

Dean cringed and nodded. He had to blank out the implications of that if he wanted to think straight.

The cold penetrated his bones as he thought about what he remembered.

"I didn't go... anywhere. After I got shot. Did you?"

Sam sighed, gripped his skinny shaking hands and put them between his thighs as he shook his head. His hair had frost on it, probably wet before from Lucas spilling holy water over him. "It's not a requirement when you're marked to be resurrected. We might not have gone anywhere, or we went somewhere and got our memories of it erased." Sam shrugged but it looked more like a shudder.

Dean scooted up next to Sam. "We gotta use our body heat, come on," he urged, pushing his body into Sam's, pulling Sam into him. "Get your back off the wall, Sam, what're you thinking?" He muttered, manhandling Sam so his back lost contact with the freezer wall which was covered in thick frost, and hunched him over his knees more. Sam was in bad shape.

"I'm thinking," Sam's teeth chattered, "it doesn't even matter if we died again in here. We'd just resurrect. Might as well just wait, ignore everything else," Sam trailed off into a trembling whisper.

Dean got up and rubbed Sam's frigid back, his touch probably rougher than it had to be but Sam was saying some bullshit and Dean was channeling his response into it. He pushed Sam's hair up off his neck and knelt over him so he could breathe hot air over the nape. "Stay with me, Sam," he ordered. Sam shook his head. Dean got a hold of his brother's shoulders and gave a sharp jerk. "Sam, rally!"

Sam peered up at him though a curtain of frosty strands of hair. His eyes were bloodshot, he was pale and gaunt, but Dean was startled backwards when he saw the bullet wound. It was bull's eye center of Sammy's forehead, and it was still healing.

Dean felt for his own. Sam shook his head.

"He got you in the heart."

Dean moved his hand, felt the hole in his shirts, looked down to see the black blood in the slowly-closing wound. He heard Sam sigh heavily.

"I think it's the cold. It's making us heal slower." Sam shrugged and it turned into a full body spasm.

"Sam why the hell are you so..." blasé he was going to say but then suddenly he got it. With a sick, certain clarity, Dean knew Sam had been through this before. "Sam?"

"He comes to me in my dreams when I sleep," he informed flatly. He looked up at Dean. "Does yours... does Michael do that to you too? Does he make it cold? Does he impersonate me to you? Or Dad? Maybe Cassie? Use them to try and make you say yes?" Sam looked almost hopeful. If Dean said yes, they could share this pain. If Dean said yes, he'd know what it was like and Sam wouldn't be alone.

"No," Dean whispered.

Sam's eyes shuttered but he nodded. What he said next was toneless but genuine. "There's only a few good things going for us right now. I can count them on my hand. This is one of them though, Dean."

"What, that Lucifer comes to you in your dreams to pressure you to say yes?" Dean spat.

Sam swallowed and shook his head slowly. "That Michael doesn't."

Dean winced and clenched his jaw, thinking and trembling and having enough of this beating around the bush. "How many times have you tried to kill yourself?"

He said it angry and entitled. He said it like Sam was a threat, an enemy intent on destroying his brother.

The dissonance was difficult to process as hypothermia set in. Sam didn't seem fazed by Dean's question or the tone he'd asked it in. He pushed his back up against the freezer wall and hissed with pain. His breaths were coming fast and shallow.

"Lost count. I started trying after I found out. We reconnected. You said, um," Sam's voice broke for the first time today. "You said I'd said yes without you and Dean, that's..." Sam shook his head, brought his fingers up to chew on his nails. "I need to die... I want to die if it means Lucifer never gets me as his vessel. It's for the greater good."

Dean stared at his brother, speechless. Sam's words resonated with him even though he held so much contempt for them.

"We're doing so much to stop it right now Dean but why aren't we just finding a way for one of us to die? Our bloodline dies with us, and then the biblical apocalypse can't happen."

"Sam, no. That's... you're not thinking straight."

"I'm thinking s-strategy," Sam stuttered. He'd stopped shivering, entering the next stage of hypothermia. Dean wouldn't be far behind.

He looked away, shaking his head but still not really knowing what to say.

When he looked back up, Sam's eyes were closed.

"Sam? Sammy?!" He shook his brother and Sam startled, blinking awake. "Fuck, we have gotta get outta here," Dean announced, spurred to action. He got up and used a meat hook to bang on the freezer door. "Help! We're in here! Get us out! Help!"

To Dean's surprise, it worked. The stock boy appeared holding a bandage to his bleeding forehead and grimacing as he got a look at them. "Are you guys okay?"

Dean had already grabbed Sam up and gotten him half-walking with him out of the freezer. "Fine. Cops here yet?"

"No. Soon."

Dean picked up the pace. They stumbled through the store. Sam mumbled he couldn't really feel his legs as he fell to his knees when the curb dropped down to the parking lot.

Dean got him loaded into the Impala and they peeled off for the closest motel.

To Be Continued... A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Please kudos+comment if you've got a second. If you're not sure what to comment, even the simplest contented emoji is tremendous but also I can't tell y'all how much I love reading what you're doing/where you're reading my fic. It blows my mind sometimes to learn how my writings have been a part of your day. All my love! ~ Alex

#whumptober2020 #no.9 #for the greater good #no.17 #dirty secret #supernatural #fanfiction #suicide #hurt sam winchester #implied/referenced suicide #hypothermia #hypothermia and withdrawal comfort coming in the last chapter #😊🤗

[saibh29]

The Truth in the Past (Part 3)

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader

Warning: Swearing, Murder, Angst

AN: Still not getting better..... 

You’ve covered for your sister all your life to such an extent you don’t know anymore where she ends and you begin, or how to even stop a relationship that’s now more toxic than good.

PART ONE   PART TWO 

****

Neither of you spoke until pulled up outside of your apartment building, sat there in the darkness your sister finally unwound her arms from where she’d been hugging her pulled up legs and looked over at you.

“You realise what you’ve just thrown away for me again?”

“You’re my sister” you said tonelessly “What else was I meant to do?”

“You haven’t even asked me if I did it?”

You looked over at her pale face, illuminated from the background street lights. “It doesn’t matter” you said softly “it doesn’t change anything”

“It changes a hell of a lot Y/N” Y/S/N shouted, her voice echoing around the too quiet car “Hell Y/N this isn’t some easy to disappear shoplifting charge, this is murder. They think I was involved with what happened to Pete… they think…” her voice faded away to a choked sob as her mind slipped back to the image of a broken and bloody Pete on the floor of the club. “They think I murdered someone”

No one had come out and said it, but it had been obvious in some of the questions she’d been asked. The looks on peoples faces as she was led to the interrogation room earlier. Everyone was blaming the stripper.

She’s snapped at a lecherous boss perhaps? That would have been why she’d been found leaning over a body with blood covering her hands and body. No one seemed to think of the possibility that she had simply been trying to help. That she’d arrived to find her boss on the floor and her first instinct hadn’t been to run but to try and help, to see if CPR would work.

“Y/S/N did you hurt Pete?” your question was still toneless and your face gave away nothing as to what you were actually feeling. “it changes nothing about my position but I need to know what I'm dealing with”

Anger was starting to overtake Y/S/N, that her twin sister even thought she was capable of this. “What do you think Y/N” she snapped “do you really think I'm cold enough to bash someone’s head in? that my questionable morals stretch to murder?”

You sighed once more “just answer the question”

“No” your sister hissed “I didn’t hurt him, when I got to the club I found him like that, the blood was warm so it hadn’t happened long before I got there. Instinct took over. I liked Pete; he was nice. Didn’t grope us all or leer over the dances so I tried to help. I just wanted him to breathe again”

Your compassion for your sister, not a client, finally broke through at the hitch in her voice. You reached over a squeezed her shoulder a very small whisper of a smile coming to your face. “Everything is going to be fine Y/S/N” you comforted her “we’re going to sort this out, just like we always do”

Your sister took a deep breath trying to force her brain away from the image of Pete’s mangled head. “I'm sorry. For everything”

“Not necessary” the doorman to your apartment building was starting to look curious about why the two of you weren’t going in. “We should go in, you’ll need to try and sleep. Someone will want to talk to you again soon, the threat of my firm won’t hold them back for long”

Y/S/N looking like she wanted to say more but at you subtle shaking of your head she nodded, the two of you walked up to the elevator in the building and went up to your apartment. When she went to try and talk again you cut in front of her words.

“Sleep Y/S/N, we’ll talk it all through in the morning I promise. For now, just get some rest”

Your sister was still hesitating, eventually though she must have agreed “alright” leaning over she kissed your cheek. “thank you” she whispered before vanishing into her own room.

The moment the door was closed your mask fell, vanishing into nothingness as you smothered a gasp of pain. Slapping a hand over your mouth you tried desperately to hold back the tears as you collapsed onto your sofa.

The look in Jay’s eyes was haunting you, as he’d stared down at you in the station. The way that in one sentence you had crushed everything, you’d broken every fragile bond that had held you both together, given up your chance at happiness for your sister. Again. In a twisted cycle that you as twins seemed incapable of breaking.

It meant that if one of you was showing even the slightest sign of being happy the other seemed to feel the need to ruin their lives forcing the other twin back into misery. Maybe it was just where the two of you belonged.

You grabbed the blanket from the end of the sofa wrapping it around yourself as you pulled out your phone. You’d felt it buzzing fairly uncontrollably the whole drive home.

Sure enough you had 5 missed calls and numerous voice messages. Accessing the first one you listened as Jay’s voice floated down the phone.

‘Y/N what the hell is going on? Call me back, right now!’

His messaged gradually got more frantic, until the final one was almost him pleading for you to pick up the phone and answer him, to explain what the hell was going on and why you suddenly had a twin sister who it looked scarily like was about to be charged with murder.

You wouldn’t be calling him back though, that helped no one at the moment, including him.. You needed to be as impartial to this investigation as possible, even if your firm would never let you represent your sister they wouldn’t even let you look at the case notes if it came out that not only was the accused your identical twin but you’d be sleeping with one of the detectives. It wouldn’t be helping Y/S/N and right now, that’s what you had to do. It was what you always did, you helped Y/S/N/

Biting your lip and fighting back tears once more you pressed your flushed face into the cool leather of your sofa, watching through full length windows as the night sky faded into that of early dawn.

*****

@lifesaclimb-buttheviewisgreat​  @lclb13 @moli1497​   @clementines-x​ @the-chosen-one-time-lord​​ @no-other-names-availible-blog​ @angelaiswriting​ @selldraug​ @angryares​ @thenovarose​ @georgiagrl1990​ @mindofthescattered​  @dontstopxx​ @iamabeautifulperson18​ @madelinecraig03​ @ka-x-in​ @mesmericbell​  @weirdpotato-14​ @putinontheritzz​ @soulslaststand​ @fuckthatfeeling​  @ember1201​ @morganlb23​ @tomhopperarms​  @fakingintrest​ @artprincessbree​  @dreamer-lover-laughter​ @artprincessbree​ @rime-warrior​​ @captainvaneswife​ @kapolisradomthoughts​ @thingsandstuffienjoy​ @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked​ @aya-fay​  @itsbubbaog​ @hp-hogwartsexpress​ @emmykinzs​ @thatbadassunicorn​ @sassywingednightmare​ @weirdnewbie​ @goyawriter​ @shipperfangirling​ @nathaliabakes​ @stillreadingfantasy @waywardblueshun @give-jack-a-lightsaber

#chicago pd #one chicago #chicago pd x imagine #chicago pd x you #jay halstead #jay halstead x you #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead x imagine #jay halstead x oc #jay halstead x fanfic #halstead #halstead x oc #halstead x you #halstead x reader #detective halstead #hank voight #ofc #insert #imagine #fanfic

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 13 Part 1

We’re in Heaven! Crowley’s got to access his blending-in skillz.

Warning for slightly creepy mind control.

Link to next part at the end.

(From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

---

Chapter 13

There was a noise like a twang of a harp, but in reverse.

Two men (seemingly), a child, and a small green dog in a space helmet popped out next to the reception desk.

Noone was there. Crowley hung back while Aziraphale went up to the desk. It was pale mahogany, as smooth and clean as a surgical tray. The only things on it were a tiny golden bell, and programmes for The Sound of Music on stands. There was a plaque in front of the bell, that said:

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.

Bit forward, Crowley thought.

Aziraphale turned back.

“Good, nobody’s here. That will make things easier. Now, what we’re looking for is -”

There was a musical chime, and an angel appeared behind the desk.

Aziraphale jumped, then tried to look as though he hadn’t. “Um, hello. I believe we spoke a moment ago?”

The red-haired angel gave them a frozen smile. “Welcome to Heaven. Please sign in.”

A ring-bound blue folder appeared on the desk in front of him.

“Er. Certainly.”

Aziraphale stepped forward. Crowley shifted so that Aziraphale’s body blocked him from view. He was unsuccessful. The receptionist’s eyes flicked from each member of their party to the next. First they took in Aziraphale’s disheveled appearance from his fight with Michael. Then the eleven-year-old child, the floating green dog, and then -

“That is a demon!” they shrieked.

Aziraphale froze, pen in hand. He could feel the situation topple out of control like a stack of books on an unwisely rickety table.

“Do something, Crowley,” he stage-whispered.

Crowley looked around, wondering if there was any point trying to duck out of sight. “You’re the one who just took out an Archangel, why are you looking at me?”

The receptionist’s hand flew out towards the little bell.

Adam stepped forward. A terrible, booming voice came out of his mouth.

“Don’t move.”

The red-haired angel froze. An eerie blank look stole over their face, smoothing away the panic. They straightened up and let their arm fall to their side.

“Have a pleasant apocalypse,” they said, in a high, toneless voice.

A chill ran up Crowley’s spine and set up camp there.

Aziraphale set the pen down and turned around, avoiding Adam’s eyes.

“That’s, um, well. Thank you, I suppose. How… how did you know to do that?”

Adam shrugged. He held the Book tighter against his chest.

“He did it back in the garden,” Crowley muttered to Aziraphale. “While you were. You know. Indisposed.”

The receptionist kept gazing forward with a faraway expression. By unspoken agreement, they all inched away from the desk.

“Right,” Aziraphale said. “I suppose I should lead the way. Crowley, you’ll need a disguise.”

“Yeah, could have done with one five minutes ago.” Crowley eyed the angel behind the desk and concentrated. His body glowed. His hair sprouted a few extra inches down to his shoulders. The darkness leached out of his clothes, leaving them white as bone. They morphed into a floaty blouse and smart suit-trousers. It was a good facsimile of what the receptionist was wearing. Crowley could have got it closer, but looking at the angel gave him the willies. He morphed a long earring that would pass for a gem as long as nobody looked too closely, and tucked a strand of hair in front of his ear to hide his own gem.

He turned to Aziraphale and made his best churchy face. “How do I look?”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Yes, dear, very fetching.”

Crowley reckoned he could get away with one white glove under his shirt. It might be a little fashion-forward for Heaven, but at least it was discreet.

They turned to Adam.

“I have no idea what to do about him,” Crowley admitted.

“The green dog is quite difficult to explain away,” Aziraphale said.

“It’ll be alright,” Adam said, vaguely.

His nose was back in that Book. What on Earth was in that thing? Crowley tried to get a glimpse at the title. It was in a curly font, which always played havoc with his eyes, especially with the sunglasses - oops. He would need an explanation for the sunglasses if anyone challenged him.

“I reckon,” Adam said, slowly, “if we all just walk around like we’re supposed to be here, then nobody will say anything. I think they just won’t notice I’m there.”

“Psychologically, there is a basis for that…” Aziraphale said, sounding doubtful.

“I think he means something a bit more… occult,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale coughed. “I suppose, if push came to shove, he could always. Well. Do… that again.” He gestured vaguely back at the reception desk.

Nobody had a better plan. They exchanged uneasy glances and set out.

~*~

Crowley despised open-plan offices.

They were the kind of thing his side ought to have devised, by right. Technically the nasty, cramped, dirty space occupied by Hell down in the basement qualified as open-plan, even though in practice everyone siloed themselves off in makeshift half-walled cubicles constructed out of anything they found lying around. This was something else, though. He felt himself going cross-eyed as he contemplated the vistas of white, airless space. It was like walking around inside a lightbulb.[1]

Spacedog trotted at their feet. His back legs whirred and clicked. He gave loving looks to Adam’s dirty, untied shoelaces as he sloped along. Adam’s guess earlier seemed to have been right. They’d met a few angels, and their gazes had slid pleasantly past their group without questioning their presence at all.

Aziraphale led the way. Crowley knew he should have some idea what everything was, but it had been so long since he’d been up here. He’d probably missed a few thousand restructures, too. Good.

They entered another blindingly bright open space with a bank of desks set up every half a mile. Crowley glowered from behind his shades.

A group of angels were clustered together. Aziraphale walked past them, head down. Crowley followed.

“Excuse me,” someone called out.

Aziraphale’s steps faltered. Crowley meant to keep walking, but against his better judgement, he glanced over at the group. With a jolt, he realised one of them was beckoning him over.

He stopped. Mistake.

“Hello, excuse me?” The voice brooked no argument.

Crowley stood frozen. A tiny voice screamed in his ear.

“Uh. Yeah?”

Aziraphale gave him a desperate look over his shoulder. Crowley pretended not to see.

The angel crooked her finger at him. Mouth dry, he walked slowly towards her.

“Yup?”

She had a sternly benevolent expression. They all did. It was becoming his least favorite expression.

“Are you any good with Powerpoint?”

Something in Crowley’s brain broke.

“Pardon?”

“You’re on the front desk, aren’t you? I’d be ever so grateful if you could help me. We’ve all got presentations due before the big push. It’s been ages since I’ve used the dratted thing - beg your pardon -”

She pressed a hand to her lips, as if blotting them.

“Also, if you could help us set up the projector, that would be super,” she added.

Crowley looked over his shoulder at Aziraphale. The angel spread his hands, helplessly.

“Erm. No problem,” he mumbled.

There was no way out. He drifted over to the huddle of angels as though walking to the guillotine.

~*~

Aziraphale, unlike some, was not an accomplished lurker. He could feel himself drawing unwanted attention as he tried not to hover. He suspected the only reason no-one was questioning him was because of Adam. Suspicious gazes began to be directed at him, but turned vague and distant as they failed to register Adam’s presence, before wandering back to their work. Crowley, at least, gave the impression he knew what he was doing as he clicked away on the angel’s ultra-thin desktop computer.

One of the few advantages of the extremely open-plan office was that it was easy to see threats coming from a great distance away. Aziraphale spotted Gabriel, flanked by Uriel and Sandalphon, the second he got out of the lift.

Aziraphale grabbed Adam by the shoulder and scurried behind a printer.

“- We need to be dramatic, but sombre. Maybe some lightning? And crank up the wind machine. I want my coat to billow when the first round of smiting kicks off.”

Gabriel swooped down towards the knot of angels. Aziraphale looked at Crowley, heart in mouth. Crowley was still in the middle of the group, explaining how the projector worked.

“- Has anyone heard from Michael? She missed a video-conference. It’s not like her.”

Aziraphale could not think for the life of him how to extract Crowley. He, on the other hand, was about to be right in Gabriel’s line of sight if he glanced over. He had to move. He’d have to trust in Crowley’s disguise and pray for luck.

He tiptoed backwards, towards the fire exit, and felt behind him for the handle.

The door gave a polite click and swung open without a sound. Aziraphale beckoned Adam. The boy jerked his head at Spacedog. The three of them slipped out and onto the fire escape.

When the door clicked shut behind them, Aziraphale felt a wave of relief for himself and fear for Crowley. He was nauseous with guilt for leaving him back there. But there was nothing to gain from dwelling. He held up his ring hand, and with a glow from his gem, summoned a piece of chalk into his hand. He marked the wall next to the door with a C.

Adam looked around, unmistakably bored.

“This isn’t how I imagined a spaceship,” he said.

“Ah.” Yes. They were still keeping up that fiction. Aziraphale was losing patience with it, if he was being quite honest. “Well, this is more of an… interim location. We’re really trying to get to Alpha Centauri.”

Adam’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I know about Alpha Centauri. It’s cool.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Talk to Crowley about it. He’ll tell you all sorts.” Not necessarily true all sorts, although Crowley told them with great confidence.

Adam had rallied, now that he knew their destination. “So, how do we get there?”

“We need to find the Department of Stars and Systems.”

In fact, the fire escape wasn’t the worst way to get there. It might even be faster, provided they encountered nobody. Aziraphale began the climb up to the next floor. Adam and Spacedog trotted at his heels. He marked the walls with chalk as he went.

He’d have to hope that Crowley caught up with them as fast as possible.

~*~

Many flights of stairs later, Aziraphale dragged himself up the last few steps, thinking with great nostalgia of the lift.

They were, at last, on the right floor. Aziraphale listened at the door, mostly as a formality. No-one was ever up here.

He opened the door and emerged onto floor 4004.

Its official name was the Department of Stars and Systems. Its unofficial name was The Universe.

“Woah,” Adam said.

The corridor they’d arrived in was, in one way, the polar opposite of the rest of Heaven. It was black. Endless black, the kind that made your eyeballs feels like they were being turned inside out. Aziraphale could see himself, and Adam, and the dog, as clearly as if they were standing in a well-lit room, but their surroundings were a deep, light-eating darkness.

Aziraphale groped for the wall and chalked a C onto it.

“Nearly there,” he said.

They walked carefully, unsure whether there were still walls to bump into. Eventually, as if cut into the night sky, letters appeared at head height, hanging in midair.

Gen 1:1

Aziraphale stretched out his hand towards them. They touched the raised letters, and behind them, a smooth steel surface. It was a door, invisible in the blackness.

When he touched the door, there was a musical beep, and a keypad lit up just where a handle would normally be.

Aziraphale’s face fell.

Adam hovered at his elbow. “Try one-two-three-four-five-six.”

Aziraphale contemplated the keypad,[2] his heart sinking away into the darkness. Stupid. Of course there would be security clearance. And of course they’d never give it to him. He looked around in the vague hope there would be a post-it note somewhere with the passcode written down.

“Oi,” came a voice from the other direction.

Aziraphale spun around. Crowley sauntered around the corner.

“Crowley!”

Crowley squinted, his shades dangling from one hand.

“This is weird. It’s not like proper darkness. More like light that happens to be black.”

He was still dressed like the angel from the front desk. He had dropped the sickly sweet expression, though, and looked properly Crowley-like again. He’d also reverted to his usual walk. Aziraphale loved that walk. The sight of it brought happy tears to his eyes.

“You escaped then, I take it?”

Crowley grinned as he sashayed over. He had a sparkle to him that meant a bad job well done.

“Eventually. I got their projector working. They thought I was so helpful they gave me a couple more tasks to do around the office.”

That sounded like the opposite of escaping, and also the opposite of Crowley’s general vibe. Aziraphale eyed him with suspicion.

“Then I issued an automatic update to all their devices with no deferrals. Slipped away in the chaos. Turns out angels can swear just as well as demons. I reckon it gets pent up if you go too long without.”

Aziraphale laughed.

“Well, at least you spotted the chalk,” he said.

“Chalk? What is this, the Famous Five? I went to the monitor room and saw you on the security cameras.”

Aziraphale blushed. He blamed everything currently happening to him on silly technological nonsense.

Crowley squinted at the keypad. “Ah. I’m assuming you don’t have the door code?”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted.

“Who’s in charge here nowadays?”

“Well. Nobody really comes up here. It’s an archive, but it’s self-regulating, so…” Aziraphale thought. “I think technically Gabriel’s in charge.”

“Right. Try one-two-three-four-five-six.”

“I really don’t think -”

Aziraphale heard beeping. Adam was already tapping numbers into the keypad.

“Wait, you don’t know -”

There was a click, and the door swung open.[3]

“I’m telling you,” Crowley said cheerfully. “Always underestimate that man’s intelligence, you’ll never go wrong.”

Aziraphale gave his most dignified eye-roll.

They stepped, one by one, over the threshold.

They emerged into a room with the Universe inside.

---

[1] Demons could do that, but why would you want to?

[2] It had thirty-one buttons, not all of which were numbers. One through six did appear on there, in some fashion.

[3] If anyone had asked Adam, not that they’d bother to, no reason to bother asking him anything after all, he’d have showed them prophecy 1511: the numbere of the Univerfe is the numbere of wone-thorough-sixe. But they didn’t.

(Link to the next part)

#omens universe fic #omens universe #good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #steven universe #crowley absolutely only has the most rudimentary grasp of powerpoint #and the fancy heavenly projectors probably baffled him after the elderly tech he had to wrangle in hell #but he's good at blagging. so #they should have asked Adam

[somefinelipstickonthatpig]

rated: g

fandom: Tales of Symphonia

prompt: “Tears of Fear” + Colette

requested by: @moominquartz​

so here we are, huh. this makes #14 on my bad things happen bingo prompt fills. which means there’s on 11 more to go?? canNOT BELIEVE

anyway, i hope u enjoy my latest tragedy, also known as: “What if the mission to rescue Colette when Rodyle sics his winged dragons on you goes horribly wrong?” also left ambiguously open-ended bc i can’t ukno actually kill everyone off but i cAN make them suffer 

o - o - o

Quiescent [Read on AO3]

o - o - o 

The thing 

about fear 

is that it bites. 

With stained teeth, fear sinks into bones. There’s a reason people have voices: because time and matter thought it necessary that space should be given for sound. Screaming is supposed to save her. Isn’t that its boon? And while there is fear in being hunted, it is some other, deeper horror entirely to watch those you love become prey. 

As they drew near, mere angular shadows circling high above, Presea had described the winged dragons herself in her toneless drawl: “Carnivorous. Excels at the pursuit and capture of prey. The probability of successful evasion on this small platform is one percent.” 

Which meant Rodyle was right. She is a sinful Chosen. She is worthless. Completely useless. 

“She can’t save the world. She can’t merge with Martel,” Rodyle had chided and his laugh rings in her ears. “She even puts her friends in danger…”

Colette knows this. She knows this.

“What a pathetic Chosen.”

She had told them not to fight. She had told them to not try. She had told them to run. Why did they not listen to her? Why are they not running? 

Colette wishes they would take after Zelos, who had said he would “pass on dying, thanks,” and now hangs back, only striking out when an opportunity presents itself--a flank is left exposed or a leg is unguarded by a barbed tail--and then disengaging just as fast in an effort to avoid provoking the mother dragon. Sweat beads along his wrapped brow and Colette knows the shake in his arms is from more than just fear.

Colette has never before been so terrified and unable to do anything about it.

“You guys!” she screams from her cage of spinning light. “Please! Run!”

Regal, Lloyd, and Presea are the forerunners as they always are. As they always will be. Raine is at their backs, Genis behind her. His feet are planted into the glowing stone underneath his shoes as he throws spell after vicious spell into the fray. 

The first spiraling Photon Tempest Lloyd and Raine throw at one of the babies seems to work. The dragon crashes to the rocky ground hard on his jaw and Sheena cheers, “All right!” but the dragon’s hatchmate is there just as quickly. His webbed wing smacks into Lloyd and Colette shouts and can do nothing.

She can’t move as she watches the mother’s teeth nearly pierce Presea in half. She can’t move when Regal’s arm and chest have deep rivers of crimson spilling down his white shirt from pushing the girl out of the way just in time. Raine’s voice floods over them as she casts her healing magic, but her eyes aren’t on Lloyd. Lloyd, who is foolhardy and taking on the hatchmate alone and barely fast enough to stay ahead of its claws. 

All it takes is one 

faltering 

step. 

A claw catches one of his ribbons and yanks and like a ragdoll, jerked by his neck, Lloyd spills onto his back on the stone.

Colette watches and can do nothing. 

There’s a dark line of red dripping down Lloyd’s chin. He rises to his feet again, but his knees threaten to buckle.

The other baby leaps into the air, leaving underneath him the shuddering form of Regal. His leg is bent in a way it shouldn’t be; he has collapsed to the stone and still, Colette can do nothing.

“No…” 

Presea dashes to cover Regal as Raine pulls up behind her, dropping to her knees. Her hands glow, the name of healing spells tumbling from her lips. The shadow of the flying dragon falls over them both, claws first.

“No!” 

Colette screams; her voice overlaps Sheena’s. Sheena, who is caught on her back underneath the mother’s teeth. Her feet kick up into pink gums, lodged in the uneven valley between two yellowing fangs, as she keeps the giant mouth pried open from closing around her. Her arms are trembling. Blood trails down her sleeves.

“Stop it!” Colette wants them to understand. 

Lloyd kills the hatchmate with a quick scissor of his blades. Both swords held out before him, he spins for the mother’s head, calling Sheena’s name.

Zelos is--

“--stop it!” 

She needs them to understand. 

The world warps and distorts. Blurs. Colette wishes she could wipe at her own face. She wishes she could palm away her tears, but her hands refuse to move. They can’t.

She can do nothing.

“Stop it!” she cries the same instant Genis does when the remaining baby leaps and kicks out his feet. Ribbons of the back of Genis’ pale blue shirt flay with specks of angry, angry red. 

Colette screams. “Please! You have to stop this! You have to run!” 

Zelos runs in, holding his sword out above the both of them after Genis falls.

“Why aren’t you running?!” She can’t possibly be worth their lives; not when she couldn’t even do her part to save them. “Please, stop it!”

Sheena is unconscious. Her arms are loosely curled in front of her like she had been trying to protect herself.

Lloyd stands before the giant head of the mother, swords crossed. His legs are shaking, about to give out, but his jaw is set. Blood cakes the side of his face, but still, he fights. Still, he tries and Colette can do nothing. Her cheeks are cold, cold, cold, and so, so warm. She can’t breathe beyond the tightness corked in her throat. She tastes salt on her lips, dripping down her chin. It leaves icy, wet streaks down her throat.

“Please, Lloyd! Run!”

The mother lifts her head, long scaled neck gleaming in the sun. Her shadow towers over him.

Colette screams the instant she snaps down.

She screams.

And she screams.

#bad things happen bingo #bth bingo #symphonia #colette brunel #lloyd irving #regal bryant #Genis Sage #Sheena Fujibayashi #raine sage #tears of fear #Presea Combatir #zelos wilder #fanfic: symphonia #fanfic: colette #mod krissey writes a thing #angst #do they all die?? #do they all live?? #who knows

[emotional-support-salad]

soulmates

written for @tyrias-library‘s valentines day event.

afritan/moldark; moldark belongs to @commander-twig. somewhat of a continuation to this. 

.

Afritan leans against the center post of the porch, arms crossed over his chest, watching Moldark demonstrate his axe throwing to a haggle of Norn children. They flocked to him, eager and wide-eyed despite the early hour. 

In the naked light of a Hoelbrak morning, the broad-shouldered sylvari blends in seamlessly with the black pines dotting the mountainside. His movements are slow and controlled; his gaze honed in on the practice dummies lined up a few yards from where they are standing. The children cheer when the axe splits the crudely-painted bullseye in two with a loud hollow thud. Afritan smiles, but the corners of his mouth are aching. 

He shouldn’t be here.

According to Evert Forsberg, one of the lead archivists back at the Priory, the disease will eat away at his lungs and clog his windpipe with wet white flowers until he chokes on petals and blood and bile. Unless he confesses, and the feelings get returned. Asuran scientists first discovered the disease in two of their sylvari test subjects. Other races are immune, in as far anyone can be immune to love. Afritan remembers how gently the box-faced Norn told him this, how his warm hand dwarfed the span of his shoulder and clamped down carefully; a comforting touch. 

It’s masochism, plain and simple. To covet the company of the person who will unwittingly kill him, but the alternative seems somehow worse. It’s possible to have the flowers surgically removed, with as side-effect that the memories of his soulmate will also disappear. Afritan prefers to waste away. He presses a fist to his mouth as the first cough wracks his frame, and ducks into the cabin when it’s apparent the fit won’t stop. Another bullseye accompanies his abrupt departure, and he slams the door shut behind him in afterthought. 

His shoulders are shaking violently as he bends over double, hands on his knees. On the verge of collapse, he retches into the untouched silence of the living room. Wet, scrunched flower petals stick to his tongue, to the roof of his mouth; his throat scraped raw. 

Why isn’t Moldark’s friendship enough? 

The pressure stacks in his chest, and the breath gets snatched from his mouth when he vomits all over the black bear pelt spread out over the cedar floorboards. His vision swims with fresh tears when he witnesses the sight of the flowers strewn over the rug, like teeth on the ground after a back-alley fistfight. Afritan slides down helplessly, sobbing softly into the heel of his hand, legs akimbo. 

The door creaks open, and the onslaught of pale sunlight reveals the absolute mess he’s made of the rug. Moldark stands there like a statue, backlit and beautiful and entirely out of reach. Afritan’s chest aches, simultaneously full and hollow, hurt. 

“What’s going on? Are you--are you alright?” It’s the first time he’s heard a sense of urgency in Moldark’s toneless voice. 

He lifts his head, leans into the sound like a sunflower to the sun. A weak whimper leaves his abused throat when Moldark kneels down at his side and examines his tear-streaked face with hawkish eyes. It takes fistfuls of self-control not to burrow into the crook of Moldark’s neck and cry freely, because it isn’t fair how gently those powerful hands hold him, hands that have killed for the court, that have killed to serve and to protect and to save. Moldark frowns when he dissolves in another bout of tears, but doesn’t leave his side, doesn’t budge an inch.

After the worst of his tremors subsided, Afritan sucks in a deep breath and murmurs softly, “I’m s-sorry about y-your rug.”

“Nevermind that. Do you want to tell me what this is about? Do you.. do you need anything?” He withdraws his touch, and Afritan sniffles petulantly, rubs the snot from the furled bark of his nose.

His gaze flicks between his friend and the blood-stained bear pelt. About five months after he discovered that Moldark was his soulmate, he started hacking up entire flowers: white carnations. A whole sink of them in the Priory dorm’s lavatory. The symptoms were severe enough to diagnose him with third-stage Lover’s Rot, as it’s called in the common tongue. Considering the atrocious state of his lungs, it would be a miracle if Afritan made it to next winter. Moldark cocks his head and narrows his eyes at the lack of response, then slowly turns to look at the flowers. 

“Will you at least tell me who it is?” 

Afritan draws his knees to his chest and rests his chin atop of them; a gesture that makes him look young, small and terrified. A thorny coil of hair slides down his forehead in front of his right eye. 

The facade he painstakingly tried to maintain in Moldark’s company lies in ruins around him, and he can finally allow the pain to show on his features when he speaks.

“It’s you. It’s always been you, I’m so sorry, I. I just couldn’t--” here, the dam breaks. Afritan starts to ramble, his punctuation worsens, and he stutters every other word, voice cracking at the end of a sentence. “I didn’t want you to resent me, to pity me, to.. to treat me any differently, but I can’t help it, that I love you. Because, I do. I really really do.” 

Moldark settles down cross-legged and drops his big hands between his legs, elbows propped up on his thighs. Any other man would’ve come across defeated or weary in this position, but he merely seems self-contained and pensive. His lips are slightly sprung, as if he’s on the cusp of saying something, but he shuts his mouth again before a hush of breath could escape. It’s a lot to take in: the blood and the flowers and the sudden confession and the enormous weight of the knowledge that his feelings decide over life or death. Yet, his posture remains rimrod, his shoulders straight. 

“I’ve never, hhm.” He pauses, looks down at his hands. Back to Afritan. “I’ve never been in a relationship with someone. I don’t, I don’t think I know how to. There’s never been a time and place for it in my life…”

Afritan can hear the petals of a flower unfurling between his ears and despairs. It’s what he deserves, it’s what he deserves for holding onto that one thread of hope that somehow, someway he’d be worthy of Moldark’s love. 

“You’ve sought me out, cared for me. You didn’t--” a shake of the head. “I ran from the Grove and traveled to the other side of Tyria to be accepted as a person and not a former courtier, but you never needed prompting, didn’t need the distance to see me. Really see me.” 

The sunlight recedes to the modest entryway, slides over the gleaming iron-wrought coat rack next to the front door. Afritan hugs his legs tightly, watching the other attentively. Hope rears its ugly head, and he swallows back a bloody cough.

“I’d like to try... I’d like to learn how to--you’ll have to be patient with me but I think, I know, I want to learn how to. How to love you,” Moldark admits softly then, tilting his head as he turns his undivided attention to the other sylvari. His eyes are narrowed to slits, like a drowsy cat’s in the afternoon sun. 

It’s eerily quiet inside the cabin until Afritan slowly moves. The sound of his knees scraping over the floorboards underscores the fragility of the situation. He wraps his arms around Moldark’s neck, tucks his face away against the column of his throat, breathing in his scent and soaking up the comfort of his presence. They stay in this position for a while, not bothering to fill the space with more words. Eventually Afritan breaks away, wiping at his tired eyes and stands upright.

“I’ll clean up,” he offers with a watery smile. By then the smell of blood pervaded the air like a virus. 

Moldark cradles his chin in both hands, fondly staring up at the other. “And I’ll help you.”

.

#tyriaslibraryevent #tyriaslibrary #gw2 #gw2 fic #gw2 fanfic #gw2 sylvari #ship: afrimol

[joshslater]

Getting Jacked

In this installment of “comprehensive rewrite” we address the somewhat more complex titled “Fuck boi-ification: Jack-Off“. Similar stories and bonus material on my Patreon.

Matthew woke up in his messy bed, as the morning sun lit his bedroom way too early. He was old enough to handle a party without getting completely hangover, but he still felt pretty raw. He needed breakfast, shower and plenty of water. As he got up memories of last nights party started to return to him. He had been invited out by his friends to a house party near campus, and Matthew immediately said no. He wasn’t fond of parties generally, even when the age and types of people matched him, but a student party at his age and size wasn't his idea of a good time. Matthew at 24, just about to turn 25, would be older than probably everyone there. He was also proudly, openly gay, currently trending towards a bear, and would stand out like a dogs dick. He had a the beginnings of a beer belly, which looked smaller than it really was on his 6'5 frame, and thick arms and legs, all covered in light brown fur. He didn’t believe in cutting and went to the gym to get strong. While he kept the hair on top of his head short, his face was covered by a dense, black beard. He was also hesitant to come because of his interests. He enjoyed looking at Video games and social politics. He was deep into Zelda and Pokemon, but also a fiery activist online, fighting misogynists and homophobes alike. All commonly mocked.

However recently he felt he had become less and less sociable doing his tedious, life consuming office work, and Jon at the office had really pushed him to come along. He was almost the right age and was friends with Sarah who threw the party. It was an open invitation to college frats and sororities, as always with house parties, but some younger people also showed up from other schools, again as always, so the place had been packed.

Memories of the night slowly came back to him as he got up and changed into cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He remembered uncharacteristically having a blast at the party, where he got drunk on beer and shots with some frat bros and started flirting with some guy. It probably wasn’t going anywhere, but the mood had turned awkward as soon as a posse of shitty little fuck boys had filed in. There must have been half a dozen newly minted 18 year olds, all wearing trendy clothes and accessories. At some point he think he heard the leader of the pack, Jacob or something, call him a faggot. Perhaps he just looked like someone who would say that a lot.

Apparently he had continued drinking more jäger bombs, because all his clothes from yesterday were scattered across the bedroom floor. He slowly begun picking them up. When he picked up his jacket he could feel something shift inside one of the front pockets. He fumbled to find the opening and produced a small box. It looked like one of the cheaper jewelry boxes, like when you buy a $9 tie clip or something. He turned it around, but it had no text on it, opened the lid and a poorly folded sticky note popped out. Matthew unfolded it to read a hastily written message.

Jack,

these might look better on you

/Jacob 

So this was left by that damn preppy douche, but who was Jack? Did drunken Matthew agree to hand over the box to someone or had it just been stuck in his pocket by mistake? Matthew put the note down and looked inside to find two gaudy ear studs. Even he could see that they were no where near made out of gem stones or even crystal. Cheap knock-offs that didn't differ much from wind shield shards put on a pin. No, these where magnetic, not using pins. In a way it made them even worse. Such stupid, worthless things.

As he was turning the piece of glass between his fingers, he got an impulse. No one would ever know. He removed the magnet from the cut glass piece and placed them on either side of his right ear lobe, and then repeated on his left side, without looking in a mirror. He wanted to surprise himself with how he looked.

It wasn't really a surprise though. He looked every bit as dumb in the bathroom mirror as he had expected. Oh, well. He pulled on the stud and the magnet on right ear with one hand to remove them, but it just painfully pulled his ear. He tried using both his hands to pull them apart, without success. Fuck, how strong are these things? It actually started to hurt a bit. Matthew was thinking through what he had in his tool box. This would be the most stupid and embarrassing way of getting ear piercings. Was this some sort of crude practical joke between Jack and Jacob?

He hurried back into the bedroom to dig out the toolbox from under the bed. The pain was getting worse by the second. Sharp pain was shooting from his ears into his head. By the time he entered the bedroom the pain echoed throughout his entire body. Matthew’s head started getting dizzy and his eyes got blurry as they watered up. He stumbled a few steps more before falling onto the bed and spasming as his body started aching all over. It wasn't just the piercing pain shooting through his nerves, though it was still there. There was a dull, relentless pain in his bones. All of them. He felt like he was going to explode. The skin burned like sunburn and felt taut like a sausage.

Matthew's breathing got rapid and shallow. His body was soaked in sweat. He was dying right now, that he was sure of. He had lost pretty much all control over his limbs, as he was shifting around and twitching. Not even given the decency to go out with the roar, he thought, as his attempts at calling for help or scream in agony got translated into short yelps, like a tail trodden house dog. Wasn't this how chemical warfare toxins worked? All nerve synapses randomly firing, causing loss of motor functions and unspeakable pain?

He was anticipating losing consciousness at any moment. Wishing for it was perhaps more to the point, as he thrashed around on the bed. Perhaps it was the other way around, he thought. Perhaps the skin was shrinking, wringing him out like a wet rag. He certainly sweated as much. His mind was all jumbled by pain. There was something else coming out besides sweat. A yellow tinted goo, like he had covered himself in snot.

He rolled over on his back and gasped for air. Wait! He could move again? He tentatively felt his chest through the goo. Still there, still his. He tried to shout for help, but just managed to wheeze out a toneless whisper. He tried again, and halfway through it broke into high pitched shriek, and he felt a sharp pain in his throat, like his vocal cords snapped. Before he had time to panic about it, his whole body was shot through with pain, and he arched his back as the muscles contracted. It was a searing pain, at least as bad as the first wave. Then, added to that, came a stinging pain all over his skin.

It stopped as suddenly as it started, or perhaps he had finally blacked out for a moment. He couldn't tell. He was just thankful all the pain had stopped. What the fuck had just happened? He lied completely still in the ruined bed, fearing the next assault of pain. It smelled like the intestine bin in a slaughter house. When minutes passed and the only thing happening was the muck covering him going cold, he hesitantly got up.

Even before standing up he could see and feel that his body had drastically changed. Flat belly, flat chest and markedly smaller. The now oversized, soaked cargo pants fell to the floor with a slosh. The bed looked like someone had given birth in it. Or foaled. Apparently the blurriness had left him too.

He slowly made his way to the bathroom. While he was careful to not touch anything, he left a snail trail of wet footprints and droplets. He almost fell twice, once when his foot slipped on the floor just outside the bedroom and once when his now too large underwear got unstuck from the goo on his thighs and fell to his ankles.

The mirror image in the bathroom wasn't very helpful, given his messy state. He was about a foot shorter than before, but other than that he looked like he had mud-wressled in brown, hairy jell-o. He stepped into the shower, pulled off his final piece of clothing, the now brown T-shirt, and made an attempt to swipe the muck off him, like you would clean slush off a snowboard. Seeing his slow progress he decided to just turn on the water and clean properly.

The drain water had a disgusting color, taking a surprising amount of hair with it, as well as chunky bits of god knows what. The water revealed him looking thinner than he had been since perhaps he was 14. His floppy man boobs had turned into flat, firm pecs. His beer gut had melted down into a fit torso with vague lines of abs. As the water revealed his skinny fit body, it washed away almost all his body hair, leaving just a hint of fuzz around his dick. Seeing this, he reached his chin, only to discover his beard was gone as well.

Any other day that would have been a big deal, but now it was just another detail, as he kept staring down at his pale, thin body. He ran his hand down the front of his chest and abs. His tiny, skinny twig of an arm. It surprised Matthew how good his skin felt. Soft, sensitive, smooth and without any imperfections he could see. The water felt amazing hitting his skin and running down his body. He started to get an erection.

That just got him angry. His dick was easily half the size of his old cock, perhaps even smaller. It was shorter, it was thinner, and though he had wisps of pubic hair both his new dick and marble pouch were smooth and hairless.

He shut off the water, did a 5 second rush dry with a towel and stood before the mirror for the first time. Fuck! Matthew had had sex with many different body types, jocks, bears, athletes, overweight. This right here, an anorectic muscle wannabe, was his biggest turn off. He looked in his late teens, short and thin with hints of lean muscle. His smooth, hairless skin made him look even younger. He saw nothing that reminded him of his old self. Even the belly button was different. There was nothing for him to like either. It was like someone had precision tailored every detail just the way he hated the most. His hair had grown! Even though he was just out of the shower, everything except his tightly faded sides and back stood straight up, as if he had been styled as a douche since infancy.

He hated all of it. The smug, not quite handsome face that looked unable to grow facial hair, framed by the earrings on either side that sparkled like they were taunting him.

“Ah fuck, get off me!”, Matthew shouted in a high pitched, adolescent voice, as he yanked the stud. He hated his new voice. He hated the shitty studs. He hated the body they stubbornly were attached to. Perhaps he could cut them off, and that would turn him back? Wasn't that the plan before he changed into... this.

He went back to the bedroom to look for pliers, taking care to not step in any gunk on the floor. Coming back into the bedroom it looked even worse than he recalled, leaving it just half an hour ago. It was an horror show. That gave him pause messing with the ear studs. That's when he saw the sticky note again. Of course, he should try to talk to Jack or Jacob. But he didn't know them. He hadn't even seen Jack and could barely describe Jacob. Man, it was hard to think clearly. Perhaps someone else at the party could describe Jacob? Sarah should know! It was her party, and he should have her number in the forwarded invite on his phone.

After many signals Sarah finally answered the call. She sounded tired, but upbeat. - This is Sarah! - Hi, it is Matthew. Can you describe Jacob? God, he hated his voice. It was childish and annoying. - Who? - One of the young, preppy dudes. - Look, I have no idea who most of the people were, or what they looked like. I think I got a note from one of them though. Would that help? Hang on. The line went silent for a few moments and then she came back. - I have a note for Jack. Do you know him? - No. What does it say? - It says: appointment at Manila Massage at 2pm. Shower first. - Does it say how I would get there? - Sorry. - Thanks anyway.

He found it in the map app on his phone, and not that far away. 12 minutes estimated travel time, and it was hours until that appointment. He felt relief that at least he had a plan to follow. He looked around at the damage. The sheets were probably ruined, as was the duvet and mattress. The floor was just tiles and plastic, so a mop and a squeegee would do. He could probably wash the cargo pants and underwear, but he could stand inside one of the legs now. Oh, right, he was still naked with a semi hard on.

Matthew winced at the sight of his new dick. It was the size of his thumb. No, he realized, his former thumb. He stepped over to his chest of drawers and started rummage for old stuff or tight stuff that might fit. The black speedo briefs he hadn't used in years actually fit him now, as did an old compression shirt and adidas hot pants, though loosely. Lucky he hadn't thrown that away. With a pair of flip flops, although too large, he would at least be able to walk outside.

Matthew didn't have the reach he used to, so cleaning out the bed proved to be much harder than he thought. And he didn't have the arms and height he used to, so he opted to go several rounds with the icky sheets, duvet and pillows. He felt super self conscious being outside looking like this. It didn't help that his hard on was hardening and clearly visible. He wasn't as strong as he used to be either, so the wet mattress was a bit of a struggle to keep away from his body. "Stupid fucking body", he said to himself. At least he had plenty of stamina.

Even cleaning the floors took longer than expected, as he was getting more and more distracted by his penis rubbing the inside of his speedos. Eventually he gave in, stepped into the shower and started to jack off. It felt good. Really, really good, but he was unable to climax. None of his go to fantasies worked. Instead of starting to browse his porn library, he decided to just step out of his shorts and speedos, and shower the groin in cold water. That did the trick well enough for him to clean the rest of the floors.

With an hour to kill before he needed to leave, he enjoyed another hot shower, as instructed, and then aimlessly idled in the apartment. He checked the fridge for food, and decided he wasn't hungry. He went through his clothes more thoroughly. Some of the now over sized shirts looked "cute" on him, but found few useful things. He ended up playing some silly phone game, which he used to loathe, until it was time to leave.

Again he felt self conscious and exposed next to his F150 truck. He had no problem climbing into it. But he had to climb. And after plenty of adjustments it was still a challenge for him to manage driving.

The Manila Massage was easy to find, in the basement of a residential building. There was a small waiting area with two chairs next to a cheap looking table top sized fountain just inside the door. A small Asian women appeared from one of the inner rooms. Well, actually they were pretty much the same size, save for some obviously enlarged breasts.

- Jack Hoff? - What?! - Are you Jack? - No, I'm Matthew Goodman. - Aaah. Your friend made a joke. Very funny. She made no expression showing she felt it was funny. - Well, Matthew Goodboy, follow me.

She lead him back into a larger darkened room with lots of carpets and futons on the floor, but hardly any furniture. Clusters of candles placed around the room was the only sources of light.

- Don't be nervous. Here, drink this.

She poured something from a crystal decanter into a shot glass and handed it to him. He downed it. It tasted like it contained sugar, vanilla, peach and alcohol, in that order. He found it much less revolting than he should. Different palate he guessed.

- You can get undressed and put your clothes here and then lie face down here.

She motioned first at a stool and then at a thin futon on the floor.

- All clothes? - Yes, sweetie.

She smiled and left the room. Not really sure what he was in for, but too committed to back out, Matthew stepped out of the flip flops, pulled off his shirt and froze. He sported a raging hard on. He carefully pulled down the hot pants and speedos. As he placed himself on his belly on the mattress he felt light headed as the alcohol hit. This was the gift that kept on giving. 12 hours ago he would jäger bomb anyone under the table, and now he got tipsy from a thimble of liquid candy.

After a minute or two he heard the lady enter again, and the sound of a glass bottle. Then he felt her hands starting to rub his back with oiled hands. If the shower had felt good, this was heavenly. He'd never had anything that smelled remotely like this on him before. Peach, again, and some flower. But it felt too good to care. She worked his neck, his arms, his legs and almost slipped a finger in his butt, before going back to his back.

- Now, turn over on your back.

Matthew did, and his mouth fell open. She was naked. Matthew just stared at her body. Slender and hairless, like his, but bronzed and with huge breasts that jiggled as she applied oil to his chest. His eyes were transfixed on her nipples, bouncing around in front of him. It wasn't until she had moved on to his arms, and he looked at her belly button and neatly trimmed bush, he realized his mouth was gaping open. She then moved on to his legs, and to his horror he realized his dick stood right up, next to where she rubbed his inner thigh.

She looked Matthew straight in the eyes and started to give him a hand job. It didn't take many strokes until he exploded with pump after pump of cum on his chest and abs. She smiled and started to rub the cum in the oil.

- That one didn't count.

She then straddled him, facing him, and started to ride his cock. Matthew was surprised he was still hard. He looked at her in amazement and tipsy confusion. He once had sex with a girl to see if he was gay or bi. He had only managed to get hard when he pretended she was a young boy, and felt really shitty about it after. But now, seeing this Asian woman bobbing up and down on his dick, he felt hornier than even at LumberCon last year. He loved the way her boobs moved. The way her hair moved. The way his dick felt. The tingle in his body. The smell of peach and sissy blossom. Right then and there he couldn't think of anyone he would rather be than Jack Hoff losing his virginity in a very happy finish by... did he even know her name?

Jack was super confused as he exited Manila Massage. It was like he couldn’t remember anything from before he came, pumping cum into the Asian lady. Apparently having super happy ending with her had been a birthday gift from “Jacob” and the lady refused to take his credit card. That could all be true, he couldn't remember when his birthday was, but the really confusing part was the credit card. On one side it said "Matthew Goodman", but as soon as he flipped it he had no idea what name was on it. He knew he should recognize this Matthed dude. He kept flipping the card and almost walked into someone standing in his way. He looked familiar. Was this was Jacob?

- Happy birthday! Who's a shitty little fuck boy now? - What? Who? - Don’t worry about it... Hey, what do you say we drive to the mall and buy you some new clothes? Give me back my truck key, and we’ll go in your car. He motioned towards a purple Honda Civic with a big spoiler in the back. Jack handed over the Ford key that he’d found in his pile of clothes. - Well, I... You know... I think I might have fucked my brains out. - Sweet, dude. Just what I paid for. - I’m serious. I can’t remember a thing. - Well, I guess you’ll just have to trust me until it comes back. Get in.