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separatist-apologist · 1 year

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Throw Me To The Flames

You could drag me through hell if it meant I could hold your hand

Summary: Elain only ever meant to deliver a message to Vassa on behalf of her sister's court. She never intended to see Lucien.

And she CERTAINLY didn't mean to get in the way of a knife that was only ever meant for his chest.

Kidnapped, and dragged helpless to the continent, the two will have to work together if they want to survive.

Note: HAPPY HOLIDAYS to my BEST @acotargiftexchange, @fieldofdaisiies

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed hanging out with you!!!

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In all Elain’s life, she never expected to find herself standing in a human manor, fussing over a pot of tea again. She could hear rustling wings and the tapping disapproval of Azriel’s impatient boot. They were waiting on Lord Graysen and she knew it irritated him. There were other things he needed to be doing, and while he certainly didn’t have to chaperone this meeting, she appreciated it all the same.

He wasn't the only one out there monitoring for good behavior. Arina, who had declared she and Elain were now inseparable, had taken one distrustful look at Azriel and said she’d come, too. A representative, she’d added when Azriel had sighed with exasperation, of Day Court.

And Jurian was there, simmering with quiet anger at the entire thing. He’d begun raising the human armies and Elain had heard the bitter argument between him and Azriel—why did Nolan get the final say?

Because Nolan had the capital and Scythia was still divided. They needed the men loyal to Grayen to rally the rest of the humans if they wanted an army at least the size they’d utilized with Hybern.

Elain swept into the living room she’d stood in once before, the memory of that argument with Lucien replaying before her eyes. It was like watching the ghost of two people she barely knew, face off and ready for combat. Now Azriel was perched on that pink couch, his discomfort evident. Jurian stood in the doorframe, eyes trained on the door while Arina paced by a window.

“Are you sure—”

A knock interrupted Jurian’s angry words, drawing him into the hall. Azriel glanced at the steaming tear before nodding for Elain to sit, too.

“Don’t serve him,” Azriel murmured. It was the sort of thing Lucien would say, too. Still, the urge to do things right overwhelmed her. She knew every step to this dance—play her part immaculately to get what she needed. Fall on her knees to beg the man she’d sworn to always love to help her rescue the man she currently did.

He was not as she remembered. Time had settled into the fine lines of his once youthful face, marking him older. Gray peppered at his warm brown hair and teased against a mustache he hadn’t always had.

Her chest ached at the sight. So many years had passed, seemingly as quick as a breath. She had never once considered what that passage truly meant. That one day she might wake and Graysen would merely be gone, passing like memory over the earth.

Graysen, who’d been staring at her with open-mouthed surprise, closed his lips into a firm line. “Elain.”

She looked at Azriel, who’d told her that Graysen would only speak to her. Was it to express his disapproval one last time? To humiliate her all over again, having found the first time so wildly satisfactory.

“I said I would speak with her, not with an audience,” Graysen continued in clipped tones. Dressed in the familiar cobalt blue of his family crest, he was a peek into a life she might have had, if things had worked out even a little differently.

He wore a band of iron around his ring finger, resting casually—who had he married, she wondered? Who had replaced her in his home, his heart? He didn’t notice how her eyes traveled, his gaze burning on Azriel. As if anything he could say, anything he might do would frighten the ancient, winged male behind her.

“You’ll take what I offer,” was Azriel’s cold response. He punctuated it by sitting himself on that garish couch, flaring his wings for effect. Graysen’s distaste was apparent, made worse when

Arina stepped forward and with a revealing, pointed smile, asked, “Tea?”

They needed him. Elain turned to him, wanting just once to touch him. Instead, she kept her hands curled to fists at her sides. “You asked to speak with me?”

“I wanted to see you,” he admitted, taking one careful step towards her. “You haven’t changed—”

“She’s immortal,” Jurian snapped, earning twin looks of amusement from Arina and Azriel. “She will outlive you.”

Graysen’s mood darkened all over again. Elain was burning with humiliation, warring with the same impatience that seemed to have infected Jurian. They were wasting time. Azriel could be helping Cassian gather troops while Rhysand prepared to winnow them in. She and Arina could have begun planning how Elain would get herself close enough to the fortress so she could find that hidden box.

“What do you want, Gray?” she asked, her voice wearier than she’d meant to sound. “It’s been so long and you said…”

You said you didn’t want me.

“Are you happy?” he asked her, something flickering in his eyes. Elain felt unmoored for a moment, adrift in his question, his gaze, and the realization that he wanted her to tell him no. That though he’d rejected her and cast her aside, and even though they both knew he would never be brave enough to claim her like he should have all those years ago, he still hoped she was miserable.

Because he was miserable.

“Yes, Gray. I am.”

It was the truth. Maybe if he’d asked her a year before she might have told him she was. Graysen’s disappointment was rippled for only a moment before it vanished subtle enough that had she not known him so well, she never would have caught it. Elain didn’t ask if he was happy, given the truth so stark before her.

She simply did not care.

“Will you help us?” she asked, ready to be done. The answer was simple. Yes or no.

“And if I don’t?”

“We’ll do it without you,” Elain replied, turning her back to look at Jurian, Azriel, and Azrina. It was dismissive and casual, the graceful boredom of true-born, fae nobility. She saw the corner of Azriel’s lips twitch, as if it amused him to see her so callously dismiss a man that clearly held himself in such high esteem.

“Where will you gather the forces?”

“Scythia,” Jurian said with more confidence than anyone in the room felt. But Elain turned again, drinking him in one last time. He had haunted her for so long, his face the only thing she thought of more times than not. Had he always seemed so severe? So cowardly? Tucked behind his high walls, in a grove of ash? A ring of iron he knew was useless gripping a finger meant to symbolize love and fidelity? She’d come to him in the worst moments of her life and he’d never spared her a second glance.

Hadn’t cared if she’d lived or died. He’d merely cast her aside, as though she’d wanted this life. It had always burned her, and for years Elain had written and re-written speeches in her mind of what she’d say to convince him otherwise. How she’d make him see that what she’d wanted was him, for as much time as she was allotted.

And never once had it ever occurred to her that perhaps that sentiment was not returned. That Graysen was too scared, too cowardly to ever love her the way she’d loved him. What was love, without bravery? He wouldn’t have gone to war for her—Elain knew that with certainty, because he could have. He could have fought to have her, could have defied society and convention and their very customs and prejudices to have her, and he’d cast her aside. Even when she’d gone to him and confessed he had her heart—always—he’d tossed her aside like a cheap, replaceable thing.

Only now did he understand that perhaps it hadn’t been true, and still he stood here with his cold eyes, demanding she beg, if only to soothe his wounded ego. Elain would beg for Lucien. She would get on her knees and ask for his help if nothing else would save him. There was still enough hope that Elain could maintain her dignity.

She thought Lucien would understand if she told him she couldn’t muster this one last humiliation.

“We have enough,” Azriel finally said, filling the silence with his gruff voice. “If you wish to sit on the sidelines—”

“Like a coward!”Arina interjected, rising on her tiptoes to look menacing over one of Azriel’s flared wings. A ghost of a smile whispered over his face, as if she’d said the very thing he’d been thinking.

“You asked to speak with Elain, you know what she wants. Grant it—or don’t. We’re done wasting time.”

Elain was grateful when Arina grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards the door. She felt like she’d lived a thousand lives in the last day—they’d executed Beron the morning before, and now she stood before Graysen, pleading with him to help her get Lucien back. It was more than just the threat that Lucien would be forced to free Koschei, of which Elain suspected he might have to in order for her to truly damage the box so he was mortal—and killable.

Jurian yanked open the door, clearly disappointed Graysen would leave humans out of the fight in favor of the fae. Face hidden in shadow, Elain understood how important it was to the human General that humanity be well represented when the stories were told.

“Wait–!” Graysen’s voice echoed off the walls, following them into the narrowed foyer. “Your High Lord will winnow us in?”

Azriel assessed him coolly. “He will.”

“We’ll be ready at dawn.”

And that was that. Graysen shoved past them without a second glance, the first one to step into the cool summer night. The four of them watched him go, their displeasure surely burning a hole in his back.

“Is that all the time we have?” Arina whispered once Graysen was out of earshot. “A night?”

“Any more would be a waste,” Azriel replied, guiding them out onto the porch. Jurian seemed to agree.

And so did Elain.

LUCIEN:

Lucien waited for Vassa to slip through the bedroom door, his leg jangling nervously. She’d been pacing the world just above the lake all morning, dragging a trail of fire through the sky as they waited. Time was against them—Lucien had his power back and could, as he’d proven when he’d taken a turret off the far end of the fortress, unspell the magic of his ancestors.

Blood was all that was required, the very same coursing his veins. He could have undone Koschei right that moment had he felt like it. The only thing sparing Lucien the inevitable was Koschei’s distinct lack of knowledge regarding the ancestor who’d bound him.

Vassa slipped in, exhausted like she always did. Neither of them slept, waiting for the day their lives were so casually wiped from the world.

“Something is happening,” she whispered, ignoring Lucien on the bed for the window just behind him. “He’s gathering forces.”

“Forces?” Lucien asked. He hadn’t seen another living creature outside of the three of them.

“His magic,” she breathed, as if it should be obvious. “He’s pulling more of it, reshaping for a fight.”

“Then it’s over,” he said dully, gripping the blankets as the realization washed over him. He’d free Koschei, damning the world and perhaps worst of all, he would never see his mate again.

It was such a selfish thought, a self-pitying feeling to know that he would have given anything to just tell her what he’d been trying for so long to say.

Elain, I—

And she’d politely let him off the hook, each time agreeing, “I know.”But she didn’t, because he hadn’t said so. He’d kept the words leashed behind his teeth, certain she’d never want to hear him say those words.

“I don’t think so,” Vassa interrupted, primed for a fight. Vassa would go down swinging, and Lucien suspected she intended to take her with him. “If his escape was an assured thing, he wouldn’t be fortifying. He rebuilt the tower you wrecked, wrapping it in his slimy magic.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think something unplanned is happening, and he’s reacting,” she said, turning to look at Lucien. “Someone—or something—is coming, and he didn’t expect that. I know he always meant to fight a war in Prythian, where there were more factors he could control.”

Lucien forced himself to think carefully. To be logical. High Lords would move to defend their own territories and people, breaking lines and abandoning alliances if it meant seeing their own power laid to ruin. Koschei could play them off one another—separate them and force them to fight seven wars on seven different fronts.

“Beron is dead,” Lucien reminded her, the wheels spinning in his mind. “He’ll expect Autumn to be weakened, pulling them from the fight.”

“Are they?”

Lucien scoffed. “Eris is young, perhaps, to a death lord, but he’s hardly unseasoned. He’d rally. He’d–”

Lucien swallowed the words he’d been about to say with such confidence. He’d come.

“What if they coming?” she whispered, daring to look out at the dark sky again. Her fingers gripped the stone, scanning as if she’d see a terrifying, winged army just beyond. “He has no more moves left to play, at least not in secret.”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t play them well,” Lucien reminded her. After all, Vassa was only a pawn in his bid to get to Lucien. The two turned to look at each other, and he wondered if Vassa had realized what he had only just.

“When I break his spell, you’ll be freed, too.”

“I won’t leave you here,” she said, courageous until the very last. Lucien shook his head, because the humans needed someone just. Someone fair, who put them above everything else.

“You must.”

She opened her mouth as if she might respond, only to close it as that same realization swept over her. There were other things to consider besides their time in captivity and their shared friendship. Vassa could not think like that—and neither could Lucien.

“Well,” he finally said, his voice ringing with hollow finality. He pulled at the bond in his chest, wishing Elain was awake.

She pulled back with an immediacy that made his blood sing. Somewhere in the world, his mate was safe. She was free. Lucien needed her to stay that way, even as creeping realization wormed its way against the back of his neck. Elain was unlikely to keep to the sidelines—was likely the driving force, in her stubborn, unyielding way, of the whole affront to start with.

It should have scared him. Lucien wanted to be angry.

He felt nothing but relief. He trusted her sisters and her friends to temper the worst of her impulses and remind her that dying served no purpose, and deprived the world of her very presence.

And still.

Knowing she would come at all, that she would try and claw her way back to him made Lucien feel alive in a way he hadn’t in centuries. Finally, after riddled with his despair, his self-loathing, his insecurities, Lucien felt like he had some divine purpose. As though the suffering had all been for something, had been dragging him kicking and screaming directly to her.

As someone worthy.

Lucien rose to his feet, joining Vassa at the window. “It doesn’t seem possible he’s left anything to chance.”

“He can’t control everything. Only himself,” Vassa murmured in response. “There are too many of us now—he can’t hold that many strings.”

“He can’t fight a war on every front,” Lucien said in response. “Surely even he has a weakness. Some very killable heart, perhaps?”

“Maybe that’s what he keeps touching under his cloak,” Vassa joked. “It’s just an open hole in his chest.”

Their eyes met, a silent question passing between them. Lucien didn’t have to speak a word to send Vassa scurrying away—watchful, as she was so good at. It was desperate—one last attempt at thwarting what was almost certainly their inevitable conclusion. Lucien would die and Vassa freed, only to succumb to the dark reign of Koschei.

They wouldn’t let history say they hadn’t tried. And when Lucien left his bedroom in the keep just before dawn, pulled by the shadowed whisperings of the Death Lord himself, Vassa waited just in the hall, her lips forming two silent words.

Spelled box.

She inclined her head in a familiar direction, to the once ruined portion of the castle Lucien had once been caged in. Vassa slipped away, fierce determination warring with what looked almost like an apology. Lucien didn’t stick around to let her vocalize it. They all had their parts to play—his was this.

Koschei sat rigid in the same high-backed chair at the long table, laden still with too much food. Unnecessary, given what was coming. Bone-white hands laid calmly on the stone, framing an empty plate with skin stretched unbearably tight over his joints.

“An army gathers just outside the mist,” Koschei told Lucien, his words lacking the usual emotion. It was merely a statement, those Lucien thought there was some puzzlement to his expression, as if for all his meticulous calculations, he had not foreseen this. “They do not accept death as readily as you do.” Lucien heaved a sigh as he fell into his chair, pulling whatever he could reach towards him. It was a last meal, even as his mind turned over Vassa’s words.

Spelled box.

Containing what? And if he managed to unbind it, would he make things better or worse?

“I realize your education is incomplete,” Koschei continued, leaning forward as Lucien began to eat. “Raised wrong, you do not understand your significance.”

“Does it matter?” Lucien asked, certain it made little difference here at the end of things.

Koschei cocked his head. “Of course it matters. Why you, instead of another? Generations of Spell-Cleavers have existed since the first…any might have done. I have waited for you.”

Lucien forced himself to swallow. “Because my line spelled you the first time.”

“Your line spelled me the first time,” he agreed, reclining back in his chair. It was as if Lucien’s willingness to play along, to listen to this story, had settled him. “Bound me to this lake, to this fortress as punishment and…perhaps…as a joke. I have never truly known why Apollion spared me when so many others did not. His magic, drained from him in his ultimately foolish endeavor, spared me the fate of so many other of my siblings. Trapped, yes…but dead, no.”

A thrum in Lucien’s blood made Lucien think that somewhere, he’d heard this all before.

Koschei, unaware of how Lucien’s senses were awakening, continued to speak. Lost in memory, he paid Lucien little mind. “We knew the fae were getting stronger—harnessing the magic of the land, the sea, the sky much like we had once done. We’d grown greedy and were bored with unchecked rule. Your kind was little more than a sea floating rat—able to see and untangle spells, we thought. A little trick and little more.”

Lucien’s heart pounded in his chest, steady like a drum. “Apollion was guided by a prophecy–by love.” There was no disgust, no derision to the word. Only distaste, and perhaps confusion. Koschei, who was not a creature with a true soul as far as Lucien could tell, didn’t understand the lengths a person might be willing to go for such a potent emotion. And he understood, right then, why the gathering army confused him. Why hadn’t they chosen to stay and protect themselves, forsaking their kinsman? Beron had been willing to do so, after all. Beron had handed over a child he’d raised with no feeling at all—surely they were all like him.

But they were like Elain. Burning with feeling, with the willingness to try if for no other reason than loving the world and each other was all they really had. All they could cling to, could steady themselves again.

“Seers are rare—and Apollion let one convince him to bind me. Swore there was a way.”

“She was right, it seems,” Lucien replied, abandoning his food entirely to hear this story. A Seer and a Spell-Cleaver had begun this.

And Lucien knew why his blood was humming. It was her. Outside in that waiting army, coming back for him to finish what their ancestors had begun thousands of years before. He had to force himself not to react, to retain his mask of boredom.

Koschei didn’t smile. “She was. And so they came—Apollion and his Cassandra. She promised me knowledge of the world, promised to tell me all she knew if I would spare her family from my hunger. I had such an appetite back then. Your magical little souls make the finest of meals.”

“You agreed?”

Koschei nodded, ignoring the way the sky began to slip from violet to cerulean as the sun broke through the haze. “How could I resist? I agreed, and she came with her lover, who cursed me to this lake for eternity—and lost his life doing so. She’d thought she could save him. She didn’t realize…as I’m sure you’ve come to—you cannot have it all.”

Their eyes met, Koschei’s words a warning. Lucien discarded it, unwilling to trust that Koschei would be honest with him when so much was riding on everything going exactly as he planned.

“So, what? You’ve been here?”

“I’ve been here,” Koschei agreed. “Heartbroken Cassandra settled among the humans, passing her line through them in an effort to prevent another tragedy. Humans do not feel the magic as your kind do. No mating bonds, as she and Apollion had. No prophecy. The architect of her own ruined legacy as a speaker of false prophecies. She was so afraid I might need another…but not so afraid she didn’t wind that thread through generations of ignorant humans.”

Feyre. Cursebreaker, destined to save them from Amarantha. Her sisters, able to withstand the Cauldron, and Elain—

“I’ve been pulling those threads since before you were born,” Koschei murmured, watching Lucien piece it all together. “Your mating bond has been thrumming through the world far longer than your own father has lived. Waiting for just the right fingers to pluck at it, to draw you near. Little Cassandra, for all her ploys, never imagined her once children, so far removed, might one day become fae again. Destiny is a tricky thing—your kind has never truly understood it.”

“You don’t need her,” Lucien said quickly, betraying himself.

Koschei nodded. “No. I only ever needed you. She merely put you in place.”

“You’ll spare her,” Lucien said. It wasn’t a question.

“And what will you give me in return?”

The board was set. Lucien knew Koschei was primed for his words, for the promise, and so he chose his words as carefully as he could.

“I will give you an end to all of this.”

Koschei only smiled. “Let's begin.”

ELAIN:

Dawn broke just over the horizon when he went to find him. Dressed in golden sandals laced up to her knees, and a leather-skirted pteruges embroidered in gold, Elain felt like a princess of Day Court. Her hair had been carefully pulled from her face in equal rows to create a pretty ponytail more ceremonial than functional. The white leathered breastplate, etched with a rising sun over her chest, and the band of gold over her arms, spoke of Elain’s allegiance.

And who shielded her from all accountability when it came to the brazen slaughter of a High Lord. Helion Spell-Cleaver had taken one look at the furious Eris Vanserra and with a wry smile, said, “High Lord.”

He’d gotten an answering snarl in response. Elain wondered if Eris’s reasons for hating Helion extended to Arina, left behind in Day as a last defense of the city, should they fail here. Elain could untangle the complicated history of those two once she had Lucien back—once they were safe.

“You didn’t want me to see that crown,” Elain said by way of greeting, standing beside Helion as they waited for the mist to fall. It would be Nesta, with the remnants of the death power still clinging to her veins, that pulled it down. Elain could see her eldest sister in the dark leathers of the Valkyries, flanked on either side by Gwyn and Emerie as she stood against it. Head cocked, studying it like a long-forgotten friend.

“No,” Helion agreed, gold eyes coming to rest on her. “I wanted to see if the blade would call to you.”

Cassandra’s dagger was strapped to her belt, the only weapon Elain carried.

“Why not just say that?” she asked with more than a little frustration. “Why the secrets?”

“Killing Beron still serves my purposes,” Helion told her, shadows flickering over his expression. “And I can’t be caught sending assassins into neighboring territories. That had to be all you.”

“I would have kept your secret,” Elain told him, as if there weren’t creatures who could read minds. As if Helion needed just enough plausible deniability to keep his home safe. He only nodded, a silent thank you, even if it no longer mattered.

“Will it work now?” she asked, her insides roiling. Just beyond that heavy curtain was Lucien, still alive even if he’d stopped pulling back on their bond. Something like resignation was hanging between them—he’d made a choice.

She hated to think what choice he’d made, likely on her behalf, without even consulting her first. If Lucien had decided on self-sacrificial bullshit, she’d dig him right back up just so she could kill him all over again.

“They say Cassandra was mad,” Helion told her, his eyes far away. “She said so too, at the end. The journals they recovered were the scribblings of someone lost—she claimed to have lied about it all, that her visions were little more than the wishes of a female trying to achieve greatness.”

Elain felt her stomach sink. “Was she?”

He exhaled. “She had enough presence of mind to leave behind documents, even if they prevented anyone from looking too closely for wherever she vanished. They say it was her prophecy that led to Koschei being bound to begin with. One of the first Spell-Cleavers, if you believe the stories. Guided here on fragments and hope.”

Elain’s heart pounded. A Seer and a Spell-Cleaver had begun this? She blinked away the urge to cry, to push away that golden thread of fate that clung so tight to her ribcage. It was a war and it always had been—but it was a meeting of two souls looking for each other across time and space. Elain’s body ached at the thought. Even if it hadn’t been them, they were always meant to find each other. All the suffering, the misery, it was all worth it to bring her to him.

“I’ll winnow you to the front,” Helion told her, watching as silver flames danced over Nesta’s palms. “And destroy the wards. After that…”

Elain swallowed. After that, she’d have to hope she understood enough—that her visions on how to end this were right. “I won’t fail.” She had to believe that, needed blind faith to get her through the fear racing through her. So much could go wrong, especially know that Elain knew that it was wildly believed Cassandra, the person whose dagger she held, was a liar. It occurred to Elain just as the mist fell, that this might be one last trick. Koschei, luring her in for some piece of his plan she hadn’t considered.

Reckless. The whole thing was reckless and still Elain didn’t care. As the warm winnow pushed at her ribs, Elain felt relief that her separation from Lucien was nearly over. Whatever happened next, they would greet it together.

Just as they’d always been meant to.

A terrible roaring filled the silence before she or Helion ever touched the sandy bank of the lake. He’d clearly been ripped from the air too early, eyes wild as the pair tumbled backwards. He shielded her as something blasted around them, drawing a pained moan from his throat. It wasn’t the sound Elain wanted to hear erupt from a male that exuded the sort of raw power Helion did.

“He’s free,” Helion panted, twisting to look overhead. The sky was blotted in endless, unrelenting dark, broken only from the frazzled static of magics pent up too long. Neither of them moved, staring at the ancient magic unleashed on a new world. She could feel it like oil balancing atop water, too heavy to fully sink into the soil.

Helion reached around Elain, ripping at the wards keeping Elain out—if they even existed anymore.

“Go,” Helion ordered, pulling her to her feet. Neither of them spoke the truth, though the solid second they held the others gaze, the same fear washed through them.

Lucien had freed Koschei.

Elain’s stomach twisted as she scrambled, running for the iron doors blown open when Koschei had escaped. She wasn’t supposed to be looking for Lucien. She was supposed to be looking for that box, but all Elain could think of was Lucien. He was the whole point—everything she’d done had been for him.

The bond was still there, drowned by the roaring and the resulting screams and singing metal of a battle that would be ultimately futile. The combined power of all seven courts might hold him off—might keep him from immediately sweeping through the continent, but eventually Rhys and Feyre would flicker, drained entirely. The rest would fall like dominoes. Koschei only had to batter against them like waves against rocks, weathering each new attack until they were exhausted and unable to continue on.

Time was against her.

Elain ran through dark halls, guided by only flickering torches blowing in a phantom breeze. Occasionally they flickered out, leaving her blind in the dark. She skidded into an open dining hall, the only furniture a long, stone carved table filled with rotting food. Flies buzzed, picking at the carcass of what had once been a chicken, while maggots crawled over plates and cups.

Elain stared in horror, her stomach turning. Where was Lucien? She tried to scream his name, but her voice was lost to the world, drowned in an endless roar. Elain twisted, her panic making her reckless and foolish. She was afraid, so deeply afraid that she no longer cared about anything or anyone. Not as she turned, guided by the gold glowing in her veins. It took her to a spiraling tower and stairs slick with a copper scented substance. Blood, it was blood—

“Lucien,” Elain cried, throwing herself through the door to the iron bars of a cage. She’d seen this—seen him, curled just inside. His once vibrant, warm skin was ashen, too pale to belong to the male she loved. For a moment, Elain thought he was dead, eyes squeezed tight as they were. His hair spilled around a pulsating wound, caked in the same substance dripping down the spiraling stairs.

His golden eye opened. “Elain?” he whispered.

Elain gripped the bars, tugging uselessly. She watched him pull himself towards her, wrapping a callused hand over her own as he forced himself to sit.

“You’re hurt,” she said, not giving him a chance to speak. He was dying. Elain could see the inevitable conclusion to the slashes carved against Lucien’s chest—like a hundred lashes. Elain crushed her mouth against his own, tasting the salt and metal dried against his mouth.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” she said, some part of her settled now that they were together. “I’m going—”

“Elain,” Lucien managed, a heavy finality to his words. He reached just behind, and pulled the thing she’d been looking for. The box from her visions, thudding to the floor when Lucien could no longer stand to touch it.

“It's his soul,” Lucien said, each word thicker than the last. “Without it, he can’t die. Apollion he…” Lucien took a deep, shuddering breath. “He gave us an out. He knew he was going to die, he—”

It didn’t matter. Elain didn’t care, not as she wrenched at the bars, twisting with all her immortal strength until she could force herself between them. Elain squeezed herself in, sucking in a heavy breath before collapsing just beside him.

“As long as he has it, he can’t die,” Lucien told her, his face inches from her own. “Take it to—”

“To me,” Elain interrupted gently, rising on her knees as she pulled Cassandra’s dagger from her belt. “To us,” she added, not daring to look at the flesh hanging from Lucien’s chest. He would survive. They all would. The battle was early and everyone was still strong.

“When this is all over,” Elain told him, her hands shaking in fear as she used one to lift the latch of the box and the other to raise the dagger, “I want that time you promised. Decades in Summer, in Day, in Dawn.”

“You can have anything,” Lucien told her, pressing his forehead to her temple. “I am yours and I always have been. I always will be.”

“You are mine,” she repeated as a sharpened awareness clawed at her neck. “And I am yours.”

“He’s coming, Elain. You have to do it now—”

The lid opened, revealing a mass of swirling silver flickering against a writhing mass of inky black. The world around them ripped, like a yawning mouth looking to devour them. She could feel what Lucien had, the thundering steps of a creature newly freed only to realize its death was close at hand.

“Now,” Lucien whispered, lips to her cheek.

“Together,” she added, wishing she was less afraid. His fingers closer around her own, holding her while Elain p

lunged the dagger into the center of the box.

A deafening, brutal scream rang around them, the agony of a long-held life ripping through Elain’s very sanity. Blood poured from the box, drenching her legs and still Elain twisted, digging that knife viciously through the box until she’d split the wood in two. Arms wrapped around Elain’s body, pulling her against Lucien as the tower began to shake.

“He’s going to pull the fortress apart,” Lucien yelled, his voice drowned by the screams. Lucien pulled her down, his body bracing itself for that first crash as a stone clipped the cage they were both cowering in. Elain swore she felt warmth—the smell of crisp air and crunching leaves so reminiscent of Autumn. A memory she couldn’t quite place, and a time she’d just only lost.

Something struck her, and Elain was grateful to lose herself to the dark.

#elucien #elucien fanfic #elucien fanfiction #elain x lucien #elain archeron #lucien vanserra #elain archeron x lucien vanserra #ONE MORE CHAPTER #oh my GOD im so excited to be almost done #Look at us #who would have thought we'd make it #NOT ME

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shadoedseptmbr · 3 months

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20 Questions for fic writers

tagged by @wrathoscribbles Thank you!!! <3

hmm, i am where these things go to die but feel free to tag me if you get the urge to run with it!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

115 uh, doesn't seem like that much, really

2. What’s your total A03 word count?

832,340

3. What fandoms do you write for?

well, let's see- Mass Effect, Dragon Age, MCU (caveat, all my Marvel knowledge goes into anything I write. My Hawkeye is an amalgam of the Clint i grew up with, the Clint from Fraction's run of Hawkeye, and what we were given in the MCU with all the...uh, blatantly weird dad vibes thrown out the window. I really like Laura and the kids but i have no idea what to do with Dad!Clint. He is the least Dad-shaped Avenger and i'm including like, Speedball). I haven't written Buffy or the fandom that shall not be named in literally over a decade but i do have a couple stories for each on my AO3.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

In Cupid's Little Bag of Trix

Fandoms: Thor, The Avengers (2012), MCU by way of every Marvel 'verse M Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis background Natasha/Steve Summary Darcy might have a little crush. And possibly a kink. Look, it's been a long couple of years.

Shelter

Fandoms: Dragon Age 2 E OCf!Hawke/Sebastian Summary In whom do we seek shelter? Sebastian and Hawke, figuring things out over the course of a story. mind the tags, this one goes dark and sideways but ends happy. Written before extreme tagging was a thing.

apodyopis (SO *thirsty* lol)

Fandoms: Thor The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types M Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis voyeurism but not like...no one is actually having sex Clint's just like that

Summary

Clint likes to watch his girl work. Kind of a sequel to Cupid's Little Bag of Trix but can be read alone

Steal Away Home

Fandoms: Dragon Age 2 Explicit Graphic Depictions Of Violence F/M, Multi Work in Progress Sebastian Vael/Hawke (F) Aeryn is a menace Aeryn is also an assassin Child endangerment Panic attacks fantasy PTSD childhood neglect everyone here has issues

Summary Post-game adventure including the reclaiming of Starkhaven. Sequel to Shelter. This one needs tags updated, too. Several panic attacks, several people with control issues, lots of childhood neglect and out right abuse and endangerment. We used to just assume everyone knew that was par for the course with DA but honestly.

anchor the night

Fandoms: Mass Effect Teen And Up Audiences Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings F/M Summary After the date at Apollo’s. After the bit that would fade to black, too. Mind the tags.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

oh absolutely, fandom is built on the life blood of comments and i've made some of my dearest friends fangirling over each other's fic. Plus, i've never been particularly overwhelmed by comments so it's never been a particular hardship.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

dolore broke my own heart with that one

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

In Cupid's Little Bag of Trix, probably. Clint and Darcy are a barrel of monkeys and they're both so fucking full of zest.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Not that I've ever noticed. I'm fortunate enough to just get readers who want to be chill. i had someone once scold me for being mean to Alec Ryder, lol.

9. Do you write smut?

so much smut- less in Mass Effect, which is mildly hilarious given Aedan's penchants, lol.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Not unless you count the various branchings of Marvel. I don't really get the appeal.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

again, not as far as I know

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

I have! I had the high honor of writing Shep/Shep with my buddy @nightmarestudio606 with The End is Where We Begin

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I sail an armada, lol. I multiship and my favorite varies with what day it is. Right now, Codywan is winning, heh. My favorite to *write* though... Shenko is right up there but Clint/Darcy was so much fun.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

none of my WIPs are abandoned. I don't know if I'll ever finish Steal Away Home the way i want to, though.

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Dialogue and characterization, I think. Structurally, I have an excellent grasp of nuance when it comes to word choice in a way that lets me say a lot with not much.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

I'm not particularly focused and it can take a long time for me to finish work. And I tend to write without outline and that can lead to a wandering, meander of a fic.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Do it all the time, do my best to make it accurate. I use a smattering of Scots Gaelic for my version of Starkhaven and my source is mostly old books because i like the archaic texture of it. Several of my characters have american south accents and i elide words and use slang and drop g's. '"I am going to the store, mother," she said in her Texas twang' does not read like "Goin' t'the store, ma." and you can't make me believe you don't lose vast amounts of characterization by trying to force it to work. And overly correct dialogue is one of the first reasons i'll drop out of reading fic.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

First written? The Black Stallion (book not movie) First published online? Trixie Belden

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

hard to pick from my favorite children, lol

Cupid's Little Bag of Trix is a (now fairly heavily edited) mess of stream of consciousness that grew a plot from when i was writing quick switch omniscient pov and just expected my readers to figure it out. But i love it. And it remains the biggest boost to my writing ego as ten years after posting, i still get kudos Verge (post Omega DLC) is when i really figured out who Aedan and Kaidan are, together and it manages to wreck me all over again, every time i re-read it.

#sept memes #long post #sept writes

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stuffnonsenseandotherthings · 4 months

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Watch It Or Drop It - A 2024 Drama Challenge

As always, the impending chime of a brand New Year just around the corner is stirring up the age old urge to Sort My Life Out somewhere deep inside me and rekindled the burning flame of No I Really Mean It This Time once more.

So far this has meant deep cleaning my house with a fervour rarely seen outside of the pages of the most fanatic of Cleaning Tiktokers (something which will definitely have faded even before the clock strikes 12), setting up a planning and organisational system so that my life can go smoothly for once (that will probably last until summer after which point I'll be so sun addled I'll stop caring about to-do lists altogether), and forcing myself to confront my mountain of unread books (by placing them accusingly next to my bed so I can wake up and fall asleep to them until the growing sense of guilt forces me to hide them in a cupboard).

No a bad start if I may say so myself. It's not even 2024 yet and things are already looking Sorted.

Joking aside though, while there are, as there usually are, big (potentially life changing) goals that I want to work towards this year and which will take a fair bit of work and/or courage on my part to make happen, there are also smaller ones. Manageable ones. Silly ones. Ones that'll make the whole year just a little bit more fun. For example: clearing my MyDramalist Want-To-Watch list.

Because there are 84 dramas on that list and while some of them haven't aired yet, over two thirds of them are fully complete and sitting patiently, ready for me to watch at my own leisure whenever I want.

And, unfortunately, up until now I've been so over-faced with how many dramas there were waiting for me that I didn't want.

At all.

As in I was actively avoiding watching anything off my Want-To-Watch list.

As you can imagine this has been frustrating because 1) this is the opposite of what a Want-To-Watch it's for (I put the dramas on there for a reason after all) and 2) not very conducive to making the big, scary number go down, quite the opposite in fact.

So I've found myself at a bit of an impasse.

And to break that impasse I have come up with (what I hope is) a foolproof solution (because there is nothing more fool than having to trick yourself into doing something you want to do anyway).

The Watch It Or Drop It Challenge

Rationale:

I have been avoiding watching dramas on my Want-To-Watch list because:

1) I'm feeling overwhelmed with the amount of dramas currently on there and end up feeling time pressured to watch them all.

2) Linked to this, I'm worried about making the "wrong choice" (i.e not enjoying which ever drama I pick and being disappointed about something I was previously excited for, being in the wrong mood for a drama I would have otherwise enjoyed) leading to analysis/choice paralysis where I end up being unable to pick anything at all.

As such I need a system that:

1) Takes aways the element of choice, at least in the initial stages.

2) Removes some of the pressure to enjoy every drama I pick and allows me to celebrate both a "watch" or a "drop".

Rules:

1) Dramas are selected completely at random using a random number picker (this random number picker to be precise, isn't she gorgeous?).

Unless it hasn't aired yet (in which case I obviously can't watch it, I'll do a lot for this challenge but not bend time and physics) I have to give it a go. I can't spin the wheel again. What I get is what I watch (or drop).

2) I watch it or I drop it (self-explanatory, really, given the name of the challenge but it's something my brain clearly needs reinforced otherwise we wouldn't be here in the first place). A drop has just as much "value" as a watch in terms of continuing my learning curve about my drama tastes and there's no shame in not liking something I thought I would enjoy.

3) I can take as long as I need to decide if it's a watch or a drop, the only condition is that if I am watching it, I actually have to be enjoying it. This is not an endurance test or an exercise in how long I can guilt myself into watching something (5 minutes before the end of the final episode is the current record by the way, incase anyone's interested), this is me making sure I...

4) ✨ Have fun ✨ There are many things in life that aren't fun, watching dramas should not be one of those things (although they are allowed to make me so uncontrollably, that I will allow, nay even encourage).

🎉 And there we have it! My own little challenge for 2024 🎉

I'm feeling very pleased with myself but let's see how long I can keep it up, unless something drastic happens I'm planning to start a little early and pick the first drama tomorrow. I'm going to be post the whole challenge here (which dramas get picked, pre-watch thoughts, whether I watched or dropped it and why, etc) for accountability's sake because I know myself well enough to know that if I don't then this whole meticulous plan isn't happening. I also think it could be a nice little momento, if this whole challenge is successful, something to look back on from the time I bravely took on and defeated a list of my own creation.

And so without further ado,

#k-drama #thai bl #japanese bl #kbl #watch it or drop it #sorting my life out one drama at a time #because it was getting silly how scared I was of my want to watch list #but I am nothing if not easily trickable #even if the person doing the tricking is also me #so this should solve my drama problems #or make them worse #only time will tell

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star-trekkin-across-theuniverse · 1 year

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Worthy, pt13

part 1 & 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12

__________

tags: @bolontiku, @rampant-salamander, @darkdragonpheonix , @440mxs-wife, @castiels-sunflowers, @peekingsunshine, @alexakeyloveloki, @feelmyroarrrr

word count: 3712

__________

There’s only been a few times in my life when I’ve been desperate to become invisible. In eighth grade, when Jimmy McFadden found out I had a crush on him, he responded “That nerd? She wishes,” in front of most of the school before commenting on my jiggly bum. That wasn’t the part that made me want to vanish. It was when he said it was a shame I was such a nerd because I had “such excellent knockers”. That’s when I prayed for a hole to appear in the floor and suck me away because honestly, hell would have been preferable. And my boobs weren’t and still aren’t, that great. In senior year, the self-same boy, who’d become even more impossibly handsome, asked me to prom, but quickly announced that he’d only done it because he needed help studying for his chem final and figured if he showed me a good time, we’d both get something out of it. I wasn’t sure about how his plan to deflower me worked out to mutual benefit. But once again, I wanted to disappear into the ground, never to be seen again.

Once I hit college, I was able to retreat from social circles that were petty and indifferent to the emotional games that teenagers played, and I hadn’t had any further incidents of mortification. Until now, on learning I could potentially manipulate the emotions of those people around me. I was ashamed and embarrassed. What if every emotionally charged encounter in my life had only occurred because I had willed it into existence? Every first date that had gone well, or every one that had gone poorly, might have done so because I wanted it. Every man I’d ever been with flashed through my mind. It was a short slideshow, but what if they’d only been with me because I made them think they wanted it?

“Oh god,” I flinched. What if Bruce had only kissed me because my stupid college crush had resurfaced and forced him to? “Oh god. I have to go.” I stood up.

“We aren’t done yet, sunshine,” Lex put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back on the exam table.

“No, I have to go. I can’t be around people. I need to be locked away from everyone so my feelings don’t affect them.” I stood back up.

“And yet, regardless of your determination to go, you aren’t forcing me to let you go with your brain. So sit the fuck down, and let’s finish this assessment.” She raised an eyebrow, like she was daring me to try to mess with her head.

“Maybe you’re immune,” I argued, “because Loki has affected you too.”

“Affected is an interesting word. Tainted might be better.” She looked over her shoulder, “does anyone out there feel an overwhelming urge to suit up and help Ella escape?” A chorus of negative answers returned. “See? We’re solid. Settle your boots.”

I relaxed just slightly, somewhat in awe of Lex Richmond. She had a different kind of confidence than I did, one that was tough. Like she’d been run through a gauntlet to get where she was. My confidence came from being told every day of my life that I could do and be whatever I wanted. I got the impression that Lex had fought for each accomplishment in her world. I suspected some people probably found her brusque, but I found her honest approach refreshing and reassuring.

She steered me toward the super swanky MRI she and Tony had developed, and I found that I was right. She was reassuring because she was honest.

“I don’t know how you feel about small spaces, but I fucking hate them. Unfortunately, MRIs need to be smallish in order to get a good image. We enlarged the space as much as we could but it wound up being just a few centimetres. There’s some clicking that happens in there, and the machine whirs, but if you tell me what kind of music you like, I can jack some tunes to you.” She made the explanation seem like a social chat. It relaxed me quite a bit.

She hadn’t told me about the super secret light show she and Tony had wired into the MRI, so while I listened to music, I got to watch a colour organ project colours across the inside of the machine. If anything, it was hard to remember not to bop my head to the music. The time past faster than I thought it should have. She led me back to the med lab and walked me over to a treadmill.

“So now we’re going to check your endurance. When this happened,” she gestured at her arm, “I was suddenly enhanced. I could run faster for longer with little effect on my general energy store. Since you’ve always been this way, I’m curious to see how you do.”

I snorted. “I can’t run for shit, Lex.”

“Show me,” she nodded at the treadmill. I hopped on and let her get me started. And of course, she started me way too fast. I slowed the machine down and kept it to a brisk walk. She raised an eyebrow but at my returned glare, said nothing. I kind of wished it was one of those swanky treadmills with the TV attached because I hated being social when I was sweating, but staring at the wall was also really boring. The stupid thing could have at least faced the window so I could look out over the city. After ten minutes I was feeling kind of done, and said so. Lex laughed and shook her head.

“This is an endurance test. And you’re walking, not running. So you can either choose to run, which will burn you out faster, or keep walking all night,” she laughed. I gaped. “I know. Bitchiest doctor that ever lived in bitchy doctor land, right?”

“Something like that,” I huffed, but I increased the speed on the treadmill. Not quite to a run, as I wasn’t sure my heart would take the shock. I had done next to nothing other than sit in a lab during my Master’s studies.

“What’s your sport?” She asked.

“I don’t have one.” It wasn’t actually true. I’d been on a rep soccer team during high school and my undergrad was on a soccer scholarship.

“I don’t buy it,” she disagreed.

“She had a full ride for soccer in college,” Tony offered from across the room. I scowled in his direction.

“This should come back then,” Lex laughed, and bumped the speed up so I was jogging. I grunted and lurched forward into a run. The thing about soccer was it was short bursts of really intense exertion. I was not a distance runner. I could do bursts of speed, but I had put on weight during the last few years, and I was out of shape, so I doubted those bursts of speed would really be considered speedy. I settled into a slow jog and focused on a spot on the wall, and let the soundtrack that was constantly running in my head take over, tuning everything around me out. I wasn’t paying any attention to Lex when she pressed the stop button, and I stumbled a little on the slow down, but didn’t quite lose my balance.

“I thought you said this was endurance?” I asked. Lex nodded at the clock on the treadmill with an eyebrow quirked. It said sixty minutes.

“How long was I running?” I asked, double-checking the clock. Yeah, it said sixty minutes.

“Fifty minutes. At 5 miles per hour. So I’d say you’ve got some endurance left. You should consider taking running up,” she suggested.

“You say that to everyone,” Tony snorted. “Lex is desperate for running buddies. I think she might be bored of Steve.” Lex smacked Tony in the arm, laughing.

“That’s not true!” She protested. “About Steve, anyhow. I do like having new running partners though.”

“I’m not going to start running. I like sitting. And feeling my ass get bigger.” I stepped off the treadmill and sat down on the nearest chair to illustrate my point. “Only thing missing right now is some ice cream.” Lex shook her head and handed me a bottle of water.

“Use your imagination,” she teased. I stuck out my tongue and reached for the towel on the crossbar of the treadmill to wipe myself off.

XXX

I’d managed to escape for a shower while Lex crunched the data on my assessment. I wrapped myself in one of the super plush awesome towels I’d purchased and padded across my room to get dressed when a voice interrupted me.

“Ms. Carmichael, Dr. Richmond would like to see you in the med lab.” The crisp British accent startled me. I shrieked and jumped into my closet. “Your heart rate has just accelerate, Ms. Carmichael. Should I assume you haven’t read your suite orientation manual?”

“I skimmed it!” I argued.

“In that case, I am J.A.R.V.I.S., the artificial intelligence Mr. Stark has programmed, primarily for his benefit. I am, however, in use throughout the tower, and can see to any needs you may have as they arise. Which includes forwarding messages like the one I just passed on.”

“Right. Uh, thanks?”

“That is not necessary, but you are welcome, Ms. Carmichael.”

“Okay.” I stepped out of the closet. “You can’t see me, can you?”

“No, visual monitoring would be a violation of your right to privacy in your own home,” it (he?) responded.

“But you can monitor my vital signs?”

“For your safety only, Ms. Carmichael.” I couldn’t help but look at the ceiling when it spoke. I dropped my towel and dressed hastily, not quite believing that there was no video link, but deciding if there was video, it was because everyone at Stark Industries was destined to see me naked, or in some state of undress. I hurried out of my suite and back to the med lab.

“Did you know there’s an AI in the ceiling? Creepy as hell.” I asked Lex as I walked through the door. I didn’t realize Tony and the gang were still hanging around, until I heard Tony stifle a laugh. I shot him a dirty look and turned back to Lex. “So?”

“You have some clear differences from Loki, which makes sense, as you aren’t a clone. And you and I have some pretty clear differences as well. I’m significantly stronger than you. But your intelligence is off the charts,” Lex offered.

“We didn’t do any intelligence testing.” I was confused.

“Tony might have hacked some networks to get some extra information. Did you know that you qualified for Mensa when you were, like, six?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know they rescinded your qualification when you were nineteen because they decided you must have cheated?” She pressed.

“No. But it doesn’t surprise me. I rewrote every exam in first year for the same reason until the college decided that I had to write all my exams in a private room.”

“That didn’t bother you?” She asked.

“After high school? No. The academic advisory panel approached it like they were looking out for both our interests, and I agreed. It ensured there was no dishonesty on either side,” I shrugged. “It meant I didn’t have to keep worrying about rewriting exams.”

“That’s a remarkably calm response,” she raised an eyebrow, as though she didn’t believe I could be zen about anything.

“Just because Loki has self-control issues doesn’t mean I do. My mother is the calmest, coolest person I’ve ever met. I do have half her DNA, you know.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Lex broke into a wide grin.

“You know, that’s so true. I can’t help but focus on the Loki in you, but your mum must be pretty remarkable to have attracted his attention. You’ll have to fill me in on the story,” Lex leaned back against a counter and scribbled some notes on her tablet, “but another time.”

“Sure. In the meantime, can I go? I have a ton of work to catch up on.” I had found all the testing pretty invasive, and really wanted some time in the lab, alone with my thoughts, to build stuff. Lex didn’t say no, so I took the opportunity to leave, heading down to the Starbucks in the lobby for an enormous cup of coffee before heading to the lab.

XXX

I was alone in the lab. It was beautiful. I had half expected some of the night-labbers to be hanging around, but it was eerily quiet. I accessed the online radio and set up some music to break up the silence as I worked on the water reclamation miniaturization. My parents had always teased me about being born in the wrong decade, and I was completely thrilled to find a Big Band music station. The speaker on my desk was set at the perfect level to not interfere with my work; not so loud that it irritated me, and not so quiet that it was distracting. I tapped my foot and pulled my magnification glasses back down. Tony had dropped a set of customized tools off for me before I’d headed home and I was astonished and pleased with how well they fit my hands.

I must have lost track of the time as I worked, but I realized I was sitting in silence again. The playlist on the radio station had been about three hours. I flicked through the screen and found another similar playlist and hit play. The familiar strains of one of my favourite torch songs filled my space and without realizing it, I started singing along. Singing was my guilty pleasure. It released stress, and made me happy. In light of the discovery earlier in the day, it was probably a good idea I keep singing. It would at least have the side effect of making the people around me happy.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” A voice pulled me out of the tiny space my vision had tunneled down on. It took a minute before my eyes acclimated to the dark lab space after staring down on my backlit workbench. I pushed the magnification glasses up to the top of my head.

“Bruce,” I breathed. “Uh, hi.”

“Tony said he could hear you singing and that he couldn’t help but smile. I could use some happy,” he apologized.

“How did he –“ I paused, “Nevermind. J.A.R.V.I.S, can you block the audio feed from this lab?”

“Certainly, Ms. Carmichael,” it responded. “And activate override block protocols,” Bruce added. I quirked an eyebrow at him. “So Tony can’t just override your request unless he comes down and does it from here.” He explained.

“Of course, Dr. Banner.” The AI sounded almost sentient; the tone it spoke in was so familiar and friendly. I began to clear away my mess and realized my project drawers were cluttered and messy, and half the reason I’d wanted to work was to tidy them. I emptied the debris out of the reclamation apparatus drawer onto the top of my desk and stowed it. As Bruce watched in what appeared to be horrified awe, I cleared out my drawers and began organizing parts and components in the small storage containers that Markus had left on my desk before the weekend in a subtle suggestion that I needed to better organize myself.

“How do you get anything done?” He asked.

“A clean desk is a sign of a diseased mind,” I retorted, flicking various screws into containers according to size. Bruce leaned back against the desk beside me, his arms crossed over his chest. I felt like I was being graded, or somehow measured. “You can’t fail me in this lab, Doctor.” I winked. He chuckled. It was a low rumble, warm and friendly.

“To be honest, Tony is more disorganized than you are. You might win the intelligence leg of this triathlon though.” He pushed off the edge of the desk and stepped over to look at my various piles of supplies. “You have plans for all this?”

“Hell no, I always over-order and then just return stuff to distribution. Saves me having to reorder during a project,” I laughed.

“And one of the stores trolls hasn’t come to kill you in your sleep? They have to recount every single one of those million teeny screws when you return them, you know.”

“I’m sure they have a sorter or a counter or something. I’m not going to mess around with having to worry about lot numbers and compliance and quality control issues by having to reorder,” I shook my head and shrugged.

“I think Tony might be the only one who gets away with that,” Bruce warned me.

“Well, no one has come to stab me in the eye yet.” I snapped the lid on a container and pulled out the deep drawer at the bottom of my desk. Bruce let out a low whistle. “That’s impressive, Ella.”

He squatted down beside the drawer and lifted a few containers out of the drawer. My real dirty secret, despite how slobby Markus though I was, was that I wasn’t slobby at all. My materials were all managed and labeled when they were not in use. My desk was only a mess when I was mid-project.

“There’s a lot of spare parts here,” Bruce commented.

“I keep enough to rebuild every component I’ve actively worked on in a six month period. Don’t tell anyone. I like to cultivate the messy genius mystique.” I took the containers back and carefully placed them in their original spots. I wasn’t sure if Bruce had noticed that they were in part number order, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know. I dropped a piece of paper on the stacks to separate them from what I was going to add, so I didn’t have to figure out where to start the next time I was in the lab.

“Can I buy you dinner?” Bruce suddenly asked. I lost my grip on the drawer and slammed it shut by accident, startling both of us.

“Sorry!” I exclaimed. Bruce cringed.

“I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t. I’m probably close to twenty years older than you.” He pushed his hand through his hair and began to back away. I grabbed his arm to stop him.

“You might be ten years older than me. Maybe?” I reassured him. “I’m starving. So I hope you meant right now.”

“Reassure me I’m not robbing the cradle first.” He looked so uncomfortable that I couldn’t help but smile.

“My thirtieth birthday is in three weeks.”

“Oh. You’re much older than you look,” he blurted. “I’m sorry. I mean, you look quite youthful.”

“I’m half Jotun teenager, it’s okay to say I look young.” I realized my hand was still on his arm. “In fact, I’ll even be flattered when you tell me I look young when we’re old and grey.” What was wrong with me? Why would I say something so bold and outrageous to him before we’d even made it through one date? I wanted to fade into a corner, and melt into a pool, and ooze down an air vent to get away.

“Maybe we should get through dinner first.” His smile was awkward, but not unfriendly. I laughed uncomfortably. In the weird silence that followed my stomach growled loudly. We both laughed and the strange moment was over. “Before your stomach unleashes the Other Guy, even.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed and we headed to the elevator.

Bruce led me out into the warm night, and stopped and looked in both directions, deep in thought. “Three blocks that way is some of the best Thai you’ll ever eat. Six blocks the other way is a great burger place.” My eyes fell on the hot dog cart across the street.

“I’ve never had street meat in New York City,” I tugged him toward the sidewalk. He looked at me, his brow wrinkled in surprise.

“This isn’t really a first date, Ella,” Bruce protested.

“I’d argue our first date was when you kissed me,” I winked, and slipped my hand in his and pulled him across the street. I stopped in front of the street vendor and flashed my best smile. The guy grinned back.

“What’ll it be for you, prinzessa?” He was every hot dog cart street vendor trope I’d ever seen in a TV show. I brought my hands to my face to mask my excitement.

“Just a hot dog and a diet Coke, I guess,” I ordered and tilted my head at Bruce. “He’s buying.” I told the guy all the stuff I wanted on it, and greedily took it from him. Before Bruce could even pay for it, I’d taken a huge bite. So good.

“You’re going to pay for this later,” Bruce shook his head and took a bite from his hot dog. I shook my head and sat on the nearest bench.

“No. So good, so worth it.” I looked up at the tower and shook my head. The hot dog, the dream job, the high school crush buying me dinner. Some weird balance in the universe was trying to make up for my dubious parentage, at any rate. There was something so ordinary and nice about sitting there with Bruce, eating hot dogs and saying nothing. Like I wasn’t the daughter of a god, and he wasn’t the incredible Hulk. Like we were completely normal, albeit genius level intelligence, people. I sighed and took a sip from my drink. Bruce’s arm snaked around my shoulder and he leaned over and kissed my forehead. I slid my bum closer on the bench and leaned against him.

“You sure this isn’t a first date?” His voice broke the quiet peace between us.

“Why?” I laughed.

“Because it’s the kind of first date we’ll talk about when we’re old and grey.” His voice rumbled in his chest. I looked up at him, a little bit surprised. He’d seemed so cautious while we were still in the tower. He dipped his head and his lips met mine.

#bruce banner x ofc

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furiousgoldfish · 2 years

Text

On healing from self-harming thoughts and behaviours (tw for mentions of self harm)

Struggling with trauma-induced brain irregularities, as well as self harming thoughts and behaviours, I learned that the only way to resolve them was to kick out any shame, guilt, or pressure to make it better. All of the trauma induced self hating behaviours are there because at one point, they have saved your life. You wouldn't be doing them without the abuse ever occurring, you wouldn't be doing it if it served no purpose, you wouldn't be doing it if you were nurtured, cared for, and supported sufficiently thru your life. These behaviours are not your fault, they do not make you bad, they do not affect your value. They're signs of struggle, proof you've been thru pain, and that you ideally, everyone should go easy on you and acknowledge you've been hurt too much.

The hormone irregularities in brain are likely to decrease the more time you spend in healthy environment, because your brain is always adjusting to the situation, and a simply by not experiencing abuse, your brain will slowly fix itself to the new environment. Self-harming thoughts and behaviours, however, are likely to reoccur whenever you're exposed to stress, triggers, anything that feels similar to abuse, or just ptsd bringing back abuse memories because that's what ptsd does.

Nobody can go from self-harming behaviour one day, to completely healthy the next, it's like trying to change what you lived with your entire life, overnight. Expecting yourself to simply stop, and not give in to awful urges anymore, is bound to end in a disappointment, and possibly induce even more self hatred.

What it takes it dropping expectations, understanding you're doing this for good reasons, possibly it's the only stress relief you've ever had, possibly it's the only way for you to feel safe or sane, only way to come down from rage or terror or shame. It's not something you can lose and go without. Once you understand exactly why you're doing it, it's possible to imagine a scenario where you had something else to replace that, something that would serve the same purpose, without causing you damage. And then, you don't try to simply replace it, but you imagine your destination, and slowly start steering in the right direction.

For instance, if you're indulging in self-hating thoughts, you go, okay, I will still do it, but I will think of something slightly less self hating. I will reduce the self hate by 1%. If it's a painful thing, you decide, okay, I will reduce the amount of pain just slightly today. If it's fantasies of abuse, you decide to make them only slightly less overwhelming. Just with slightly more care for your well being. 1% is enough. Because that's what it takes to change the direction of where you're going.

Maybe a week later, you'll be able to reduce it by 2%, and maybe a month in, you'll go for 5% less. It doesn't matter how fast, or how slow you go. Progress isn't stark or sudden or visible from one day to another. I look years back, and get stunned by how desensitized I was to the things I was doing, because I've been slowly steering away, I became sensitive to them again. Once you're no longer participating in severe self-hatred, or exposed to constant abusive fantasies, you gain back sensitivity, and it's no longer an every-day thing for you, it's no longer something you reach for.

And you can't expect yourself to always be able to steer in the same way. Of course at one point you'll relapse and go back to your extreme to make yourself feel normal again. Of course life will push and pressure you back into your dark place. It's not a failure of yours. It doesn't mean that you're weak. It doesn't destroy your progress. Because you know how to steer away from that place now. You've steered away from it once before, and you know you don't have to stay there. The ship's wheel is in your hands, and you now know all the places you can take it.

It doesn't matter how many times you relapse, if you never stop steering, your destination will be the same. Give yourself all the time, all the forgiveness and gentleness in the world. You're doing something that is hard, and you're doing it despite the whole world failing to acknowledge it or help you. You're crawling out of a hole you should have never been pushed into. You're changing your own brain, because nobody cared for it to stay intact and undamaged, when you were the most vulnerable and in need of protection.

It's okay to exist and to be struggling with this. Even if you're not working on it. Even if you don't plan to. There's no shame in having thoughts or behaviours that only affect you. You don't owe anyone to fix yourself, to fix your brain. But, if you do want to, you should be able to do it without judgment, without feeling shame or pressure to do it on a timeline, or all at once. This should be in your hands only, and possible to do in a way that doesn't cause you huge discomfort. You've been thru enough of it.

#trauma recovery #abuse recovery #healing #child abuse #self hatred #tw sef harm mention #self harm #abusive fantasies #toxic shame #recovery progress

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lomlwintersoldier · 3 years

Text

Break Me Down II

Masterlist | Part 1

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: oof more sexual tension, mechanic!bucky

A/N: i wrote this over and over again and i realized it wasn’t working because I was trying to fit it al into 2 parts sooo....there will be a third part to tie all this up <3

Since that day in the gym with you, Bucky can’t seem to get you out of his head. He finds that when he turns a corner, a part of him hopes he’ll run into you, to repeat the fleeting moments he’d had with you before. When he enters a room, his heart jumps in the half second it takes to find you, and when his eyes do land on you, it’s like he can hardly breathe. You’ve gotten under his skin and all the denial he felt previously about his feelings for you had disappeared. Your smile, your laughter, your darkening eyes when you're serious, and the way you look at him...he could bask in your stare forever.

But, he can’t let on his feelings to you just yet so instead he chooses to work on the 1965 Ford Mustang that’s been sitting in his garage for weeks. He missed getting his hands greasy while he was dating Serena, she’d typically preferred when he focused all his energy on her so his own interests, such as fixing up “vintage” cars (seriously, he was older than this car by like 30 years) took a backseat.

He heads down to the old, leftover garage at the back of the compound where he kept his beauty away from Tony’s Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches knowing the billionaire would make fun of him for having a relatively cheap and ordinary car.

It’s pleasant to be out in the sun, working on his car, bathing in the summer heat as a light breeze blows through him every few minutes; it reminds him of the times he’d worked on various cars back in the day. Modern cars were so different from the old clunkers he used to fix up so it was a learning curve, but it wasn’t long before he fell into his rhythm and the hours passed like minutes.

It’s mid afternoon by the time he realizes he’s stuck on one of the final parts of the job. His hands, albeit expert and surprisingly delicate, were too big to get to the parts he needed deep in the hood of the car, and he sighs in frustration. He leans over the hood, hands gripping either side as he chews on the toothpick in his mouth quizzically.

Then, he has a wonderful idea.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Ms. Y/N, Mr. Barnes is requesting your presence in the garage.” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice booms over the intercom, startling you from the book you were reading.

“What? What does he need me for?” You inquire intently as you sit up on the couch, pushing the throw blanket that enveloped you away from your heated skin.

“He simply requested your help. The task is undetermined,” her feminine yet robotic voice replies.

Your heart jumps a bit although you can’t fathom what he could need your help with. Following that day in the gym, you’d found yourself holding your breath whenever you passed the common room, the kitchen, his room, just hoping that you could get a glimpse of him. You wanted his hands on you, to breathe his air, to look into those eyes again.

And it appears you now have that opportunity.

The walk down to the garages feels endless and you find yourself walking quickly, too quickly. You didn’t want to seem as eager as your speed would show so you slow down to a snail's pace until finally, you reach the side of the compound you’re sure you’ll find him in.

You see him before he sees you and...damn. Does he look enticing.

His back faces towards you as he bends over the hood of the vintage red car he’s working on, the white tank top he’s wearing gloriously displaying the black and gold arm the Wakandan’s gave him. Sweat glints on the exposed skin and you resist the urge to bit your lip. When he turns, a wide smile crosses his face and you suddenly feel like your cheeks are on fire.

“Hey, doll,” Bucky calls out to you as you stride over. “Think you can help me sus out this problem with the engine?”

You look at him quizzically as you plant your hands on your hips, glancing at the cherry red car before you. “I don’t really know anything about cars…”

He grins, straightening up as he wipes his grease-covered hands on the towel he has tucked in the waistband of his jeans. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to.”

“I just need your hands,” he holds his flesh hand out for you, daring you to take it with a smirk on his face.

“Come on, doll,” he laughs. “It’s not hard.”

You roll your eyes before placing your hand in his. Gently leading you by the hand to the front of the car, Bucky points at the mess of black parts that rest under the rather simplistic hood. “There's a part under here,” he gestures towards the left side of the car, “that I can’t get to. Hand’s too big.” He raises his large metal hand and wiggles his fingers playfully. A surprised laugh escapes your lips. “This is what you asked me to come out here for?” You ask incredulously. “Do you know how far this place is from the main building?”

“You have small hands,” he chuckles as he takes your hand and presses his palm to yours, spreading your fingers to match his and he’s right. Your hands are far smaller than his.

But now, hand pressed to his, you're abruptly aware of his presence, of his large and imposing body that towers over you as he stares intently into your eyes. Locks of his dark hair have fallen out of his bun and frame his face, the strands so close to tickling your cheek. Your eyes drop to his lips and you think, I could just….he’s right here….

“We should fix this car,” you exclaim, breaking both of you out of the moment as you drop your hand from his. You spin away leaning both your hands on the car, focusing very hard on the engine in front of you.

You can practically hear the smile in Bucky’s voice when he says, “alright doll, I need you to wiggle those pretty little fingers down...here.”

He places your hand over where he wants you to go as he rests his other hand on your hip. Trying to not be too distracted by his touch, you follow his instructions, reaching through the tight crevice he was unable to worm his digits between.

“Now take...this,” Bucky murmurs against your ear as he presses his chest to your back, handing you a part with the hand that just moments ago rested on your waist. He smells of sandalwood and cypress, a deliciously intoxicating aroma that is just wholeheartedly Bucky.

As you work, you realize you no longer have autonomy over your limbs. Your hands have become his as if you’re a marionette and he, the expert puppeteer. He guides you through the process, never letting your body move more than a few inches away from his as you listen intently to everything he whispers to you.

As you connect the last part, you circle around to face him, parting yourself from his chest. In response, he leans forward, practically caging you in against the car. Breaths intermingle, hearts beat faster.

Fuck it, you think.

Without stopping to contemplate the choice you’re about to make, you lean up onto your toes, connecting your lips to his with a fervor that initially catches him off guard, but he quickly sinks into your kiss, his scorching hands falling to your waist as he pulls you against him. His tongue forces its way into your mouth as you entangle your fingers in his hair, almost pulling it as you fight for dominance.

This kiss is filled with all the tension you’ve felt over the last couple of weeks, a desperate result of the stolen glances and held breaths in each others presences. So close and so far at the same time but now, in this moment, there is only the two of you, existing in perfect sync as you ride out this impatient longing together.

When you finally pull away, you’re out of breath, but you leave your arms tangled around his neck as his drop to your hips, resting lowly enough that his fingers graze your ass.

“What was that?” He laughs as he brushes a strand of hair from your face.

“You were getting too cocky,” you smirk as you push away from him, beginning to strut away the same way he did with you all those days before but you’re suddenly yanked back by the hand. Faster than you can react, he's got you enveloped in his arms and he’s walking you backwards until your back hits the cold cement wall of the garage.

“What’re you-” Bucky cuts your words off by crashing his lips to yours.

While the kiss was passionate before, there’s suddenly a need, an urgent craving that you can practically feel brewing beneath his skin, a hunger so deep you’re unsure you can satisfy him. His hands come up to cup your cheeks, keeping you so tightly pressed against him that you’re almost certain no one else exists, it’s Bucky, it’s just Bucky. All of him is almost overwhelming. This kiss is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before, it sets your body on fire, ignites electricity in your veins and leaves you frantically reaching for more.

“Was I, doll?” He murmurs heatedly against your lips. “Was I too cocky for you?”

His hips dig into yours and you tear your face from his, breathless and gasping for air. He wastes no time in moving to your neck, sucking and kissing and biting, earning your quiet moans as he gyrates his pelvis to yours. Your legs have gone weak and the only thing keeping you standing is his waist pressed between your legs.

“Bucky!” You exclaim when he bites the sensitive skin just above your collarbones particularly hard. He takes your cry as a signal to move back up to your lips, giving you one last, harsh kiss before pulling away.

But this time he doesn’t walk away. He keeps you pressed forcefully against him, the fiery heat between the two of you voraciously palpable as both of you try to catch your breath.

“Come up to my room,” you breathe as you tangle your fingers in his hair once more. His eyes fix on yours, his brow furrowing as your lips part in hunger, wanting more, wanting him.

“You sure you want that, baby?” His right, flesh hand cups your cheek and you see a tinge of real concern in his eyes, despite the bravado in his voice.

Instead of responding, you lean up and gently bite the soft skin of his neck, earning a groan from his delicious mouth.

“More than I’ve ever been.”

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Next Part: Coming soon! <3

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samstree · 3 years

Text

and the wolf was nowhere to be found (1/3)

In which Jaskier chooses to lie, until he can no longer tell the truth.

(lying spell/potion, cursed jaskier, geralt apologizes, post mountain, miscommunication, rated teen, read on AO3)

A big thanks to @wanderlust-t and @a-kind-of-merry-war for the prompt! <3

The reverse trope series: [1] [2] [3] [4]

“You are gonna run after him again, just like that? Don’t you remember what he did to you? What you went through?”

Essi leans against the doorframe, her arms crossed in front of her chest, watching as Jaskier packs a second bag.

“Come one, poppet. Geralt was having a hard time back then, and now he’s come all the way to Oxenfurt to apologize.

“So what?”

“So I’m forgiving him.”

She grumbles a few rude words regarding the witcher’s lineage.

“Hey! That’s not nice.”

“And this is way too easy! Why can’t you see a disaster waiting to happen until it hits you in the face?” Essi exclaims. “Do you know what I would have done? I would make him grovel! Give him the cold shoulder. Or…or at least play it cool for a while longer so he knows not to take you for granted again! Sorry, but I’m…not like you.”

“Um…excuse you. I am plenty cool!”

“There’s nothing cool about being utterly in love and then getting cast aside over and over again, Jaskier. You know that.”

Jaskier sighs, walks to Essi and pulls her into a tight hug, all his scattered doublets ignored.

“I’m going to be okay,” he tries to tuck her curls away from her eyes but fails.

“Are you?” When she pulls back, there’s something inscrutable in those blue eyes, the curtain of blonde hair obscuring her emotions. “When you came down from the mountain, the way you couldn’t even … I don’t know. I just need to make sure it won’t happen again.”

“It—” Jaskier opens his mouth to make an easy promise, but finds the words choking in his throat. “I, um—”

Essi squeezes him on the shoulder. “He’s apologized, profusely from what you told me, and he’s being nice now. He will certainly be nice for a while, but what happens after he wins you back? What’s preventing him from hurting you again?”

Jaskier has no answers for her, so he resorts to giving her another hug.

“At least, think about my cold shoulder tactic. Sometimes people need the reminder, just so they know what they can easily lose.”

“Essi—”

“Think about it.”

She presses a small kiss on Jaskier’s cheek and leaves him to his packing. Outside the window comes the familiar sound of Roache’s hooves, clicking against the cobblestone.

Jaskier straightens his tunic and lets out a heave. He can see Geralt is being good now, friendly even, after all these years of denying their friendship. Now, the witcher is even waiting downstairs to begin their next journey.

Essi is just being overly protective, Jaskier decides.

He winds down the stairs and finds Geralt cooing at Roach. The urge to melt in those golden amber eyes is overwhelming.

“We good?” Geralt takes Jaskier’s bags and secures them on Roach, side by side with his saddlebags.

“Good,” Jaskier lies.

---

The truth is, Jaskier has heard of this so-called “cold shoulder” tactic. He’s even contemplated it for longer than he’s willing to admit. Every time Geralt dismissed him as a friend, brushed him off, Jaskier couldn’t help but want to retaliate with equal measure.

What if he’s the one to give Geralt a time-out? What if when Geralt tells him to fuck off, he just…leaves? The same idea churned in Jaskier’s stomach for two decades, but in the end, he knows the answer—he can never bring himself to go through it. His feet would carry him back to Geralt before even taking a step away.

He was left anyway.

But now…

Jaskier can’t afford to be left again. Essi was right. He isn’t sure if he can pick himself up again. He barely managed it the first time.

Jaskier lets out an audible scoff as he comes to the realization. He’s going to do it. The cold shoulder tactic. It’s so cheesy that it feels like something only school girls would use to get attention from a crush. Keep your distance, string him along a little. That’s how you get him to notice you exist—

“Something funny?” Geralt turns on horseback, sunlight peaking through his silver hair, a curious frown between his brows. He’s towering, beautiful. He has always been the most beautiful person Jaskier knows, even if he doesn’t know it.

Jaskier strums an absent chord on his lute. “Just something Essi said.”

“Hmm.” Geralt nudges Roach forward. “I was thinking… You’ve never seen a basilisk, have you?”

“No?”

“There are rumors about a nest in the next town. Want to see it?”

A hint of smile hints at Geralt’s lips, and Jaskier’s heart almost leaps out of his throat. A basilisk hunt is one he’s been dying to watch for years, if not decades. He’s drooling with excitement just thinking about the ballad that will certainly sweep the continent off its feet.

“Of course I want—" The sentence stops in its tracks. Jaskier bites his tongue to hide the slip. “You know what, I think I’ll stay in town. This new song needs some polishing before its debut. I’m sure a big witcher such as yourself doesn’t need a bard’s moral support for a meager basilisk, right?”

Jaskier adds a wink for good measure, but Geralt is not amused. He’s staring from his vantage point, his expression inexplicable. Is it really so shocking that Jaskier will turn Geralt down this once, after all this time?

“I understand.” Geralt pauses before continuing, almost too carefully. “Perhaps I can help? Sing it for me tonight?”

“Sing it…for you?” Jaskier asks, dumbfounded. The lute in his hands suddenly feels a lot weightier than it is.

“You wanted my review for so long, Jaskier. I’m giving it to you now. I’m sure your playing will be…nice.”

Geralt looks at him with hope in his eyes, and Jaskier can’t help but let his ego grow a little. It’s unbelievable that a simple refusal is what got Geralt to finally say anything positive about his music. The tiny triumph fills his chest with unexpected giddiness.

“Maybe I will. We shall see,” he replies. His fingers strike another chord.

Jaskier feels a spring in his steps, urging him forward to the mare’s steady gait. Golden amber eyes are burning a hole into his back, but he doesn’t dare to look back lest the tiny bubble of this perfect moment break.

---

Night falls, and Jaskier scribbles down another line. The door opens and Geralt drags his feet into their shared room.

Jaskier makes no effort to get up.

Once upon a time, he would have raced across the room to greet Geralt, checked for injuries and fussed over any scrapes and cuts, all the while getting dismissed with the witcher’s grumbled words. He’d help remove those heavy armors when Geralt’s muscles ache from exhaustion and get ichor all over himself.

He will not do that tonight.

Play it cool, Essi’s words echo in his memory. Right, he’s doing things differently now.

Jaskier fixes his gaze on the notebook in his lap and listens as Geralt shuffles around the room, putting everything back in place. One by one, his armor pieces drop in the corner of the room.

“How was it?” he asks with the most nonchalant tone as if he’s just noticed the other man’s existence.

“Fine. The basilisk’s dead.”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier chooses the single hum uncharacteristically as Geralt puts his swords against the doorframe and sits down on the single chair.

He’s so still, hovering even.

“What?” Jaskier finally looks at him. Geralt, as he claimed, looks fine, with only a smudge of a black ichor sticking to his hair. A frown appears between his brows.

Adorable.

Jaskier shakes the thought quickly.

“Your new song?” Geralt prompts.

“Oh yeah. Never mind. I don’t feel like singing.”

It’s another lie. A necessary one, Jaskier tells himself.

“You,” Geralt says, raising an eyebrow, “don’t feel like singing?”

Jaskier clutches the notebook to his chest almost defensively, not sure what to do with the accusation. Is it a tragedy that Geralt knows him like the back of his hand? Or is it a shame that Jaskier is indeed buzzing with excitement to test out this song, with the most important person in his life?

“Well, I don’t.”

Jaskier keeps his chin up and scrambles off the bed to put away his books and pens. Geralt’s intent gaze is on his back again.

“Twenty years, and I’ve never known you to turn down an opportunity to sing.”

“I guess you don’t know me that well,” Jaskier bites back with a force that seems to come out of nowhere. “The bard may not want to entertain all the time, darling.”

The endearment sounds false, more like a jab. He lets out a dry chuckle and hopes to ease the tension but to no avail. Geralt’s eyes are wide with surprise. So Jaskier reaches for his bedroll as a distraction, but only serves to make the confusion deepen on Geralt’s face.

“What are you doing?”

Jaskier lays it by the fire, on the soft rug that magically seems clean enough. It should be self-explanatory, but apparently not because Geralt is still staring quizzically.

“Sleeping.”

Geralt looks at the double bed and then back at Jaskier. “On the floor?”

“Thought I’d give you the space. I know how keyed up you are after the potions.”

Jaskier can feel his heart pounding in his chest, the nervous energy buzzing as more words he doesn’t mean comes out of his mouth. He crosses his legs on the bedroll and pulls the blanket onto his lap to hide from Geralt’s scrutiny. But then, something dawns on Geralt’s face.

“Jaskier…” Geralt rubs his forehead, his face pinched. “What I said in Oxenfurt, I meant it.”

“You do?”

“You can count on me now. It won’t be like…before.”

Their gazes meet, and Jaskier bears the intensity of it with everything he has. He feels bare, seen through by the amber gold he’s missed and cursed and loved so much.

“I’m here, and I’m all here, Jaskier. Please believe in me.”

“I do.”

It’s not the truth despite how much he wants to believe it. Jaskier wonders if lying to Geralt ever becomes easier.

He doesn’t know what is not convincing him. Geralt looks so genuine, and Jaskier wants more than anything to trust him again, but the smile on his face feels too stiff.

The plan is going as Jaskier wanted. He’s showing Geralt that his friendship doesn’t come freely anymore, and the witcher needs to make more effort, meet him halfway, somehow. Then how come as the quiet night creeps in, Jaskier only finds a hollow space in his chest?

The roaring fire in the hearth warms his back, but Jaskier clutches his blanket tighter. It can’t stave off the coldness left by the lack of a witcher’s body by his side.

---

Jaskier continues with the same scheme the next day.

Ignoring Geralt is not a difficult task in the beginning. The barmaid is a beautiful thing, doe-eyed and curious, has too many questions for her own good. She keeps asking about Jaskier’s ballads, and wouldn’t quite believe any crazy stories in them.

“Is it true that the White Wolf fought a sea serpent on the Skellige Isles? Surely, those creatures only exist in legends!”

She’s getting familiar, pressed up against Jaskier on the bench, almost pushing him back into Geralt’s side—the real subject of the topic, but it’s obvious her fascination lies only in Jaskier. Her brown eyes stay on the bard alone.

“Why don’t we find somewhere more private and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“Is it a good one? It must be a heroic tale, isn’t it?”

“Heroic, of course. There’s also a twist. I won’t spoil it for you, but—” Jaskier winks, his fingers brushing past her wrist. “—it’s a love story that holds more heartbreak than you can bear.”

Her giggles are like soft wind chimes, and Jaskier guides her away from their table. He takes two steps and turns back, smacking himself on the head as if he’s only just thought of it.

“Oh, shoot! I know I promised to go the market with you, Geralt, but you see…” He gestures to the girl waiting expectantly in the near distance. There’s nothing I can do about it, he says with a shrug. “Have a good time, will you?”

Geralt is holding his tankard, his knuckles white and his face ice-cold. It’s like Jaskier is looking at one of those ice sculptures made by Oxenfurt’s art students every winter.

“You said you’d come.”

Geralt’s voice is so gentle, so full of dejection that Jaskier’s resolve almost breaks. He clears his throat and darts his eyes elsewhere. Those acting coaches back in school would have been disappointed in him for letting his emotions peak through, but Geralt doesn’t seem to notice what’s underneath this front.

“Surely you can find a new bridle for Roach by yourself,” Jaskier waves his hand in dismissal. “You are a big witcher.”

Geralt opens his mouth and closes it, before speaking again. “And the pastry shop you wanted to visit?”

Jaskier thinks of the lemon cakes he’s been itching to try and swallows the yearning in his throat. Gods, being with Geralt all day with not a care in the world, and with the best sweets on the continent. What is he doing turning all this down?

“Well,” he insists, “Better company comes before cake, my dear.”

With that, Geralt lets go of the topic. His amber eyes drop back to the half-finished ale. “Better company. I see…”

“Surely you understand, Geralt.”

“Just—” Geralt purses his lips in an attempt at a smile. “Don’t exaggerate too much.”

Jaskier should feel bad as he walks out the tavern door with a beauty on his arm, he should, but instead, a pang of anger rises in his throat. How many times did Geralt abandon him at the sight of Yennefer in the past few years? How long did he brood on top of that mountain, recounting every bad choice he’d made in his life and decided that it was all Jaskier’s doing?

For once, Jaskier doesn’t want to put Geralt first in everything, waiting for a bone thrown in his direction, and the witcher—this infuriating man—is going to act like a kicked puppy.

Horrified at this burning rage, Jaskier turns only to watch helplessly as Geralt walks down the street in the opposite direction. He’s planted to the spot, unable to chase Geralt down, and clueless as to whether this plan is doing him any favors other than the fleeting satisfaction of getting back at his friend who was at fault.

Was.

Geralt was at fault. Jaskier has forgiven him, or at least, that’s what he said at first sight of his witcher’s travel-weary face back in Oxenfurt.

And yet, he’s punishing him still.

The barmaid is still waiting for Jaskier’s stories, her cheeks still round with a timid blush and her eyes gleaming with expectations.

The colorful adventures taste stale on his tongue and she loses interest too quickly before returning to her post. His mood sours further as the day stretches on.

Jaskier ends up wandering around town without an aim in mind. The only place he’s carefully avoiding is the market, and the stable, and the smith’s shop. Anywhere he might bump into Geralt. When night draws in, a sudden downpour catches him off guard and drenches him from inside out.

Great. Just the perfect ending to the worst—well, the second worst day of Jaskier’s life.

Candles are still lit as Jaskier enters the room. He finds Geralt fast asleep already, and on the table, right next to his writing supplies, is a lemon cake.

It’s drizzled in honey and looks just as enticing as he imagined.

Jaskier picks it up and finds a lump forming in his throat, choking him with guilt. He wants to scream, to let out the frustration at all the mistakes made in the past and haunting him still. He wants to cry. It’s just…

Now, he doesn’t know if he still deserves to.

---

Okay, I know I'm being mean to Geralt here, but don't worry, I’ gonna be mean to Jaskier in the next one ;)

Also, whatever Jaskier is doing here is very unhealthy. Don't try this at home.

Tagging: @rockysstupidity @flowercrown-bard @alllthequeenshorses @mothmanismyuncle @percy-jackson-is-sexy- @constantlytiredpigeon @behonesthowsmysinging @kitcatkim3

Please feel free to tell me if you want to be removed or added to the list <3

#geraskier #geraskier fic #geralt x jaskier #jaskier being an idiot #geralt apologizes #mutual pining #miscommunication #cursed jaskier #jaskier whump #reverse trope #lying spell

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wreckmetoji · 3 years

Text

idfc

An ongoing fic in which you don't realize you have both Fushiguros at your feet.

↳ Toji Fushiguro/Reader Part 3/?

Part 1, Part 2 , Part 4

content warning. age gap, shameless smut, afab reader, mild degradation, spit kink, size kink, choking, unprotected sex, overstimulation, profanity This is part three of a several part story revolving around smut. **Minors DNI**

1.6k words

You came to a quick conclusion that had he not prepared you how he did, there was no fucking way his dick would fit. "Doll, we're just getting started." The circles Toji traced on your hip with his fingertips did little to calm your nerves. That wasn't his intention anyways. "Like what you see?" Toji smirked, free hand going to the base of his length and giving it a slow shake. You had to will yourself to look back up to his eyes instead of following the sway of his cock. You didn't trust yourself to speak so you nodded instead. “You're... um..." The words died in your throat as he leaned down, towering above you. He moved his hips between your legs, trapping you between his strong arm and the back of your couch. "Big?" "Fucking huge," You breathed, his sardonic grin only growing at the shake behind your voice. "Careful sweetheart, you're stroking my ego. That's a dangerous game." Toji stroked the head of his cock against your slick, rubbing against your clit before stroking the rest of him down the crevice of your pussy, then coming back up to tease your clit again. Soft mewls left your lips, rocking your hips up into him and urging him to hurry the fuck up. Movements halted, and you immediately noticed the missing presence of his girth. You lifted your head to look down between the two of you, ready to ask him what was taking him so long, until you felt the head of his cock part you. He shifted his hips, pushing forwards. You arched your back, the wind knocked out of your body completely. He was gonna split you in two, holy shit. "Fuck, relax princess," Toji sucked a breath through his teeth, pushing two more inches into your heat. "You're so tight." Instinctively, you wrapped your legs around his slim waist, knees squeezing him slightly more with every agonizing push. In no way were you a virgin, but you had absolutely nothing to compare to his size. His other arm came up beside your head, effectively caging you between them, using one hand to grip your hair and tugging it to make you look at him. The sting had your eyes watering, your cunt squeezing him ever so slightly. His eyes pierced through you, holding your gaze until he was completely bottomed out inside of you. You looked completely fucked out and he'd barely even done anything yet. Your hips rocked, pushing up into Toji as much as you could. The corner of his lips tugged into a smirk, your eyes carefully watched his tongue slide over his scar. "Look at you, like a bitch in heat." He pulled out to the tip, fucking back into you with brute force. If you couldn't breathe before, it was impossible now. He repeated, setting a steady hard pace, watching your face contort in overwhelming pleasure. "You're such a slut, you think I don't notice the way you look at me every time you come over?" Toji gave an especially bruising thrust, making your jaw fall slack. You were barely able to make noise with how hard he was pounding into you, only little moans and squeaks every time his hips made contact with yours. "You've been wanting me to fuck you stupid for years, huh?" You sputtered an unintelligible answer, eyes rolling into the back of your head when he gave your hair a hard tug before letting go. His hand moved down to your lips, thumb forcing into your mouth with ease, pressing your tongue down with the pad of his finger. "Be a good girl," Toji muttered darkly, leaning down and sticking his tongue out above you. Your eyes came back into focus just as the string of spit fell from his tongue onto your own, an airy moan leaving you as the warm liquid dripped down your throat. He was quick to kiss you, tongue intruding your mouth to give you more and swallow your desperate sounds. When he parted, the string connecting connecting two of you snapped and dribbled down your chin, onto your chest. Toji groaned at the sight, sitting back on his thighs and gripping your hips with force. He pulled you into him, using your much smaller stature to his advantage, fucking himself with you brutally. Your screams and moans had drowned out his voice, but hearing him laugh made you gaze at him stupidly. He wasn't looking at your face, but down where the two of you were connected. When you shifted your gaze to see what he was laughing at, your eyes widened at the bulge pushing against your lower abdomen with every thrust. "Look at that... I could fucking break you, couldn't I?" Toji moved his hips up, pressing against you further. The words left your mouth in a garbled mess, but he understood them nonetheless. "Please break me, Toji... please." You were too absorbed in your own pleasure to see his expression shift, so the shock that came to you when he suddenly pulled out and flipped you with force made you shout. He entered you again without warning, mercilessly pounding into your aching cunt. One hand grabbed your forearm, pulling you to arch your back at an impossible angle. "Careful what you wish for, princess." Toji growled. His free hand came to wrap around the front of your throat, thumb and forefinger pressing on your pulse points just under your jaw, making your vision blur. It was too much, you could feel another orgasm quickly rising, trying desperately to voice the fact. His grip tightened on your throat, your head was floating. "Gonna cum for me again? You dirty slut." He grunted, leaning over you and pressing his chest to your back. You nodded as best you could with his hand holding your head still. The lack of oxygen was getting to your head, your eyes went glassy and your body began to slack against him. Your climax hit you like a truck, your entire body quaking and collapsing in his strong grip. You had completely blacked out, eyes rolling so far back in your head the strain gave you a headache. The last thing you remember is his arm wrapping around your waist to hold you up, and feeling warm ropes of cum filling up your overstimulated cunt. When you came to, Toji was wiping between your thighs with a dampened hand towel as you straddled his lap. He'd already pulled his pants back up, only remaining shirtless. You felt exposed in front of him, groaning at both the ache of your entire body and displeasure of your exposed state. "There she is," He announced, voice softer than you think you'd ever heard him speak before. You blinked, trying to lean back, body still too weak to do anything on your own. "Careful, princess. I got you." The room spun as he stood, carrying you with ease into your bathroom. You flinched at the cold granite counter making contact with your bare ass, making Toji chuckle. Once you relaxed, your back leaned against the mirror. “Scared the shit outta me, little girl." He turned the shower on, back facing you as he adjusted the nozzles and worked on removing his pants. "Don't think I've ever had someone pass out while I'm dickin' them down before." Oh how badly you wish you just died, right there and then. You could feel the heat radiating off your face, your ears going red. It was worse that he found it amusing. "Guess it was just that good," You muttered back, voice scratchy from overuse. "I guess one could say you fucked the life out of me." When Toji turned around, he had a lopsided smile that matched your own. "Yeah, guess you could." Toji was never a sweet or gentle man, that much was obvious. The scars that littered his body were from some dangerous job he always refused to specify, every time you had asked about the visible ones on his arms and face he would just say 'doesn't matter, I'm retired now'. So it came as a surprise when he got you on your feet and came into the shower with you, your back against his chest. This felt much different than the sex, it seemed much more intimate. There was a looming sense of closeness. It was short lived, however, once you started using your body wash his sneaky appendages traced up your sides and began cupping and kneading your chest. A soft sigh came from your lips, leaning your head back against his chest as he fondled you. You could already feel his half-hard cock pressing against your back, your own sex throbbing in time with his. A particular tweak of your nipple elicited a meek moan, your eyes fluttering closed. One of your small hands held his thick forearm, the other reached back and pressed against his upper thigh, just below his pelvic line. That was enough for him to hum, low baritone bouncing off the bathroom walls and shooting directly to the heat once again pooling between your legs. "Round two already?" You smirked through your words, having to tilt your head back all the way to look up at his roguishly handsome features. One of his hands moved down, brushing your swollen abused clit. Toji dipped his head, nudging your hair from your neck with his nose so he could kiss, lick, and nip the spot he'd been pressing with his thumb earlier. He peered up at you through the jet black strands of his bangs, raising a brow and grinning wickedly. "What can I say, I live to please. Besides..." "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

#toji fushiguro #toji smut #toji x reader #toji fushiguro x reader #toji x y/n #toji fushiguro smut #reader insert #jjk toji #toji jjk #jjk smut #toji thirst #daddy toji #minors do not interact #anime x reader #anime smut

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drawlfoy · 3 years

Text

detention retention finale p.1

masterlist (read parts 1-2 here!) request guidelines

pairing: draco x reader

request: no this series is from my original idea however i did take inspo from quite a few people (credited at the bottom of this)

summary: gryffindor y/n is put to the test when she tries to use her detentions with draco malfoy to get close enough for him to share his secret. unfortunately, things are never as simple as they seem. (set in 6th year)

warnings (plz pay attention to these this time): blood, violence, mild gore, mentions of wanting to throw up, you’re just kinda not having a great time during this chapter. also, kinda dark!harry trope here. it is a little ooc, i know, but it was what worked and so i ran with it. also, i play around with the timeline of events that occur in hbp so just expect that

a/n: the long awaited p1 of the finale is here! the second half is almost entirely written save for a few scenes, and i expect to get that out in the next few days (so much less than a week). i really appreciate you all being patient--i wrote and rewrote the potion scene about 3-4 times because it just wasn’t the vibes that i wanted, but i’m semi happy with how it turned out and at this point i’m just gonna go crazy if i keep trying to restructure it so here we go. all the loose ends will b tied up in the last part and y/n is finally gonna catch a break ;) so as always lmk what you think!

word count: 8.7k

here’s a spotify playlist inspired by this fic!

tags: @gruffle1 @missmultifandommess @cleopatera @hahaboop @accio-rogers @geeksareunique @eltanin-malfoy @war-sword @cams-lynn @itsivyberry @ayo-cowbelly @nerd-domland @yesnerdsblog @shizarianathania @evanstanfanatic @strawberriesonsummer @hariosborn @night-ving @straightzoinked @imintoodeeptostop @naiomimoonshard @jejegu @ophelia-enthusiast @alwaysbeanunknownfan @nearly-memories @litty-dumb @callieclearwater @malfoy-wife15 @charlenasaxen @belladaises @fiantomartell @yiamalfoy @crystalox @dracoismybabey @dreamcxtcherr @decaffeinated-turtle @marrymetheonott @felicityofbakerstreet @daedreamss

enjoy >:)

Snape’s stores were much more difficult to crack than she’d expected. She’d managed to steal one ingredient from there once, but back then all she had to do was disengage the multiple jinxes that guarded the door. Since, unfortunately, her slimy old Potions professor appeared to have felt a compulsion to fluff his nest and redecorate. A new painting was hung on the door--one of a large raven with beady, intelligent eyes that followed her as she walked past as inconspicuous as she could, no doubt preparing to fly off into the painting’s grey sky to alert his master. Her father had something similar to this in front of his Gringotts vault. She resolved to speak with him over the break to try and find a way in.

Not like she’d had any chance to execute her plan, anyways. It had been two weeks since Y/N had so much as had a simple interaction with Draco. Every time she tried to talk to him, he turned his attention away from her, offering her a disinterested sniff in response or just outright pretending like he didn’t notice her. Pansy Parkinson seemed to take joy in this development, though she was hardly getting anything on her end save for a few dry looking conversations as Draco’s body angled away from her.

Without the “distraction” of friendship and genuine human connection, Y/N had plenty of time to emotionally free-fall into an internal moral crisis. She supposed that Draco wasn’t expecting her to keep up her end of the deal now, just as her Gryffindor friends had given up on trying to make her useful. Physically, nothing was stopping her from walking right up to McGonagall during one of her detentions and telling her that Draco Malfoy was making an attempt on the headmaster’s life. But was it really worth it? Every time the thought crossed her mind, all she could think about was the way Draco looked when he talked about his mother, the way a shiny film glazed over his eyes and his eyebrows knit together.

She’d made a promise. Too much was at stake. While she had failed her friends, she was at least not going to fail Draco...not when the rest of the world had betrayed him.

Y/N was slowly sifting through thoughts like those when Katie Bell stepped foot into the Great Hall for the first time in a month. Her legs, slightly wobbly from being on bedrest for the better half of November, carried her down the aisle towards the trio of Y/N’s now ex-friends. Her soliloquy was interrupted by the familiar sound of Harry’s voice as he spoke, hushed and rather quickly, to Katie, his hands animated and his frame bent slightly lower so he could speak quietly. It didn’t take much imagination to discern what the topic of their discussion was as their eyes flickered over to the Slytherin table. She managed to hear a few snippets as the wind from the owls blew in and carried it towards her:

“Malfoy--”

“Was it?”

“...remember?”

Katie, lips pressed into a thin line, shook her head. Harry bit his own lip and swung around to look at a blond figure further down the aisle. Draco. He was staring at the meeting, his body entirely frozen while he took it in.

Oh, Draco.

Before either party could say anything, he was already turned around and speeding off outside of the hall. She swallowed; Harry and the rest of her Gryffindor peers were conversing and not casting a single look her way. Taking a deep breath, she got up from her seat, leaving her half eaten toast behind.

It didn’t take long to locate Draco--Myrtle’s bathroom was hardly a minute’s walk away from the Great Hall. He was in the same position she saw him there last, his head hanging over the sink basin while his body heaved.

“Draco,” she called out.

He snapped around, his eyes wild and his hair slightly wet at the tips. It occurred to her that he’d splashed his face with water. “Come around again for a formal Katie Bell confession?”

“No!” she exclaimed. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get herself past the doorway. Not when his wand was raised at her like that. “I wouldn’t do that. I would never do that.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” he snarled. “Do you really expect me to believe anything you say?”

“Please,” said Y/N. “Please let me explain.” Despite the sting of his words, she couldn’t help but feel some degree of relief when she realized that he was finally speaking to her again, finally acknowledging her again.

He let out a huff of disbelief. “This isn’t about you. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter whether or not you explain. You lied to me. You put my family in danger, me in danger. And for what? A date with Potter?”

“What?” All the air left her lungs as she stared at him. “It was never like that!”

“Save it.” His tone, a bitter blend of vileness and defeat, echoed off the stone of the bathroom floor. Y/N was overwhelmed with the urge to run up to him and just beg him to forgive her, but the fire in his eyes and the angry twist of his mouth told her that that wasn’t an option. Instead, she slowly crept towards him. His eyes blazed as she neared him holding her hands up. “Please, Draco. I’m begging you.”

His composure slipped, his wand shaking slightly in the air while he caught his bottom lip on his teeth and stared at her with a look she couldn’t quite place. She was just about to ask him about it when a pair of footsteps stopped right outside the bathroom.

“I know what you did, Malfoy!” Harry appeared, brandishing his wand and pointing it at him with conviction. “You hexed her, didn’t you? Katie?”

Draco sucked in a wheezy breath, struggling to stand up entirely straight as he held his wand at the ready.

“You’re not even gonna deny it?”

“Let me guess, Y/L/N couldn’t get a confession out of me so you’re here to pick up the slack?” Draco finally snarled. “How cute.”

“Shut up!” roared Harry. She’d never seen him look so furious before. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” he said menacingly, the usual cool confidence she associated with him slowly reappearing in his demeanor as he twirled his wand around his fingers. Y/N finally let out the breath she was holding as Harry zeroed his focus on her.

“And just what are you doing here?” he hissed. “Hermione was right, huh? You were with him the entire time. I can’t believe I expected anything different from you.”

Despite the fighting nature of the words coming from one of her best friends, she couldn’t help but glance at Draco as confusion briefly rippled through his features.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know that she was being shunned by her friends for not telling them anything.

“I was just checking on him!” she wailed.

Visibly unsatisfied with the answer, Harry just scoffed and aimed his wand at Draco. “You’re going to confess what you did or I’m going to make you regret it.”

Harry wasted no time with firing off the first spell--a weakly cast Stupefy that hardly missed her head as Draco’s Protego ricocheted it in her direction. She yelped as she dodged it, smacking into the side of the stall door and falling on the ground unceremoniously hard. Frantically, she dug through the pockets of her cloak to locate her wand, but she was too late. A flash of light was headed her way.

Instead of it smacking into her chest with the force of a curse, the green light spread around her, creating a shield-like sphere. She met Draco’s eye’s briefly in shock.

He’d cast a protection spell on her. In the middle of a duel that she was hardly formally a part of, he cast a protection spell on her.

“Diffindo!” The puddles from the eternal broken faucet glowed red as Harry parried Draco’s attack. It again went flying in her direction, breaking through the shell of the Fion Duris charm. In a stroke of luck, she rolled out of the way. A light blue flash followed from Draco--a nonverbal.

Finally. Y/N managed to close her hands around her wand, mind racing with thoughts of who she’d disarm first. Her wand had just begun to point towards Harry as the aftershocks of a Levicorpus charm slammed her to the ground once again, her wand bouncing on the cobbled stone once before rolling under the stall door. Y/N swore. “Harry, stop it!”

Harry was clearly losing composure. Despite his magical talent, the speed at which he was rattling off curses compromised his control...and his aim. Draco sent a few Fion Duris and Protego Maxima charms her way, but it still didn’t help when Harry had completely lost it.

Things turned for the worst when his Tergeo actually sliced Y/N--just barely, but enough to draw a significant amount of blood in her wand arm. Even if she wanted to try and find her wand behind the toilets, she wasn’t even sure if she had the strength to fire off anything.

Her cry of pain prompted Draco to immediately turn his attention from Harry, angling his body towards her instead, an indistinguishable expression etched into his face as he took in the bloodstained white sleeve of her arm.

Under normal circumstances, Y/N would’ve swooned at the fact that he willingly forfeited the duel just to check on her. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and Harry’s rage-filled expression and clenched jaw reminded her of this as he reeled his arm back and shouted out, “SECTUMSEMPRA!”

She didn’t think about it. To her credit, there really was no time to think. The cracking crimson light flashing towards Draco’s distracted figure was enough for her to launch herself at him with the intent of knocking them both to the ground--but she was too late, far too late. Glowing red light encased her entire body for a few tense milliseconds before she crumpled to the ground.

The Sectumsempra curse felt like every single nerve ending in her chest was being massaged with a sharp knife. Hot, sticky blood filled her mouth as she blinked, glassy-eyed and dazed, up at the ceiling. Distantly she could hear familiar voices over her body. There was a wet warmth that bloomed on her chest. She managed to glance down at her midsection to see an array of deep, short slashes scattered across her torso.

“Am I okay?” Her voice sounded tinny and funny to her. A pair of light gray eyes came into her vision as she managed another breath. “Draco? Is that you?”

If he leaned closer, she couldn’t tell. His face was beginning to swim in her vision, blending in with the glass ceiling. Finally, a familiar voice, albeit strained and cracking: “You’re okay.”

She felt something shaky brush past her cheek and the coolness of metal rings dance over her skin.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You’re going to be okay.” He sounded so far away for someone who was leaning right over her. She could see out of the corner of her eye a figure, cloaked in dark robes, raise its wand and recite an unfamiliar incantation. The metallic taste in her mouth began to subside as she felt the warm stickiness of her own blood seep back into her skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not entirely sure what she was apologizing for but doing it anyway. She thought she could feel the warmth of someone’s fingers softly cupping her face, but it could’ve been the heat of the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. In that moment, she was overwhelmed with the desire to just be held, to not be lonely. “Please don’t go,” she begged.

The last thing she heard was a tense, “...Okay.” Then everything went black.

Y/N spent the majority of her break obsessing over the last memory she had of Draco--the startled way in which he gazed down at her as she bled out in Myrtle’s bathroom and felt his soft hands brush the hair away from her face. It was almost as if there had never been a problem between the two of them, like he’d forgiven her at that moment, but she knew that wasn’t true. Their last Potions class together had made that very clear. While he, thank Merlin, wasn’t letting Pansy hang off him like he did in 4th year, he still pointedly ignored her even though she had to nearly hobble into class. So why had he looked so worried if he didn’t care? And why, whilst surfing the high of a cocktail of pain potions, did she feel like she remembered someone with light blond hair at her side in the hospital wing?

“And you’re sure your bandages are comfortable?” Her mother interrupted her train of thought,, the plate of ethically-sourced willowbird lying completely untouched in front of her.

“Yes, Mum,” groaned Y/N for what had to be the hundredth time of her Christmas break. “I told you. Professor Snape and Madame Pomfrey made me their top priority over the last week of school. They say that I won’t even need them come January.”

Mrs. Y/L/N hummed as she delicately picked through her salad.

“I can’t believe that Potter boy’s nerve,” said Mr. Y/L/N from the foot of the table. “Hexing his own friend like that?”

“Dad, he didn’t even know what it did!”

“Exactly! What kind of person does that?”

“He’s just stressed,” Y/N mused, though she was personally a tad miffed at the fact that she’d been brutalized by someone she once considered her best friend. “And he was a little angry at me. He thinks I’m in cahoots with Death Eaters.”

“Ridiculous.” Mrs. Y/L/N vigorously shook her head. “Anyways, dear, no relation to the previous topic: I ran into Minerva at Wurgie’s the other day while I was shopping for gifts. She told me something very peculiar. Is it true you’ve become friends with the Malfoy boy?”

Y/N paled. Dealing with the backlash of Hermione, Harry, and Ron had been bad enough, but her own parents? Over the winter holidays? “Draco?”

“Yes, unless the Malfoys have another son I’m not aware of.”

“Well…” Y/N searched her mother’s face for any sign of animosity but found nothing but genuine curiosity. “Yes. We both had det--I mean, we were partnered for a class project together in Potions. He seems to have grown up a little.”

Oblivious to the slip up, her mother nodded. “Interesting. I was actually quite close with Narcissa myself back in the day. The Malfoys certainly don’t have a great track record of picking the right side, but we were two quaffles in a case throughout our schooling.”

“You knew Mrs. Malfoy?” asked Y/N, her eyes wide. “I had no idea!”

“Of course, we disagreed on the pureblood values and traditions that should be followed with children,” continued Mrs. Y/L/N, “But despite that, she was always kind. I hope she’s faring well.”

Y/N gulped as an idea slowly began to form in her mind. “Er, Mum, actually...Draco told me some things about...well, his mother.”

Both of her parents perked up.

“So you know how you guys always talk about how the Order owes you a favor for the time you went undercover in the first Wizarding War?” asked Y/N. They both nodded. “Do you think...we could cash that in right about now?”

A month later, Y/N stood in front of the painting that hung on Snape’s door, frowning at the raven that stared right back at her, daring her to try and open the door. In all the excitement of Christmas and explaining to her relatives that she’d nearly been murdered by her ex-best friend in a haunted bathroom, she had completely forgotten to ask her father how to distract a charmed guardian painting, and it’d hardly be beneficial to owl him during a busy work month. It was still completely up to her.

The dungeons sent a certain chill through her bones as she ran through possible plans, prompting her to tuck her hands into her pockets and shiver so hard that she didn’t even hear the footsteps approaching.

“What are you doing down here?” came the snotty, posh voice that she knew belonged to Pansy Parkinson.

“Parkinson,” Y/N greeted, snapping her head up to see that she didn’t come alone. Draco strode next to her, though he wouldn’t look at her directly. “Come for a rematch?”

Parkinson pulled out her wand and scoffed. “Wasn’t planning on it, but if you’re offering…”

“Pansy!” Draco hissed, yanking her away and forward. “We have places to be. Don’t waste your time.”

“But--”

“She almost got killed by Potter, like, yesterday,” he continued in a hushed voice. “Do you really want to make that worse?”

Parkinson sent her one last sour look before she was dragged off by Draco (who still refused to make eye contact with her). Y/N slumped against the wall, wincing as one of her injured spots bumped against a protruding stone. Why was he ignoring her? He’d protected her during the duel. He was even the one who stood over her as she lay crumpled on the floor.

A lump began growing in her throat again as she realized just how lonely she was. With her friends gone, all she had now was...her owl, Edison? Yes, that was it. Edison and Hannah Abbott, who clearly was just letting her sit next to her for meals out of pity. Y/N wished that she had the strength to sit alone and just say fuck it so she wouldn’t have to be the kickstart to a bleeding-heart Hufflepuff’s philanthropy career, but she was already beat down enough as she was. Sitting alone would just seal the deal in her new life as a social reject who dreaded classes where the professors let you choose partners. It was like she was a shy first year again, too nervous to talk to anyone and instead sitting alone at the breakfast table, praying that she’d make friends with someone, anyone, even though she was too afraid to figure out how.

And then came Ron, the sweet ginger boy who she’d met once when she went to a wizarding play with her dad. He’d plopped into the space next to her one day, eyeing the untouched plate of toast in front of her.

“You gonna eat that?” he’d asked. Y/N had just stared, mouth agape that someone was actually talking to her. “Hey, you’re the Y/L/N girl, right? My dad works with yours.”

Without waiting for her reply, he’d just popped the piece of toast in his mouth and continued talking at her as if they were old friends. Before she knew it, she was getting swept up into the social swirl of Harry Potter and his friends, helping them as they made their way through Hogwarts and took on the challenges brought upon them by Voldemort and his cronies. For once in her life, Y/N felt like she actually belonged.

And she’d thrown all of that away.

“Y/N?”

An unfamiliar, dreamy voice sounded from a little further down the dark hall, snapping Y/N out of it. She hadn’t even noticed, but she’d slid down to the ground and tucked herself into a ball. When she touched her face, she felt wetness on her cheeks. The raven in the painting made some kind of weird cackling sound.

“Who’s there?”

A girl in Ravenclaw robes, strange eyeglasses, and shockingly white-blond hair that rivaled Draco’s stepped into sight. Luna Lovegood. She’d seen her a few times--mostly during the Dumbledore’s Army meetings they’d both attended last year--but had never had a private, one-on-one conversation with her beyond the time that Y/N threw a protection charm to protect her from Bellatrix’s Avada Kedavra at the Ministry and she’d thanked her.

“I thought I heard you talking to someone,” said Luna as she settled in next to her, crossing her legs. “Isn’t Snape’s raven lovely?”

“I suppose so,” mused Y/N.

“His name is Marvin,” continued Luna, “and he always listens.”

“Huh?” Y/N balked, giving Luna a funny look. No wonder they call her Loony Lovegood she thought. “It--he can...talk?”

“Oh, yes,” said Luna, apparently not noticing her confusion. “Marvin is quite the conversationalist, to be honest. Snape is a very fortunate wizard to have him in his possession.”

As if to accent her point, Marvin crowed a few times.

“I was actually coming here to have a chat with him about you,” said Luna. “I think it’s terribly unfair how your friends are treating you. I thought that Marvin might know what to do. He always seems to.”

“Luna,” Y/N murmured, not expecting the way that her eyes began to swim with tears. “You...you really think so? I’ve been feeling so awful about what I’ve done…”

If she seemed taken aback by Y/N’s emotional outburst, she didn’t show it in the slightest. “Y/N, you just care about other people. And you know what it’s like to be lonely, so I understand why you didn’t want to leave someone alone when they felt that way, even if it was Malfoy.”

Y/N bit her lip to keep the tears from spilling over.

“My mother had this saying about kindness,” said Luna softly. “She told me that it’s easy to be kind to people you already love. But you can really tell how caring someone is by how they treat those who are different.”

Marvin made a sound that was eerily similar to a jackhammer in the background.

“Thank you,” managed Y/N, letting the girl pull her into a hug. “I...I can’t say that enough. I really needed to hear that.”

“I know,” Luna replied wistfully. “I’m sure your friends will come around, too.”

“I sure hope so.” She swallowed, giving her a small smile as Luna squeezed her hand.

“Marvin is such a funny bird.” Luna shifted onto her feet, creeping towards the painting. “He loves shiny things. Now that I know the spell that weakens the barrier between the natural and painted world, I like to give him things sometimes. If he likes it enough, he’ll fly off to his flock to gloat to his murder for the rest of the day. He’s so proud.”

Something clicked in Y/N’s head. Was this her answer as to how to distract Marvin?

“It’s Transcendere, if you were wondering,” continued Luna, making to walk away. “Just in case you wanted to know. I can’t imagine why you’d need to, though. Anyways, I’m off to meet with Snape over a few questions on the exam. I don’t imagine he’ll be around here for the next hour!”

Before she could even thank her, Luna was already gone and down the hall. Y/N felt her pockets frantically, trying to find one thing that might appeal to the raven. He looked at her expectantly.

Her only piece of jewelry was her family ring, and apart from her obvious personal ties to the object, something told her that giving Snape’s guard bird a concrete identifier as to who broke into his stores would not be wise. So that left….She reached into her pocket, taking out the glittery quill that Draco had gifted her last fall. Giving it one last look and closing her fist around the feather one last time, she thought about how much she wished to go back to the simpler time.

Marvin made a little chirp, snapping her out of her reverie.

“Transcendere.”

The quill poked through the canvas and into the scene, slowly changing so it fit the art style that the painter used to bring the raven to life. He wasted no time snatching it out of her grip, giving an appreciative gargle before he took off, flying away into the grey sky.

She was in. A quick Alohomora charm opened the door, and Y/N made quick work of deactivating the jinxes that guarded the entrance and was happy to see that he hadn’t changed anything else with his security measures. Finding the potion was easy, and before she knew it, she had reset all the security charms, shut the door, and made her way all the way up to the Gryffindor tower with the vial tucked firmly in her pocket.

Getting Draco alone was the hardest part of her plan. Every time she saw him, he was either surrounded by a gaggle of Slytherins or darting off down side corridors that she could never quite locate. Carrying around the vial of stolen potion was getting increasingly stressful, too, especially now that their DADA class with Snape was coming up. He had to have noticed that his stores were broken into at that point, but given that he hadn’t stopped a meal yet to berate the student body on the importance of integrity and “keeping one’s grabby hands to themselves”, Y/N assumed she was somewhat in the clear. On the bright side, Y/N was enjoying mealtime much more now that she was eating with Luna. Her new friend even convinced her to go to the library with her one night to study--something that Y/N was not too familiar with.

They’d left right before the library closed, going their separate ways. Something crossed Y/N’s mind as she realized what day it was--Saturday. Draco always worked on the cabinet on Saturdays, and of course he wasn’t going to bring his friends along with him.

Quietly, she sank down next to the stone wall at the entrance, waiting for Draco to exit. She waited, and waited, and waited. Y/N was just beginning to wonder if Draco had switched his schedule around when the telltale sound of stone bricks scraping against each other snapped her to attention.

Draco looked more frazzled than usual as he stepped out of the newly-constructed entrance, his hands shakily running through his hair and his tie out of place. Y/N felt a sudden pang of guilt at the thought that she was going to add even more stress to his night.

“Draco,” she said, standing up and teetering at the sudden motion.

He started at the sight of her before setting his jaw and turning to continue a walk down in the opposite direction.

“Please,” breathed Y/N, jumping forward to latch onto his wrist. “I need to talk to you.”

He immediately snatched his hand away, his scowl deeping in his features. “I don’t have time for this,” he said, though sheer exhaustion seemed to replace the usual venom in his voice. “If you’re here to apologize, I don’t want to hear it.”

“But--”

“I don’t have time,” he repeated once again, desperation seeping into the edges of his tone. “I don’t have the time to figure out whether or not I can trust you again.”

“Then let me make it easier.” Y/N reached into her pocket, producing the potion vial that had miraculously not been shattered after she’d carried it for so long. Draco arched an eyebrow. “Run a diagnostic spell on it. I want you to know that I’m being completely honest.”

“Y/L/N, I told you, I don’t want--”

“Please, Draco,” she pleaded, holding it out to him. “Just do it for me. If you do it, we’ll be even for what happened in Myrtle’s bathroom. I’ll leave you alone if you tell me to.”

He sucked in a breath, begrudgingly casting the spell. The vial glowed and cast a bright emerald light on his surprised features. “How did you get that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” rushed Y/N. “Just ask me anything. I’ll take it if you want.”

He looked like he was about to leave her in the corridor alone, so she did the only thing she could think of--uncorking the vial and downing it all in one go. It went down like water, hardly feeling like anything. She was surprised. Wasn’t it supposed to feel more compelling?

“Y/N, you are such an idiot sometimes,” he growled, but he turned back to her anyway. “Okay. Fine. Did Granger put you up to talking to me?”

“No. Harry did,” answered Y/N, the words coming spilling out of her mouth without her even thinking. Draco’s briefly softened expression immediately hardened.

“I suppose that answers it then,” he snapped. “I’m not sure what that was supposed to accomplish.”

“Ask me something else!” cried Y/N. “Something you don’t already know the answer to.”

His silence was evidence enough that she was maybe, potentially, possibly getting to him. Something twanged in the pits of her stomach, reminding her of the time that she’d eaten bad fish in Greece and was sick for days, but she cast the thought aside for just a moment as he finally responded.

“This is ridiculous,” he clipped. She waited, turning the empty vial over in her hands. Finally, after a few agonizing moments of silence, his voice sounded again. “Why are your friends mad at you?”

Just as she was about to tell him, the tell-tale sound of footsteps and a cat’s meow echoed down the corridor. Filch. Panic-stricked, Y/N launched herself in the direction of the Room before a hand closed over her forearm and pulled her back.

“That’ll take too long,” Draco whispered, so close to her that she could feel his breath on her neck and had to try not to shudder. Without waiting for her response, he yanked her into the broom closet across the corridor and softly shut the door.

It became fairly apparent that the broom closet was perhaps not the best hiding space for two adults, a fact that Y/N quickly noticed as she realized that the only place she could comfortably place her hands was lightly on top of Draco’s chest. His own hands pressed into the wall on either side of her head as he used it to push himself as far away from her as possible. When her eyes flickered up, she could see in the dim light that he’d shut his eyes. She couldn’t blame him--when she ran the plan through in her head, it rarely ever included getting stuck in a tiny broom closet together, and it never crossed her mind that it could happen before he’d even forgiven her.

“I heard something too, my pretty.” Filch’s voice floated down the corridor as he neared them. She sucked in her breath, intent to hold it. She wished that she could cast a Silencio on the broom closet, but there was no way to be able to do that in such close range. Plus, she was quite preoccupied with the churning in her stomach that was getting significantly worse.

Filch’s steps were getting louder as he called out, “Anyone there?”

“Yes,” Y/N let as a tortured, strangled whine. Realization flickered across Draco’s face as his hand shot out to clamp over her lips. She tried not to focus on how warm and nice his skin felt touching her and instead on the fact that Filch was still walking.

The footsteps finally paused outside of the broom closet. Y/N could feel Draco’s heart racing under her palm. She vaguely registered that her hands had long since curled into fists, clinging onto his shirt.

“Anyone in here?”

“Mmph,” responded Y/N, hardly able to enunciate anything over the death grip Draco had on her face. This only made the lurching in her middle worse, so bad that she felt like she had bile rising in her throat.

“My lovely? What’s that?” A cat’s meow rang out from across the corridor. “Over by the Charms classroom?” Another meow. The sound of quick shuffling would’ve come to Y/N as a relief if she didn’t feel like she was about to puke the entire contents of her stomach up on Draco Malfoy’s hand.

“Thank Merlin.” Draco exhaled. Y/N could feel his shoulders relax under the grip she had on his shirt and took note of the fact that he smelled very strongly of that stupid rich scent in her Amortentia, something that was somewhat difficult when the cramping in her stomach had gotten so bad that she could hardly stand up straight.

Then he let his hand drop.

“They’re mad at me because I didn’t tell them about you.” The words came spilling out so fast and without prompt that Y/N felt like she was out of body, watching someone else speak for her. “I couldn’t ever bring myself to hurt you like that because even though you’ve been mean to me and my friends and I technically have no reason to want to protect you, I still do and it’s just so complicated because I thought I was just being a good person or whatever but honestly now that I think about it f it came down to it I would choose you over anyone else here and that’s scary and ohmygodIcan’tstop--” Y/N managed to suck in a small breath as the magic in her system propelled her forward, barely catching the widened eyes of Draco, “--It’s been so hard being away from you and I understand why you’re angry at me and I’m such a hypocrite for being upset that you were a Death Eater when I didn’t tell you why I started talking to you in the first place but I couldn’t just confess to you when I finally had a reason to spend time with you and I didn’t want to fuck it all up but I did and Draco please help I can’t stop I want to so badly you were never supposed to know all of this I thought that it would just make me tell the truth not everything--”

“I know,” His hand came up one more time, covering her mouth and muffling her voice. Without being able to move her lips, the words died down once again while the waves of nausea and agony hit in their place. Draco’s face had once again adopted that unreadable, somewhat sad expression as he moved his free hand so he could thumb away the tears that were collecting on her cheeks. Her fingers twisted into the soft fabric of his button down as she choked back a sob against his hand. “I know. That was really fucking stupid, even for you. You do know you’re not supposed to take more than an ounce of Veritaserum, right? This is going to take forever to get through your system. You just have to let it run its course. I’m sorry.” The potion was closing in around her throat as she blinked up at him through tear-ridden lashes. “I hear Filch escorting a student to McGonagall. This is our chance to get out.”

Y/N nodded as best as she could without loosening his hold on her, and they were creeping out of the broom closet and slowly making their way down the hall as silently as possible. He was to her right, his left arm slung around her shoulder so he could keep her quiet without sacrificing too much of his balance. He pulled her away from the direction of the Gryffindor dorms.

“Not happening,” he whispered, his lips almost brushing past her ear. He was so close. She shivered. “Filch went that way. Plus, I need to keep an eye on you until you’re back to normal.”

She nodded again. By some miracle, they made it to the Slytherin dorms without much of a hiccup beyond the awkward shuffle down the stairs. “Purity,” muttered Draco, prompting the cobblestones to rearrange themselves into a door. “Oh, don’t roll your eyes at me.”

Y/N scoffed behind his hand. The Slytherin common room was, thankfully, entirely empty, but very eerie and cold. She tried to open her mouth to tell him that he’d obviously drawn the short straw when it came to lodging, but when she felt his palm tighten over her lips, she was reminded that that wasn’t an option.

“Here we are,” murmured Draco, his voice still low and careful as he led her to the end of the hall of the boys’ dormitories. Something other than the effects of the Veritaserum she consumed set off the butterflies inside of her once again when she thought about the fact that she was really going to see Draco’s dorm room. His door, black and heavy, was completely unblemished apart from the silver numbers of his room.

Before she could think any further, he turned the knob and spun her so he was looking right down at her. “The less you talk, the longer it’s going to take for you to be normal again. Try not to be too loud, though. I wanted to sleep tonight.” With that, he released her once again.

“You have really nice hands,” she blurted out, immediately clapping her own palm over her mouth again.

“Oh.” An uncharacteristic blush rose in his cheeks.

Squeezing her eyes shut and steeling herself for whatever was about to come out of her mouth next, she let her hand fall. “I--I actually think I can control some of what I say now.” She took one more breath in to check. “Yeah. Thank god. It’s not just...coming out of me anymore.”

“I’m not too surprised,” he said. “You were on quite a roll back there in the broom closet.”

“So, um…” She shuffled her feet. “Are we good now, do you think?”

Draco sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone willingly down two state terrorist interrogation sessions worth of Veritaserum just to apologize to me. So, yeah, I guess. I think you should probably try and get some sleep. Chances are it’ll wear off some by tomorrow morning.” With that, he rested his hands on her shoulders and steered her towards his bed.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked, sinking down onto his black silk bedding and meeting his eyes.

He shrugged. “How are you feeling? Do you need anything before you sleep?”

“I’d really like it if you held me until I fell asleep,” Y/N said so quickly that she didn’t even have a chance to look away from him. He blanched, his eyebrows raising but his lip quirking up.

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought you were going to ask for water or something.”

“Draco, please don’t be mean,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out. I would like some water, though.”

“Your wish is my command,” he drawled, disappearing into his bathroom before coming out with an empty glass that he cast a quick Aquamenti into. “Go slow. I really don’t want you coughing up water on my sheets.”

“Me neither,” she said between sips. “Merlin knows I’ve embarrassed myself enough already.”

When she finished, she handed it out to him. “Thank you. I really appreciate you doing this. I mean it.”

He snorted on his way to put the glass away. “Of course you do. That’s the beauty of Veritaserum.”

“You’re actually funny sometimes, you know,” she said.

Draco smirked at her again. “Veritaserum. You’re doing wonders for my ego tonight.”

While he was doing whatever he was before getting into bed, Y/N went ahead and slipped under the sheets, rolling over onto her back so she was closest to the wall. She felt the bed slightly dip to her left and a throat clear.

“What is it now?” muttered Y/N.

“You know, it’s really hard for me to do what you asked when you’re on your back like that,” he said.

“What?”

“Like, do you want me to be on top of you or something?”

“What are you even talking about?”

Draco huffed and reached his hands out to grab her shoulders once again, turning her to face him. Before she could register what was happening, she felt his own hands come around under her arms to rest on her back. Her head lay on the swath of skin between his shoulder and his collarbone, and she could feel the quickening of his pulse. “There. Honestly.”

“This is really nice,” Y/N blurted out, physically cringing when she realized that in her position she couldn’t easily cover her mouth.

“Yeah?” She could feel the laugh rattle through his diaphragm.

“Yes.” Y/N huffed. “Stop asking me questions. This isn’t very kind of you.”

He let out another light laugh, his fingers moving to thread through her hair. “Is this okay?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve wanted--” Y/N buried her face into his shoulder, silencing the words that were about to come out of her mouth. “Oh, my god,” she said after she resurfaced. “I think I want to take a vow of silence after this is over.”

Y/N could hear his smile as he offered her a, “What a load of good that thought is doing you now.”

“Please, just knock me unconscious until it all goes away,” she groaned.

“Stop demeaning my work,” he said, mock offense creeping into his tone as he continued to card his fingers through her hair in soothing motions. “What do you think I’m trying to do? If you want me to give you blunt force head trauma, then just say so. Sheesh.”

She sighed dramatically. “At this point, maybe.”

“Seriously, though, are you feeling okay? That was a lot of Veritaserum,” he murmured.

“I’m just feeling mortified right now,” she answered.

“You still need to tell me where you got it.”

“Oh. I stole it. From Snape.”

All at once, Draco dropped his hands and pulled slightly away so he could gape down at her. “You did what now?”

“Yeah,” she said, confusion creeping into her tone. “It really wasn’t that hard, you know. I’ve done it before.”

“When?”

She felt another lurching sensation. All of the questioning was starting to make her stomach turn again. “I was a second-year. Harry had to brew Polyjuice Potion and he needed an ingredient we couldn’t find anywhere else.”

Draco let out a low whistle. “At twelve?”

“Eleven. My birthday hadn’t come around yet.”

“That’s…” He’d shifted so she wasn’t pressed up to him, catching his lip between his teeth as he thought. Y/N hadn’t made much notice of this development as the growing pain in her midsection grew. “That’s quite a lot for a kid.” The way his hair glowed in the soft moonlight made her heart twinge. It looked so soft. Y/N noticed that she’d been staring at him for far too long without saying something when he blinked, planning on opening her mouth to apologize or crack a joke when instead:

“I have the biggest crush on you.” The words left her lips without any prior consent, the consonants and vowels forming before she could even think.

He was completely frozen in place, his expression entirely unreadable.

“Oh, god, and now I’ve ruined it all because I know you said that I didn’t have a chance that one time in detention and you don’t see me like that and I’m pretty sure you’re with Pansy and even if you weren’t I’m not enough for you and I wish I hadn’t taken this stupid potion but I know that I’d do it a hundred times over if it meant that you would trust me--”

Her words stopped abruptly as Draco silenced her--not with his hand, but by placing his lips on hers. The kiss was brief and shy, more of a question in nature than a statement. Her fingers curled around the collar of his shirt as he pulled away, a rather frazzled and deer-in-the-headlights look etched into his features.

She was speechless. Absolutely, completely, irrevocably speechless. Despite the insistent gnawing of the Veritaserum at the lining of her stomach, she could only manage to blink owlishly up at him, mouth agape.

“Are you okay?” His voice was low.

“Ehm…” Her lips refused to move. Draco frowned, dropping his hands from her sides and sitting up straighter. Something impartial washed over his features, turning his expression from hurt to uninterested, like he’d woken up from a pleasant nap and was snapped back to reality. His legs pulled away so no part of her body was touching him.

“I--er, didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just wanted to make you quiet again, y’know, before you said anything else you regretted. And I thought that...kissing you would shock your system enough to make you stop talking.”

Her cheeks turned a violent red as she realized the depth of his statement. “So you...don’t see me like that?”

“No.” He ran his fingers through his hair once, took in a deep breath, and dropped his gaze to the comforter. “You should go to sleep. Hopefully you’ll feel better in the morning.”

At the very least the potion was beginning to settle in her stomach as Draco’s breathing turned slow over the next hour or so. She didn’t know all too much about the mechanics of Veritaserum, but at this point, she had almost nothing left to confess anyways.

Y/N tore her eyes away from his sleeping form, turning around to face the wall. His bed was soft. And it smelled like him, like the perfect blend of black tea and sage and snobbery that was in her Amortentia. She squeezed her eyes shut and wished to be anywhere but there. When he kissed her, it felt like he wanted her. Yes, of course he was timid, but she’d thought he was just nervous. But what was there for him to be nervous about? She’d already confessed under literal truth serum. He knew how she felt, and he didn’t even say sorry for kissing her and telling her he didn’t mean it like that. He still didn’t want her. Of course he didn’t when Pansy Parkinson in all her obnoxious Slytherin perfection was right fucking there.

She was just beginning to feel sleep tug on the strings of her consciousness as she felt her hair get tucked behind her ear by a warm hand coming around from behind.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s better this way, you’ll see. It wouldn’t be fair if I...if it was different.” Despite his words, he let his fingers brush over his jaw as he moved closer, his shoulder lightly pressing into her back.

At that moment, there were so many things that Y/N wanted to say, ranging from “I am never going to live this moment down because I’m positively lovesick over you” to “I am going to beat you up for kissing me and then telling me it didn’t mean anything after I confessed.” Two schools of thought, neither of them perfectly encapsulating the true essence of her feelings. Her most traitorous thoughts told her to stay still and enjoy the final moments of affection she’d get from Draco, but she’d given into impulse a little too much that night.

He must’ve noticed that her breathing had changed because he suddenly shifted his weight onto his free arm, keeping his hand poised by her neck.

“Please stop touching me.” The words that came out of her mouth sounded much more pathetic than they did in her head, a voice crack finding its way into the final syllables. He jolted away.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought you liked it when I touched you.”

“Yeah, before you told me you didn’t feel the same way,” she mumbled. “I really would appreciate it if you didn’t make me rehash that again. Today has been humiliating enough. I’m not looking to set a record or something here.”

She’d thought that her quip was pretty good, but Draco remained completely humorless. “I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. It was stupid of me to act on impulse like that. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Never meant to--” She stopped in her tracks, instead letting out a sharp huff. “Nevermind. I don’t want a fight right now. I just want to sleep.”

Much to Y/N’s horror, her throat began to tighten up again with the tell-tale coming of tears. The next breath she exhaled was embarrassingly shaky and loud, and the movement that it sparked in Draco was even more mortifying. He made a small sound of sympathy. “C’mere, Y/N. I’m so sorry. I know that must’ve hurt you.”

Undecided between feeling pissed and just wanting to forgive him, she slowly sat up and faced him. His arms were out in a motion of invitation, an unreadable expression in his eyes.

“You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen.” The Veritaserum in her system didn’t care much about her emotional turmoil, much to her horror. Y/N began to turn away, a watery scowl fixed firmly on her face, but Draco’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“If I...wanted to be with you,” he began, his tone careful and clipped, “It would never work. Okay? Trust me when I say it has nothing to do with you. You did nothing wrong.”

“I kind of did.”

“Yeah, well, we both did. But I don’t want you to think that I, er, never thought about it.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t quite sure what the underlying meaning of that was.

“So... “ He motioned again with open arms. “Do you...want to? I’ll play with your hair again until you fall asleep.”

Y/N stared at him, completely astonished. “Why? If you don’t see me like that, then why?”

“I’m not going to sleep tonight anyways,” he said softly. “And I want to help you feel better.”

She opened her mouth with the hopes of a biting retort coming out, but instead she was met with silence. Against her better judgement, she set her clenched her jaw and gave in.

His arms were wrapped around her in an instant as she tentatively settled back into his chest, her hands lightly rested on his shoulders. Despite the humiliating previous events, it didn’t feel awkward, especially when Draco’s long fingers slowly threaded through her locks and brushed past her neck. A small, forbidden sigh of contentment left her lips when he let his touch linger over the back of her neck. His deep, slow breathing and the steady beat of his heart began to lull her to sleep.

The next morning, she was able to lie convincingly enough to Draco, telling him her name wasn’t Y/N Y/L/N and that she was 80 years old. Confident that she wasn’t about to spill all of his secrets to the student body, he told her she was free to go.

“Draco?” she asked poised by his door.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I’ll see you much after this? You know, now that we aren’t Potions partners and don’t have detention together anymore?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe when this is all over, I’ll see you around at pureblood functions or whatever.”

“Yeah.” Y/N tried not to think about the implications of pureblood functions still existing in the future after this. What kind of world did Draco think this would turn into? “But this is probably it, right? The last time I’ll see you like this?”

She didn’t even need to see his nod. She knew. That’s why he offered to play with her hair despite not even liking her--it was his way of apologizing for roping her into this, for tricking her, for shutting her out, for the Sectumsempra curse...for everything. His way of apologizing before they parted ways.

final a/n: ty for reading! first off, congrats to the anons that guessed veritaserum. that shit took me forever to write bc i had such high expectations but it turned out to be quite the challenging scene since i still had to juggle draco’s conflicting emotions/distrust and the fact that i really wanted him to make her feel better fjdkas; i thought i’d mention someone who helped me write this (even tho i don’t think they realized how much they helped lmao)L i’d like to thank my 🌟 anon for giving me some inspiration. i was struggling with the first half of this story in terms of pacing for quite some time but found some help in an ask they sent me mentioning how they related to y/n feeling lonely/would like to see luna and neville mentioned. unfortunately, i haven’t quite been able to fit neville in yet (and i’m not sure if i can without it seeming just like a random extra bit of story that isn’t helpful to the plot), but hearing some affirmation that y/n’s loneliness was something that actually resonated w them really helped. it made me realize that the isolation from her friends/draco didn’t have to just be a logical turn of events for the plot to proceed in a sensical way and instead could be used to explore y/n’s character. i hope you all enjoyed! i promise the stuff w her dad and the order will be cleared up next chapter

#draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy #draco #draco imagine #draco malfoy imagine #draco x oc #draco x y/n #draco x you #draco malfoy x oc #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x you

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exovapor · 3 years

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I'm OBSESSED with your writing. Can you try.. Maybe, Donnie being a filthy boy being an 'stalker-ish' of his long time crush? Be checks their FB for new posts, saves every picture of them he finds? He doesn't mean to be a creep, feels guilty, but just doesn't know how to ask for more than friendship?

Good afternoon Anon. Here is my short story in relation to your ask.

I wasn't sure where you wanted me to take this, so I had to do a bit of guessing on my part. I hope this something like you were wanting.

I will admit that this ask was a bit of a struggle for me, not knowing a clear direction to take it outcome made me a little unsure of my writing and guessing abilities LOL. However, I will admit to crying along with the characters in this story more than once.

Thanks again for the ask and the initial compliment. I hope to continue to earn your favor in future posts.

· Stalker [noun]: 1a person who harasses or persecutes someone with unwanted and obsessive attention. 2a person who hunts game stealthily.

· Donnie stared at the definition on his one of his monitor screens while his various other screens were busy flashing receipts of files downloaded, text trail streams from your phone, notices of any social media post/update/like/heart/emoji, a GPS line grid of your routes today (overlayed over the routes you’d taken previously), and data search hits of anything and everything that pertained to you.

· At this point, the boy had literally every picture you had ever posted, anywhere, of yourself. In fact, he had all the pictures that other people posted of you in them. He had even gone through the effort of designing a face recognition program that picks you out of the background of total strangers’ pictures and, yeah, he had those in a file too.

· He has special file folders that compile things that you like, things you don’t like, things that make you happy, things that make you sad. He is your own personal Pinterest and you didn’t even know it… and maybe that is the part that keeps bothering him so much.

· He sits staring at that word and definition and chewing his bottom lip. True, he knows the word and the meaning, but he needed to LOOK at it, analyze it, mull it over in his guilt ridden brain.

· He just KNEW the word Stalker couldn’t apply to him.

· After all, he isn’t harassing or persecuting you, you don’t know! So, it isn’t necessarily ‘unwanted attention’. It is just…unknown attention.

· Stealthily, hmmmm, did that part apply to him? Well, He isn’t EXACTLY being stealthy.

· If you knew about technology like him, then you would probably see his programs running on your devices and be alerted to his activities. AND, if you shared his love and view of technology, then you would probably be more understanding of his activities and not consider them stealthy…just data mining. In fact, you might applaud him.

· ‘Ok, that was taking it a bit too far’, Donnie thinks to himself and he feels a band tighten and squeeze around his infatuated heart.

· He is almost certain that you would be shocked to learn of his extra curricular activities and how they revolve around every aspect of you.

· Regardless of how he tried to spin the truth and wiggle out of the definition of stalker, Donnie still felt guilty for invading your privacy. However, he honestly couldn’t help himself…at least not anymore.

· He has fought the urge, the nagging thoughts and the burning need, to know more about you for what seemed like an eternity.

· Listen to him, he is starting to sound dramatic like Mikey! What is his turning into? He is losing his rational edge!

· To be accurate, it hasn’t been an eternity. In fact, he has known you 1 year, 36 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes, and 23 seconds to be exact. However, you started occupying space in his mind 2 minutes into meeting you and your claim over his mind has grown exponentially over time.

· You were quiet and reserved during that first meeting, so there wasn’t much to go on. It started as a simple visual interest with a thought of ‘Oh. She’s pretty’.

· However, then you started talking and that changed everything.

· You opened up more and more each time you hung out with their little group, revealing layers and layers of interests and personality. You were fascinating…and that’s when his thoughts about you really started to snowball and spiral out of control.

· You went from being a simple pretty face to being a walking embodiment of everything he seriously ever dreamed of having in a mate.

· Early on, there were three sticking points that really made Donnie’s feelings problematic. 1. He was a nearly seven foot tall walking talking turtle and you weren’t. 2. You had a boyfriend that you were deeply in love with and adored. 3. Donnie was too insecure about #1 and how you felt about inter-species dating to let you know that you had started to OWN his heart.

· Now, thanks to his surveillance, there were only two sticking points….#1 and #3.

· He still remembers the feelings of that day, 44 days ago, when the blip of information popped up on this screen alerting him to the fact that your boyfriend was starting to stray.

· Donnie had severely conflicting feelings bombard him at once and it was overwhelming.

· The initial knee jerk reaction was elation, one of the problems blocking him from you may soon be null.

· However, the feeling of elation only lasted for a second or two before the intense anger and sadness set in. Donnie was honestly shocked at the depth of his anger, he didn’t even know he had that level of malice in him. Had he been in physical proximity to your boyfriend at that moment in time, Donnie isn’t sure that he wouldn’t have hurt your guy…or worse.

· How COULD this guy do this? WHY would he? He HAD YOU! What the heck was this guy thinking? Not only did he have you, but you thought the world of him. When you spoke about him you would smile so genuinely, your eyes would shine and gaze off into a bright imagined future. Donnie was always so jealous to watch it happen, he wondered what it would be like to be THAT GUY. And here the idiot was throwing it all away and meeting up with another girl!

· WHAT THE…(yes, this called for a curse) HELL…IS WRONG WITH HUMAN MEN?

· As the anger set root in his heart, the sadness engulfed Donnie like an all-consuming wave. He realized he was going to have to share this information with you, somehow, and that he was going to have to watch as it destroyed you.

· At first, Donnie had a plan to try and save you both from that fate. True, it would hurt him more to save your relationship, but he would rather be the one facing the pain and not you.

· He TRIED to circumvent the situation. He sent anonymous messages to your boyfriend stating that he knew about the infidelity and that he would tell you if needed. However, it didn’t seem like your boyfriend cared because he sent messages back stating Donnie could, basically, go fuck himself.

· Life had cruel sense of irony, thought Donnie, that is exactly what I do since this moron has the woman that I love.

· So, after trying for nearly two weeks to stop what was happening behind your back, Donnie had no choice but to let you in on the secret.

· Donnie couldn’t come right out and tell you that he caught your boyfriend cheating by hijacking your data streams and the data streams of those around you. So, Donnie intercepted some texts between your boyfriend and his mistress and he then sent you a text, under the guise of your boyfriend, telling you to meet him at a specified restaurant for a date.

· It had been a gut wrenching night for Donnie. He remembered watching it all play out on camera feeds from around the restaurant and street outside. He watched you dressed up in your pretty dress get out of your cab in front of the restaurant. You had such a lovely smile on your face, you must have thought you were in for a romantic evening.

· He watched as you walked inside and how the hostess got flustered and confused by a 2nd girl showing up for your boyfriend’s seated-for-two table.

· Donnie stopped breathing as your eyes found the new couple holding hands and giving each other sweet kisses across the table. Hands and lips that were supposed to be yours were touching some stranger.

· Donnie watched your smile and eyes die…the light of your inner sun go out…

· …and it killed him.

· He’s not sure who was crying the hardest, you standing there in that restaurant witnessing the scene or him back at the lair watching your world crush around you on his monitor.

· It had taken a while for you both to recover from that night.

· His brothers noticed his melancholy mood for a couple of weeks but Donnie wouldn’t tell them what was bothering him. And you stayed in your bed, refusing to face the world, for nearly as long.

· Eventually, the group began to notice your silence and absence, so April stopped by your apartment to check on you. She was the one to pull you out of bed, get you to shower and eat. She visited everyday and made sure you had someone to vent to and a shoulder to cry on.

· Donnie was glad that April could be there for you when he couldn’t. He didn’t think it was appropriate for him, a male, to be your confidant at that time. Especially since he felt so much guilt over having to be the one to expose you to that pain.

· No, he didn’t CAUSE the pain, but he did have to make you face it and he didn’t like not being able to protect you from it. You were such a rare, precious creature and watching you in pain felt like he was suffocating slowly.

· There were some points during those first few weeks that he questioned if he did the right thing, but logic told him it would have eventually come to pass with or without his involvement. It was better to rip the bandage of quickly and let you start to heal than it was to let you linger and drag out the inevitable.

· Donnie did secretly check on you every single night during patrol. And, of course, his surveillance feeds were always running. He watched from a distance as his beautiful phoenix burn down to ashes and, eventually, started to rise again.

· Now, it’s been over 3 months and you’ve begun to be more like your old self. Donnie can tell there is a silent sadness there, but you are able to laugh and smile with the group during your get togethers. And each time you two are left alone, his mind nags at him about those last two sticking points.

· Would you be at all interested in him? And HOW does he go about telling you that you have become the center of his world?

· Still staring at the monitor and the Stalker definition, Donnie sighs and rubs the bridge of his snout to release of the pressure now pushing against the inside of his head. The memories of what has happened, the emotions of what was and what is, it was all starting to be too much.

· “Bro, what’s all this?”, Mikey says standing behind Donnie’s chair, talking around a mouth full of pizza.

· “NOTHING!”, says Donnie, voice breaking from the stress of being caught. A startled Donnie quickly taps some keys on his keyboard and the screens revert back to the standard lair camera feeds.

· Mikey may look or even come off as naïve at times, but he’s no fool, he can sense that his older brother is trying to hide something. “Dude, seriously, what was that? I’ve been standing back here reading the screens. I saw Y/N’s name and that looked like her phone number on that other file…, you know the file that looks like texts messages. And why is there a plotted map of the area around her apartment, her work, and to the lair? What’s up?”, Mikey said giving a disapproving look at being thought a pushover.

· “Just standard surveillance, Mikey, nothing to worry about.”, Donnie says trying to placate Mikey’s curiosity. Donnie hates lying, especially to Mikey, but he’s feeling so guilty about being such a…(inward sigh)…stalking creep that admitting the truth is hard to do.

· Mikey stands there staring at Donnie and, as he does, Donnie begins to fidget with his computer chair armrests.

· Mikey stuffs the remnants of the pizza slice into his mouth and does his best Leo impersonation by crosses his arms and staring down at Donnie as sternly as his jolly face can achieve, “Dude, I’m not going to ask you again. You’ve been weird for months. We’ve let it go for the most part but now you are hiding things from me…from ME, dude! You and I, we’re like peanut butter and jelly, we’re ice cream and chocolate fudge, we young dudes have got to stick together. Trust me, bro, I’ve got you!”.

· Donnie stared at the floor, too ashamed to meet Mikey’s eyes any longer. He gave a heavy sigh and reluctantly started to speak, “Sorry Mike, I…I honestly don’t know what’s come over me lately. I’m doing things I never thought I would do, I’m feeling so guilty about it, but I don’t know if I can stop doing it either. I feel…lost.”.

· Mike relaxed his leader stance and leaned against one of Donnie’s lab tables, “Bro, I can tell you’ve been carrying some heavy stuff lately. You need to let it out.”

· Donnie felt the heat rise up through his body like he was suddenly being consumed by a fire and he ripped his glasses off his face and drew them down on the desk in frustration, “Mikey, I’m in love with Y/N. I have been for a while. I have been…”, Donnie hangs his head in shame, “…tracking all her digital foot prints and watching her. In fact, I’m the reason she found out that asshole boyfriend of her's cheated.”

· Mikey’s mouth drops open at Donnie’s demeanor and use of the word ‘asshole’, “Whoa, dude, why didn’t you say something earlier?”.

· Donnie can feel a stinging at the corners of his eyes, this was so embarrassing, so frustrating, so…..so many things at a once. He didn’t have a response for Mikey, all he could do was shake his head.

· Still with his head hung down and staring at the floor, Donnie starts to hear Mikey chuckle. Donnie looks up to see Mikey’s eyes on him and for some reason they are full of merriment at his painful dilemma. Donnie stares at his, normally, very considerate brother in astonishment, this isn’t like Mikey at all!

· “Mikey, I’m more than serious here, now is not the time to make fun of me. What is so funny?”, Donnie asks exasperatedly.

· Mikey shakes his bald head and claps his brother on the shoulder with his green hand, “Bro, she thinks you’re cute.”.

· “W-What?!”, Donnie stammers out.

· Mikey, still chuckling, says, “Yeah, dude, that’s why I asked WHY you didn’t say something about liking her sooner, she’s always thought you were cute. She and I talk about it all the time.”.

· Donnie just stares at his jolly brother in silence. His mind is too blown to form a sentence.

· Mikey turns to leave stating, “And by the way, dude, stop watching her like that…that’s just creepy.”.

@turtle-babe83 @tmntspidergirl @kokokatsworld @nittleboo @the-second-circle-of-shell

#tmnt donatello #tmnt #tmnt donnie #tmnt fanfiction #tmnt x reader #tmnt bayverse #tmnt 2016 #tmnt fandom

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yostresswritinggirl · 3 years

Text

Abandoned By The Altar

Part 2; When you grow older.

Vibe Here

A timeline oriented story focused on your once perfect childhood relationship as Diluc’s bride to be, soon becoming estranged after the death of his father and his neglect. You only wish now that he looks at you the same way he did when you heard you were supposed to be together forever when you were young.

Pairings -> Diluc x Reader, Kaeya x Reader if you squint (All young at the first parts)

Word Count -> 8170

Themes -> Initial Fluff, Angst, Fluff again

Series -> #Bonafide Specials (100 followers event) Part 1 Part 3

Warnings -> Character Death, Slightly suggestive themes

Diluc's heart almost leaped to his throat when he had finally seen you, found you, now conversing with the new member of the family his father had adopted just yesterday. Kaeya, was his name. He looked peculiar, and older than him too.

Despite your spritely aura, he noticed his now brother still wary and even tensed at your presence, so the younger boy finally made his way over. The training sword bouncing against his hip with every step, he made his way next to you, offering a smile as he gestured to the blunette. "I see you've met Kaeya, he's my new brother, he entered the house yesterday."

Your lively eyes that was wide with happiness from finally seeing Diluc now held a hint of wonder as it landed on Kaeya, a toothy grin presenting itself on your face. The blunette can't help but blink, "Hello there, big bro Kaeya! I'm (Y/N), my mother and father are good friends with Master Crepus!"

You offered a handshake and he took it only a second late, handshake light yet tight. "Oh! I'm also Diluc's financee." Fiancée, Diluc corrected again as your hands part from each other. "Yeah, that."

Kaeya's only visible eye suddenly flew wide open as he chokes on air. Did he hear that right? These two children in front of him, years younger than him, already fated to marry in the future. What kind of customs does Mondstadt had, he warily thought in the back of his mind as he watches you two interact.

What a sad life it must be to be forced to something like that so early, he thought to himself before he saw you reach out to Diluc's hand. And the redhead, upon noticing this started to remove his used and dirtied glove, before catching your outstretched hand easily.

Kaeya only watched with an uneasy smile. He supposed this is something he needs to get used to if he wants to stay.

And oh boy, it's not something he's gonna get used to easily, the skeptic boy thought as he found himself getting dragged around by the Winery by you. You were touring him around and inside to places he had yet to see, entering rooms that normal people probably had no access to. You knew the Winery as if you had a map on you, and he supposed he expected this much if you were that close to his... brother.

"Were you," the innocence of your eyes as you whipped your head up to look at him hurt his heart over how in contrast it was with his, "forced to be together with Diluc?"

You let out a scandalous gasp on which Kaeya had to stop himself from snorting. "Why, no! I'm the one who even asked him about it," his snort turned into that weird sound again. "He's my bestest friend and I want nothing more than to be by his side always!"

F-Friend? God, Kaeya's head had been experiencing a numbing headache lately.

With his desire to be part of the Knights of Favonius, Diluc had more often than not, neglected giving you attention so often that it was a stark contrast to the closeness you two had before. And on days where he held his training sword, he'd realize just how he missed you and your imposing hugs.

But he wanted- no- needed to get stronger. He was blessed by the Gods with a Vision, and the weak are meant to be protected, and he can't let himself be the useless person he had been the day you were on the brink of death. Even if you hid it perfectly well and brushed aside the incident when you came to, he noticed how the veins in your hand were a more prominent shade of blue now.

How your fingertips get easily cold and how you always clung to the warmth his hand gives off as a result of his Vision.

When Kaeya asked about you, about his Vision, about his ambitions— he complied almost instantly, like a valve opened fully, all the answers Kaeya was seeking flowed out seamlessly like running water.

As the oldest out of you three, despite the fact that you'd all only knew each other for three days, Kaeya had already felt the urge to protect and be there whenever Diluc had busied himself with his justified training. He'd watch your lips turn into a pout as your redhead drag himself back outside with his sword and Kaeya would then distract you from your disappointment.

Crepus had been witness to this grand scheme for a while now, relieved that his new son had at least started coping with the new environment and interactions. But your presence had always astounded the people around you, and comforted those the same age as you. Despite being on the road and barely making lasting friendships, it was a mystery how you managed to entrance people like that.

"Diluc is just pursuing his dreams," the redhead, your uncle, started as he sat next to you by the benches. Boar Princess, he noted as you closed the book you were reading, opting to look up at him with those doe eyes again. "I know you must feel lonely, having to wait for him and everything. But he's doing it for you too, to protect you."

Your eyelids drooped in the implications and your lips pursed into a pout as you turned back to watch Diluc spar with his instructor. You sighed again before whispering under your breath, "But aren't we supposed to be together forever..."

You felt a big hand ruffle your hair, making you whine on how messy it was now. How old were you again? 11 years? Eh, should be enough. "Sweet (Y/N), being Diluc's fiancée doesn't mean you need to be around him everytime," he started talking about your promise and that had finally drawn your full attention. "You have your own life, Diluc has his path to be a knight. Sometimes what you want doesn't go the same was as he wants, and the same goes for him to you. But in the end you still are together, and still treasure each other."

The thought of having a daughter never really passed the man's mind in his whole life, he mused as he watched your beaded eyes fleet back to Diluc, before once again finding itself to Crepus with a firmer resolve. You wanted to learn more and it's time you finally understand the gravity of your promise.

Crepus placed down his cup of grape juice and turned to you on the bench. "You know your mother and father and how they're together, right?" A soft nod. "You two will be just like that, in the future together. Not always together but always end up coming back to each other, because your parents love each other always. Do you want to be with Diluc that way? Do you love and support him like that?"

Your button nose cutely scrunched up in contemplation and shortly gave him a vigorous nod with a wide grin. He grins back. "Good, thank you, I'm sure that Diluc too would support you in your dreams."

As if he had a sixth sense, the young master Diluc felt as if his name was being mentioned in important business as his eyes passes over the bench where you two reside. Sensing the distraction, his instructor finally allowed him a break, and the first thing he did was jog over to the two of you, "Father, (Y/N)." He watched you as you scrambled to climb down the bench, hurriedly taking off his dirtied glove to assist you down.

Crepus once again hid his smile behind his drink as he watched you bound over to him, the same fire in your eyes as you placed your hands on the child's shoulderd firmly. "Diluc, I love you!" You loudly declared before smashing your lips to his— Crepus spits his grape juice. "I'll support your dreams to the end-! Ahhhh, Diluc fainted! Uncle, HELP!"

The young master woke up a few hours later to you crying over and over, saying sorry for 'breaking him again.' Crepus and your parents were by the side, your mother's horrified face concealed by her hand after hearing what you've done.

Oh dear, the Ragnvindr thought to himself, my son is a sub.

Ever since that day, the people around you have started preparing you for your future of refinement and adulthood. You were no Vision-wielder unlike Diluc, and your handling swords were nothing to boast about. Your parents are businessmen and as their only child it would be you that will be inheriting and operating the work that they had built up, and so naturally that was the route you had to pick.

Your tutoring and Diluc's continuous training to get into Ordo Favonius made it hard for you both to spend more time with each other. Toys were replaced by books and swords, garden of Cecilias changed to libraries and training dummies.

Crepus, as a father and an uncle, alternates his time between you two. At times he'd be the one sparring with his child and grating the principles of knighthood to him, and on rare occasions that you were there, he walks you around as he talks about the wine industry and the operations of his business. Both of you started growing, separately, but there was a similar flame representing your spirit within both of your eyes.

Diluc entered the ranks of the Knights when he was 14, and Crepus was overwhelmed by the achievement his son finally reached, of the dream he once had when he was a child. In that same age range, you've also ended up making a name for yourself as the youngest business entrepreneur and economic scholar, your name and prodigy reached past Liyue...

And in your hands lay a perfectly white envelope enclosed with the insignia of Sumeru. The Academia invites you into a scholarship program once you turned 18.

Your whole family rejoiced at the recognition and the opportunity and you wept in tears of happiness. Finally, your young mind cried, you were finally something worthy to be next to Diluc instead of a normal person that can't be blessed by the Gods.

A party had been in order for both milestones, and more prestigious individuals from all over Teyvat were present. Something came up before the party that forced you to be late once again, and Diluc realized just how long you hadn't seen each other, more so spent time with each other. Kaeya stood next to him before nudging him with an elbow slightly, "What's got you so worried, brother? You shouldn't frown on your own party."

At the remark, Diluc stood straighter and fixed his frown. Why is it now that he was reminded of your promises and dwindled time? In the back of his mind, he realized just how much at fault he was for being neglectful. The spark you two had felt estranged and distant, feeling as tho things won't come back to the way they were.

The Court Marshal's booming voice suddenly announced your family name and the hall turned silent as everyone lifted their gaze to the grand entrance. Your bedazzled self stood there in your ombre dress, short sleeve matched with elbow gloves, and a resin Cecilia hairpiece holds itself on the crown of your head.

Diluc and Kaeya, and several other boys in the crowd gasped at your regal aura. Was this really YOU? The same girl that spit a grape on his hand/complimented a stranger's eyepatch? You stood with the poise of a refined woman and your face enlightened with a subtle artificial blush. Gone was your toothy grin and replaced with respectful smile as you made your way through the crowd.

Suddenly the nervousness came crashing back to the knight and he scrambled to pick himself up as the distance between you two shortened.

"Master Diluc," you curtsied and he inwardly doubled over at the formality, finding it almost detesting. "I'm glad to meet you again."

"(Y/N)," he bowed with a hand on his chest. "You don't need to be so formal."

The respectful smile on your face turned into a full-blown grin, the one he was used to, as you barreled towards him for a hug. Purely due to instincts and conditioning, Diluc was quick to catch you into his arms to reciprocate the hug. Disappointed gasps and whines echoed through the hall at the display, but they stood there in awe as they watched, for the rare sight of the young master's genuine smile was there for all to see.

As you two first danced the night away, it was finally brought onto everyone the fact that young master Diluc and young mistress (Y/N) were already fated together.

The ballroom parted to give way to you two as you chatted the missed times together, falling easily into steps while updating each other of the things you had done. It's true, you two may had gone your separate ways and lost time but in the end, you'll find yourself in each other's embrace.

The darkness of the knight embraces the winery as crystalflies dance by the vines and the surrounding grassland. The freshly signed contract made its way in between the pages of the personal journal before it was pushed into the luggage together with the packed clothes.

There was a thick silence in the room as Diluc continued watching with his lips tight, leaning against the doorframe. A tension was obvious, but it wasn't between you two, but it was also against you two.

Tomorrow at high noon marks your official departure to Sumeru now that you had finished your secondary education, at the prime age of 18. All things necessary had been prepared, a convoy of knights to guide you until you reach past the border of the continent, and in that security is Kaeya. Cavalry Captain Diluc had matters to work on in the capital, it was not his official job to officiate your leave. Even if he wanted to.

It was one of the instances, of the many, that being a knight had pulled him away from you.

"Something's on your mind, I can feel it," Diluc snapped out of his thoughts when he felt the ghost of your fingertips brush away the hair framing his face, cupping both of his cheeks like you've always done. He takes one into his hand, squeezing it lightly as he offers a small smile.

"So are you, your hands are trembling," and indeed they were. You huffed at being caught but recovered, pulling him into your room and on to your bed. There were numerous times when you'd sleep together on the same bed when you missed each other; you were both 8 that time, now you laid there as 18 years olds. The implications had him gulp while you seemed unbothered.

"Four years," you recounted as you flopped back on your mattress, the room you took for yourself in the winery ever since you arrived 10 years ago. "Maybe lesser, depending on how well I do."

"You'll do good," he assured as he kicked off his boots and climbed next to you, now laying on his side to face you. Your eyes fluttered shut with a sigh and he couldn't hell but blush at the way your eyebrows scrunched together with your pursed lips, "I believe in you."

"It's the longest we'll be separated, you can easily find another girl that would bother you enough to get you to marry her." You both snorted at the idea, before laughing in harmony at the joke.

"Mmm, I should be saying that to you. Scholars and prestigious men attend the Academia, they can easily sweep you away with their wits," he bit back and you laughed at the idea. How funny the predicament is, joking about getting stolen the same day you finally signed your arranged marriage contract.

Talks about anything and everything blew the night away easily. Diluc can see in your eyes that the nerves within you wouldn't let you sleep, and keeping him locked in constant conversation would prevent him from leaving. He entertained you this much, uncharacteristically chatty, as if repaying the four years that will go by without each other. And at the back of Diluc's mind, his worry of losing you in those four years started to manifest and cloud his thoughts into a fairly sensible doubt.

"Lulu!" He yelped as he felt a sudden bite on his cheek, reflexively pushing you down by the shoulders under him to suppress the assault. He was strong, you'd forgotten this new fact. As you laid sprawled under him as heavy breathing mixed in between.

You gripped the wrists of his hands that now stands next to your head to keep him there. His eyes were wide yet bashful. You called out to him again and it was almost a whine, asking him to tell you what's in his mind, what's worrying him and distracting him like this.

And he spilled all his insecurities, for every word that slipped past his lips, his heart relaxes while his eyes clenches. Somewhere in the middle of his rant, you had his cheeks captured in your palms again, to swipe at the tears that passes by. He worked his ass off to become a knight so he can protect you but you will be too far for his claymore to reach you, he wouldn't be there to hold your hand so you don't go off on your own and wonder to somewhere dangerous. And he wouldn't be there to bring you into his arms to remind that he exists, the one and only person meant to be for you.

Diluc doesn't know when he started falling in love, he doesn't know when he started wanting your company as a lover. But he knows there would be men that would look at you the way he does, easily captivated by your aura and your beauty. And if they were to take your hand, he wouldn't know. He wouldn't know when he had lost you, if he had lost you already.

Diluc was an honest man to you, and he was honest when he said he was scared to lose you.

"I belong to you," you started as your fingers softly pats his cute reddened cheeks. "And only you. I'll get a ring and don it on my hand to let the world know, I'll write letters to you as many times as I can so you'll know I'm still alive and yours." You pulled him closer, foreheads touching each other, as you stared at the red windows to his soul. He nods in agreement, slightly assured.

"I want to stay here tonight," somehow you urged the words out of him so easily everytime. The introverted boy you once knew stood on his own feet now, proudly, "Just so I don't forget you easily."

"I won't let you forget me at all," Diluc froze from taking off his vest when he saw you with a mischievous glint in your eyes, "Not after tonight." Oh boy.

It was the devil's hour when you twirled a strand of his untied hair, wild and curly, around your finger. Luscious and thick, silky yet unkempt. "Don't cut your hair," you mumbled as you leaned against his bare chest, sending a smile as you tilt your head up to see him chuckle, "It looks better long, I want it extra long when I come back!" He mumbles his agreement against the crown of your head.

When the sun rose high in the sky and the caravan was set to go, many of the servants of the Winery had expressed their congratulations and their good lucks to your new milestone. Your parents were more worried than not knowing their only child, nomad at heart, shall venture the world alone for four years away from them. You were crying angrily at how they made it so sentimental, forcing the waterworks out of you.

Crepus had already given his goodbyes and stood to the side with Diluc before the clock struck exactly 4 PM. The man's vigilant eyes however did not miss the fact that you and Diluc seem to lack the necessary sleep to power through the day, even tho half of it is already gone. How they grow up so fast.

When you found yourself bounding over to Diluc one last time, he took your hand ever so gently, still coming into terms of your departure. You only hum idly as he stares at your bare hands, before suddenly he presented two silver rings of infinity. You had to stop yourself from gasping aloud, "A promise ring, so that everyone in Sumeru knows there's someone waiting for you back home already." His red gaze averted to the side in fluster, gingerly sliding the band to your ring finger as he did the other to his own.

Home. Yes, Mond is now your home, and specifically next to him is where you belong. You shared your last kiss before Kaeya had finally called for the carriage to start ascending, on the dot. You peeked out of the carriage one last time as you waved your goodbyes to everyone, the silver band catching the light of the sun as it shines with promise.

Diluc wished goodbyes to you that day. And as he turns to his father to board their own horseback and carriage, he ends up losing two people on the same day.

Dearest Diluc,

I hope this letter finds you well. The Academia had been very accommodating ever since I arrived, there are a lot of people here from all over Teyvat, just like you had thought! I felt quite lonely and inferior when I entered but I've gained nice companions along the way and things became easy. With my exposure to our families' businesses, studies were actually easier than I expected them to be. There's been talks with the professors of me being accelerated half a year with my progress, it seems four years may not be accurate.

I've also gained myself a senior, a really kind and intelligent upperclassmen. His name is Cyno, a nice gentleman. He's been teaching me on weapon mastery since he's really good with a polearm. You use a Claymore, right? If I come back wielding a polearm, I want to spar! But don't worry about him, he knows of our betrothal and his boundaries.

How's being the captain there? I hope Uncle Crepus and Kaeya are doing well with you mostly in Mond's city now. It seems the Academia doesn't really receive letters for 'security reasons' hence why I haven't received any of your letters. But no matter, I'm sure you're doing far better than I am, you're much stronger and capable now afterall! Make sure to take care of yourself always, get some breaks and eat your meals! I don't want to see you so skinny and weak when I get back!

Forever Yours,

(Y/N)

There is bliss in ignorance. As you fold up the letter into the envelope, the door to your room echoes a knock before it softly opens to reveal your upperclassman. His gaze falls on the envelope on your hand in silent question to which you return with a smile and a nod, standing up from your study table as you followed Cyno out of the dormitories to the Academia's post office.

It had been a year since you left Mondstadt, a year since you've last seen Diluc, and a year since Crepus had died. Your parents, not wanting you to be distracted by the loss and dent your studies over such matters, opted to refrain from informing you of the grave news. It has also been a year since you started writing letters to Diluc and never received a reply.

"Time will go by quickly, and you'll be back before you know it," the Sumeru denizen beside you reassured you of your lack of correspondence and you offered a smile at his niceties. It doesn't worry you that Diluc wasn't able to contact you like so, you only wish that he was able to receive your little notes so he's reminded to take care of himself.

Yet as you pass the envelope to the postman, there was still an uneasy feeling on the back of your mind. You turn around with a curious hum, calmly and slowly scanning the grounds of the Academia before walking once again to catch up with your senior, clutching the silver ring close to your chest as you fell back into idle chatter.

Once you've disappeared behind the doors of your next class, a lone man stands straight on one of the tower's roof. The warm wind of Sumeru washes by him in a force enough to whisk away his hood, but he did not care. He did not care over the way his red hair spills all over his shoulders as it danced with the wind.

Diluc only heaved a sigh before leaping back into the shadows on his last day in the desert nation, finding no proper clue and heading to the next nation over. But not before stealing a freshly folded letter from the shelf of a certain post office.

Two years. Two years. Sumeru Academia sent you off on graduation with both striking awe and somber disappointment. After losing the prodigy Lisa, they were now losing you, the now renowned master practitioner of economics. You did so well, SO WELL in fact, that your four years stay ended in just two because of your numerous acceleration as a year in you're already conversing with the modern founders of the practice.

They wanted you to stay longer but you've had your fair share of knowledge and waiting. Everyone knew of your relationship predicament, understanding where you're coming from, yet to leave another prodigy to Mondstadt. It was unnerving for them, but your smile had been nothing but reassuring. You comforted those with the promise of correspondence and accommodation, if they so wish to find time and pass by Mondstadt in the future.

And hence you find yourself in Dawn Winery, your luggage and naginata as your only companion. You barged in like nobody's business and started looking around for anyone- Kaeya, Uncle Crepus, Diluc- yet no one showed up. Servants are scarce and almost non-existent, you were confused beyond comprehension.

A set of footsteps echoed behind you and you twisted around in excitement, only to see one of the higher attendants you still remember, Elzer. "M-Mistress (Y/N)! Y-You're ali- you're here!" You cocked your head to the side, unsure of how to take his slip up.

Ah, right, priorities. "Have you seen where anyone is? Kaeya, Master Crepus, Diluc? I passed by here first since it's on the way but I can't find anyone!" The gravity of the change gnawed at you from the pit of your stomach, and you nibbled at your bottom lip at the flash of emotions that passed his face.

"We're unsure where Master Diluc is currently, but Master Kaeya is in Mondstadt-" A lead! Diluc must be patrolling somewhere in the city anyways so you bolted out of the mansion, thanking the man before he can finish answering all your questions. As you left so loudly, in your wake the other servants were now aware of your presence, and the feeling of dread revives in the Winery.

Two years must have gone by longer than you expected it to be, this thought passed you as you went through the main gates of the City of Freedom. The knights that were usually on guard are those you've never seen before, and the people around you barely spared you a glance with no recognition. Even the ones stationed at the entrance of the Ordo Favonius HQ were completely new when you went over to ask.

"Have you seen- do you know where the uhm," you paused in remembrance, "The Cavalry Captain. Do you know where he is?" With how new they were, you figured Diluc would be known by his title instead.

One of them nods and pointed at the Cathedral, "Yes, Ma'am. He's just finished an expedition and are conversing with the healers in the church." Finally, an exact location! You thanked them and flew off once again.

And so you found yourself in front of the altar of the anemo archon, alone in the completely silent establishment. There were no whispers to guide you or people to tell you where he is, it was too quiet, and you were turning helpless. Offering your bow to the statue you turned to walk back down the aisle, only to see a familar figure staring at you as if you were a ghost haunting-

"(Y/N)?" You gasped and ran towards him.

"Kaeya! You're here!" You embraced him softly, careful of the confusing clothing and the hanging polearm on your back. He embraced you just the same, a hearty laugh masking the nervousness on the back of his throat.

"Aren't you supposed to come home two years later?" Kaeya inquired as he stepped back from the hug, suddenly smirking, "Or are you telling me you ran away from school?"

You smacked his arm with a whine at such a preposterous accusation, harder than you'd intended as you heard him wince. Oh goodness, your training with Cyno really made you strong. "Ahhh, no, no! I finished early because I was too good ahah, who would've thought!" The blunette let out a rare snort on that of which only spurred on your laughter.

The familiarity of another had eased the tension on your shoulders as you conversed freely about everything that had transpired for you, how things had been and- you've realized now just how tired you were from the long travel you'd gone through even tho you were used to such lifestyle when you were young.

After things had died down, you finally asked, "Where's Diluc?" And the twinkle of lax delight hardened at the question. He took a few seconds to start as his eye shifted left and right, and your knees were shaking from the implications-

And then he finally told you everything. The death of Crepus. Diluc giving up his Vision. Him disappearing for two year, without return. All the disaster that had happened the moment you left.

Your legs gave out as your knees hit the floor painfully, it will probably bruise later but you couldn't get yourself to care. If you hadn't left that day, would it have gone differently? Would you be able to make him stay? You should have been there to comfort him, to be by his side and yet-

Please tell me you're joking, you cried out so desperately to Kaeya who dropped down to gather you into his arms. But you knew better than that, he knew you knew better than that, so he didn't answer. And the altar behind you listened to the echoed screams and cries of a maiden abandoned by grief and love.

And Kaeya stayed for as long as you needed him to be. And in the back of his mind, a bitterness bit—

That should have been Diluc, holding you and comforting you.

That should be him, showing you where Crepus Ragnvindr's gravestone lies to pay your respects.

That should have been him who stayed.

It had been almost two years now since you've gone back to Mondstadt, almost four years since Diluc disappeared, together with him he took away your hopes and promises. The talk about your arranged marriage had become taboo to the people who still knows, but they don't comment on the ring that still lingered around your finger.

Besides finally taking over the business in Mondstadt (your parents had established one in Fontaine while you were away) and being pursued by scholars all over the world, you've been dealing with the pain silently and alone. Numbing soon. Every passing day with no news of him claws at the idea of him being alive even, and the thought sickens you to death.

It was one of those nights when you couldn't sleep and had decided to stroll around the city during the dead of the night to clear your head. Your parents had sent you a letter of recall to Fontaine, asking you to leave the business to the managers. They didn't exactly put it into words, but you knew your parents better than anyone: you should stop hoping he'd return, was what they wanted to say.

You rubbed your forearm as you continued your walk. It must have been your time with Sumeru that made you so vulnerable to the cold now, was your thought process as another chilly wind passed by you. And then you heard it—

An echoed cackle and a crackle of icicles.

The hairs on the back of your neck stood straight as you stumbled to the side, narrowly missing a flying icicle. Thank goodness Sumeru Academia required combats class, you thought as you darted straight through the alleys, the Abyss Mage hot on pursuit. This was the worst time to leave your freaking polearm at your house, you screamed at yourself as you vaulted over empty crates before coming out of another street.

“Look out!” A gruff voice shouted as a sudden wall of black? fire manifested behind you. You heard the icicle melting as it touched the wall and dissipated with it, revealing a figure cloaked in pure black. Back turned to you, the Abyss Mage continued its assault which was now focused on the intruder. And their clash started just like that.

You hopped back when another barrage of icicle rain was summoned. This guy had a Vision(?) but it was something you’ve never seen before, nor had encountered in your classes about the elements. You can’t leave him now, not like this, and so you picked up a slab of wood from a broken crate. Abyss mages have shields yes, you need to break that.

Without a moment’s hesitation, you leaped over the ledge that’s in level with the floating enemy (again, thanks for the acrobatic lessons) and brought down the hard wood over the mage’s head. It produced a sickening crunch as the shield broke under pressure as well as fall through and hit it square in the head! It dropped back to the floor momentarily, and it made you aware that you two were plummeting to the ground.

You pulled your limbs close and braced for impact- “Shit, I got you.” You felt something cold and thin wrap around your body before it guided you to the cloaked person’s awaiting arms, stumbling a bit at the weight. You grunted at the inertia before you met eyes with orbs of red within a shadow, it looked at you widely behind an owl mask(?) and you looked back with a squint. Who?

Your little moment was interrupted when the Abyss Mage started rising from the ground again, slightly swaying from the blow you hit it with earlier. In alarm, you quickly placed your feet down to stand, the chains around you easily slinking away back to the person’s cloak. The man then stands in front of you protectively, cursing under his breath, “You need to leave, it’s too dangerous.” There was a weird strain in his voice now.

This made you scoff, so loud and offended, that you felt the man be taken aback by your response. “You can’t even disable the shield in time,” you ignored the way he seemingly cringed back to this cloak as you stood next to him, slab of wood at the ready, “Don’t worry about me, I had lessons.” Now it was his turn to scoff but relented anyways, as if he knew well enough that you’re not falling back easily.

Batarangs flew from his cloak as it hit the Abyss on the arms and chest, screeching in pain at the unexpected attack. You rushed over and clubbed his hand that held the staff, kicking it far away when it was dropped. A chain then latches around its waist as it was pulled to the cloaked man, who delivered a quick kick to its stomach when it neared, sending it crashing to the wall.

That was so... exciting! You gasped at the thrill of the fight, slightly hopping and clapping at yourself as you smiled at the stranger with the widest grin you had mustered ever since you came back. His gait was tense when walked up to you, past you, in front of you as he looked around for any onlookers or dwellers of the night that had witnessed the commotion. “That was really cool, what kind of power was that? You look like you’ve done this multiple times before.”

You heard the most subtlest sigh when you were sure you whisked away his attention, slowly he turns to his side but not sparing you a direct view. From what you can tell, he wore a LOT of black under that black cloak. “You shouldn’t have stayed,” he started with a sigh as he finally turned to you fully, “Who knows what could have happened-”

“WATCH OUT!” You shoved him by the shoulder as you threw your slab with a force so mighty it broke the face of the mage, immediately disintegrating into ashes and dissipating with the wind. Under you your companion grunted from the pain of being thrown to the floor, and when he looked up, he was scrambling to catch you again.

The icicle impaled through your thigh coaxed out and coated with blood as dark spots danced on your vision from the pain and blood loss. The man pulled you up against his chest, hushed whispers of panic begging you to stay awake as he was wary of the shrapnel still in you.

But you were stubborn. And so you fainted.

The next day when you awoken in your bed, the night before would have easily been passed off as a fever dream if not for the bandaged injury on your leg that had you immobilized for days. When the citizens of Mond finally got a hold of you and asked about the incident, you gave them as much information as you could about your hero,

“He was an unknown hero that appeared at the dark of the night.”

Days passed by and you heard rumors in passing of the one named Darknight Hero. The name made you facepalm.

The faithful day happened three weeks after the encounter with the "Darknight Hero" when you finally recovered from your injury, able to walk around and do your daily rounds of work and deliver the paperwork of the margins of the sales and cost-effectiveness of your family's business in connection to Angel's Share. You had prepared so many documents all hailing from your numerous studies in the Academia, graphs and studies of the data Elzer had expertly combined for you lay in your arms in a bundle of folders.

The tower had to be carried by two hands, and you grunted as you bumped your bottom against the thick door of the tavern, using your hip to swing it open with mighty force. "Ugh, Charles, here's all the economic reports I finally finished after three week-" if not for the man himself, the floor of the tavern would have turned into a sea of papers as your fingers trembled and slackened at the sight.

His towering build, the thick main of red hair, it's all him. The moment the weight from your arms departed, you immediately stumbled over to him, eyes wide and mouth open to call out to him, "Diluc-!" But he flinched away from you instead of meeting you halfway through. And that slight movement halted you in your tracks, eyes wide with horror and pain from the rejection.

Diluc's eyes widened at the change, his gaze passing at Charles before back at you, reluctantly gesturing at your bandaged thigh he spoke, "You should be careful with that injury, don't want it to open up." His voice had a rough edge to it now, deeper yet still veiled with velvety smoothness.

"You're here," your disappointment from earlier was changed from the enlightenment of the situation. His jaw tightened at the sight of the tears that started falling from your eyes, "You're alive!"

Forced away by Charles with the promise of taking over the tavern for the day, you and Diluc took a stroll around the city. Enthusiastic of catching up, you talked endlessly about your years in the Academia and the last two years that you had stayed in Mondstadt before his arrival. Yet opposite of your upbeat chatter, Diluc stayed silent and forward-looking, offering only nods and grunts in between your pauses that asks him if he was still listening. Everytime your hand brushed his when you walked too close, he'd immediately pull his hand back and step away from your personal space.

It was a one-sided conversation. And it ended quickly as it had started.

You stood now at the stairs of the cathedral, overlooking the imposing statue of the Anemo archon. Your location made you remember something, and you opened up another topic, "Your brother, Kaeya told me about what happened four years ago." His apathetic gaze suddenly turned cold as his shoulders tensed. "Diluc, I'm sorry for what happened and-"

"He's not my brother, (Y/N)," you've never thought there would come a day when you'd hear such venom come from his sweet lips. Nor the cold glare that was now in full view, directed at you, "And you shouldn't go around trusting that guy, he's nothing but trouble."

The lump now stuck in your throat prevented you from responding, but you figured you didn't have the chance to do so anyways. As Diluc had ended his warning, he turned away and started walking back to the direction of the tavern, muttering something about work needed to be done.

You tried to reach for his hand before he could have gone too far, but you froze a few seconds away- and then he was gone, out of your grasp, leaving you alone at the steps of the cathedral without a look to spare.

Your cradled your hand to your chest as you felt your eyes water again, the overwhelming distance now opening the truth in your gaping heart as you wept in silence: The promise ring was missing from his hand.

Days had gone by after that where you sat in the background in idle wait, observing as subtle as you can be, hovering around him. The Diluc that you once knew was different from the Diluc who disappeared for four years, and the differences screamed at your face at every one you picked up:

His soft gaze now seems hardened and hooded, as cold as the cryo slimes and as deep as the ocean floor. Whenever you look at them, you always feel as tho he was years away, in a place unreachable. Even when they fall on you, there's a hidden emotion behind them, but they never once softened at the sight of you.

Around his hands were thick gloves of either pure red or another black-red variant. They were rough and never off, hot and grazed with years of use. It was different, so different from the white ones you had gifted him on his birthday. You placed a grape on his palm once and giggled at the memory, expecting him to look at you with recollection, but he only stared at the grape before shaking his head. And he turns away from you to get back at his work.

Diluc's hair was longer than you've ever seen before. It reached past the middle of his back when it had only grew by the shoulder when you've last seen it. It was fluffier and wilder, held up by a ponytail that you can't even see past the thickness. You loved running your hand through it before and Diluc had always felt at ease when you do that; you reached your hand out to touch the ends of his long hair, but he immediately turned to you before you could even feel it on the edge of your fingertips, caught by the cold squint of his eyes. No matter how many attempts, he always managed to stop you.

Another thing that had changed was his wardrobe. There were barely traces of the white knight aesthetic he had when you were still young, no, now he felt shrouded in the darkness of the knight. Made to blend with the shadows, he dons all black besides his undershirt. He resembles no trace of the knight he once was when you look at him.

The last detail you hated the most was the way he had been... secretive to you, and anyone in general. For this reason alone, you barely visited the Winery now, only coming there for business purposes or to converse with the servants that still remembered you. Whenever other matters were to be discussed, you're almost immediately ushered out by one of his men, no questions asked. This had became so commonplace that you started seeing yourself out the moment the air felt unwelcoming.

The more you notice, the more you felt farther away from the Diluc you knew. But this was the same man you loved, and still love. The grief had changed him, the disappearance had changed him, but nothing can change the fact that he was the same person that held your hand when it felt cold.

Speaking of, you clutched the hand you spoke of as you felt the breeze pass by you. The sea of Cecilias danced with an orchestrated flutter, as if singing to you in music of their petals grazing one another. Ah, you realized, this was the same exact place you first met Diluc.

"Is your hand cold again?" He spoke from the table under the gazebo where you delivered the perfectly arranged document. This time you dealt with the matter of tax revenue and compiled the business proposals of those that had attended the party he hosted with the seneschal.

You simply nodded and he sighed. The disappointment breaking your heart into a million pieces, "You should know by now to wear gloves or long sleeves whenever you're out. You must have gotten lackluster due to the climate of Sumeru, you should fix that."

You felt the tears bite at your eyes painfully again. As of recently, you've been crying a lot more than you had ever been in your life. And yet these ones flowed with ease, without a hiccup or a sob, almost liberating. "I'll be leaving for Fontaine tomorrow," the shuffling of the papers stopped behind you, "Flint will be handling the management of the franchise here, I've taught him the necessary computations so you can trust the reports he'll give to the Winery. Mother and father wants me to focus on the expansion of the business, after all."

There was a moment of silence before the shuffling began again and with that pushed the final sword into your heart. You bowed your head, smiling to the Cecilias that caught your tears in their petals, "Thank you for everything, make sure you take good care of yourself, okay?" You didn't know if you were talking to the Cecilias or Diluc.

But you felt lighter than ever, as if the last chain that pulled you down were finally broken.

And you took a small step, and then another, bigger one this time. For the first time since you're back to the city, you finally breathed in relief and without restraints.

Soon you were making distance and you were finally ready to go,

until a gloved hand pulled you back. Your gasp caught into your throat as your head whipped to stare at him, his eyes just as wide as yours. "What," he breathed out helplessly and you've noticed how short his breathing was, did he chase you? "What do you mean? You're not leaving forever, right?"

Forever. You felt the warmth of the gloved ones in your hand squeeze as you saw a faint light return in the depths of his glossy eyes, and you felt it—

The reassurance of your promise, as you squeezed back—

Underneath his thick gloves, red and black, you've finally noticed—

If he hadn't finally let his hand find yours, you wouldn't have felt the ring hidden underneath the cloth.

You beamed at him with eyes full of adoration and pure hope, of a grin pearly white that it almost shone as it caught the sun, he felt burned by it— but before he could escape, he was tackled to the ground with loud laughter.

@boxofteenageideas @creation-magician @your-local-venti-simp @indigodreamtime47

#genshin impact #exile.flower #genshin impact diluc #diluc x Reader #exile.pocketwatch #this may or may not have a part 3 #goodness this took so long and with so many errors #Actually teared up a bit skskskkss #genshin impact x reader

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lostysworld · 3 years

Text

A healing touch – Kaz Brekker x reader

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 (final)

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x reader

Warning: OOC, mention of touch aversion

Summary: You trying to fight your motives to help Kaz, but maybe you should not?

A/N: I don't know what I'v done, but anyway :D. I promised some romance, so enjoy a little bit of it, guys, in the end of the chapter)

Masterlist

– I am so selfish.

You and Inej are sitting in your parents' bakery after the closing hours, waiting to finally come home.

Despite the girl's calm behavior, you always find yourself comfortable around her.

– Why?

– I wanted to help Kaz through his avertion, - you casts a look towards the kitchen, where your mother is, and lower your pitch. – But I only ended up with thinking about my own reasons.

– So you are in love with him!

– Shh! - you wave your hands at Inej for her loud voice, being afraid your mum will know about it. In that case you won't be able to shut that woman up. – Do you want everyone to learn about it?

– I'm sure, your mother will be happy-

– That is the reason, - seeing your friend's mischievous grin you realizes, your worst fear may come true. – My mum will talk about it for the whole time, if she knows.

– Knows what?

Your heart sinks down. Seems, you were so worried about your predicament, than didn't notice the entrance door opened silently behind your back. But Inej did for sure.

You turn around to face Kaz, your very handsome problem, as it appears. Now you know why Inej was smiling like this.

– We are closed, young man, - your mum comes out of the kitchen, but when she recognizes Kaz, her smile becomes wider – Oh, Mr. Brekker, come in. The oven is still warm, do you want something?

You fight the urge to hide somewhere and only whispers.

– Saints, it only becomes worse, - Inej holds back a laughter looking at you, your mother, and Kaz, who seems struggling the same problem as you.

He can deal with every freak in Ketterdam, but when it comes to your mother, the man is always confused.

– Uhm, no, thank you.

Brekker turns to both of you, looking at Inej. It is clear, that he doesn't come to see you, and it suddenly upsets you.

Inej only nods to you and stands to follow Kaz, while you is staring down in your empty cup. Suddenly a brief touch to your shoulder draws your attention.

You raise your glance at Kaz, who stands right beside you, rather close to you, you'd say. His hand is still on your shoulder, and his heat radiates from the palm even through the leather of the glove.

– I didn't thank you for your help last time.

You could never read his glance, it is always the same cold, collected expression, that you can't understand. Maybe, you are way too much mesmerized by Kaz Brekker to notice something else.

– It's fine, Kaz. You are welcome, - you hesitate, seeing his piercing eyes don't leave you. – And good luck your heist.

He nods silently and walks out. As soon as the door behind him is closed, you drop your head on the table with a loud grown. Why you can't just tell him how you feel? It will go two ways anyway. He will admit that it's mutual or not. No big deal, yeah?

– If I acted like you twenty three years ago, I would never marry you father, Y/N.

Yours mother's sympathetic voice rings somewhere above your head, but you don't want to argue with her.

– I'm not a sum of kruge for Kaz to be interested in.

– Mr. Brekker is only interested in kruge, because he doesn't have something more valuable, see?

You raise your head to her to see her smirking and lay it down again. Your mother can advise you whatever she wants, but it doesn't mean you have enough courage to do it.

You walk into the Slat, that is unexpectedly overcrowded for this time of the evening. Earlier this day a boy came to collect you to Kaz, as he was told, and that makes your heart flutter.

You haven't seen your friends for these two days, the heist they prepared was extremely important for all the Crows and you decided not to distract them.

On the first floor you notice Jasper and others, though Kaz isn't amongst them. You wave playfully to the guys, it is hard for you to hide, that you really miss them.

Jasper waves you back and nods towards upstairs.

– Kaz wanted to see you, Y/N.

With a brief nod you run to Brekker's room. After two short knocks you open the door, not waiting for a permission.

– Y/N, - a small smile hides in the corners of the man's lips.

– Should I congratulate you with the successful heist, Kaz? Everybody look so content.

He nods and extends his hand towards you. You come closer immediately noticing a small silver pendant on his palm.

– It's lovely, Kaz. Thank you.

– Are you sure? - his suspicious gaze follows you, you raise your brow trying to understand his question. – I mean, it was stolen-

Does he question his methods now, after all these years?

– I like it, stolen or not. Besides, you risked your safety to get it. So, I like it even more.

Taking it from his palm carefully, you realize Brekker's hands are without gloves tonight. Your decision, made some days ago, comes to your mind at the same time.

– Could you help me?

The man's gaze instantly finds yours, and you recognize a sparkle of panic inside. Any other day you would apologize for breaking his boundaries, but not now.

Kaz swallows and nods, after that you turn around letting him lock the pendant on your neck.

He is doing it so carefully, that you don't even feels the touch, but only his hot breathing on you neck. And it slowly drives you insane.

– Kaz, - once the pendant is locked you turn rapidly to face him, meeting his piercing blue gaze.

You know that this kind of proximity makes him uncomfortable, but you just can't help yourself to move an inch back.

You swallow and drop your gaze on his hand, that now is laying on the table just right next to you. Brekker's glance is watching you slowly moving your own one.

Your palm is inches from his, still you don't make a final move. You two are so close, Kaz can feel your breath on his cheek, and it gives him slight shiver down his spine. Pleasant or not, he can't decide.

– Kaz, - you call him once more, whispering. – I can help you with it.

– No one can, Y/N, - you don't need to be precise for him to know what are talking about. Brekker shakes his head, and you watches his weak grin disappeare.

– I will. Please, let me in, Kaz. I will not hurt you.

You are craving for his touch so badly, that it almost makes you shake with anticipation. But the man doesn't rush the moment.

You finally touch his wrist with you fingertips, Brekker flinches, but doesn't move away. Taking a silent permission you trace an invisible pattern on his arm, when his hoarse whisper reaches you.

– Stop, - he swallows hard.

– Kaz-

– Please, stop, Y/N, - you've never seen Kaz Brekker begged before, moreover you don't want him to hate you after this evening.

Your glances cross and you feel like you are unable to move. He is still a bit struggling with the effect of your touch, but something else is on the back of his mind.

– I've wanted to touch you for so long, - his voice runs goosebumps across your skin. – I even thought that ignoring you might help.

– Look at me, Kaz, - your hand flies to his chin, barely touching, slightly turning him to face you. – You can do this.

The man shakes his head with anger appering in his eyes. He doesn't blame you for trying, anyway, he tried too. But he does blame you for giving him this false hope.

– We need to try once more.

'We'. Kaz sighs. Isn't it worth trying? Isn't Y/N worth?

Your hand caresses his cheek as if he's made of glass. Brekker tenses, and you feel him ready to burst with swearing.

But to you own surprise, the man just exhales slowly, and after a second he slightly leans into the touch.

– See?

Y/N is warm, not like Jordie, Kaz feels it's radiating through his own skin now. The tingling on his cheek from your accident brushing leaves him a bit nervous. In a good way.

Y/N smells like cinnamon and baking powder, and Brekker loses a bit of his sanity from such proximity. He would never let anyone do the same with him.

But it's you. Kaz can make any deal, but he also can make an exception for Y/N.

– I think, it's enough for today, - you slowly take your hand from his cheek, afraid that it cam be too overwhelming for Kaz.

A faint smile lights up you face, and instantly it is reflected on Brekker's face.

– Ask Jasper to walk you home.

– I will be fine-

– No, I want you to be safe, - your breath is stuck in your throat. – So...good night.

– Good night, Kaz.

This stupid smile doesn't leave your face until you come home.

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagine #shadow and bone x reader #shadow and bone fanfic #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone x you #kaz brekker #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker fanfiction #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x you #six of crows x you #six of crows x reader #six of crows imagine #six of crows

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aspiringauthorintraining · 3 years

Text

Sands of Eon (2/2)

(A/N): hoped you liked the first part. Enjoy! Read with sad music cause I wrote it with sad music. I hope you cry lol.

Part 1 here!

Fighting in a battle changes a person. But surviving an Archon war destroys them.

At least now, you had a better understanding of what Xiao went through before. And seeing how it affected you, it made you all the more thankful that you could suffer in place of Xiao.

Once you arrived in the past, you had successfully prevented the contract between Kubira and Xiao from coming to fruition. It was simple really. Kubira wanted a servant to do his bidding, and figured Xiao would be perfect for the role. But if the god were to find someone before Xiao, someone who was willing to become his bloodhound instead, there would be no reason for him to actively search out the adeptus. In short, you took over Xiao’s role in the war. It was the only plan that would change the outcome of the war and the future the least, without having others get involved.

All it took was offering yourself. You had surprised the god, who was amused that a mere human would want to serve in his army. But he decided to humor you, and in exchange for your obedience to his orders, he granted you immortality and increased power. By the end of the forsaken war, your power had become strong enough to rival an adeptus’. At the price of insurmountable bloodshed.

You hadn’t seen Xiao during the war, something that you were thankful for later on.

Not a day would pass that you wouldn’t think of him; hesitating, wondering if you would be able to face him after all that you had done. If he would look at you in disgust, knowing of all the deeds you had done for your master. If it would be worth facing his hatred, just to get a glimpse of his face once more.

Once the long war reached its end, Rex Lapis freed you from the chains of your blood-filled servitude. You had considered asking the archon to bring an end to your curse of immortality, but decided against it.

You could have had a merciful death, spending the last of your days as a human. But you didn’t deserve such an easy death, not after all the inhumane sins you committed. What you truly deserved, was to live every day of the rest of your immortal life; remembering every life you had taken, every drop of blood shed with your polearm, never being able to escape the horrors you submitted yourself to. You would continue to roam Teyvat, neither human nor adeptus, barely surviving, barely hanging on the thread of sanity left in you. Never forgetting that you had chosen your fate.

And the selfish part of you urged you to keep your immortality as well. You held onto the selfish desire to see Xiao one day, smiling and celebrating, surrounded by the people of Liyue. Blissfully unaware of what you endured and suffered, in his stead.

And as a millennia passed, you never once regretted changing your fate with Xiao’s. You had made your choice, and you now lived with it.

Your life followed in the steps of Xiao’s original fate, spending your days and years protecting Liyue; an atonement for your sins, as well as gratitude to the Geo Archon who saved you. On quiet days, you ate Almond Tofu at the Wangshu Inn, finally understanding why the adeptus had craved the dish so much before. It was the texture, rather than the taste that made it so alluring.

Avoiding the yaksha in the millennia had been easier than you thought. The only way you would hear about Xiao was through the Geo archon, who came to visit every now and then, checking up on you from time to time. He would update you on the man’s whereabouts and health during each visit, keeping the adeptus nameless, per your request.

“I don’t remember my real name.”

“Xiao isn’t your real name?”

“No, it was given to me by Morax after the Archon War…”

Xiao wasn’t his name anymore, and you figured not knowing his name would prevent you from ever seeking him. The less you knew, the better.

“It’s the last night of the Lantern Rite festival, (Y/N).”

Verr Goldet informs you as you greet her on your way up the stairs.

“Is it that time already?” you asked with a small smile. You reached down to pet the cat who rubbed her back against your leg with a purr.

“The traveler stopped by to let you know his invitation to join him and his flying companion at the festival still stands.”

You looked out at the terrace, watching the violet, sunset sky turn darker with each minute.

“You know me. I’m fine watching from the roof.” you responded, shaking your head.

The Wangshu owner gave a sigh at your response.

“At least go to the mountains for a better view. I’ll pack you an Almond Tofu so you can eat dinner up there while watching the ending festivities.”

Seeing her pleading face, you couldn’t reject her suggestion.

You finally reached the top of the mountain, giving you a good view of the city of Liyue, as well as the lanterns floating in the sky. Looking down into the city square, you could see the people of Liyue celebrating the last moments of the festival: children running around with last-minute made lanterns, lovers gathered near the bridge hand-in-hand, and Ruijin explaining the rules of her new game to the curious crowd. But it was the crowd gathered in the center, dancing in a big circle that grabbed your attention.

You spotted a figure dressed in teal, playing a flute instead of his usual lyre, providing music for the crowd to dance to. You smiled seeing the anemo archon having the time of his life. And it seemed that one more figure was having the time of his life, in the center of the dancing circle, wearing a mask and dancing along to the bard’s wind music.

Your breath hitched at the sight of the figure. Even with the mask on, you could recognize him anywhere. It was your first time seeing him in over a millennia, and you could still remember his face, down to every last detail.

Before you knew it, tears streamed down your face, the sight of finally seeing him overwhelming you with emotions.

“Looks like your wish was granted too.” you laughed happily through your tears, remembering what he had wrote on the lantern you once gave him long ago.

“For a day to come to wear the mask, not to conquer demons, but to dance to the tune of that flute amidst a sea of flowers.”

- Xiao

As he continued dancing, you were entranced, never being able to see this side of him before your time venture.

It was only when the ending rite began that he had stopped his movement, taking his mask off to properly watch the show. Your heart stopped at the sight of his face, a small smile gracing his features. And it wasn’t until the ending fireworks rang in your ears, that your heart was reminded to beat again, realizing you had spent the whole ending festival watching him.

You took a moment to look out at the vast sea of lanterns, wondering if Xiao had made one of his own, and what wish he had written on the lantern. Taking one last look at the brightly-lit night sky, you turned your attention back to the city, watching as a group of people surrounded Xiao with smiles on their faces. And at the sight of his responding smile, all the pain you had endured up til now was forgotten.

“Xiao.” you called out quietly.

It was the wrong name, but it was the only one you knew him by.

The yaksha darted his eyes around the crowd, seemingly as if he had heard you call out to him. Although, it was far too loud with festivities in the square, and the distance between the two fo you, that it wasn’t likely.

“Happy Lantern Rite.” you whispered, a tear falling down your cheek.

It was worth it. Seeing the smile on his face, surrounded by the people of Liyue who respected him. It was worth your loneliness and pain, to save him from his. Being the only one to remember everything would be a suffering you would gladly take for his happiness.

So, you forced yourself to tear your eyes away from the his figure, away from the lantern-lit city. And silently, you headed down the mountain, back to Wangshu Inn, alone.

(A/N): AhhHHH!, you’ve made it to the end! Thank you for reading! I felt so sad playing the story quest for Xiao during the Lantern Rite festival. I planned on having a happy ending but just ended up going on an angst spiral. Let me know what you thought! I’m thinking of doing another part with a possibly happier ending, but we’ll see if I’m up for it lol. Again thank you for reading! Safe readings!

Like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell for notifications for more videos. jk lol, this isn’t youtube. Just play some Genshin.

#genshin impact imagine #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin imagine #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin impact xiao #genshin impact xiao imagine #xiao imagine #genshin xiao #xiao x reader #xiao x you #no beta we die like hilichurls lol

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morganayenneferburnham · 3 years

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Have I Known You 20 Seconds or 20 Years? – Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter 1: Devils Roll the Dice, Angel Roll their Eyes

Chapter 2: You Did a Number on Me

Chapter 3: You Could Call Me Babe for the Weekend

Chapter 4: The Best of Times, The Worst of Crimes

Chapter 5: All I Know Since Yesterday Is Everything Has Changed

A very short summary: Y/N has been working with the crows for a few years. Her life feels complete until she meets the insufferable Nikolai Lantsov. She finds herself forced to work with the King of Ravka on one of Kaz Brekker’s crazy schemes.

Word count: 2k

A/N: Hey there! So this took me a bit longer than expected but here it is! I should probably mention that it's an angsty one. Sorry. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'd love to get some feedback :)

Chapter 5: All I Know Since Yesterday Is Everything Has Changed

She woke that morning wishing she didn’t have to leave her room for the rest of the month. That was going to be difficult, however. Kaz would come to drag her out himself if he had to. She knew he would. It was probably best to avoid angering him any further. He had made his anger quite clear the night before.

---

Kaz had sent everyone away for the night after having heard their reports and studying the plans for a few more minutes. His gloved fingers had wrapped themselves tightly around her wrist when she’d tried to slip past him.

“Can you get the job done? Or do I have to worry I’ll lose my corporalnik to a king?” His voice had been heavy with disdain.

“Of course, I can do the job, Kaz! How long have I been working for you?” she’d felt panic rise in her, making her nauseous.

“I’ve known Jesper even longer. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t disappointed me.” He snickered. “You haven’t answered my question, Y/N.” The way he’d said her name had sent a shiver down her spine. It had been a barely hidden warning.

“Kaz…” her voice had broken. Would he send me back to Tante Ingrid? She simply couldn’t tell.

“Start tailoring Nikolai and yourself back. I’ll see you in the morning. Do not be late.”

She’d spent the next 3 hours tailoring the king, who threatened to ruin her life by occupying her every thought, and then herself. Nikolai had at least had the decency to stay quiet this time around. She had been far from done when they’d called it a night, but she’d judged it would be enough to keep Kaz off her back.

---

Y/N got ready quickly, keeping Kaz’s warning in mind. She shrugged off her nightgown. She’d slept terribly. She pulled her white shirt over her head, tucking it in the pants she’d chosen for the day. Her mind kept travelling back to Nikolai’s kiss and Kaz’s terrifying fury. She loosely tied the strings at her shirt’s collar, letting the delicate bow rest on her chest. Her brain seemed to be stuck playing both moments repeatedly. It was ridiculous. Nikolai had only kissed her to keep up the act. There was no reason to jeopardize her place with the crows over something so meaningless. So why couldn’t her mind stop bringing it up?

When she finally reached the music room that currently served as their boss’ office, Inej sent her a look of pity from her perch on Kaz’s armchair. Great, she thought, Kaz is still mad.

Jesper and Wylan were lounging, limbs tangled, on a small couch. She nodded to them, returning their greetings, making her way to the opened glass-paneled doors leading to the garden. She watched Marya Hendriks paint while they waited for Nikolai and Zoya to join them. The older woman was working on a beautiful landscape of the Geldcanal. Y/N focused whole-heartedly on the paintbrush strokes letting them erase the memories of the previous night from her mind as they went. She knew it wasn’t permanent, the problem would still exist once Marya stopped painting, but it brought her comfort for the time being.

“Thank you for gracing us with your presence, your royal highness” Kaz’s raspy voice brought her back to the present. His rage and disdain were barely leashed. She turned in time to catch the surprised look on Nikolai’s face. She might have thought it was funny if she wasn’t so scared of what Kaz could do.

“Good morning, are my general and I late?” Nikolai schooled his feature into a charming grin. “Though, you know, I was under the impression that Kings couldn’t be late, everyone else is simply early.”

Just when Y/N thought it was impossible, Kaz’s eyes darkened further. Nikolai had managed to make him angrier somehow. Kaz sneered, “You are late.” They were in for a horrible day.

The air felt colder than it had a few minutes prior to the Ravkans’ arrival. Kaz continued, “The first part of the job was a success. However, that was the easy part.” He sent a pointed look her way. “The next part will require everyone to follow the plan to the letter.”

She flinched. Kaz isn’t mad. He is livid. She moved away from the open doors opting to take place on the arm of the couch where Wylan and Jesper were still lounging. Jesper reached for her, letting his hand rest on her thigh, giving it a small squeeze as if he felt her distress. She was thankful for that small gesture. It would help her endure Kaz’s wrath.

“I still need time to figure everything out. These blueprints do give us the layout of the factory and the warehouse, but we still don’t have the guards’ rounds schedule. We’ll also need to find out the shipment schedule.”

Inej interrupted him “I’ll take care of that. Just keep planning, I do quite enjoy your scheming face.” Y/N always loved getting a glimpse of their relationship. It was always subtle, but they clearly did love each other. It was endearing how much they did.

Kaz’s features seemed to soften a bit at that. “Of course, my darling. Perhaps General Nazyalensky can be of some assistance.”

Zoya nodded. “Sure, we’ll get you the information. Just make sure we have a way out with the plans and the prototypes we need.”

Kaz nodded and turned back to Y/N his gaze cold and hard. “You’re not done with your tailoring.” It wasn’t a question, it was a critic. She felt a chill travel down her back. “You have to finish this morning before either of you can leave the house.” He considered her for a moment. “Use your room. We can’t risk a servant seeing you like this.”

-----

They’d left the room a few minutes later. Y/N leading the way to her room at the Hendriks mansion. She had been quiet, practically ignoring him the whole way. Only turning to him once to check if he was following her. Her brows were furrowed. Nikolai wasn’t sure if she was mad at him or scared. Scared of what? Me? Or Brekker?

Nikolai now watched her from his seat at the end of the bed as she readied her tailoring kit. She had tailored her body back the night before, but she still had ways to go before she was sporting her beautiful features again. She had her back turned to him, her olive pants hugging the soft curves of her hips just right. Nikolai’s mind kept travelling back to the night before and the outfit the Grisha had chosen for the day wasn’t helping him at all. He wanted to rest his hands on her hips and pull her body to his. He wanted to feel her comforting curves pressed against him, closer than they had been the night before, the fabric of her skirt no longer in the way.

He watched her finally settle in front of the mirrored desk, raising her hands to her face. He was glad she was starting with herself. It would give him time to gain full control of his brain again. He observed the careful movements of her fingers for what felt like hours. He was grateful for the time she’d bought him, until he saw her face as she made her way to him. He couldn’t help but glance at her full lips. He wondered just how different it would feel to kiss her now. Saints, I forgot just how naturally gorgeous she was. The urge to pull her closer was threatening to overwhelm him.

“So, I guess I’m only undoing my own tailoring? Not Genya Safin’s? You still need to look like Sturmhond.” She sounded guarded.

“Yeah. I don’t think you could handle how handsome I really look.” He saw her jaw tick. Saints, what a stupid thing to say. And why did I wink at her again? She’s obviously uncomfortable.

He watched her carefully as she came to a stop, standing between his thighs. Nikolai could feel his heart hammering in his chest. She was standing so close he worried she could hear it. If she did, she made no mention of it. “This is gonna hurt. Tell me if you need a break.” She sounded determined; all traces of her previous insecurity gone. He only nodded, not trusting his voice with her standing so close to him, her floral scent drifting his way due to the soft breeze coming from the open window.

Her fingers were surprisingly cold against his skin. He felt the familiar itch of tailoring as she started before the pain of bone remodeling fully settled in. He tried to stay as still as possible, focusing on the concentration etched in the girl’s features instead of the pain. He felt her set his jaw back, making sure Sturmhond’s characteristically pointed chin was just right. She had made a few adjustments the night before, but she hadn’t done any major alterations. He kept watching her as she set the rest of his face back. Her shirt had slipped dangerously lower on her chest as she worked. The small bow coming lose. It was driving Nikolai completely crazy. He wanted to reach out and finish untying the damned strings. He didn’t think he could take much more of this absolute torture. She was almost done with reworking the bone when he saw her bite her bottom lip, completely lost in her work. He was about to finally lose the last sliver of decency he had been holding on to for the last hour when she straightened up suddenly. She backed away to take in her work.

“I think that should be it for facial structure. I’ll work on your eyes next, and I’ll finish with your hair.” She seemed more at ease now. Whatever had been bothering her almost forgotten.

She took her place back between his legs reaching up to his face once more. Her fingers came to rest on his cheek.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was a mistake.” Nikolai blurted out. He could’ve sworn he saw hurt flash in Y/N’s beautiful green eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He must have imagined it. He saw her straighten her spine, her shoulders tensing up.

“Whatever, we got out. We got the job done. It doesn’t matter.” Any scrap of ease she’d gained was gone as she turned her back to him, taking a few steps towards the mirrored desk. Why did you have to open your mouth? Nikolai Nothing. Nikolai the Bastard. Pretender. Nikolai the fool. He had clearly upset her.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you. Brekker told me you worked at one of the pleasure houses before… I just – I didn’t mean to cross a line.”

She whirled back towards him. Fury burning in her deep green eyes. “He had no right.” she hissed. Her rage melted quickly however, leaving her looking panicked. Nikolai saw her hands start to shake before she clenched her fists.

Another blunder. “He only told me because I asked about your tattoo.” Her hand flew to the bare skin of her arm hiding the iris burned into her skin from him. I am only making it worse, he realized. I should really learn to stop talking so much.

She lowered her head. “He’s going to send me back.” Her voice was trembling. She sounded absolutely terrified at the idea. Nikolai wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her. Why would she think that? Surely Brekker wouldn’t do that. She’s a corporalnik. If Brekker is actually stupid enough to part with such a gifted Grisha, she could have a place with the Second Army. She could have a place in Ravka… She could have a place with me.

“You could–” Nikolai didn’t get to finish his sentence. Inej had opened the door and walked in carrying a tray with tea and biscuits.

“Figured, you two were probably hungry!” Her warm smile faltered when she saw Y/N’s expression. “Everything alright?”

“Thank you Inej. You are absolutely right!” She laughed; all traces of her panic gone. “I’m starving. I could eat a stack of waffles as tall as you!” A talented corporalnik and actress, Nikolai thought.

-----

tagged: @power-of-words23

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov x you #nikolai lantsov fanfic #nikolai lantsov fic #kaz brekker #the crows #six of crows #inej ghafa #leigh bardugo #grishaverse #nikolai series #my fic #ari's fic #have i known you 20 seconds or 20 years #chapter 5 #fic update #all i know since yesterday is everything has changed

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