#its structure - of course - as found family

[variousqueerthings]

there’s so many ways that queerness exists in texts, unintentionally and intentionally, coded and uncoded and partially coded and baited and confused and limited and expansive, and then there’s whatever is happening with Hawkeye Pierce, M.D. of the 4077th MASH unit

#hawkeye pierce #MASH #there is of course also the constant mist of gender/sexuality queering that hangs over the narrative because of its structure #its structure as comedy (often subject to whimsical departures from acceptable gender/sexualities) #its structure as anti-establishment and anti-conformity #its celebration of non-conformist personalities and lives and its redefinitions over and over of madness and mutual aid #its structure - of course - as found family #its structure as an island in a sea of militant and fascistic surrealism and answering the questions of: #well what does the alternative to that violence look like? #so the idea of intentionality/unintentionality sort of doesn't matter #because it's creating a manifesto/ethos of sorts that speaks the same language as queerness #and it's down to the DNAs of its structures #(not even mentioning the structures of echoing the realities of those making it -- ethnicities - romantic lives - cultures and religions - #friendships and political beliefs - family structures created on the set of the show itself) #but yes hawkeye pierce is depicted as fascinatingly overtly queer and comedy is (like horror... which....) an acceptable space #for him to be this #(which -- when the horror and tragedy takes more of a front seat his funny-man queerness is somewhat diminished #but a. still very much present b. given an air of drama that legitimises it further c. underpinned by seasons and seasons of existence #d. embedded in that self-same DNA of the structures -- he IS the main POV character #which means he's carrying so much of that idea of non-conformity/civilish disobedience as good and right/whimsy/gender-and-sexuality/etc #so you see... there's whatever is happening with hawkeye pierce M.D.

[winchester-girl67]

Imagine... Dean Coming To You For Comfort

Summary: Dean looks for comfort after a nightmare. He enjoys being the little spoon. 

Requested by anonymous: “could you write a fic where dean just needs some comfort from the reader? it could be platonic and dean just had a bad day or a nightmare and doesn't want to be alone and wants to be held without asking"

Pairing: Dean x reader 

Word Count: 902 

Warnings: language, nightmares, implied violence (hunting a vamp nest), brief mention of a gun reader keeps under the pillow, a little angst, emotional hurt/comfort, cuddling, fluff 

A/N: Found this in my wips, it's a little short but sweet. Enjoy. 

_____

“I said, I'm fucking fine, okay?!” 

Dean's words echoed in your ears. You'd only asked him the once and he just snapped at you, so when you got back to the bunker you beelined for your room and slammed the door. 

You didn't get food, you didn't shower off the motel shower from a few hours earlier like you usually would, and you didn't get any sleep either. ‘Monopoly’ speaking, you did not pass 'GO'. You just pouted in your bed. 

The hunt could've gone better; it also could've gone worse. 

You stared at the ceiling, still awake and wondering how to reproach Dean. He was clearly not fine but until he was able to admit that, there was no getting through to him. Dean was just too stubborn when he was in these moods and honestly you were a little, too. You wanted to help, but you didn't want to swallow your pride and walk down that hall just to have him yell at you again. 

You weren't a masochist. But you still laid there, in bed, overthinking everything that went wrong with the hunt. 

First of all, you should've brought Sam with you, or Cas. Dean said it would be simple enough though with the two of you. It wasn't and you almost got killed. Dean, of course, wasn't letting himself forget it. You could see that written all over his face on the ride home. 

Stopping your mind from racing wasn't easy. You counted the dots on the ceiling tiles as you listened to the ticking of Dean's wristwatch on your arm. He'd synchronized it to the time on his cell and given it to you before the hunt so you could stay structured in your plan against the vamp nest. 

It was smart, until it wasn't. There were more than you expected and you always jumped the gun and went in first. Standing still wasn't the easiest thing for you to do with all that adrenaline pumping in your veins. And you were used to hunting alone. Before the Winchesters came into the picture. 

Needless to say, everything that went wrong after that was about ninety-percent your fault. The other ten was simply a miscalculation.

You'd known the Winchesters for quite some time but moving into the bunker with them was fairly new. In the back of your mind, you hoped Dean wouldn't ask you to move out. You kinda liked not being completely alone anymore. The world was tough and they felt like family already. It would break your heart for sure; shatter any trust you had left. 

Your bedroom door creaked open slowly on its old hinges and a shadowed figure peaked its head inside your room. You held your breath for a moment and gripped the cool handle of your gun underneath your pillow. 

Always on guard. Even if the bunker was the safest place you'd ever been. 

"Easy, Y/N, it's just me." Dean said, pushing the door open the rest of the way so the light of the hall revealed his features. 

His expression was soft, too soft -broken like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the nightmares to prove it. His hair was disheveled and he rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. 

"Just wanted to check on you, I'll let you get back to sleep. Sorry I woke you, sweetheart." Dean breathed deep and slowly started to shut your door. "And sorry I yelled." 

"Wait," you sat up and placed the gun on the night table next to you before switching the light on low. "Come here. Close the door." 

You flipped back the covers, shuffled over to make room and patted the mattress beside you. Dean wiped the frown from his face with his hand and did as you said. He shut the door and settled into bed next to you. Tense and unmoving once he rolled onto his side facing away from you. 

He couldn't ask, but he didn't need to. 

You clicked off the light and tugged up the covers to his chin. Your palm rubbed over his shoulders and half-way down his back, then circled up again until you felt his muscles begin to relax. 

"That feels nice," he breathed and sniffled a little. 

You continued your motions for a while longer until his breathing evened out, you could tell he was still awake but knew he didn't intend on talking things out. That wasn't Dean. So instead, you rubbed up and down his arm and molded your chest into his back, settling into your position as big spoon. You squeezed him and held his hand against his chest. 

"Thank you," he sighed and weaved his fingers through yours. 

Dean didn't talk about feelings if he didn't have to. And for someone so 'tough', more often than not, he liked to be the little spoon. Especially to your big spoon. 

There was an unspoken understanding that neither of you were ever to bring it up in the light of day. But things were just different at night and being vulnerable and open didn't feel as achy and oozy. 

Feelings were allowed to be felt in the dark. 

He'd be gone before you woke, starting breakfast and roasting coffee in the kitchen, but for now your pieces could hold his pieces together. 

And maybe you could both finally get some sleep. 

_________________________ Dean: @akshi8278 @laycblack @thoughts-and-funnies @mrsjenniferwinchester @crustycheeks @kazsrm67 @sexyvixen7 @lyarr24 @suckitands33  @eliwinchester99 @yvonneeeee @igotmajordaddyissues @djs8891 @leigh70 @globetrotter28 @backseat-of-deans-67chevy

SPN: @hobby27

#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x you #dean x reader #dean x y/n #dean x you #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester fanfiction #spn reader insert #spn fanfiction #dean winchester x #dean x #spn #supernatural imagine #dean supernatural #supernatural #dean fluff #spn imagine #supernatural fanfiction

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: parrotfish

Which fish hangs out on a mermaid pirate's shoulder and repeats what she says in a high-pitched voice? The parrotfish, of course. Or at least in fiction they should (certainly will in my D&D world). But even in real life, parrotfish are still pretty interesting.

(Image: a common parrotfish (Scarus psittacus) seen from the side in front of rocks and corals. It is a brightly-colored fish, mainly light blue but with patches and stripes of yellow and pink on the fins. Its mouth is open, revealing what appears to be a beak. End ID)

Parrotfish are fish famous for their mouths and eating habits. There are about 90 species known. While they were historically considered their own taxonomic family, they have since been reclassified a subset of the wrasse family and there is still some debate on how to classify them. Most species are on the smaller size, but a few can get very large. The largest species is the green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) at 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) and 75 kg (165 lbs) while the smallest species is the bluelip parrotfish (Cryptotomus roseus) reaching 13 cm (5 in). I could not find an average weight for the bluelips. What makes parrotfish really stand out visually is their colors and their mouths. Most species are very brightly colored, with distinct markings and males are usually more brightly colored than females. Their mouths are dominated by what appear to be beaks, which gave them their common name. These beaks are actually made of approximately 1,000 teeth arranged in 15 rows. As the teeth wear out, they drop off and are replaced by the row behind them. The teeth are made of fluorapatite, the second hardest biomineral int the world. To support their hardness, the fluorapatite crystals that make up the teeth are woven together in a structure very similar to chainmail, resulting in very hard teeth that measure in at a 5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. For reference, iron is a 4 and higher numbers are harder. The teeth can also handle 530 tons of pressure. You could put the weight of 200 black rhinos on a tooth and it would be fine. The beaks are powerful enough to bite through rock. Which is what they use it for, but more on that below. Another unusual feature of parrotfish is how they sleep. Some species make their own sleeping bags, which would be adorable if they weren't made of mucus. The mucus is produced using glands in the gills and looks like a transparent bubble. The fish sleeps in the mucus cocoon and when it wakes up, it eats the cocoon. There have been several proposed benefits of the cocoon. It contains chemicals that harm skin parasites while also providing a barrier that keeps new parasites from reaching the fish. It also likely blocks the fish's scent, helping it hide from predators.

(Image: a green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) swimming over yellow coral. It is large and mostly a uniform green color, except for the front of its head, which is pink. It has a large, fleshy lump on the top of its head. End ID)

(Image: a close-up of a parrotfish's beak. The top and bottom beaks are divided into two halves, left and right. The beak is bade of small, circular teeth that overlap each other. End ID)

(Image: another common parrotfish seen from the front. It is inside of a mucus cocoon, which appears as a transparent bubble around the fish. Bits of sand dot the cocoon's surface. End ID)

Parrotfish live worldwide, though the majority of species are found in the Indo-Pacific. They live in warm, shallow waters with lots of rocky reefs, especially coral reefs. They use those powerful teeth to eat and what they eat most is algae. There are three main types of feeding behavior: excavating, scraping, and browsing. Excavators bite into rocks to get their food, scrapers crape food off of the surface of the rocks, and browsers go after larger food sources like seagrass and sponges. Some of the larger parrotfish species also make coral a large part of their diet. When they eat, they naturally get rock in their mouths, moreso in excavators. Because their food clings to the rock, spitting the rocks out would deny them food. Instead, parrotfish use pharyngeal teeth set in their throats to grind the rock into sand, which then passes through the digestive tract. When it exists the digestive tract, it is in the form of fine grains of rock. Or to put it another way, parrotfish eat rock and poop sand. A single parrotfish can produce up to 40 kg (88lbs) of sand yearly, and bigger species can produce even more than that. The process of rock being broken down by living things is called bioerosion and parrotfish are one of the most famous sources of bioerosion. The sand they produce can serve as the basis for new growth of coral or other species and helps reinforce nearby islands. In places like Hawai'i, the Caribbean, and the Maldives, it's estimated that up to 80% of the famous white sand is produced by parrotfish and they serve as a major source of incoming earth to support the islands. This makes parrotfish ecosystem engineers. Their eating of algae is also majorly important to their ecosystems. Algae can overgrow and smother delicate ecosystems like coral reefs and seagrass beds and decaying algae draws oxygen out of the water. Parrotfish help the health of their environments by keeping the algae population at healthy levels. Parrotfish also eat seaweeds and sponges that grow much faster than coral and can smother coral reefs. Parrotfish are considered keystone species in many reefs, including the great barrier reef and their population dropping correlates with reduced health of reefs. Damaged reefs tent to have larger parrotfish populations and those populations drop as the reef recovers.

(Image: a group of many parrotfish feeding on coral. They are all the same species and are mostly blue, with yellow heads and stripes on the face. They appear to be biting the the coral. End ID)

Parrotfish are protogynous sequential hermaprodites. This means that all parrotfish are born female and can become male later in life. The transition is usually triggered when there are too many females or not enough males in a location, though in some species any fish that reaches a certain size will become male. Some parrotfish are solitary while others are social. In social species, the social groups consist of a large male and a harem of females that he protects and claims mating rights with. Other males will attempt to fight the male for dominance via headbutting and threat displays and occasionally one of his harem members will become male to challenge him. Males are usually more colorful than females, which they use to woo females, but also puts them at greater risk of predation. If the harem leader dies and is not replaces, one member of the harem will transition to male and replace him. Many species perform courtship dances during nights of the full moon. In non-social species, males will perform displays and fight with each other to attract females. In social species, the dominant male will mate with his harem while smaller males without harems will try to sneakily woo claimed females or sneak in and mate without being noticed. Parrotfish are broadcast spawners. The female releases her eggs into the water and the males releases sperm to fertilize them. The eggs will drift on the current until settling, after which the larvae will hatch. As with most fish species, only a very few of the larvae will reach adulthood.

(Image: a Mediterranean parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense). It is mostly bright red, but with a yellow patch above the tail and a yellow stripe around the eye that runs down to the belly. A large patch behind the eye is blue. End ID)

Thankfully, most parrotfish species are not particularly endangered. The largest threat to them comes from habitat loss as pollution and climate change harms coral reefs. Reintroducing parrotfish to damaged reefs helps them recover. All species are edible, though there is no commercial fishery for them. While parrotfish are capable of delivering powerful bites, there are few reports of humans getting bit. That being said, I found one case where someone had skin on his penis bitten off by a parrotfish. And yes, that link has pictures. Enjoy.

(Image: a blue parrotfish (Scarus coeruleus) looking at the camera. It is a blue fish with darker patches around the eye. Its snout is bulbous and the beak points downward. End ID).

#wet beast wednesday #parrotfish #the smiling grinner #fish #fishblr #fishposting #marine biology #biology #zoology #ecology #animal facts #coral reef #penile trauma #that's a wild tag to have on a post about fish #informative #image described

[weasleyreidstyles]

Serendipity Headcannons; Mattheo Riddle

series masterlist

A glimpse into our main boy's life leading up to sixth year (where Serendipity kicks off) – eventually going to do them for each character (the ones who are a constant in the series), except meadow since that's more reader-centric but let me know who i should do next (this is me putting off writing chapter 17 because its making me want to rip out my hair)

It actually ended up being so long (i got carried away) that i'll have to do a separate post for the nsfw😏 hcs that i also wrote down - if that's something that people want to see of course

warning(s): cannonical violence, mentions of parental death, menions of torture and abuse (tried to make this as mild as possible), allusions to self harm (literally one bullet point), mentions of blood supremacy/cannonical pureblood madness, mentions of alcohol consumption/drug use, mentions of being sick (sorry fellow emetaphobes), allusions to an ED

Obviously he's Voldemort's son (its a known fact; when his name was called shortly after Harry's during the Sorting Ceremony, people immediately began to fear him for his last name – avoided him in corridors and older students were horrible to him)

His mother died when he was born, so he never got to meet her. But she had loved Tom Riddle with all her heart, despite knowing what kind of person he was (I like the tom hughes fancast for an older version of him – TikTok editors have me influenced)

When he failed to kill baby Harry, Theodore Nott's mum took it upon herself to care for Mattheo (who was only several months older than Harry at the time) – she was close friends with Matt's mum

They may not be related by blood, but Matt considers Theo to be his brother as well as his best friend

Mattheo's childhood (up until he was eight) was relatively acquiescent, but obviously being the heir to the Dark Lord comes with its own traumas – he was plagued with nightmares he swears were real conversations with his father

When Theo's mum died, his father wasn't the nicest to either of the boys; they both grew to resent him – the man either ignored them, shouted at them or beat them senselessly (to build character)

They had a Governess in the years after Theo's mum died, so that they'd be well ahead of their peers once they got to Hogwarts - also a way to keep them out of Theo Nott Senior's way

During his sorting, the hat immediately placed him in Slytherin, but it wasn't as quick to choose, like it was with Draco or Blaise.

Harry had unconsciously made him public enemy number one when he found out who he was (I mean his dad did kill Harry's parents so) as well as Draco and co

Mattheo doesn't believe in the blood supremacy that is spouted around pureblood families – has never used 'mudblood' to insult anyone (draco take notes fr) – but thats only due to theo's mother and the way she raised her boys – also it would be so hypocritical because he's a halfblood (i think, idk the twisted lore of purebloods too deeply)

Professor Quirrell took a particular interest towards Mattheo (his dad was literally playing house on the back of the guys head)

He found out that Quirrell was Voldemort (?) pretty quickly when the Dark Mark was burned onto his left forearm – something that continuously happened in his nightmares so he thought he was in one when it happened

Partly why he didn't say anything – he was also weary that no one would believe him

He tried everything to get it off his skin – burning, scratching, spelling, even carving it out, but nothing worked. The Dark Mark was engraved onto his arm like it had buried itself within the very cell structure of his skin

He didn't gain as much attention as Harry did in first year. He went practically under the rader after the first couple of months, only interacting with his small group of friends (Theo, Draco, Blaise, Enzo and Pansy) and competing for the top academic spot in class – when Theo's father found out that both boys were being beaten for first place by a muggleborn (go Hermione!), he used the cruciatus curse on both of them - moreso on Theo :(

Second year was a completely different story however

When the Chamber of Secrets opened, people whispered that he could be the heir of Slytherin (because his father is literally Voldemort so technically they weren't wrong) and he didn't go as unnoticed as before

He developed a thick skin towards the insults and returned them with steely looks that sent people scurrying the other way

He began physically fighting some people when his restraint snapped at times though – he didn't have a way to relieve the tension from all the agression at this point

The only people who spoke to him with no fear were his friends

When the first student was petrified, he was brought into Dumbledore's office for questioning

During the dueling session, he watched in awe as Harry spoke to the snake but didn't dare say a word

He was the only one in his group that didn't bad mouth Harry at this time or call him the 'heir of Slytherin'

He's actually really smart (not at Ancient Runes though lol) and is among one of Professor Flitwick's favourite students

When Harry and Ron posed as Crabbe and Goyle you (Meadow) had posed as Pansy and he had thought it was strange to see her with the two of them, but she had a small crush on Draco in first and second year so he brushed it off as her trying to impress his friend

But he knew it wasn't her when Draco had mentioned Hermione (calling her a mudblood) and 'Pansy' had gone deathly still

He's been skilled at Occlimency for as long as he can remember, as has Theo. But Mattheo has a certain affinity (he calls it a curse) for hearing people thoughts without even uttering the spell – also why he's so good at preventing people like Dumbledore from using it on him

Wasn't aware of his father's diary being used to lure Harry to the Chamber of Secrets, but at one point he heard the whispers in the pipes and vehemently ignored it until it eventually stopped (big mistake, cus voldy holds grudges very well)

Once Ginny was rescued from the Chamber, he felt incredibly guilty even though he literally had no control of the situation – sent her an 'anonymous' gift basket as an apology (he knew it would never make up for what happened to her, but he hoped it would at least make her smile) – it did, she thought it was a gift from dumbledore though

One of the only times he was even a little kind to the Golden Trio and their friends

The summer after second year was hellish for him and Theo

The basilisk was obviously meant to kill Harry so Theo Nott Senior was angry that his master's big plan had failed (2 years running🤝)

Third year was more mild than the last (thank God, honestly)

Mattheo had made it onto the quidditch team now that half of them had left the year before

He's a beater and proud of it – lets out all that pent up agression on the field, which makes him one of the best in his house (dare i say whole school🤭)

Quidditch became his whole personality basically (he's a teenage boy duh – it's like the football obsessed idiots in the pub levels) and he came to love the attention it brought him – he was starting to be noticed by girls outside Slytherin and making enemies with the rival players

He decided then that he wanted to play quidditch professionally in the future – he would not be caught dead behind a desk in the Ministry (they probably wouldn't hire hom anyway, simply because he's a Riddle)

Because he was on the team, he was invited to more parties which he also enjoyed – the man can drink!

But he wasn't one to jump around like a madman like some people he saw at the parties. He and his friends (those on the team – Theo, Blaise and Draco) would sit around the sofas and play drinking games with others who were sat down – including you and some of your housemates at times – but never the Gryffindors

Sirius Black was on the loose which took the pressure of being Tom Riddle's son off his shoulders somewhat – no one actually dared to fuck with Mattheo now that he was a beater either

Buckbeak took a liking to him, surprisingly, as did the thestrals that only he, Theo and so few others could see

The dementors affected him as much as they affected Harry – he could hear his own mother's cries

During the boggart lesson, he was apprehensive of what he would see – would he see what he sees in his most horrifying nightmares? Or would it be something as trivial as a grindilow or something?

Safe to say he was glad that Professor Lupin stopped the lesson after Harry's turned into the dementor

Speaking of dementors, one of the only spells he cannot cast is the Patronus Charm – even his happiest memories are not strong enough to envoke the magic

People thought he helped Sirius into the castle at one point (absurd, i know)

He and Harry got into some arguments at times – Mattheo liked to provoke him for the fun of it, mostly so that competition on the quidditch field was filled with extra tension, but also because Harry and Ron are dickheads who like to talk shit about him and his friends (hypocrites because the Slytherins literally do the same thing lol)

This is the point where you're on his radar a bit more frequently – you, Ron and Hermione went to Hogsmeade a lot and were frequently in the same places as Mattheo and his friends

He does not like you at all, partly for the fact that you follow Harry and Dumbledore so blindly but also – you are one of the reasons he and theo get so much stick at home, along with hermione being top of the class, you are as well so he grows to resent you a little

He's always there when you're yelling at anyone who says something against your friends (usually Crabbe or Goyle – our mortal enemies fr)

When Sirius escaped the dementors people genuinely thought he helped (again, absurd i know)

Moving onto fourth year...he went to the Quidditch World Cup with Theo and Nott Senior disappeared after the match ended and festivities began

We all know what happened but when the Dark Mark appeared in the sky, Theo, Draco and Mattheo all looked at it in absolute horror, having heard the harrowing stories first hand from their families

Mattheo had a panic attack at the thought of his father returning – after the run in with him in first year, he's been certain that Voldemort isn't really dead, and this confirms it for him (because why the fuck would his father's mark appear out of nowhere?)

Because of that, the school year is off to a great start

He gets into fights left, right and centre – especially since quidditch has been cancelled in favour of hosting the Triwizard Tournament (i've obviously aged up the characters but lets pretend the age limit still exists in some capacity)

The Durmstrang students practically worshipped the ground he walked on – which was ego boosting to start with, but Mattheo quickly grew irritated by their constant infatuation with him – especially Karkaroff who always compared him to the great Tom Riddle or the 'Dark Lord' interchangeably

Whenever Professor Moody stared at him for too long, he got an odd sensation on his left forearm, where the mark sits, like spiders were scurrying and crawling around – he decides after the very first DADA lesson (unforgivable curses) that he did not like this professor.

There was just something off about him, but Mattheo couldn't quite figure out what – foolishly tried Occlimency but obviously it didn't work on the most infamous auror

Wasn't even surprised when Harry's name came out of the Goblet – he is coined 'Saint Potter' by the friendgroup (started of course by Draco)

He and Theo snuck out to the forbidden forest to see the dragons up close before the first task – almost got caught by Charlie Weasley, had Hagrid and Harry not showed up with Madame Maxine mere moments before he could spot them

He took a random girl from Beauxbatons to the Yule Ball because he did not want to deal with the hassle of Hogwarts gossip – but everyone gossiped about it anyway (busybodies)

Rumours went around about the two of them (you know like how Snape caught two people in the carriage🤭)

At this point, you were just his arch nemesis' best friend so you were not fully on his radar past sneering comments and jibes, but a small part of him can admit that you looked beautiful in your glittering dress (think Feyre starfall dress vibes)

The rest of the year went by uneventfully – he got on with his school work and remained one of the top of class except in Ancient Runes which theo tried to tutor him in....unsuccessfully

In the months leading up to the third task, Mattheo noticed Moody's skittish behaviour (also Karkaroff and weirdly...Snape) especially after Crouch was found murdered in the Forbidden Forest after the second task

On the day of the first task, he had the worst gut feeling he's ever felt – bigger than the day he found out that his surrogate mother had died

Sitting in the stands with his friends, near the back of the stadium, his arm begins to burn so painfully that he has to fight physically crying out at the crippling pain (Voldemort just got resurrected as a noseless alien)

Excuses himself to his friends' utter confusion and concern – Theo stops Pansy from running after him, letting him have space, somehow just knowing what Matt's sudden departure meant (he saw Mattheo cradle his left arm while he walked away)

Just before Mattheo walks through the exit, Harry apparates back with the trophy (portkey) and Cedric's dead body beneath him screaming that "Voldemort's back!"

He couldn't hold back the contents of his stomach at the statement because he knew it was true. He just knew it deep in his bones.

He had to hide behind the bleachers of the quidditch pitch while everyone was stampeding to leave, where he just sobbed and sobbed because he knew then what his future would be.

Theo found him an hour later and together they mourned for the future Mattheo had desperately always wanted

That summer was the worst he's ever experienced to date.

He met this snake-like version of his father, his only other memories being of a handsome man (Tom Hughes vibes) not whatever this thing was.

His father thanked Theo Nott Senior personally for taking such good care of his heir – this was such an ego boost for that horrid man

Mattheo was tortured into the perfect soldier that summer – tasked with training other Slytherins/purebloods into the regime

Its not very discernable but if his hands are still for long enough, they begin to shake unconsciously due to just how many times Voldemort used the cruciatus curse on him

His nightmares had become a reality that summer – he no longer slept, and only ate when Draco had to force him to

There was one silver lining at least

No one believed Harry Potter.

So Voldemort's army grew exponentially in secret, as did their knowledge of certain prophecies

We know that Professor Trelawney had the vision but Voldemort has a seer of his own – who made him aware of the order being in possession of a siphon but not able to say who it is (its meadow of course🤪🤪🤪)

His fifth year marked the start of the war, even if the otherside didn't know it just yet

At school, Harry started many explosive arguments with him, that he admittedly fed into a little bit out of pure amusement

His stoic facade was ever present this year. Not an expression painted his handsome face in the public eye. Rarely did anyone catch a glimmer of joy in those onyx eyes.

It was around this time, when he discovered that Harry was being taught Occlimency that you were doing some studying of your own

He heard the soft whisper of your thoughts in his head – a pleasant sound – mumbling little bits and pieces about the art, as if you were revising them over and over like a broken record

He knew you were Theo's patrol partner because Theo would not stop complaining about having to deal with one of Saint Potter's loyal followers (the two of you did not speak for 5 whole patrol sessions – lets say between September and November)

Thats when the idea sprang

Admittedly it started out as a way to satisfy his curiosity

He wanted to know why you were learning Occlimency and actually doing surprisingly well, despite not having someone to actively practice it on/with you, while Potter was not taking it seriously at all

So he asked Theo to try and befriend you – when asked why, he explained that he was curious and wanted to know if he hunch he had was right – his gut feelings are almost never wrong

Theo begins his task of slowly befriending you and relaying anything remotely important to Mattheo – no progress at first, until the two of you happen to bond over your hatred for the new DADA professor

He joins the Inquisitorial Squad because Theo's father wanted him to, and by extension said that the Dark Lord wanted his son to set an example too (lets not forget, in his prime Tom was literally the smartest in the school – was definitely head boy as well as an academic weapon)

This is how he finds out what Umbridge's detentions truly entailed

Speaking of Umbridge (she deserves her own tw actually), she had shown particular favouritism towards Mattheo and his friends, to anyone who was against Harry, really – never gave them detentions and let them off easily, even defended Mattheo's honour against Harry's 'heinous' accusations

But back to the detentions – both he and Theo found out about the blood quill around the same time

He was waiting for Theo to finish patrols so they could go smoke in the Astronomy Tower, when he overheard Umbridge talking to the two of you

Well actually she was talking to you – because apparently it was now against the rules for prefects to walk around past curfew (even though thats their literal role?) and she gave you a detention for it

When you asked why in Merlin's name Theo wasn't being treated the same, she said it's because he's on the Inquisitorial Squad and was therefore exempt from her detentions

You had detention the next day and did not show up to your next few patrols, but Mattheo saw the hints of a glamour covering your non-dominant hand (he would know because he's had a glamour over his scarred forearm for years)

Theo told him that you refused to admit that something was wrong - you hadn't even told your friends about whatever was bothering you

They found out by chance – a first year that had gotten lost was cradling their hand and the boys saw the words of the boy's own scrawl etched harshly into the flesh of his hand

When Matt was observing you in the library one day (happenstance, he's not a stalker lol), he was deducing how far along you were with Occlimency but found that you winced and held your head when he actively tried to enter your mind – not good for how long you'd been teaching yourself the art

So he gets Theo to talk to you mentally and the first time it happens is actually comical – you drop the contents of your potions incredients onto the floor out of shock before you whack Theo across the head with your hardbacked potions textbook

That's really how the two of you became friends, your friendship with Pansy following soon after

Now you're slowly building up the tolerance for Occlimency with a little help from a friend

Leading up to Christmas, the mark burns wickedly against his skin at all hours of the day

Then Arthur Weasley is attacked and Mattheo is surprised that no Weasley has come to deck him in the face for simply being Voldemort's son

Obviously no one does because everyone (barring you and Hermione) have been swept away to 12 Grimmauld Place

After Christmas he does get decked – George sends a bludger his way that most definitely had the power to break his entire arm (and definitely a few ribs); after the abysmal Christmas break he's had, he's almost tempted to let it happen – but his beater instincts kick in and he's pelting the bludger and all its momentous energy towards one of Gryffindor's chasers instead

His Dark Mark burns every time his father fails to retrieve his and Harry's prophecy

He begins to suspect that you are the siphoner when you perform wandless magic like its a second nature during breakfast one morning (you're using your magic to flip through the pages of your book, while you leisurely sip coffee, probably awaiting Granger's arrival)

His suspicions are more than confirmed when your magic seems to literally pulse like your pulling more of it from the air – it's almost indiscernible, but if he paid attention, he could see the symphonic ripple of your magic and the Great Hall's magic mingling in the air (and he knows Dumbledore can see it too)

He explains this to Theo without telling him so much that'll get him involved with what knowing this will mean for his brother

He passes all his O.W.Ls with a plethora Outstanding and Exceeds Expectations grades, except for Ancient Runes where he gets a mere Acceptable (which somehow still allows him to retake the class in his N.E.W.Ts options, funnily enough)

What's not funny is Voldemort's reaction to this anomaly of a result :(

Lets rewind to june 18th (aka battle of department of mysteries; RIP Sirius Black you icon, you legend)

The DA have just been busted (like two weeks/a week prior to the date above) and you're all in detention writing out the line "I must not disobey the Ministry" over and over again – to the point where it has become a permanent scar that you see everyday

Exams are happening and Harry has just been delivered a vision by Voldemort (he just passed out in a DADA exam🫣)

Saint Potter and his band of followers try to break into Umbrige's office and fail exponentially

The Inquisitorial Squad catch you all in the act of guarding the corridor outside her office while Harry, Ron and Hermione try and contact Sirius

You're all trapped in the office and everyone (including the Inquisitorial Squad) is shocked when she goes to cast the cruciatus on Potter – internally Matt is cringing and fighting the instinctive flinch

"You can't do that! It's illegal!" Your defence of harry is ignored as Umbridge puts Fudge picture face down – Matt swears your eyes burn a violent indigo, but it's gone in a blink

Hermione and Harry end up taking her to where 'Dumbledore's secret weapon' is and you lot are now all stuck with the Inquisitorial Squad

Theo actually only holds you loosely, and he's the same with Ginny – not forcefully holding her, but also not allowing her to break free at the same time

Crabbe and Goyle take Ron's bate and eat the Puking Pastilles from the Weasley twins' personal collection and you all escape

Then the battle eventually takes place and everyone knows that Voldemort truly has returned

Now onto the current timeline of Serendipity!!

Mattheo decides over summer that he wants to help the otherside desperately

Especially because Draco is now a Death Eater

And Enzo and Theo are set to become Death Eaters the following Christmas – punishment for what happened during the battle in June

Proposes the idea that he teach you Occlimency in exchange for you helping them get out – the group agrees and Theo and Pansy set out to persude you to help

Roll on the Serendipity plot where he slowly begins to actually care about you (scary feelings; unknown territory)

He's never felt this strongly about someone before, not in the way he feels about you

At first he enjoyed how infuriated you became with him; he also despised how many questions you would ask (but that was your nature and he grew accustomed to it)

You're the only one whose ever called him Théo, after the death of Theo's mother, the name was as good as dead to him, until you started calling him it – he never wanted you to stop

The feelings you invoke in him are what finally allow him to produce a full patronus – when the majestic form of a Hippogriff bursts from the tip of his wand, swirling and spiralling at the thought of you, he let out a genuine laugh

He's so soft for you – his persona changes in the blink of an eye at times – from cruel and brooding to gentle and compassionate

His friends have never seen him happier – admittedly were surprised to learn of your relationship, but when they watched the way the two of you interacted after you'd become a pariah to your old friends, they understood.

Mattheo is so protective of all his friends, and somehow he's even more protective of you – he had wanted to incinerate Harry and Ron on the spot for how they'd made you feel, but knew you would never forgive him for it, despite how badly they'd hurt you

He'd burn the world down if it meant you'd be safe, especially because you had the one power that his father desired to have in his ever growing arsenal

Mattheo always has to be touching you in some way (he's a physical touch kind of guy), whether that be a hand on your thigh when you're seated; an arm wrapped around you as you walk; interlocking pinkies, etc. He just loves feeling you near him.

You're such a typical Slytherin/Ravenclaw couple – your intellect amazing him all the time, and he's no longer miffed that you always beat him for a spot at the top in class – his ambitions and adamant loyalty are something that you admire dearly, and hold close to your heart

You both know without having to voice it that your love is unconditional and eternal. Its a love as rare as your magic.

~∞~

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@whatsupb18

#serendipity series #mattheo riddle x reader #mattheo riddle #mattheo riddle smut #mattheo riddle x you #headcannons #angst #fluff #flangst #slytherin boys #slytherin x ravenclaw

[witchy-scribblings]

the seasons wait for no one

rengoku kyojuro x reader

synopsis ➳ rengoku kyojuro comes from a long line of skilled blacksmiths. hardworking and talented as he is, it's no wonder he finds an employer at the early age of 20. he's proud of how far he's come, he thought this was everything he had wished for. so what is this foreign longing?

warnings ➳ blacksmith au, slight angst, misunderstandings, smut, (loads of) dirty talk, oral (f. receiving), fingering, squirting, vaginal sex, creampie, pussydrunk kyo and cockdrunk reader (hehe), lowercase, mdni!

wordcount ➳ 10.2k

[crossposted on ao3]

he should be feeling grateful for the opportunities that life had brought his way.

don’t get him wrong. kyojuro will be eternally thankful for his father’s teachings, for being well off enough to have the privilege of moving to the capital as soon as he turned 20 and for being given the one-in-a-lifetime chance to work as the blacksmith of one of the noblest families in the region. he knew, in a humble way, that he was hardworking and ambitious, and that those qualities had played an immense role in getting him to where he currently was in life, but he also acknowledged that luck had done its part as well, and he did not take it for granted.

the governor had been kind enough, and if he had been condescending (which he had), the young blacksmith had not taken it to heart. it had been a couple of servants who had given him the tour of his new home, including his workspace which, he had soon found out, was a small, stone shed equipped with a forge, anvil, slack tub and tools, a crafting bench, a wooden table that creaked when he put his bags on it and a bed with a firm mattress and sheets that could definitely use a dusting. the windows were small and let little light in, but the structure was sound and the space overall gave off a cozy ambience than he immediately grew to appreciate.

apparently, their previous blacksmith - a man who went by haganezuka - had been forced to step down from his duties prematurely due to a severe injury, but not without first leaving word of his old acquaintance, rengoku shinjuro, and his family’s historical skill on the anvil. as a recommendation to the governor. 

that was how kyojuro had been introduced to his first official job as a smith, and the young man had been downright ecstatic. he was so grateful for the opportunity to make use of his skill, truly.

and yet…

“do you accept commissions?”

you had waited for him to slide the piece of hot metal into the slack tub to make your presence known, and even then it had taken kyojuro a couple of seconds to process your voice. after making sure his hands were free of his current project, he turned to face the door to “his” shed (it didn’t belong to him, by any means, but he did spend most of his time within those sweltering walls) and came to see you, for the first time. you were unfamiliar to him, but kyojuro had gathered enough about the household of his new home to immediately come to the realisation of who was standing just outside his space.

“oh! of course, ma’am. it’s what i do!”

the eldest child of his first employer looked just as he had been described by the servants. you seemed to be a little older than him or, at least, carried yourself with an air of maturity unfamiliar to most people in their early twenties. prim and proper, you stood just outside the threshold, seemingly apprehensive of the suffocating heat that radiated off the smithy.

kyojuro had found out that, the day of his arrival to the manor, you had been away on a visit to a close cousin with your younger sister, so he hadn’t had the chance to introduce himself to either of you; though, he wondered if it mattered, since the rest of the noble family that he had actually already met had spared him just enough time to give him tasks and projects to occupy himself with, to make himself useful. nothing more, nothing less.

but the smile that slowly curled your lips clued him in that maybe, just maybe, you were different than your father and youngest brother.

“wonderful. i would like to request a ring from you.” and the details of the design you had in mind flew over his head because he could only think about how your voice held a gentleness that he couldn’t help but find attractive. that, and the fact that he had only been in your residence for a little over two weeks and he hadn’t had the time to formally get familiar with the crafting bench. his skill had always revolved around objects that were to be used, not admired, and even though he was no novice when it came to making simple ornaments, it was something he’d still need to dedicate some studying to.

the notion of a challenge pumped up the blood in his veins. so much so that he didn’t realize that you were still talking when he accepted your request.

“leave it to me, ma’am! i won’t disappoint you!” if you were annoyed by either being cut off or his booming voice, you didn’t show it. instead, you offered a nod and an amicable smile.

“i will leave it in your capable hands then, mr. rengoku. oh, and i don’t expect you’ll have it finished by the end of this week, since your workload seems large enough already. just notify me when it is done.” 

and with that, you left him alone to dwell in the heat and his thoughts. he realized, sheepishly, that he would need to seek you out and go over the details one more time. the idea of spending more time with you, he was surprised to admit that not only didn’t bother him, but he actively looked forward to it. he thought he wanted to bask in your confident presence again, to hear your melodious voice and unravel expressions other than that serene smile on your face.

it felt like a dangerous thing to long for. kyojuro was grateful for how his life had turned out up until then, and yet why did it suddenly feel like his success came hand in hand with a burden?

-----------------------

the ring was finished within the next two days, because no matter how much work he had on his shoulders, kyojuro had felt the unshakeable need to prioritize your little project. 

the very evening of the day he had met you, he had ventured into the estate and requested your whereabouts to the servants doing some last hour clean-up. he had been directed towards the library where, as he had learned, you liked to spend your evenings before your curfew. you had looked surprised by his sudden presence, greeting him by his family name in a curious manner (and as proud as he was to be a rengoku, he couldn’t help but feel his last name sounded wrong coming from you), and when he had asked for another run on the specifics of the ring, you hadn’t chastised him. no, you had regarded him with an amused semblance and patiently repeated your request for him, and this time, he went back to the smithy with the clearest idea in his head. 

that, and the lingering sensation of your hands on his when he had asked to take the measurements of your digits. for the project, of course, and despite his professionalism, he had subconsciously taken note of every little detail: how your hands were tiny compared to his, soft and delicate against the callouses of his fingers, how they seemed colder than his (but he knew that was on him; he had always run hotter than the average), and how they never trembled upon his chaste touch, because you knew the hold he had on your hands didn’t mean anything. you knew, and he should, too. 

sleep evaded him that night, for the first time in weeks, and he decided to start working in hopes of ridding his headspace of the conflicting feelings.

and diving into his work had done wonders, until he finally held the results of his efforts and was faced with the reality that he’d see you again shortly. the thought filled him with a concerning amount of excitement. the ring was minuscule in his large palm, and despite not being as skilled in craftsmanship as he was in smithship, he was proud of the way it had turned out. the scarce morning light that filtered through the small window gave it a serene gleam that, he thought, suited you to perfection.

kyojuro had thought that perhaps he should let some servants know that your commission was finished, but a big part of him wanted to be the first person to see your reaction, so he placed the ring snug against the cushioned insides of a small wooden box and resolutely decided that he’d be the one to deliver both, the news and the ring, to you. 

he had made sure to get ready to visit your abode, had made himself look (and smell) presentable, but he knew as soon as he stepped out of the shed that he would not need to make the walk towards the imposing estate, because there you were.

the stone shed had been built in a secluded, relatively remote area from the main building, and surrounded by a forest of Japanese maples that, at this time of the year, displayed the most vivid of their appearance, casting a warm spell as sunlight filtered through the red leaves. the most impressive one grew a few feet from the smithy, a large specimen that threw ample shade and offered a leaf-covered clearing that he had been tempted to nap on several times since his arrival. only this time, it was already occupied by the same person he had set out to seek.

“good morning, mr. rengoku.” you greeted him as soon as the crunchy footsteps began to approach you, but your gaze never left the book that rested on your lap. he was certain you missed the way his wide eyes ran over your figure, sitting up against the rough bark of the tree, your hair kept out of the way with a simple hairpin and body covered comfortably in a warm-looking yukata. he would have dwelled in the thought that it felt almost wrong to see a high-standing lady such as yourself sitting on the ground if you didn’t look so breathtaking in the simplicity of it.

“good morning, ma’am!” he returned in his usual loud voice, bowing deeply. the box sat heavy in his hand as he revealed it to you. “i finished your commission, i hope the ring is to your liking.” he reveled in the look of mild shock on your face, like you hadn’t expected him to finish his project in so little time.

he felt an unfamiliar unease as he handed the box to you, and it remained while you opened it and inspected its contents, waiting with anticipation for you to reveal your verdict of his hard work. wordlessly, you plucked the ring from its place on the box and turned it in your lifted hand, letting the soft red orange glow of the forest hit it from different angles.

“it is fine work,” you finally spoke, and kyojuro caught himself from sagging with visible relief, keeping his confident stance. “if a little rough around the edges, but i can tell you put your soul into making it. just as expected from our smith.”

“thank you, ma’am!” his answer was sincere, but automatic, really; the flame-haired man feared to think of why the sight of you sliding the ring onto your finger, and seeing it fit perfectly, brought what felt like a swarm of butterflies to his stomach. he knew the ring didn’t have any special meaning to you, but a weirdly possessive part of him enjoyed seeing you wear a piece that he had made himself.

for what felt like the umpteenth time in the last couple of days, he forced himself to stop that train of thought. he really needed to stop entertaining this sudden infatuation. because it was, sudden and improper and so, so very wrong.

“i hope you won’t mind that i keep commissioning from you in the future.”

he was scared of how much the idea excited him.

“it’d be my pleasure, ma’am!”

-----------------------

the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. the autumn season had come and gone without anything of significance to write home about, but kyojuro was the kind of man to find wonder in every little thing that life had to offer. he would draft letters for his family regularly, in his free time, which slowly became less and less as the head of the estate steadily added onto his workload, but he never complained. if anything, he was grateful for the opportunity to hone his skill further, and was pleased to see the visible improvement on every project he completed.

being the extroverted person he was, kyojuro was quick to get along with most of the house workers, soon becoming an esteemed member of their humble circle. he was never late for meals, and the cooks had learned to double the rations since the arrival of the blacksmith, knowing the man to polish whatever amount of food was served to him. and, despite having his own work to tend to, he never hesitated to offer his assistance to the maids, even though they rarely conceded. 

within his second month, kyojuro had received his first visit from haganezuka. he hadn’t known the man personally, only that he was an old friend of his father, and despite the gruff disposition he displayed, he appreciated his company. the previous blacksmith came over every two or so weeks to share a pot of  green tea and, occasionally, mitarashi dango (because kyojuro had learned the pattern of his visits as well as the older man’s favor for the sweet treat, and would request it made “coincidentally” every time haganezuka was to appear). haganezuka claimed that he only visited because he would go insane without nothing of substance to do at home otherwise, but kyojuro had learned that this was the man’s way of admitting he enjoyed his company as well.

his letters were always long and thoughtful, always wishing good health to his parents and dedicating extended descriptions of the passing seasons to his cherished brother senjuro. while the maples still displayed their vibrant red, he would claim fallen leaves to attach to his letters. 

he never wrote about you, as much as he itched to scribble on and on about his growing admiration (crush) for the eldest daughter. he never mentioned the rings and necklaces and bracelets you’d sometimes request of him, nor how much he was improving on making detailed ornaments, because it’d beg the question about his blossoming feelings for you, and that was a question he wasn’t ready to answer even to himself.

he would also, unexpectedly, find himself spending more time with you. that spot under the maple tree happened to be one of your favorite places in the lands that your father owned. he’d find you there sometimes, when he stepped outside of the smithy to catch a break from the pounding heat of the hearth, always sitting proper, immersed in a different book each time, while he stood by covered in soot and reeking of sweat, but you never seemed offended by his rough appearance when you asked for his company.

you had told him about your evident love for reading, your preferred genres, your routine, your favorite foods and had confided in him that you loved the deep, meaningful conversations you shared with your mother and dreaded always hearing your father express how he deemed himself above everyone else. you told him about your little sister and how she wasn’t truly scared of him (he had met the young lady, and despite his friendly introduction, she had been intimidated by his hawkishly wide eyes), and in return you had asked about his family, and that topic alone had caused him to get carried away with facts and anecdotes.

“i love how passionate you are about your loved ones, mr. rengoku.” that had been the first time he had actually flushed in your presence and you reveled in how well red suited his complexion.

he was oddly satisfied, though, because he wasn’t the only one whose emotions were starting to show in the open. the more afternoons he found himself basking in your company, the more you let your true colors shine; he was pleased to learn that that proper lady that had once professionally commissioned his work was actually the easily-excitable and dreamy woman that, he liked to naively think, only really showed herself to him.

in the weeks leading up to the beginning of the winter, he had been tasked with chopping wood for the incoming colder months, so the afternoons that had once been filled with incessant chatter between you and him had morphed into another kind of coexistence that you couldn’t deny enjoying despite missing the conversations you were used to holding with the blacksmith.

you were ashamed to admit that you hadn’t turned the page of your current read in gods know how long, but who could blame you? only a few feet away from the great maple you sat against was a very exerted kyojuro, puffing and grunting as he brought down the ax time and time again, cutting through heavy grains of wood in a way that he almost made look easy. and you knew that he knew that he was distracting you, because through the side-eyed glances you’d occasionally spare his way you’d caught his wide eyes shamelessly staring right back at you and what was, undeniably, a smile on his parted lips.

-----------------------

winter was a slow season. everything felt more lethargic, different in an unpleasant way. the maples had lost all of their vibrant leaves, leaving the ominous structure of curved branches hanging in the air. the thick snow that covered the ground gave kyojuro’s steps a sluggish quality on his daily trips to and from the estate, but the promise of comforting food helped him push through the complicated weather.

there was very little that could discourage optimistic kyojuro, but the loneliness that came with winter was slowly taking a toll on him. his friend haganezuka (who would never admit to being friends) had put his visits on hold until the weather became easier in the spring, and so had you; it was much too cold to spend time in the forest, and although kyojuro would never wish sickness upon you, he missed the time you used to spend with him. he would see you in the manor, sometimes, but he didn’t know if he would be overstepping his employer’s hospitality if he stayed to chat, so he didn’t. 

he always noticed that you were wearing at least one of the pieces you had commissioned over the time, and that weird feeling in his gut would reappear and remain as he made his way back to the shed.

it wasn’t until one of the warmest days that december would allow, when the sun soothed the unforgiving cold if only a smidge, that he got to talk to you again. because you had sought him out. because it had been a sunny day and the snow had been easier to trudge through, and he answered the knocking on the door to the smithy without expecting that it would be you on the other side of it.

“ma’am, you shouldn’t be here.” despite his surprise, he regarded you with a stern expression that he can’t remember having used on you before. and, despite his words, he ushered you into the warmth of his workspace, because it was still too cold outside to just send you back on the way you had come from.

you were quiet while he brought you close to the forge, relief settling in your bones when the heat started to spread through your stiff joints. he looked upset, but the way his beautiful eyes regarded you wasn’t enough to deter you.

“i missed you,” you stated without breaking eye contact, determination in your voice and gaze, and kyojuro desperately tried not to look too much into the unspoken message behind your words. he was so lost in your eyes that he barely saw you stepping closer to him. he wet his drying lips with the tip of his tongue, and it was impossible to miss the way your pupils (did they look larger?) followed the movement of his pink muscle.

“i missed you too, ma’am,” he admitted, all the while trying to step backwards and put some distance between the two of you, because heaven knows his sanity needs the space. “but you can’t risk catching a cold just because you missed me.” and he knew he should sound more chastising, but his voice came out gentle, like a small act of rebellion against his better judgment.

“no, no, you don’t understand,” you stepped forward, trying to close the distance once more, until his lower back was pressed against the old table and his hand held the chair in a vice grip, because your body was so much closer to his than it had ever been, your chest pressing against his, your head craned up in a way that must have been uncomfortable because you were smaller than him. your hand came to hold the one that wasn’t busy nearly splintering the back of the chair he was holding on to for dear life. “i need you so bad, kyojuro.”

you had never called him by his given name before, but now he fully understood why “mr. rengoku” had always sounded so off parting from your lips. a shuddery breath escaped his lips without his permission, and he knew damn well that you had felt it, because he could also feel your own breathy plea right against his lips, and he couldn’t even try to deny the way the sound went straight to his cock, his resolve so close to snapping it was almost painful to hold onto it. but he had to, he couldn’t give in, couldn’t taint you-

“please, kiss me.”

fuck it all-

sharp and rapid knocking shattered the trance you had put each other in as you jumped away from the blacksmith, startled nearly out of your skin. the interruption was so sudden it felt like you had just had freezing water dumped on you.

“mr. rengoku?” you recognized the voice of one of the servants, loud and clear despite being muffled. he sounded agitated. “i can’t find the lady at the estate, is there any chance she’s with you?”

kyojuro didn’t answer immediately, busy regarding you closely. now that the haze was broken, he could see the clarity, the vulnerability in your eyes as you gazed up at him. he didn’t like it, he hated that you had laid your feelings out in the open, that he had almost admitted to reciprocation and, now that you had been forced back into your senses, he couldn’t do it anymore. it was wrong, it wasn’t meant to be, but it hurt so fucking much to have you looking at him with that broken look.

he might as well have rejected you outright.

after another second, he broke eye contact, walking towards the bed and grabbing his haori that he had left there as an extra cover, before walking towards the door. he had the decency to make sure you had composed your semblance before opening the door.

“hey!” optimistic kyojuro had seldom had to fake a smile before. “yeah, she’s with me! she noticed that i left my haori at the mess hall when i went to the estate for lunch earlier. she’s such a thoughtful lady!”

“my lady, it was absurdly reckless of you to come all the way here in these conditions!” the harsh scolding from the older man fell on deaf ears as you walked towards the entrance, not even sparing a look at kyojuro when you shuffled past his towering frame. “let’s go back before the temperature drops further. thank you, mr. rengoku. have a pleasant evening.”

“you too! be careful on the way back!” he hesitated for a second before adding. “please, be mindful of your health from now on, ma’am.”

it hurt more than he’d like to admit, the way you only nodded while blatantly avoiding his searching eyes. he had wanted to, at the very least, make sure you knew that he didn’t disregard your feelings, that even if you thought that he didn’t return them you’d still know that he cared about you.

watching you disappear into the distance with your servant hammered the sinking feeling into his stomach that your relationship would never go back to how it used to be.

and maybe it was for the best.

-----------------------

“i have a problem, haganezuka.”

“don’t we all?”

spring had arrived early and suddenly to the lands of the governor’s estate, melting the snow and giving way to blossoms so stunning they felt like a reward after the merciless winter had finally passed. and what a long season it had been.

if one were to venture further into the maple forest, they’d come across a medium-sized pond that kyojuro had already had the pleasure to become acquaintanced with, especially when he needed a break from his hard work. it was especially beautiful at night, when hidden crickets sing their tunes and fireflies fly with ghastly serenity. it had been months since he last visited, since he had spent most of his time during the freezing season forging and crafting, trying to escape from the cold and his inner turmoil.

it had been so long since he last talked to you too.

he did still see you, during his visits to the manor, but you were still blatantly avoiding him. whatever glimpses of you he did catch were enough to show him that you no longer wore his necklaces, bracelets, rings or hairpins. 

it hurt only slightly less every time he noticed.

the worst part of it was keeping it to himself. he did still engage in conversation with the servants of the main house, and despite being close friends with a few of them, he knew it wouldn’t be wise to speak of the circumstances; he dreaded to think what would happen to either him or you should your father find out. 

he knew it was foolish to write home about it; after all, he had never mentioned you in any of his letters, and he was aware that the improperty of the situation would be frowned upon by his stern father; what cretin son would mess up a perfectly ideal job for a woman he wasn’t even meant to have? besides, the letters he sent were managed by the household staff, and he couldn’t be too careful with the information that could be leaked to his employer.

that is why, when haganezuka visited for the first time in months, kyojuro suggested the secluded pond as their snacking spot for a “change of scenery”, instead of the clearing of the smithy. he knew he could trust the older man with his predicament.

it helped to know that haganezuka rarely initiated conversation with anyone, kyojuro was certain he wouldn’t care enough to snitch.

“i’m in love with the lady.” it was the first time he admitted it out loud, and it felt startling even to himself, but there was not a trace of hesitation in his words. haganezuka seemed more surprised than he thought he would be, because he had stopped munching on the sticky ball that was his favorite treat to slowly side-eye kyojuro with the one functional eye he had.

“...the governor’s wife?”

“heavens, no!” your mother had been as pleasant towards him as you, which ascertained whose values you had inherited, but he wasn’t the kind of man to develop an infatuation towards a taken woman; apparently, though, he was the kind of man to fall for a woman he couldn’t have, regardless. “the eldest daughter.”

“and what do you want me to say to that?” haganezuka deflected gruffly; it was obvious this conversation was way outside of his area of expertise. he continued eating his dango, and it seemed like he wasn’t going to add anything else, until he swallowed. “you didn’t pick the brightest guy to talk about romance, kid.”

“i’m not really looking for advice, i just…” he sighed, trying to gather his thoughts. the cup of tea sat unattended by his side, on the grass. “i almost kissed her.”

“almost? so you didn’t. you have done nothing wrong so far.” kyojuro looked downright embarrassed by the admission that was about to leave his lips.

“i have given into temptation by myself. in numerous occasions. always thinking about her.” haganezuka regarded him with a look that screamed that he really hadn’t needed to be exposed to that information, but kyojuro ignored it. “i’ve dishonored her in thought. i should commit seppuku!”

“you are being ridiculous,” the older blacksmith scoffed, crossing his arms. “everyone’s given into those needs, you think you’re special?” the younger man remained uncharacteristically quiet, and haganezuka heaved an annoyed sigh. “look, if you’re going to keep being a bitch about this, i have contacts. you have a reputation and talent, kid. i can secure you a new job far from here. far from her.”

the water of the pond rippled peacefully in the direction the gentle breeze pushed it, and kyojuro stared, enraptured, lost in thought. the plate with mitarashi dango had long been polished, and despite his fearsome appetite, he couldn’t recall having grabbed a single stick in the time he had spent with the dark-haired man.

“i appreciate the offer,” he conceded, smiling up at his friend. he knew that was the best option. it’s not like he should have entertained any chance at courtship with you, but even now he was certain that there was no future in store for him that involved you. he would move on, and so would you; if he stayed, he’d eventually be forced to witness you be betrothed to another man, and the thought alone had his heart plummeting into his stomach. he knew he should leave and never look back, meet and fall in love with a woman that was actually within his league. “but i don’t think i can easily forget about her.”

haganezuka looked exasperated at this point, and decided to leave the conversation at that. kyojuro didn’t push, and once more became absorbed in his thoughts.

perhaps he just needed more time to overcome it.

-----------------------

it was late march when kyojuro was informed of a long-standing tradition in the governor’s family. apparently, it would soon be one of the yearly two weeks when half the servants were granted what could remotely be considered a “vacation”, taking place during the birthday week of the head of the estate. the staff would generally use this time to visit their families and enjoy some well-deserved rest; the other half of the staff was ordered to stay and supervise the lands while the governor and his family visited his childhood home in the next town over and spent a week of festivities with relatives, close and distant.

because kyojuro had been working under the governor for less than a year, he wasn’t given the option to take this vacation, and instead would have to wait for the one other week of the year when the remaining staff would be allowed their due rest (he was informed it was usually in the summer). it was disappointing (yet expected) to learn that he would have to wait several months still to see his family, but he had known when he had accepted the position that the periods between his visits would be long, so he hadn’t been too upset by the news.

what had been surprising, though, was being told by the head chef that the eldest daughter had had to opt out of the trip because you had been coming up with something for some time and it had culminated in a severe case of hay fever the moment spring had hit in full bloom. the news reminded him of that one conversation you had shared all those months ago about how much you loved flowers (especially sunflowers, and it had instantly become cherished information) but suffering the worst coughing and sneezing fits if exposed to them. his heart squeezed painfully.

he really missed learning every little detail about you.

kyojuro had tried hard not to dwell on thoughts about you, he had tried to de-escalate his high-strung feelings, and for the most part he had been successful (granted, he had his heavy workload to help keep his head out of thoughts that didn’t involve metal and fire), but it was small things like this that made all his progress crumble and his longing return.

the day the noble family had left the estate, it had started to rain cats and dogs. to be fair, this weather had been announcing itself for some time now, but it didn’t make the downpour any less impressive. the muted sound of rain against the roof of the shed was barely audible over the steady banging of his hammer on hot metal. it must have been pretty late into the night, the only source of light inside the smithy coming from the flaming hearth and the oil lamp that kyojuro kept on the nearby table. his eyes burned from being exposed to heat and exhaustion, but he kept them owlishly wide, intensely focused on the project at hand.

everything considered, he couldn’t be blamed for not catching the thumping of dull knocks the first time they came down on the door. and, to his merit, he did hear them the second time, breaking from his state of concentration and into one of disbelief.

who the hell was outside in that weather?

he made sure to secure his project safely before rushing to let whoever it was inside before they died of hypothermia, only to yank the door open and be met with the same pair of eyes that had actively and unforgivingly avoided his own for so many months now.

“ma’am?” he exclaimed, startled, but quickly kicked himself into action and grabbed your wrist, securing a ceiling above your head and slamming the door shut. “what the hell are you doing here?” and for the first time since he had met her, the words that came out of his mouth weren’t laced with gentleness and joy, but instead very palpable exasperation. “you are sick and-”

“i’m not sick.” you interrupted him, unaffected by the raise of his voice. you inspected his frazzled look, the layer of sweat that made his skin glow, his searching eyes, the way his mouth opened in an attempt to interrogate you, but you beat him to it. “i lied about being sick. i needed the opportunity to speak with you without being interrupted. no one will be checking on me because i explicitly asked not to be disturbed in my rest.”

kyojuro felt his heart begin to race, a gut-wrenching mixture of rage and concern churning his insides. there you were, standing on a puddle of rainwater of your own making, with your beautiful hair plastered to your face, your yukata, no wonder, soaked straight through, and despite looking like you’d collapse any second now from how harshly you were trembling in your ruined sandals you had the audacity to pin him in place with a stern look, as if he was the one in that situation who deserved a talking-to.

“you couldn’t have chosen a more favorable night to speak with me? or even better, request my presence at the manor?” some part of his mind was begging him to keep his growing anger at bay, but the more this ridiculous situation raced in circles around his brain, the more agitated he felt himself getting. “even if you are not sick, you might as well fall ill now after this stunt you’ve just pulled! the last thing i asked of you before months of silence was to look after your health and you dare disregard it just like that! and just because whatever it is you need to tell me cannot wait-”

“you are no longer required as our blacksmith.”

the build-up of his anger dissipated so suddenly it almost gave him whiplash. you remained quiet, stare unwavering while you waited for him to compose himself.

“you are dismissing me.” it was not a question, and you hated the way his usually booming voice, the same one you had loved from the very beginning, had suddenly bee reduced to a hollow hum. you hoped he’d scream at you instead.

“not exactly, please, let me explain,” you tried to keep your own emotions at bay, but it proved increasingly harder the more you looked at kyojuro. “your services have been requested by the nobleman in charge of one of the neighboring counties. it is not the capital, but the work is just as honest and well paid as it is here. you will have the same chance at a thriving career there, and this dismissal does in no way taint your reputation-”

“my services have been requested,” kyojuro parroted, staring down at you with disbelief evident in his gaze. if you looked hard enough, you could also discern something breaking behind those soulful eyes, so you looked away. “because your father spoke of them?”

“father is unaware yet. i offered them.”

“why?”

“because…” and you swallowed hard, and the dam that kept your tears constrained shattered while you struggled with your following words, “...because i messed up and this is not fair to you, and i want to offer you an out. there won’t be consequences for you, should you accept it, and we can each go our separate ways and forget that i ever ruined our friendship with my stupid feelings.”

you were sobbing openly now, muttering hasty apologies to the stunned blacksmith who had once been your friend, shrinking into yourself by the second, unable to take the whole of his scrutiny, but kyojuro decided that he’d have none of that.

that look of despair didn’t look good on the woman he cherished, against all rational judgment. he hated it.

the warm, big hands that enveloped your shoulders as they shook startled you enough to give into his prodding gaze; it had always been amusing, how you could feel it on you even when you weren’t looking, wordlessly calling for attention to those eyes that resembled fiery flames. and when you met them, they felt the same they had all those months ago, familiar and open.

“i love your eyes so much.” it escaped your lips like a reflex, but you did not regret the words one bit. the trembling of your fragile body seemed to cease, slowly but surely, the closer his inviting body shuffled against yours, and you greedily soaked into the warmth he offered.

“ask me again,” he breathed, firm and tender at the same time, and he knew you were confused because your eyebrows furrowed in the quest to decipher what he could be talking about. he conceded with a chuckle. “what you asked me all those months ago, ask me again.”

oh.

he was already so close, it reminded you of the position you had put him in on that december afternoon. this was payback, you were sure, with the way he had slowly moved you to press against that table, the way his eyes pinned you in place and his breath brushed devastatingly against your lips, impatiently waiting for you to answer to your cue. you don’t make him wait anymore.

“please, kiss me.”

and kiss you he did, with a voracious eagerness that should have been saved for a second or third kiss, not a first, but the build-up had left kyojuro so high-strung that he decided to skip all decorum and ravage you the way he almost had on that day, the way he had wished to since that day. he pulled out all the stops, licking, sucking and biting at your lips while his hands busied themselves into the soaked fabric around your hips. your own hands slid into his scalp, clumsily slipping his hair out of the tie that had always kept it tied and in place when he worked. his fiery locks spilled over his shoulders and he finally broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to yours and licking at the thin string of saliva that connected your mouths.

“if…” you trailed off, hesitating. “if you were to leave the estate… would you take me with you?” but the words were out in the open before you could smother them any longer, and the look of surprise on kyojuro’s face initially brought a wave of dread to your stomach.

“what about your family?” you understood that you leaving your family behind would be the first concern to come with your request, considering he was such a family man himself, but you were convinced. you had warmed yourself up to the idea for long enough.

“i will miss my family, especially mother and my sister… but now that i know that my feelings are returned, i don’t think i can bear the notion of being away from you, my love.” the way he visibly softened was enough to reassure you that he wouldn’t argue further; he trusted you to weigh out the options and make your own choices like the strong woman that you were.

the strong woman that was now visibly trembling from palpable excitement, nerves and cold. kyojuro became aware, once again, of the elephant in the room. and he chastised himself for letting his feelings get the better of him and completely ignore that you shouldn’t stay in those ruined clothes any longer.

“i need you to disrobe.” he realized how wrong it had come out the second the words left his mouth, so he was quick to correct himself. “i meant that we need to get you out of those clothes before you succumb to the cold.” and as if his words were a reminder, you felt a full-body shiver when you became hyperconscious of the uncomfortably cold feeling of wet cotton on your skin.

because the smithy was made up of one room (as a shed would), and leaving the small building given the heavy rain that had not ceased for even a minute, kyojuro resorted to turning around, facing his neat bed and giving you as much privacy as he could offer you in that situation.

the splat of wet clothes hitting the floor echoed loud and clear in the silent room, and kyojuro immediately jumped to grab the haori on his bed and turned, eyes closed so tightly it almost looked painful, to offer it to you.

“i know it’s not a proper outfit, but i hope it’ll suffice for the moment.” but you didn’t accept the cloth he was handing out to you, not immediately at least.

“i want you to look at me, kyojuro.” 

he knew he should fight your siren song, but his eyes flew open almost against his will, first falling on the impish smile of your face, and eventually giving in and roaming the standing expanse of your naked body.

oh, heavens -

“you need to disrobe as well, i’m afraid i soaked your clothes as well,” you didn’t sound one bit apologetic, but the smith found that he did not care. a dangerous glint shone in the eyes that hadn’t stopped observing every exposed inch of your deliciously dewy skin.

“wear the haori. now,” as he tugged on the belt keeping his yukata closed, following your subtle cue to undress without complaint, and reveling in the way your eyes didn’t stray from his even as you grabbed the cloth that was still hanging from his outstretched hand. “because if you keep presenting yourself so deliciously to me i might have no choice but to dig in.”

he worked on removing his clothes until he stood naked and shamelessly aroused before you, all the while you slipped the white haori around your shoulders; it was so large and cozy that you were heavily tempted to wrap it snugly around your body, but for the sake of the tension festering in the air, you decided to keep the front open, teasing: an invitation.

“fine by me.” and with that, he broke the distance you had once again formed to smash his lips against yours, moaning and grasping at the chilly skin of your hips, and pressing you forward into his body. his hardening cock nudged your lower stomach, and you couldn’t decide whether to focus on that or his hands sliding down to cup your ass. “hold on to me,” he slurred, and the next second he was hoisting you up, pleased as you instinctively wrapped your legs around his waist. “good girl.”

the praise played in your head over and over as he placed you on top of the table, which creaked unforgivingly under your sudden weight. mindful of potential accidents, kyojuro removed the candle from the surface on which you sat and placed it on the crafting bench instead, coming back to you with a predatory quality in his step.

“i’ve been a foolish, foolish man,” he rumbled, grabbing your thighs and pushing them apart in a motion so fluid you could only gasp, startled as he dropped to his knees between your legs, “to have thought i had even one chance of escaping your charms, my little flame.”

the words were pressed sultrily in between open mouthed kisses against your sensitive inner thighs, which by now were quivering for a whole other reason than the cold that had seeped into your body.

“kyojuro-”

“i’m not going do deny you any longer, not now and not ever.” and he didn’t tease because the wait had been long enough already. his lips latched onto your sopping pussy with intention, and you cried out in startled pleasure as he started to eat you out like a man starved. his tongue traced a long, flat swipe from your clenching hole all the way up to your clit, and back down in a zigzag motion, wiggling and flicking his tongue against the entrance, rumbling at the sweet juice that coated the muscle. “you taste so good, i can’t get enough.”

it seemed like kyojuro could get off on delivering praise alone with the way he was physically unable to shut up against your cunt, babbling and moaning about “this pussy’s so sweet, i could eat you out for hours” or “keep grinding on my face like that” or “c’mon, use my tongue for your pleasure, my sunflower” while all you had been rendered to was a moaning mess with one hand gripping the hem of his borrowed haori and the other holding a fistful of his soft hair, urging him closer.

“kyojuro, please, suck my clit harder and put your fingers in me,” you requested breathlessly and, far from being put off by your straightforwardness, your lover took to obeying and complying with the unleashed eagerness of a puppy, bringing one of the hands that had been forcing your thighs apart to your fluttering quim. his middle finger, rough and thick and thankfully not covered in soot for a change, teased the entrance with featherlight circles before pushing inside, working steadily to loosen the twitching channel.

“that’s it, you’re so tight, my love,” he groaned, because you were, but you were also so turned on that his finger slid in and out with little to no resistance. “i’m going to get you prepared so well, you’re going to take my whole cock inside this tight pussy, aren’t you?”

“y-yes! oh gods, yes, i want your big cock inside of me, pleasepleaseplease-!” his ring finger joined the tight fit, prodding and curling and squelching so obscenely you knew you should be ashamed, yet it only aroused you even more. his relentless ministrations were bringing you closer and closer to orgasm, every pump of his fingers and flick of his tongue effortlessly carrying you to the edge.

“you’re going to come? my princess is going to make a mess, isn’t she?” kyojuro noticed, of course he noticed, observant and thoughtful as he was. his wrist must hurt from how awkwardly he was bending it to finger you as well as the pace he had set, but it didn’t seem to faze him when the promise of your climax was so close he could practically taste it in the copious amounts of cum that your delicious cunt was drooling all over his lower face. “please, come on my tongue, let me get you off, little flame, c’mon, c’mon…!”

you didn’t need further encouragement to fall off the edge, voice cracking embarrassingly from the high-pitched cry that heralded your orgasm. kyojuro moaned shamelessly along with you as a small stream of clear liquid hit his tongue while he ate you out with renewed fervor, feeling it drip down his chin and onto his thick chest, fingers feeling every merciless squeeze caused by the waves of your subsiding climax, and had you been lucid enough you’d have heard him babbling and growling “good girl, that’s my good girl… give it to me, yes…!”

and he removed himself from your exhausted cunt when your legs finally fell limp on the table, regarding you with heat in his eyes and the back of a hand to his chin, wiping off the cum that soaked the lower half of his visage.

you looked out of it for the full fifteen seconds it took to come back from the faltering, smaller waves of bliss, but once your eyes rolled back in place, it was to meet his gaze and, fuck , kyojuro swore you almost had hearts in your eyes.

“kyojuroo,” you slurred, sounding deliciously fucked out. “let me suck your cock before you fuck me, please. i’ll get it so wet you’ll glide in, i promise. i wanna make you feel good too~”

“i’m flattered, little flame,” he chuckled, gathering your limp body in his sturdy arms and carrying you to the mattress (heaven knows if he tried to fuck you on the table, he’d have one less piece of furniture by the end of the night). he laid you down with tender care, carefully placing your head on the pillow before settling between your legs in a kneeling position. his hands went back to gripping your hips to adjust you better. “but i think i might go insane if i don’t take you this instant. don’t worry, though, i’ll take you up on that offer another time…”

his throbbing erection had been but a distant discomfort while he had devoted his whole attention to you, but it was now demanding the promising tight wrap of your sweet cunt. placing your knees around his waist, he brought you closer, to the point where the tip pressed against your wet folds, and he faltered.

“i’m going to make you mine,” he promised, running the red glans up and down your sopping slit, and you nodded feverishly. he decided, on the spot and despite being at his own limit, that that wasn’t answer enough. “beg for it.”

“oh, kyojuro, please, make me yours! please, fuck me until i forget my own name!” he didn’t expect he would love the way any sense of filter had abandoned you in your cockdrunk stupor, but he did, he loved how he didn’t have to coax the dirty talk out of you. he loved how shameless you were naturally.

“that’s right…” he aligned the tip, giving an experimental roll of his hips and groaning hoarsely when the thick head popped right inside your tight channel. “let me claim this pussy!”

he was fully stuffed inside in only a few pushes, straining uncomfortably against what felt like the deepest stretch of your cunt, and you moaned lowly, adjusting to the stretch around your entrance. his praise was incessant.

“that’s a good girl, taking my whole cock so well, stretching so well just for me, o-oh,” and his voice breaks a little when you return a roll of your own hips, testing the feeling, and kyojuro couldn't help returning the dangerous smile that you’ve offered. “you naughty minx.” 

that was all the warning you received before he pulled out, all the way to the tip, only to slam back home in one swift thrust. the shared moan reverberated throughout the small room, and kyojuro began by setting a slow and deep pace that left you shaking down to your very marrow. your legs squeezed his sides, enjoying the way his thrusts pushed you further up the bed.

“i’m going to fuck you so good, aren’t i?” his hands traveled from your hips all the way up to your unattended chest taking rough handfuls of both mounds and massaging, groping and pulling in all directions, at all paces, just to find out what made you keen. and whatever knowledge kyojuro learned, he abused, in the best type of way. he cupped the underside of your tits, watching them bounce with each movement, and he snarled. “gods, i wish you were wearing that necklace i made for you, if only to watch it bounce in time with your breasts.”

“i will! i will wear it next time! and i’ll also wear the rings you made for me and jerk your fat cock off while wearing them!”

“fuuck, yes you will!” who knew you could be so filthy? there wasn’t an atom in his being that minded the fact that you spewed promises so sinful they’d ruin your reputation as the proper and elegant lady if word ever got out. lucky you, kyojuro had zero intentions to share you with anyone. 

“kyojuro,” you called his name through hiccups, and he relented a little to let you speak more comfortably while giving himself a break by rolling languidly into you. he watched your hand slide down your torso until it rested on your lower belly. and then, you pushed. you pushed your hand down and he could feel the extra pressure on his snug cock, groaning lowly. you smiled deviously up at him. “i feel you all the way up here…”

if he hadn’t closed his eyes at the lewd sight of you adoringly petting the slight bulge on your tummy, he knew he would have come on the spot.

“of course you do, little flame.” break time was over, and he began to pick up the pace once more, except this time he also let his fingers join in the fun, placing a steely thumb on your throbbing bud and rubbing mercilessly while you thrashed on his cock. “i can feel you squeezing harder, are you getting close, my love?”

the only answer you could deliver was a garbled mess of “yesyesyes” and wet pleas, hips bucking in every which direction, simultaneously trying to get more of and get away from the intense pleasure he was bestowing upon you.

“come on, little flame, i need you to come before i do, and i’m so close, you have no idea… can you do that for me? can you be a good girl and come for me?”

you could, and you did, letting out a silent scream when your second orgasm crashed over you, a little less intense than the first one, but mind-numbing nonetheless. your cunt pulsed rhythmically around his throbbing prick, feeling like heaven and hell for kyojuro, all at the same time.

“y-you feel so good, my love, coming so hard around my cock… oh, heavens i’m going to come soon too…” he knew he was probably overstimulating your used pussy, but he couldn’t help but blindly chase after his own rapidly approaching release. “tell… oh, fuck! please, tell me where, little flame, please…!”

you didn’t answer verbally, you don’t think you could have been physically capable, but his question registered sluggishly, and you mustered all of your remaining strength to lift your legs and cross your ankles at his lower back, pulling him flush between your legs; through half-lidded eyes, you saw his drooping stare become awake as the realization of your actions hit him. moaning brokenly as all he had left to do was rut desperately inside of you.

“a-ah! i’m going to come inside of you, little flame-e! going to make you mine forever, yes… f-fuck!” a second later, kyojuro made good on his promise, filling you with a release that felt so abnormally warm that it brought a shudder upon your wrecked body.

the next moments felt like a blur, like you were struggling to stay conscious, but you knew that kyojuro had resisted the temptation to give into post-coitum cuddles and instead stepped off the mattress and walked around the room.

“you did so incredibly well for me, sunflower,” he praised when he was back at your side, rubbing your cheek tenderly as you smiled drowsily up at him. “i’m going to clean us up now, and then we can sleep. we’ll sort everything out in the morning.”

you felt kyojuro go through the motions of aftercare, pliant under his gentle touch as he wiped sweat and cum off your body (you swear you feel him stare for a few seconds too long at the oozing mess between your legs). the rain didn’t sound as merciless at it had been coming down most of the evening, but the drumming of the droplets on the roof of the shed, coupled with your lover’s careful ministrations, were making a damn good concoction for dozing off.

somehow, you managed to remain conscious until after kyojuro had settled in bed with you, pulling you close to his sturdy and ridiculously warm body, but who were you to turn down the delicious snuggles he promised? with your face against his chest, his arms around your body and a hand in your hair, you finally succumbed to slumber while listening to the low vibration of his voice as he made sweet promises for the future.

“i can’t offer you the luxurious life you have been raised into, but i swear i’ll take care of you in any way i’m- oh…” the blacksmith chuckled, finally taking notice of your steady breathing a very much unconscious state, and decided instead to snuggle further into you. “it’s alright,” he mumbled, “tomorrow will be a day for planning.” 

-----------------------

in the end, kyojuro hadn’t accepted your offer. well, at least not completely. instead of taking the job that had been offered to him by that nobleman acquaintance of yours, he thought it would be wiser to ask haganezuka to find him an employer that wouldn’t know of you or your family, and who still resided relatively close to his family state (because if something was for certain, it was that he had a lot of catching up to do with his own family, especially about you).

haganezuka, the blessing in disguise that he was, had managed to find the perfect employer in a scarily scarce amount of time and, the very next day, kyojuro had formally expressed to his soon-to-be previous boss that he would break their contract.

“settling down so young isn’t a wise choice if the goal in mind is to improve on your craft” had been the explanation given and, annoyed as he had been by the sudden notice, the governor had let the young rengoku go without much fuss.

you, of course, stayed at your family’s estate for a couple months after kyojuro moved out, because it would have been suspicious to time your escape at around the same time that the blacksmith had left; he had a reputation to uphold, and rumors of stealing away the daughter of a noble family wouldn’t do it any good. so, you waited, counting down the days with barely concealed excitement, and when enough time had passed, you grabbed the bag with your most prized belongings and left on a warm june dawn.

the letter in your vanity had been dedicated to your mother and sister, reassuring them that you’d be safe and happy and would always have them in your thoughts.

the summer sun beat down mercilessly on the engawa of kyojuro’s new workplace. it was a bigger shed, and despite not being surrounded by beautiful Japanese maples like the ones your former home had proudly displayed, the quiet forest, abundant in it’s greenery, proved to be a decent replacement.

kyojuro sat on the wooden platform, yukata a little loose on the chest to allow some of breeze to hit his overheated skin. he had been working all morning in the project that his new employer had left in his capable hands, so, he reckoned, a small break now that late afternoon had arrived was in order. 

the sound of dull footsteps on grass interrupted his lounging.

“do you accept commissions?”

and kyojuro knew it in that moment, as you greeted him in the same peculiar way you had almost a year ago, that you were the only one for him.

“of course, my love! it’s what i do!”

and he was delighted to know that he was the only one for you.

“wonderful. i’d like to request a ring from you. actually, could you make them two?”

#kimetsu no yaiba #kny #demon slayer #kny smut #kny x reader #kny x you #kny x y/n #rengoku kyojuro #rengoku x reader #rengoku x you #rengoku x y/n #rengoku smut #kyojuro x reader #kyojuro smut #kny fanfic #demon slayer x reader

[theharddeck]

santa baby (been an awful good girl) // coyote x f!reader

pairing: javy coyote machado x fem!reader (no y/n)

synopsis: coyote dresses up as santa + reader is only human = reader and coyote get it on in santa's workshop

word count: 6.6k

warnings: 18+ explicit content, minors DNI: unprotected sex, explicit PiV sex, a bit of dumbification, slight overstimulation, lowkey desecrating the concept of christmas but like in a hot way

A/N: i...i have no excuse. thinking of javy being dorky during sex has effectively ruined me. merry chrysler

The second Sunday in December was the tree-lighting at Miramar. 

The event entailed, of course, the lighting of the tree at the center of base, but also a crafts market, an ugly-Christmas sweater competition, and breakfast-for-dinner, but most importantly: a meet and greet with Santa. 

While it wasn’t required attendance for any of the Service members, most everyone who wasn’t on leave found some way to be involved. You found yourself at the cookie decorating station, trying to teach kids a modicum of restraint, and sneaking glances at your boyfriend over in Santa’s Workshop. 

That’s right, Javy Machado – distinguished Lieutenant, Louisiana’s finest, and your personal hero – was currently drowning in red velvet and faux ermine, dressed up as jolly old Saint Nick. His diamond-sharp jawline was hidden behind a monstrosity of a fake beard, but he had managed to master the twinkle in his eye. The night was winding down, but he showed no waning energy, just endearing interest in each and every child that made its way into the small structure. 

You could just barely see him through the front window of the Workshop, but every time you looked over at him, your heart fluttered. 

It was the way he hunched his shoulders, clearly trying to diminish his size to make himself seem less intimidating. 

It was the way he met each child’s eye, exuding comfort and kindness. 

It was how after a couple of minutes, even the shyest child seemed to relax against him, how their smiles brightened and their giggles echoed around the family center. 

You knew Javy was a total sweetheart, but it made you so proud to see how special he was making this Christmas for each of these kids, some of whom were having a dark season with their parents being deployed. 

There was a clatter and you looked away from the workshop to find RJ, one of Payback’s kids, looking guiltily up at you, holding an entire paper plate covered in Snowman sprinkles. The faint outline of a sugar cookie was visible under the blue-and-white pile, but not by much. 

Good thing it was only the ninetieth time this had happened today. 

“Happens all the time,” you said brightly, keeping your voice happy so the kid wouldn’t panic, and thinking of a diversionary topic. “Did you see Santa already?”

RJ nodded, willingly distracted. 

“He said he’d get me a Lego set!” he said, the slight lisp in his voice absolutely adorable. “A Lego set!” you repeated, folding the plate slightly so that you could pour the excess sprinkles into a dixie cup. “One of the Star Wars ones??”

“Yep!” RJ told you excitedly, his eyes widening, the sprinkles dilemma forgotten. “With an X-wing, so I can have a plane, like Daddy!” 

You finished pouring off the sprinkles, and turned the still-overly-sprinkled-but-now-recognizable-as-a-cookie plate back to RJ. He grinned up at you through a missing tooth and you couldn’t help but smile back. 

Payback might be nearly as bossy as Mav when you were up in the air, but he did have damn cute children. 

You were halfway through helping RJ with a sleigh-shaped cookie when the Christmas music they’d been cranking turned off with reverb, and someone cheerily announced over the loudspeaker that it was time for the festivities to draw to a close. Overhead lights turned on, dispelling the ambiance created by thousands of christmas lights, but you were halfway through the cookie, so you two kept working on it. 

What were they going to do? 

At some point, Reuben came over with a couple wrapped packages tucked under his arm, giving you a grateful look for keeping an eye on his son. 

The only warning you had was RJ’s reverent gasp and the widening of his eyes before you felt familiar hands on your waist and an unfamiliar beard scratching your neck. 

“Santa,” RJ breathed, and you tried to delicately step out of Javy’s grasp as he realized he couldn’t exactly greet his real-life girlfriend while there were still kids who believed in the magic of Santa within eyesight.

Javy cleared his throat and you pressed your lips together to hide a smile as you watched your boyfriend stand up straighter under the boy’s worshipful gaze.  

“RJ,” Javy said, his voice pitched lower than normal, to disguise it, and you noticed he was avoiding Reuben’s gaze pretty determinedly. “Doing some serious cookie decorating, I see?”

RJ nodded animatedly, holding up his plate to show “Santa” and nearly tipping both cookies off it in the process. Reuben dove for it, and you tried not to laugh, leaning lightly against Javy. You noticed absently that he must’ve taken the suit padding out, because you could feel his stomach through the red velvet.

Unfortunately, when RJ looked up from his plate, he noticed your lean, as well as Javy’s hand on your hip. He frowned, his small forehead wrinkling, and he tipped his head up at Javy. 

“That’s Coyote’s girlfriend,” he told Javy archly. 

“Uh,” Javy stalled, and you again found yourself fighting the urge to laugh, “yes. And…that’s why I want to steal her away for a moment. Coyote’s been a really good boy this year, and I want to talk about what kind of present he would want.”

RJ’s eyes narrowed, and he was about to say something else, before Reuben gave an exasperated sigh. 

“For God’s sake,” he muttered, reaching for RJ’s cookie plate, effectively poaching the boy’s attention. 

“Let’s show these cookies to your Ma, yeah, Junior?” he asked, before turning back to you and Javy. “And you two– behave.”

He spun on his heel, and RJ waved enthusiastically to you before following his father happily, and you turned to Javy, smiles breaking over both of your faces. 

“Not your most graceful, lieutenant,” you teased him, but Javy was already looking around the recreation center. 

With the overhead lights on, and the Christmas music off, it was rapidly emptying. Teams had already been tasked to come in tomorrow to clean it out, so for now everyone was clearing out, trying to get their kids home before the sugar crash set in, and Javy’s gloved hand found one of yours. 

“Come on,” he said quietly, in his normal voice, and you followed him instinctively when he tugged lightly on your grasp. 

You were surprised when he led you back over to Santa’s Workshop, and you ducked into the entryway. 

It wasn’t a large space, something constructed of red and green painted plywood pieces, barely big enough to accommodate Santa’s throne. The throne itself was a replica of the Iron Throne that Fanboy had paid a preposterous amount for, and had been convinced to donate to the greater good. He had then had to be led away from in agony, as Army Wives sanded down the pointy edges, and repainted the swords as candy canes.

“Nice digs, Santa,” you said wryly, your sentence ending on a squeak as Javy pulled you into his arms. 

Kissing him with the fake beard was funny, but his mouth was distracting enough that you soon forgot. 

You melted into him as you always did, your hands pressed against his broad chest. Javy’s strong arms banded around you as he kissed you hungrily, like he’d been waiting, like he’d been missing you. He tasted like peppermint, like the candy canes the “elves” (Natasha and Jake) had forced on him any time he started looking bored. 

When he pulled back, you were breathless, blinking up at him slowly. 

Javy smiled at you softly, his own chest rising and falling underneath your hands. He was so unbelievably handsome, always, but you loved his sweet smile. 

Especially how it looked from this close. 

“Hi,” you whispered, and Javy groaned, leaning down to kiss you again. 

His tongue swept into your mouth, and your knees almost buckled, causing you to cling to his shoulders. He was so strong, so big, and you knew he loved holding you, nearly as much as you treasured being held.  

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against your lips, and you felt your skin heat. You were just wearing a festive sweater under a pinafore-style skirt, aiming for comfort and festivity over something that accentuated your figure.

“It’s just a–” you tried, but Javy made a disapproving sound and kissed you firmly, interrupting your rationalization. 

“Beautiful,” he insisted, after a moment, and you nodded dazedly. 

Javy hummed, approving, and he shifted to pull off his gloves. A moment later, you felt his index finger under your chin. He tilted your head up towards him, and his kiss turned gentle, indulgent. 

“I could feel you watching me, you know,” Javy murmured, between kisses. 

 You shivered when his thumb brushed over your jaw. 

“Hard not to,” you managed to say. 

Javy laughed, a low, warm sound, that you felt like a caress. 

“What is it, honey,” he teased, brushing light kisses up your cheek, and ducking his head to reach behind your ear, “the red velvet doing it for you?”

You let out a breathy gasp when you felt his teeth ghost over your earlobe. 

“‘Course not,” you mumbled, but it didn’t sound convincing. 

It actually wasn’t the red velvet. 

It wasn’t even how sweet he had been with the kids, which was pretty darn sweet. 

“What was it?” Javy asked, as he kissed down your neck. 

You shivered as his tongue and teeth teased you. When he reached the collar of your sweater, he nosed it aside, and sucked lightly at the space where your neck met your shoulder.

“The glasses,” you blurted. 

You felt him hesitate, and he pulled back, looking at you amusedly. 

“The glasses?” he echoed, and you tried not to squirm. 

“Well, and the beard,” you admitted. “Not the actual aesthetics, just, like, the idea of them…the idea of older you. Silver fox Javy, you know, graying and—”

With a whoosh, the overhead lighting in the recreation center shut off. 

You turned to look out the window, surprised to find that no one else was left in the recreation center. They had cleared out quickly and the large room was suddenly dark, except for the lights strung around the “roof” of Santa’s Workshop. 

When you looked back at Javy, his teeth gleamed as he smiled.

His hand trailed down his arm till it tangled with yours, and he pulled you deeper into the workshop. 

“Javy, we should go–” you started to protest, but you broke off when he sat on the throne. 

The twinkling lights cast a golden glow into the otherwise dark room, and even in the shadows, Javy looked so damn sexy. He shifted in the seat, his thighs spreading, and planted his boots on the ground. He still held your hand, and you really did feel like you were standing in front of a throne, a queen to his king.

“It’s just us, honey,” he said, his voice deep, and you were having a hard time coming up with a response. Not when he looked this good, not when he was looking at you like that, not when you could already see the outline of his hardening dick against the inside of his velvet suit. 

God, what a thought–velvet and Javy. 

Your mouth practically watered, and when Javy tugged lightly on your hand, you let him pull you. You stood between his spread legs, the throne tall enough that you barely had to bend down to kiss him. This kiss was impossibly slow, leisurely. 

Javy’s hands trailed down your body, settling under your ass as he pulled you closer to him. You whimpered as his touch pulled you flush against him, his body hard against you, and his fingers gripping the flesh of your ass. Your own hands ran over his chest, around the back of his neck, anchoring you to him.

His big hands kneaded your ass, and you whimpered against his mouth when he guided you slightly sideways, against where his dick rested on his thigh.  

You felt your kisses turn lazy as he overwhelmed you. 

His big hands, his strong thighs, his hot cock, his broad chest…you felt your knees weaken as the kiss deepened. 

Javy knew, and he pulled back, giving you space. His hand found yours again, and he led you from between his legs, before reaching under your skirt. 

His touch was slow, certain, as his fingers trailed up your thighs to your waistband, where he found the edge of your tights, and slid them down your legs. He went slowly, and you were grateful for it; your head was spinning and you didn’t feel like you could catch your breath. You watched as he pulled the tights down your thighs, prompting you to step out of your shoes first. 

“Here, honey,” he prompted, guiding you to balance on the thick toes of his boots, so you wouldn’t have to stand on the floor, before he peeled your tights off. 

That thoughtfulness, combined with the determined carefulness with which he undressed you, sent another wave of arousal for you, and you followed his instruction without thinking. 

His hands were back on your legs then, reaching under your skirt again, up and up, and you shivered when his hands ghosted over the front of your underwear. 

“Were you telling the truth?” he murmured, his voice low, and you pressed your lips together to trap a whine inside your throat. “Am I gonna find you worked up under here?” 

You weren’t sure until his fingers pressed between your thighs. 

And then you moaned, you couldn’t help it. Javy’s fingers pressed into your center over your panties, his touch collecting your arousal and you felt the drag of wetness between his finger, the thin fabric, and your skin. 

Javy hummed his approval, and his pleasure had you bowing into him. 

“Javy,” you whispered, not sure what you were asking for, but certain he would know. 

“C’mere, baby,” he said softly, pulling you into his lap, his hands not leaving your panties, but still keeping you covered by your skirt. He guided you over his thighs, your legs spreading to rest in his lap, and you immediately were obsessed with the feeling of velvet stretched over his strong thighs. 

You looked up at his expression, and you felt your heart flutter. 

Christ, he was so beautiful. 

His expression was one of intense focus, but the panes of his face were so gorgeous, all the more for the fondness between the both of you. 

You pressed yourself up to kiss him, knowing you’d stumble over finding the words to tell him. Javy’s lips were so soft, his mouth so gentle, and the hand that wasn’t under your skirt cupped the back of your neck. The tenderness in his touch coupled with the strength in his hands was a heady combination, and you melted into his arms again. 

After a couple long, sweet kisses, you felt his hands move against you. 

You broke away from his kiss, breath catching as Javy dragged a thick finger over your now soaking panties. 

“You’re so warm here,” Javy murmured, his voice almost reverent, and your hands splayed over the red coat, grasping whatever you could. The pressure of his hand and the deep timbre of his voice were enough to drive you mad, and he knew it. 

“You feel so good, honey, so inviting…” Javy continued, and he pushed your panties aside. 

You whimpered at the first brush of his fingers against your core, slickened by your arousal, and warm against your skin. Your fingers scrambled to undo the red coat, fumbling with the buttons until you had the jacket undone, and you could feel the familiar cotton of his white undershirt. 

It wasn’t enough, you needed his skin. 

“Off,” you mumbled, and Javy chuckled as you pulled weekly at the bottom of his undershirt. It took some maneuvering, but you got the jacket off, then the undershirt, and then decided the beard and hat – while they had their charm – needed to go as well. 

And then you were breathless for a whole other reason. 

“You look like a damn fireman calendar,” you told him, your voice somewhere between amused and chagrined at the perfection that was a shirtless Javy Machado in red velvet pants and thick black boots, reclining in a garish throne. You decided that indulging the fantasy couldn’t hurt, and you guided the suit jacket up over his shoulders again. You tipped your head to the side, regarding your amused boyfriend.  

“Some mom in New Jersey would lose her shit,” you told him honestly, and it probably should’ve made you jealous, but it made you just so damn thankful he was all yours. 

You watched Javy’s abs contract as he laughed, pulling you back to him, and you smiled as he kissed you. You loved that it was like this with him – playful and fun, as well as just so fucking hot. 

It only took a moment for the laughter to fade from your kiss, and Javy’s hand was back inside your panties a moment later. 

He pulled a finger through your folds and your head fell back at his tease. He gathered your arousal with his finger, pulling his hand back up to the top of your slit. He found your clit easily, a familiar path, and when he pressed firmly, your legs jolted. 

“You’re Coyote’s girl, aren’t you?” he said thickly, and you wondered if he was thinking back to what RJ had said, or if he just liked the thought of you being his. Either way, you nodded weakly, overwhelmed by the pattern he traced over your clit. 

Javy turned his head so he could kiss your neck again, his lips pressing into you, tongue teasing you in a motion that mirrored his fingers at your core. You leaned into him, loving his strength and his focus on you. His hand, his mouth, his broad chest, all had your head swimming, and building up a heat within you. 

Your hips were moving, rocking into him, and you felt empty, needy. 

“Answer the question, honey,” he murmured into your neck, and he pulled back his hand to readjust. 

“Yes, Javy,” you breathed, forming the words feeling like a gargantuan effort, “yours.”

“Damn right,” he said, and then a finger was pushing through your folds as his thumb traced over your clit. 

You moaned as he pushed into you, a steady intrusion and just what you wanted. You rocked your hips into his touch, seeking more, deeper, and Javy chuckled. 

“Easy, baby,” he said softly, and you shook your head. 

“Need you, Javy,” you protested. His finger was thick, brushing into you, but you knew it wasn’t enough, knew it wasn’t what you needed. He grunted, shifting again, and then another finger was between your legs. Javy’s hand on your hip angled your hips downward, and your mouth fell open when he lifted his palm so you could grind your clit against it. 

His fingers inside you were pressing deep, stretching you, and you welcomed the width of them as you ground into his palm. 

“Baby, fuck,” you panted, and you felt his hips jerk up into you. 

Which had the opposite effect than what he had intended. 

Because his fingers were good, and his hand was good, and everything felt so fucking good– but you knew what was between his legs. And his hand wasn’t enough. 

“You need to be fucked, don’t you, honey,” Javy asked hotly, his voice low in your ear. You nodded desperately, your hips working against his fingers eagerly. He’d fill you so good, fuck you so full, and you needed it, needed him. 

You were overheating in your sweater, nearly wild with wanting him so bad, but you were taking everything he’d give you, always would. 

“Please, baby,” you whispered, and it sounded like a whine. You felt his hips press up again, an unintentional response, and your hips worked faster. 

“‘s too fast, sweetheart,” Javy said, but it sounded like maybe he was trying to convince himself too. “You’re not ready…”

You moaned, your head dropping to his shoulder. 

You knew he was right, knew you had to be worked up to taking his cock, but you wanted to be full of him, wanted to feel like his, wanted him to push everything else out of your mind with his dick. 

“Please,” you whimpered, unafraid to beg, and you felt Javy’s breath catch. 

“Cum for me first, honey, come on,” he said determinedly, and you would’ve scowled at him for his stubbornness, but he was working your body so fucking well. 

His fingers were pressing deeper inside of you, searching for the spot that would tip you over the edge. He knew when he found it because your whole body seized, and he fucking cooed, pleased and proud. His fingers worked faster inside of you, his palm grinding back into your clit, and you felt your body hurtling towards completion in spite of yourself. 

You whimpered his name, and Javy soothed you, his other hand falling to your ass again. He pressed you into him, shushing you as you trembled, and it was too much, too fast. 

Your orgasm broke through you, heat crashing over you as your boyfriend rocked you in his lap. You were shaking, you were pretty sure you were babbling, as Javy worked you through your orgasm, his strong fingers pulling steadily inside of you. 

You shuddered as you came down, the world fading from technicolor to the dark light of the rec center, and the ringing in your ears quieted enough to hear Javy murmuring praise into your ear. 

“So beautiful, honey, always so beautiful when you come. Fuck, you did so good, coming on my hand like that, such a good girl for me, always so good…”

You were pressed into his chest, and you snuggled closer to his warmth, temporarily sated. You felt Javy shift his hand, pull your panties back down before sliding his hand out from under your skirt. A moment later, you felt his chest vibrate, and when you pulled back to look, his eyes were closed, head tilted back, his fingers between his lips.  

“So fucking sweet,” he said, almost to himself, licking your orgasm off his fingers. You felt your core clench at the sight of it, at the everything of him, and you tilted your head up to him, needing his kiss. 

Javy acquiesced, and you both moaned when his tongue swept into your mouth, sharing the taste of your release. It was so hot, everything he did was so hot, and impossibly, you needed him again. 

You reached down between you, your fingers skating over velvet until you found his cock. He was fully erect now, trapped against his thigh, and when your fingers coasted over him, Javy’s breath caught. 

You hummed when his hips pressed up into your touch. 

Even without your body moving to encourage him, his thighs pushed his dick towards your hand, and you loved the feeling of him. Even through the soft material, he was so hard, so thick, and you were desperate for him. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Javy panted, and you loved it when he sounded like that, like he was barely clinging to sanity. 

“Don’t want to wait,” you trailed your hand up to his tip. You couldn’t feel the details of him through the suit, but you knew his cock, you knew where he was sensitive, and Javy groaned as you traced over him. He mumbled something into your sweater, but you couldn’t hear it. 

“Please, Javy,” you whispered, and he groaned again. 

His hands were on your waist, and they tightened when he pulled back. You were surprised by the truly forlorn look on his face when he looked up at you, and your hand paused, suddenly concerned. 

“I don’t have a condom,” Javy said dejectedly. “I’m sorry, honey, it felt pervy to put it in a pocket around all the kids and I–”

“We don’t need one.”

You didn’t mean to say it, but as soon as the words were out, you knew you meant them. You’d been exclusive for a couple months now, and you were tested regularly, and you trusted him. The more you thought about it, the more you wanted it– the more you needed it, the more you knew it was exactly what you needed.

Javy was so still underneath you. 

He was looking at you so closely, hope and caution warring in his expression. 

“Are you absolutely certain, honey?” he asked, and the way he was double checking was all the confirmation you needed. 

You leaned down to rest your forehead against his, loving the way his eyes followed you, even this close. You lowered your head to his, pulling back slightly when he reached up to kiss you. 

“100%,” you said against his lips, and Javy moaned, something deep in his chest, the hottest sound you’d heard. 

He surged up to kiss you, and you felt dizzy from the lingering taste of you on his tongue. When he pulled back, you were both breathless, just shy of giddy.   

“You want me to fuck you bare, sweetheart?” he asked, and his soft question made you shiver. 

“Please,” you managed, and Javy huffed something that might’ve been a laugh. 

“You’re gonna let me into that pussy raw?” he breathed, and you squirmed in his lap. You wanted him so badly, needed to feel him, just him. “Gonna let me fill you up, feel this cock press all the way into you?”

“Javy,” you moaned his name, fully wanton, unable to say anything else. 

Your hips were already rocking into him, craving the stretch of him. 

He seemed to understand, guiding you back to stand on his boots, while he shifted, sliding the suit pants down his thighs, along with his underwear. The red velvet pooled over his boots, brushing the tops of your feet, but you barely noticed. Instead, your eyes were trained between his thighs, where his dick was resting against his stomach. 

He had such a pretty cock. 

Long and heavy, curved slightly to the side, a plump head that felt absolutely unreal when it breached you. You were practically salivating for it, and you pressed your thighs together as you balanced on his boots. 

“Now you,” he prompted, and he helped you out of your sweater and skirt. A moment later, you felt Javy pull your panties off, now with no worry for the suit. 

He dropped the thin fabric to the ground and you stepped out of it, his fingers curled up to cup you. God, you loved how he touched you, so certain and steady, like him. You clutched his shoulder for balance, and Javy’s hand tightened over your pussy, pulling him to you by your pussy. 

You might as well have been on a leash. 

You could feel your legs trembling, you wanted him so bad. He guided you back onto his lap, your legs spread over his thighs again, but it was different now, because you could feel him. When you settled, your core brushed against his hot cock, and you both hissed out a breath. Desperation seemed to build between you, and Javy finally, finally let go of you, reaching down to hold his cock steady as you lowered yourself towards him. 

“Give me that pussy, baby,” he commanded, his voice low, and you wanted nothing more. 

When you felt the first press of his fat cockhead between your legs you felt like weeping. It was the smallest brush, but he was so thick, so broad, a promise. You held your breath as you lowered yourself down, a high-pitched moan working out of you when the head of him was fully inside you.  

“Ah, honey,” Javy breathed. 

It sounded like he was praying, and you understood, because it was just the tip of him, but already you were dizzy with how full you felt. 

You looked between the two of you, at the vision of his fat cock pressing into you and you moaned again. You looked so good together; it was amazing that he fit, that you could take him. You could feel his eyes on you, knew he was watching your face as you were watching where you were joined. 

“It’s so good, Javy,” you whispered, your fingers tightening on his shoulders. Your nails were probably leaving marks, not that either of you cared. 

“That’s right, sweetheart,” Javy said, his voice hoarse, “it’s so fucking good. How does my dick feel inside you, just me, so close to you?”

Your eyes closed and your jaw fell slack as pushed yourself farther onto him. The stretch neared on painful but nowhere near painful enough to make you stop. You felt him, like he said, you felt so close to him. It felt perfect, like you were made for this stretch.

“Halfway, baby,” Javy encouraged, and you practically choked at his words. 

Fuck, you thought you were farther along than that; it felt like you’d gotten farther along than that. 

But when you opened your eyes, there were still inches left of his cock, thick, searing length that you needed to fit inside of you. Javy’s hands rubbed encouraging circles on your back, and you realized your thighs were shaking. It felt like you were boiling, melting, but you knew you couldn’t stop, knew you needed to take all of him. 

Still, you couldn’t stop your whimper, “It’s too big, baby.”

Javy’s hips jerked up at your words, and his head fell back against the throne as he forced himself down, to be still. You both groaned at the ground that gave you, and Javy’s chest rose and fell rapidly. 

“You can do it, honey, you’re doing so good for me, so damn good,” he gritted, and you loved him so much. 

Loved that he was fighting for control but he still found breath to encourage you, soothe you, care for you. Your face felt wet, from sweat or tears, you couldn’t tell, but you made it the final few inches. 

When your shaking thighs met Javy’s legs, you both let out a trembling breath, and Javy wrapped his arms around you tightly. 

“Just stay here for a moment, sweetheart,” he whispered, and you lay your head on his shoulder, resting. 

You were so full. 

So sated, so absolutely content, like all you ever wanted to be was in this moment. You wanted to wrap this feeling up, remember it forever, this closeness. This perfection. 

Javy’s hands were still moving slowly up your back, his fingers pressing gently over you. You recognized he was breathing deeply, whether to help you monitor yours or because he needed to be controlled, you weren’t sure. 

You felt out of your body. 

You didn’t know how long you stayed like that, but it was long enough for the stretch to ease and your body to adjust. As you accepted him, as you welcomed him, your head cleared slightly, and you became aware of the gnawing need at your core. 

You needed him to move. 

You shifted in his lap, just slightly, and Javy’s breath punched out of him, as you clenched around him. 

“Jesus, honey, warn a man,” he choked, and you smiled. 

“Can’t help it,” you said, honestly, “just feels too good.”

“You’re telling me,” he murmured, turning towards you. 

He kissed you slowly, languidly, his tongue pressing between your lips as he gently pushed his hips upward. You felt your limbs go lax; he wasn’t even pumping but he was so damn deep inside you. It felt like a caress, something gentle and sacred, and you rested on him. 

He pressed up again, and he broke the kiss, his warm breath coasting over your lips. 

“Feels fucking unreal, honey,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re so tight, so wet. God, I can feel every inch of you like this, feels like heaven.”

You hummed your agreement, turning your head to kiss along his jaw. Your lips brushed over his jawline, your tongue tasting his sweat, kissing him lightly as he rocked slowly into you again. Time felt like molasses, seeping so slowly by, and everything was distilled to the press of his hips into yours, of his cock straining inside of you. 

You whispered his name, and his hands slipped from your back to your waist. 

“Need something, honey?” Javy asked, and you whined in response. 

He was slow and steady, unhurried, stoking that heat inside of you. It was perfect, it was killing you, you needed more.

“Do you think,” Javy’s voice was still breathless, but took on a teasing lilt, “you were naughty or nice this year?”

You swatted at him weakly, his chest already huffing as he laughed. 

“You’re an idiot,” you mumbled, turning to a moan at another gentle rock.

“You know I’d know if you’d been bad or good,” he said, amusing himself even as you squirmed on his cock. “I’ve got a list.”

“I swear, Javy–” 

“Do you think you’ve been a good girl for Santa?”

God, he was such a dork, but he was also so hung, and you couldn’t handle both at once. But then Javy’s hands wrapped under your ass again. Before you could sigh in relief, he lifted you up, strong arms fully pulling you off his dick, and then thrusted up into you. 

You screamed. 

You couldn’t help it, you felt it so much, so deep, so fucking full of him, and Javy’s proud laugh turned to a groan as you clenched around his cock. He’d scrambled your brain with his dick, that was the only explanation, because you were moaning and you felt every limb shaking, and you needed him to do it again. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted someone to hear us,” he chastised you gently, and you whimpered at his words. 

You both knew no one was left in the rec center, probably not even the parking lot, but fuck if the idea of someone walking in on you fucking your boyfriend on this throne of his didn’t turn you on even more.  

Javy sighed, something awed. “Is that it, honey? You want someone to see you? Want someone to walk in on you milking this bare cock? Want someone to watch me shove it so deep into your pussy, see how badly you need it?”

He lifted you again before you could respond, his strong arms pulling you up and then bringing you back down into his lap, his cock thrusting deep into you. You couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only want more, need more. You felt something drip out of your mouth, realized belatedly you were literally drooling. 

Javy swore when he felt it, too, and his hips moved faster. He held you steady as he pushed up into you, slamming his hips up to meet yours. 

It was fast, it was rough, it was so, so deep, and you could only think that you needed him to keep going. 

Javy was grunting with each thrust of his hips, a gorgeous sound that had your mind racing. You could feel his balls slapping against your ass as he drove into you, so deep, and you scrambled for purchase, your hands clinging to the back of the throne, anything for leverage as he pumped into you. 

“I wouldn’t care,” Javy said, almost growled, and you felt your core clench tighter on him at that tone in his voice. “Fucking Simpson could break in now, honey, and I wouldn’t care, I couldn’t stop. You think anything could stop me now that I’ve felt this bare cunt around my cock? Nah, it’s too good, it’s so damn good. Fuck, honey, you feel—”

He broke off, and you felt his teeth bite into your shoulder, grounding himself as he drove into you. Vaguely you knew you were close, knew it in an abstract scientific way, because you could barely string two thoughts together, much less words. 

You could only cling to him, to your sweet, strong, Javy.  

“Riding me so good, baby,” Javy mumbled into your shoulder. “Being so good for me, honey, you’re always so good for me. My best girl, my beautiful, best girl. Sweetheart, I’m close, are you close?”

You nodded, or maybe you wailed, but you knew he could hear you, because his thrusts got more frantic. His thrusts were getting shorter, and you realized it was because he couldn’t reach as deep as he wanted, as fast as he wanted. Javy made a noise of frustration and his thighs flexed, then he was lifting you. 

Still impaled on his cock, he shifted you, turned you, and then your back was pressed against the cool surface of the throne. Javy was between your legs, then, and you wrapped your arms around him, pulling him back into you. 

“Please, baby,” you whimpered, and Javy groaned in response. 

“Anything, fuck, you know that, sweetheart, anything,” he whispered, and then he grabbed the throne. 

All you could do was take it. 

Lie in the space between his arms, between his legs, clinging to him as Javy gripped the throne for leverage and thrust into you. You were held firm as he thrust into you, the new angle causing his dick to brush against a spot inside you that had your toes curling. 

“Right there, Javy,” you cried, and you felt him press deeper, determined. 

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he panted, as his hips slammed into you. “God, you feel so good, I’ve got you… I know you feel good too, come for me, please..feels like fucking home in you, please honey, I need to feel you come–”

The throne was shaking with each of his thrusts and he pulled you even closer to him. Your body shook with each rutt of his hips, but as you molded to him, your clit brushed against the hard wall of muscle that was Javy. His cock hit that spot deep inside of you, your clit rubbed against his skin, and it was overwhelming, it was everything, it was enough. 

“Come with me,” you gasped, begged, feeling a blinding heat at the tips of your toes. Javy groaned, and you knew he wanted to protest, but as your body seized, you felt him tense with you.   

You cried out as you came, exhausted and overwriting and flying, but you felt it, felt him. Javy surged up to kiss you, his mouth locking on yours. You were too tired to kiss, too poised to respond, but so was he. And as you tipped over the edge, as you cried against his lips, Javy’s strong hips stilled, and you felt his chest heave as he pumped into you. Then you were warm, so warm, feeling his cum spill inside of you, feeling the world burn around you. It was everything, you and him, locked together and spiraling, shaking. 

You were so full. 

Javy collapsed against you, somehow finding the strength to push himself onto the throne beside you. You fidgeted, squirming until you were once again in his lap, panting and shaking, as Javy held you tight while your orgasms rolled over you. 

You were grateful for the Christmas lights. 

They were a gentle light, soft when you opened your eyes, illuminating Javy’s profile like a poem. Sweat slicked between both of your bodies, and you didn’t want to think about the state the suit was in. You could feel Javy’s heartbeat through his chest, a pounding rhythm, strong and steady as he was. 

You should get up. 

But you snuggled deeper into his chest, relieved by the deep breath you felt him draw. You both basked in the muted light, the warmth of each other's arms, and you decided the feeling was also the answer to Javy’s question– you’d been nice.

.............

Tagging some mutuals, some folks who asked for it, and general lovers of Javy: @daggerspare-standingby @blowmymbackout @teacupsandtopgun @mandylove1000 @callsign-fangirl @cheekymcgrath @goldenseresinretriever @mxgyver @laracrofted @coyotesamachado @wildbornsiren @bradshawsbitch @sebsxphia @roosterforme

#javy machado #javy machado fic #javy machado smut #javy coyote machado #javy coyote machado smut #coyote x reader #javy machado x reader #i've got to stop posting at 11pm and expecting people to see it #sorry in advance for all the reblogs i will be giving this #misskielwrites

[adarkrainbow]

Given I have made two posts already about "Hansel and Gretel", or variations of the story, I'll make this fairytale the Grimm fairytale of this season. And since everybody knows Hansel and Gretel, and I already spoke somehow about it, I'll just leave below several notes, trivia and facts.

I have spoken before about the "original" version of the Brothers Grimm fairytale - aka the first edition of the text, and how it changed and evolved up to the story we know today. Many of these changes are well-known by the public - for example how the wicked stepmother was originally a wicked MOTHER (but the Grimm changed it because they had a mother-worship thing going on) ; or how the whole "duck scene" where the kids are helped crossing the river by birds was added later and not present in the original text. Some are less known, such as the fact that the "heavenly wind" rhyme was not part of the original text, or how Hansel's prison was originally not some sort of stable like in the final text but a tiny hicken coop.

In terms of "sibling stories" when we look at the great patches of historical fairytales and older literary works, you will find a lot of people pointing out to the Italian fairytale "Ninnillo and Nennella" by Basile - but I have to strongly disagree with this claim, because while Basile's fairytale does contain the motif of "boy/girl sblings abandoned several times in the woods, using various objects to find their way back, until it fails and they are lost forever", beyond that the fairytale has little to no relationship with Hansel and Gretel. A more direct ancestry and relationship has to be found in the French fairytale. More precisely in Perrault's Little Thumbling, Le Petit Poucet, which is also a story about children abandoned in the woods due to a lack of food, that found their way back several times before the birds eat the bread, and that end up in the house of a man-eater, an ogre trying to kill them. But we are still quite away from the German tale - and it is another French literary fairytale that forms the "missing link" in this chain. Madame d'Aulnoy's "Cunning Cinders" (Finette Cendron). This story doesn't involve children, but four young women - however it still follows the Hansel and Gretel formula very closely. Abandoned by their parents in the wilderness, manage to get back several times before it fails, end up trapped in the house of man-eaters, and the titular character defeats the ogre by pushing hm into a fiery oven... Of course, beyond that d'Aulnoy has a ton of additional content - such as the ogre having a wife that must be beheaded ; the lost girls being helped by a fairy godmother ; and the second part of the story being an alternate Cinderella.

But all in all it shows a point I made previously, and talked about in my ogre posts: the structure and type of the "Hansel and Gretel" story is originally an ogre tale. All older versions of the story involve ogres, not witches - but since the German do not have "ogres" in their folklore, the ogress was replaced by a witch. And despite this replacement, the witch of the story keeps several ogre traits - such as a motif of "the elderly devours youth", the idea of the witch having a poor eyesight but a keen sense of smell, or the entire "maternal perversion" motif. Which is my next point.

"Hansel and Gretel" is a familial tragedy, like many other fairytales. But the family of Hansel and Gretel is an actually extremely bizarre one. You can see, once you know your folklore and fairytale lore, that despite it being considered a "classic" and a "foundation", this tale is actually a fragmented and pieced-together story that leaves numerous gaps and is much more muddled and confused than its equivalents and predecessors. What I mean by that is that, when you look at the familial relationships in this story, you will discover several remnants of an older and more commonspread familial structure that was erased, and only leaves bizarre analogies in the new set of characters the tale offers.

To be clearer. We know that Hansel and Gretel are siblings, and that they have two parents - the father and the stepmother, formerly mother. The witch is an unrelated character acting as an outside element - or so it seems. The fairytale actually establishes a parallel and a connection between the wicked stepmother and the witch. They are parallel characters, two wicked women that want the death of children, but whereas one wants to throw the kids out of the house to leave them to starve or be devoured by beats, so she can have more food herself, the other imprisons the children in her house and overfeeds them to devour them later. A more direct link is established whenn the children return home, at the end of the tale, and discover that their step-mother is dead.

Some dark and edgy adaptations will have things such as the stepmother being killed by her husband, or killing herself, stuff like that - but by the tale alone, on just reading the words, and the first impression it leaves on a child, is that the stepmother mysteriously dies in unexplained ways right after the children burned the witch in her oven. The fact that the two wicked women end up deceased for the tale to end happily, the fact the stepmother's death is left unexplained while the witch's death is graphic and fully presented, the fact the stepmother's death is announced after the witch was killed... It all leaves the impression that the two were connected, and that by some sort of "parallel magic", killing the witch triggered the stepmother's death.

This is something many adaptations picked up upon, and you find versons where the witch and the mother look a lot alike, or are played by the same person, or are the same being. (One can compare it to Russian variations of the stories of Baba-Yaga, where wicked stepmothers sometimes send their nice stepdaughters a la Vasilisa the Fair, to the Yaga's house claiming the Yaga is their "sister"). All in all this continues the idea that the witch is a perverse take on the mother figure - nourishing and protecting children only to gulp them down into her stomach. Which, by the way, is the very symbolism and essence of ogres: fathers that kill, mothers that eat.

But while this is the most famous of the "perverse family connections" in the tale, there is another people tend to forget: the connection between Gretel and the witch. I talked heavily of the difference of treatment the witch has between Hansel and Gretel in a previous post ("Why was Hansel the meal of the witch?"). People have noted the strange discrepancy of Hansel being the one locked up and fattened up to be eaten, while Gretel became an abused slave. Many modern adaptations played on this element by having the witch planning on not eating Gretel, but making her an apprentice in witchcraft, an heir to her house, and treating her like a daughter/witch in training. After all, she does malnourish her, so she seems not keen on the idea of eating her at first...

But these modern adaptations actually picked up on something deeper and more fascinating. You see, the witch not locking up Gretel and treating her as her slave seems to be a leftover from older variants of the tale, because there is a widespread archetype in fairytales known as "the witch's daughter" or "the ogress' daughter". In many ogress or man-eating witches tales, the antagonist has a daughter that assists her in her chores. Sometimes the daughter will secretely help the protagonist escape and be an ally - but these are quite rare, and most of the time the daughter is the one the witch/ogress charges of killing-cooking the protagonist. Then the protagonist tricks the daughter, kills and cooks her instead of themselves, and serve her to their monstrous mother, who believes she is eating the protagonist, when in fact she devours her own daughter. It is a very typical structure in those tales, found from the Baba Yaga legends to the Kabyle tales of the teryel.

The witch's daughter archetype also exists in fairytales where the witch is not a man-eater, but rather an antagonist that imprisons people, or that imposes impossible tasks - and here, the daughter will be a more benevolent figure that will secretly help the protagonist escape the witch and/or overcome the trials and tasks the mother imposes. In fact, in several of those stories, the protagonist fights for the right to love and marry the witch's daughter.

All in all, the fact that Gretel is treated as a slave and assistant to the witch, that she is to help feeding and fattening her brother, etc, etc, implies that her character in the story of the Grimm is a leftover of the "ogress' daughter" or "witch's daughter" of older stories. As a result it makes even more sense for adaptations to have the witch treat Gretel as some sort of surrogate daughter, and it makes the whole family picture of the German story very messed up. The witch who tries to eat the children might be their mother/step-mother, and Gretel might be the witch's daughter.

Another motif that has been picked up by various adaptatons is the motif of birds. I remember long ago I stumbled upon a fascinating art series depicting the witch as a half-bird half-human creature - unfortunately the pictures are now lost in the vast pit of the Internet. More recently, another artist posted an image of Hansel in his cage, with the witch appearing a large, black bird above the cage, wearing a witch's hat.

All those art pieces reflected a true fact: "Hansel and Gretel" is a bird story. You have the birds that devour the bread crumbs, but also the pretty bird that leads the children to the witch's house, and the ducks that helps them cross the stream in the added ending of the Grimm. Some variations also have Hansel claim, when he keeps looking back at the house, that he is seeing a "pretty bird" instead of a "pretty cat" like in the Grimm's final text. As a result, some people did identify the birds that eat the breadcrumbs and/or the bird that leads the children to the house with the witch. The anime "Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics" notably depicted the pretty bird luring the children to the house as the witch's familiar.

A last note: The idea that the witch's house is made of tons of various candies and sweets was popularized by various modern adaptations and retellings of the story. In the Grimm tale, the house isn't made of candy. It isn't even made of gingerbread as so many people believe! While it is common for people to think of this tale as "the one with the gingerbread house", I don't know where that comes from. In the text of the Grimm, the house is merely made of bread, plain old bread, with sugar for the windows. There are however cakes that are said to cover the house, as ornaments. Maybe people in retellings decided to mix together the "cake"and the "bread" and decided to make it "gingerbread"? I don't know.

#hansel and gretel #fairytale analysis #gretel #fairytale witch #the gingerbread house witch #grimm fairytales #german fairytales #the brothers grimm #hansel #birds in fairytales

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Dear Crowley, I heard this dashing and very intelligent fox beastman is looking for a job. He used to work as a manager at a popular theme park, so he probably has a ton of experience! Maybe he'd make a great addition to the staff?

The way I choked laughing when I read this interaction 🤡

I decided to structure this interaction like a job interview between Crowley and Fellow (facilitated, of course, by the Reader/Prefect's written recommendation). I thought it would be funnier this way! (Note: Fellow is definitely sugarcoating, glossing over, outright lying, and laying it on thick in some of his responses, but since this is framed mainly from Crowley's perspective, these inconsistencies are not pointed out.)

Enter; An Unkindness of Ravens.

This is the one recommended for the open teaching position?

Crowley eyed the man standing before him. He was beastman, as per the Prefect's description, with a pair of red fox ears and a fluffy tail.

A crimson-lined violet jacket, half a cape tossed over one shoulder, was secured over an olive vest and a snug waist. Golden embellishments and starry badges dangled from his lapels, and the same sparkles studded his top hat. Fun patterns cut into diamond windows raced up his dark green trousers. His long legs were crowned by knee-length spats, and he held an elegant cane topped with a fox in his gloved hands.

His look was professional yet playful.

The candidate was handsome—no doubt about that—and the keen gleam to his eyes implied a sharpness, a pointed wit, about him.

A horrible thought occurred to Crowley: He's not more dashing and intelligent than me, is he? No, no, it simply cannot be done! There’s no one fairer than I!

The headmaster brushed off his concerns, vanity placated, and cleared his throat.

"Let's see here... You are Fellow Honest, correct?" Crowley referred his provided resume. It was handwritten and contained a number of spelling and grammatical errors.

"That's my name! Don't wear it out," the beastman chirped with a wink and the twirl of his cane. "Fellow Honest, at your service."

“Please tell me about yourself, Mr. Honest.”

“Well! Not much to say, I’m afraid. I’m just a wanderer down on his luck, lookin’ to find his way in the world. I saw your job posting and thought I should shoot my shot.”

“I see on your resume that your last position was as a theme park manager…? Why the sudden shift in career, if I may ask?”

"You see, I've always been a lad of big hopes and dreams. I went into the entertainment industry wanting to spread that positivity to others.

"My park used to attract quite a few families and their children, so I came to know the kids quiiite well! They'd tell me stories of their school days, talk about the things they'd want to become in the future. So full of imagination and wonder. I realized I wanted to be a part of that process. Teaching them, guiding them... so they can be the best adults they can be!"

Fellow chuckled—it slid off his tongue easily, as though his laugh was slick with honey. "I thought I'd be the one inspiring them. Turns out, the kids were the ones to light a fire under my tail."

"My, what a stirring story!" Crowley cried out. "I can tell that your passion for working with children is true~

“Now then, why Night Raven College? There are any number of schools you could apply to if you wish to lend your assistance to the youth."

"It's true. I thought to start my own school before this," he confessed, "but Night Raven College called to me. Its graduates are influential, the school's reach immense, and the headmaster most magnanimous... I figures if I wanted to make an impact, this was the place to do that."

Fellow hesitated.

"... And, as one bright young boy once told me, Night Raven College is a place where everyone and anyone is welcome. Even someone from as humble a background as myself can fit in here."

Crowley found himself nodding along with his narrative. The shower of praise was making him feel flattered and floaty—and the more Fellow talked, the more the headmaster felt himself leaning into his words.

But the interview questions. They were not through yet.

The thought slowly sobered Crowley up. His resolution returned, duty and honor-bound to pick the most qualified candidate for the job.

No time for fun and games, not now.

"How would you describe your own magical capabilities? As you know, NRC is an establishment meant for training tomorrow's mages. To that end, many of our tenured professors boast a strong history of magic themselves."

"Ah, that." Fellow’s smile was wry, playing off the anxious little tug at his cravat. “That is…”

“Answer the question, Mr. Honest.”

“Dire, Dire, Dire—may I call you that?” He paused, but failed to grant enough time for a response. Fellow moved fast, talked fast—his cane spinning fast, fast, fast. “I’ll be the first to admit my magical might isn’t on the same level as that of your colleagues.”

Crowley frowned. “Then I’m afraid we cannot proceed with the interview. It would be rather challenging for the students to learn from a teacher who has yet to master magic themselves...”

Fellow’s face fell. “You’ve already made up your mind?”

“I apologize, but this discussion is over.”

“H-HOLD IT!!” he protested, his polite facade dropping. Anger and upset flared on Fellow’s vulpine features. “Where do you get off, cutting me out the very moment I mention…”

Crowley’s expression hardened, the grip on his staff tightening. “Oh dear, it looks as though this interview is headed south.”

Dark power roiled up from within him. The binds on his strength, snapping. Fellow whimpered like a fox backed into a corner by a larger predator.

“A-Ahahahah… Please forgive my outburst, sir~” he simpered, sinking back into his seat. “I-I’d still like the chance to explain myself, oh-so-generous headmaster!!”

“You may,” Crowley replied. His face was almost entirely shrouded by the shadow of his mask. His expression, unreadable.

“You’re right. I… I don’t have a lot of magic to spare. But…!! Even if that’s true about me, I don’t want the students to think like that, judging their own worth based on what an institution says is desired or not.” Fellow’s fingers curled into shaking fists in his lap. “In an ideal world… everyone can pursue their dreams without discrimination, without being told they’re not enough.”

“The final question for you,” Crowley announced grimly. “How do you plan to instruct if you cannot lead by example? How will you instill the lessons and values of Night Raven College?”

“Magic isn’t everything,” Fellow fired back passionately. “It doesn’t matter how much magic history they can recite or how many fancy spells they know.

“What’s most important to me… is that the students find enjoyment in what they learn and can make use of it. That’s how I’d teach them. Practically, and in a way that allows them to laugh and enjoy life for the fun that it’s supposed to be.”

“Hmmm.”

Crowley stared him carefully, like a crow nestled amid the tree branches. Watching, listening.

For the first time, he felt as though he was witnessing the true Fellow Honest.

His interviewee heaved a deep, dramatic sigh, a hand running through his hair. He barked out a bitter laugh.

“I get it, you bigwigs never want to hear what the little guys have to say. I’ll see myself out. It was a waste of my time to try this again. I knew I should have struck out on my own."

Fellow headed for the exit, stomping unhappily, his violet cape trailing behind him. From the other side of the door, a small cat boy in oversized clothes peered in.

“C’mon, Giddie,” Fellow snapped, “we’re done here.”

The child obediently followed. He stumbled in boots that were untied and far too large for him. Still, the concern in his young face did not waver.

Crowley’s eyes followed them until their figures vanished out of sight—but the applicant lingered in his mind. He returned to Fellow’s handwritten resume, mind wandering to the answers the beastman had offered. Different answers, but nonetheless ardent ones.

“… Interesting,” Crowley mused, his lips pulling back into a smile. “Most interesting.”

He's an applicant to consider.

#twst #twisted wonderland #Dire Crowley #Fellow Honest #twst interactions #twisted wonderland interactions #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #Two Ravens at the Writing Desk #stage in playful land spoilers

[cookies-over-yonder]

"... In that moment, you, and Taylor, and Nick all realize that there is no fixing this. That this is as good as it's going to get. That you are all stuck with each other in the forms that you are now. You see daddy magic—that same daddy magic that exited Ron and Terry's body, emanate from their bodies like a fine mist, coalesce into the air, and then zip into the jar and fill it up a little bit more because that's what your relationship is."

The Close Family and Closure: An Analysis and Breakdown of Taylor's Issues in Hell or High Father

...and the way he addresses and, in Taylor fashion, downplays the problem, and denies its lack of solution.

(I have transcribed the majority of this scene, and below the cut is my line-by-line breakdown and analysis, as well as some other tid-bits.)

hello! ever since i got into dndads, taylor has been my favourite. i found his extreme escapism and dumb confidence fascinating, and as you may know, i love finding scenarios for him to break. it's, like, at least half of my fics at this point.

this episode is my favourite episode, it broke me, and it pieced me back together but Wrong in all the right ways.

this analysis is focusing on the taylor of it all. the motivation behind his words and the changes in his cadence and the denial that still, despite everything, refuses to fade.

i've never written an analysis post structured like this, so do let me know if you like it. i just... i really love taylor.

okay, let's go!

1. "Well...''

Nicky: … I didn't see a lot of Taylor's growing up and that was—that was fi—like we're cool now right, Taylor? Taylor: Fuck yeah dawg— Nicky: See?

to start off, taylor's instinctive answer is to agree with nicky. because well, yeah, they're chill now, that's true, so of course the first thing he does is agree. and i gotta say that i was expecting taylor to leave it at that, because he's not one to dig deeper when he doesn't need to, and even when he does.

Taylor: Well…

taylor says this immediately after his first answer and oh ny god i got SO excited. but this ain't about me. anyway. taylor finally admitting that they're actually not 100% cool is such a big fucking step argh i am so proud of him forever and also so sad for him forever...

Nicky: What? Look, I'm back now, and I'm super tight, and we hang out, and we can do samurai shit together, and we're fuckin'—we're tight as fuck.

this part makes me so sad because nicky is so ignorant to how his absence has affected taylor despite his frustrations at glenn for not being there. and also, this sort of reasoning would have worked on convincing taylor back in early season two. in fact, it did!

[Season 2 Episode 10: Dad Me To Hell]

taylor is completely satisfied with this reason because it feeds into his main character syndrome. his dad left to protect him. what better reason is there? and now he's back and there and able to do cool shit with him, so everything is perfect, right?

but the next thing taylor says is so fucking heartbreaking:

Taylor: If I'm gonna be honest, Dad, I've kinda been hoping and keeping an eye out for time travel magic so that we could go back in time, and you could be there for me.

the way he trails off as he says it, and he loses his confidence in his words... it shows an unfamiliar shyness. we've never seen taylor be this vulnerable before. and to think that he'd been holding out hope for time travel magic to fix his childhood? that perfectly aligns with the idea that taylor is so stuck in his anime escapist fantasy that he can't accept what's real. and magic is real, so therefore he must be able to fix his past, right? it's not impossible for there to be time travel (see. end of season 1 + see. attack on titanic.) but taylor doesn't realize that this is something that can't be fixed so easily, even if that magic were available. he doesn't believe that this can't be fixed. more on this later.

Nicky: [grunts and falls] Uh… um… I didn't know you felt that way. Taylor: Yeah, you know, it's just, when I was practicing my jutsus I could have used some pointers. Nicky: Yeah, but like— Taylor: As a result, I've developed a number of very bad habits that I'm told are very hard to break. And, you know, just watching YouTube videos is not the same as having a dad who can fight.

in the past, taylor has used anime to cope with his absent father, and he relied on the fictional characters to bring him the same comfort a father might bring (this was mentioned by freddie in one of the teen talks and while i've been relistening i've yet to find it. do forgive me as i am merely mortal) while this isn't directly referring to that, i still feel it's worth mentioning, as taylor is confronting his own unhealthy coping mechanism and acknowledging that no, youtube videos aren't a replacement for a dad. he couldn't fill the absence of a father with anything else in his life no matter how hard he tried.

also, taylor is smart. he knows that he has unhealthy coping mechanisms or "bad habits" that he can't break and he knows that they're caused by nicky's absence. i just wonder how long he's been stewing over that, you know?

as shown earlier, when taylor first met nicky and found out why he wasn't there, he accepted it immediately, knowing it was the coolest reason for a father to be absent and only fueled his protagonism.

but now, taylor's confronting his own issues surrounding nicky, and explicitly addressing them to nicky.

*wipes a tear*

i'm so proud of him.

Nicky: Wha—I mean, if it's training you want, we can train you, and like, you see your grandpa there— Taylor: [sighs] It's too late. I needed to start when I was three to five years old like true ninja warriors.

there is something so cutting about the way taylor says it's too late. he's talking about training to be a ninja warrior on the surface, yes, but that's not it.

it's too late. it's too late for nicky to witness his upbringing. it's too late for taylor to grow up with a loving father figure. it's too late.

and taylor knows that, and he's saying it, but he's still masking it with it being about training to become a ninja when in reality it's so much more.

this is just one example of the way he downplays the issue. he zeroes in on just one aspect of his life that nicky wasn't a part of, and speaks as if it's the main issue, when really it's only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Nicky: Oh, well, I mean— Taylor: So I'm already trying to play catch-up a little bit, but you know, I guess it's water under the bridge. But you know, if there is time travel magic, then you know, maybe, or if you find it, you could maybe… pick me up on the way back… to the past, and you know maybe we could do childhood all over again.

taylor is playing catch-up with training, but he's also playing catch-up with having a father in his life.

and again, he downplays it, says it's water under the bridge, when it's so very clear how deeply this has been affecting him his entire life.

and to top it all off, he brings up time travel again. and the way he says this is so un-taylorlike it's jarring. the uncertainty of the maybes, the trailing off, the voice so quiet you almost can't hear it...

he thinks there's still a chance to redo it and fix things, but i feel that deep down he knows it's impossible, that it doesn't work like that, and yet he's still grasping at straws to try and make things better.

it's... it's really sad. i feel really sad for him.

and the way he says he wants to redo childhood. as opposed to only talking about training, here he actually says he wants to do childhood all over again, and it's so, so quiet. and taylor is never shy. it's so clear how badly he's hurting over this.

god. okay.

2. "I didn't even know where you were."

Glenn: So we're cool. Nicky: So, we're cool. Glenn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nicky: We're just three cool guys. Taylor: Well…

i love how taylor isn't backing down on the fact that nicky fucked him up. like the gates are open and they can't close back up that easily. he's not accepting them just being three cool guys.

Taylor: Well, I'm just saying—you know, I could have, y'know—not to put too fine a point on it, but Dad, I would have appreciated if, you know… I didn't even know where you were. I 23&me-d my ass, and they sent me a picture of fire, and the cops showed up! There was a white van parked outside of our house for three years!

again, i really notice the change in the way taylor speaks, he's more unsure, quieter, and uses more filler words (such as "y'know"), and it feels as if he feels bad about making nicky confront his faults as a father but he's pushing through it anyway, because he has to.

and i absolutely love the throwback to episode ONE with the 23&me test! like this had been brewing from the start! i just think it's fantastic for it all to build up to this. like yeah. taylor didn't know WHO nicky was or WHERE nicky was and trying to figure it out only led to more danger for him.

Nicky: [gets on one knee and puts his hand on Taylor's shoulder] I guess I never got to properly apologize to you, did I?

Taylor: Well, an apology won't really turn back time, and I don't know how I feel—I would rather have the time travel magic.

this is so cutting. like, yeah, an apology won't cut it, and taylor immediately circles back to time travel magic, as if it could fix what's broken when it really, really can't.

i also find the trend of time when it comes to the close boys to be very fascinating. glenn got locked up in time prison, nicky's childhood was split into two timelines, and taylor thinks time travel can fix his broken relationship with his father?

god damn.

Nicky: Well, I didn't even get to explain—I was in Hell. I was worried that these fuckers [pointing at the other kiddads]— Taylor: Yeah, those fuckers. Nicky: —would have chased after me if I'd gotten out of hell. Taylor: So you're telling me that these fuckers kept you away from me all these years? Nicky: Yeah, you know what? It was these motherfuckers! They are the reason I didn't get to spend time with you because they betrayed me! Taylor: That makes sense; I just saw the memory! Yeah, yeah!

thinking about how taylor immediately agrees with nicky in blaming the others for his absence, because, well, yeah, shit's complicated and they are definitely part of the reason, but the fact that taylor is so on board of whole heartedly blaming them after chewing into his dad about not being there is just so sad. like yeah, of course he doesn't want to be upset at nicky. and it hurts so much that he is.

god.

oh my god.

okay, now, i didn't transcribe the entirety of taylor's memory, i actually summarized it and quoted some key aspects of it, so here:

Taylor's first belt ceremony. He's performing, and he finishes, and he bows, and he looks up. His mom is there. He's sniffling a bit and Cass asks him if he's okay and comments on how he moved all the way up to green belt, and he says he knows. He looks over to the kid who was supposed to get green belt but didn't because of him. The kid is whining, and then his dad comes in and gives him a big hug and—

"It's okay son, I saw how hard you worked, and in my eyes, you're a black belt. Come on, let's get ice cream."

The kid says thanks and they hug and then they leave and Taylor watches them leaving through the window and sees the child and father and mother smiling together. Taylor looks down at and then throws away his green belt.

"I think I'm done with karate."

Taylor gets kicked out.

that line that the father said to his child really hit me, because taylor never heard nicky say that to him. ever. and that was all that he wanted, really. like, "i saw how hard you worked," as in, i was there, watching you, practicing with you, supporting you, i saw you, i see you, i'm here, i'm here with you. and "in my eyes, you're a black belt," in my eyes, you've worked so hard, in my eyes, you deserve more than what you got, in my eyes, you're strong, in my eyes, you're capable.

things nicky never saw, and things nicky never told him.

and then, well, taylor quits.

a memory defining taylor's relationship with nicky. a memory where he wasn't there. a memory where he didn't see taylor's growth. a memory where taylor gave up on an ambition. a memory of absence.

anyways.

Nicky: I'm really sorry— Taylor: I'm kind of sensing a pattern here to be honest. Nicky: Yeah, I'm thinking that maybe the things that your granddad did, I do now. I'm thinking maybe I fucked up in the exact same way… Taylor: [lays a hand on Nicky] I think you fucked up in the same way too. Nicky: Okay. Well that's good. That's good for us.

god. oh my god. the fuckign pattern. i'm so sorry this part makes me lose my coherency all i can think of is how sad it makes me idk idk guys im sorry. you get it. taylor saying yeah you fucked up in the same way and nicky learning that and accepting it. oh my fucking god. like. i dont know theres something about the acceptance of it that really gets me. at the start of the conversation nicky denied it, and here he is, after seeing a memory of taylor doing something he wasn't there for, and now he's like yeah, yeah. i did fuck up royally.

3. "...there is no fixing this."

Glenn: What if we started over? What if we tried to kinda give it a little bit of a reset, and try and make some new memories together, as this sort of team of three? What do you think about that? Is it stupid? I dunno.

Nicky: What kinda memories are you talking about?

Glenn: Well I was thinking we all go to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth, and start everything off on the right foot! It's been so long since I've been to Disneyland, and, I dunno, let me show you all the secrets. Let me show you all the hidden Mickeys. I never got to show Taylor how to get over nine-hundred-thousand points on the Buzz Lightyear ride. And you! Nick, I never showed you the secret entrance into Club 33 that only I know about, and it requires you to go through the sewers a little bit.

I mean, what do you say? Maybe we can do something about this whole fucked up Close family. Maybe we could bring it on back a little bit. What do you guys think?

Nicky: Yeah, sure, yeah I mean, I like Disneyland as much as the next guy. What do you think Taylor?

Taylor: What's Disneyland? I don't understand, what's Disneyland?

now listen, i know that taylor not knowing what disneyland is was just because of the whole doodlerized world thing, but i feel like it also really highlights the disconnect here. like, glenn wasn't around much in nick's life but they knew each other and yes glenn went to disneyland without nick a lot and yes nick liked universal better and if i got into their relationship it would take far too long and i don't feel particularly equipped to tackle that which is why i'm focusing on taylor, but i think that taylor asking what disneyland is highlights the disconnect between him and nicky. nicky and glenn are talking about something that taylor is completely lost on, and to me it really shows the disconnect between all of them. first off, nicky likes universal studios better than disney, second of all, taylor doesn't even know what disneyland is. they grew up in different realms, and they grew up around different people, and nicky was never there, which means there's so much taylor knows that nicky doesn't, and so much nicky knows that taylor doesn't and so much of that knowledge and those experiences can never or will never be shared.

Nicky: Oh yeah, good point, I guess it's on a previously Doodlerized world now with a bunch of really fucked up shit in it.

Glenn: I'm just saying that like—give me a chance. Give me a chance to try and make up for all the—well—you know what? No, no, no, no, no, I can't make up for any of that stuff.

it's true. this solution is like putting icing on top of an overdone cupcake. temporarily sweet but it's still bitter and burnt. (i'm sorry if that doesn't make sense, i don't bake.) but like when you burn something you can't just. un-burn it. sure you can put icing and sprinkles and all the fun stuff and maybe you can wash out the taste but that doesn't change the state of what's underneath.

that's their relationship to me.

Anthony: As you're saying this, without even wanting it to, tears are rolling down your cheeks, and in that moment, you, and Taylor, and Nick all realize that there is no fixing this. That this is as good as it's going to get. That you are all stuck with each other in the forms that you are now. You see daddy magic—that same daddy magic that exited Ron and Terry's body, emanate from their bodies like a fine mist, coalesce into the air, and then zip into the jar and fill it up a little bit more because that's what your relationship is.

ah yes, finally, we reach the end.

this is what their relationship is. it's comprised of missing connections and missed experiences and misplaced memories and absences and longing and searching and finding one another only for it to be too late. it is comprised of absence as opposed to love or hate or anything in between. the nothingness that is absence is their relationship

how depressing.

if i'm honest, i think nicky still has a chance. obviously he can't fix anything with taylor, but i really do hope that he tries to be proactive in taking part in taylor's life from here on out, that is, if taylor even survives this next episode, oooh scary.... hahaha anyways.

i hope everyone enjoyed this essay! i started writing it the day the episode came out but schoolwork kinda took over me.

i wanted to get it out before this episode's teen talk so that's why i finished it tonight, but i may reblog with more thoughts, who knows! we'll see! :3c

i do also encourage you guys to check out my art for this episode specifically inspired by that last anthony quote there.

and of course my thoughts are not the objective truth, i am a mere university student, ignoring my school essays to write one for tumblr <3

bye-bye! <3 :3c

#dungeons and daddies #dndads #dndaddies #hell and high father #dndads analysis #analysis #cookies analyses #cookies rambles <3 #taylor swift dndads #glenn close #nicky foster #nick close #nicholas foster #cookies writes and cookies wrongs

[jamiesfootball]

On the one hand Roy breaking up with Keeley was deeply rooted in his own insecurities and it’s heartbreaking because they both clearly still love each other.

On the other hand, while it’s easy lambast him for being stupid about it and not staying together to work it out, he may have accidentally done a very good thing for himself.

We saw in season two how Roy tends to get a bit clingy in a relationship. Some of that is probably just who he is - a guy who feels things very very very strongly and wants all the quality time with people he loves - but I suspect that some of it is also an outlet for the fact that Roy doesn’t easily make strong, honest emotional connections.

He gives people PARTS of himself. He gives the yoga ladies a bit of his silliness, but not the passionate core of himself that loves football more than anything. He gives the coaching team… more than he used to, but he holds back from being a Diamond Dog. He clearly loves the lads on his team, but they’re not allowed to comfort him about his break up. That’s a step too far.

Outside of his family, Keeley really was like the only person he let inside. And it’s easy to point at Roy’s sense of self worth as the reason for the break up, but on a deeper level I think part of him also felt devastated by the possibility that maybe Keeley didn’t feel as strongly. She didn’t need him the way he needed her, didn’t want to be attached to him the same way. She was fine on her own. Preferred it sometimes.

She loved him. He knows that. But Roy is a man in progress, and god only knows how low his reservoir of being loved was before the series. In some ways, Roy was a starving man when it came to Keeley, and honestly good on him if he realized that wasn’t the healthiest thing to bring into a relationship.

While he might have gone about it in a messy way, in a way that didn’t use enough words because he didn’t know how to make the words mean exactly, I think Roy asked for what he needed. (And Keeley might’ve hit the nail on the head when she called it a ‘break’ instead of a ‘break up’, but Roy is not a man of half measures. If they’re not together then it’s a break up. He’s stringing no one on here.)

Roy is emotionally a fucking mess post break up, but we do see signs now that this is a Roy Kent who is becoming comfortable with his life. He’s warmer with the boys, he’s joking with the coaches, he’s having a great old time during practice and personal training. He’s even made Jamie Tartt into a friend- dare I say, a close friend.

These are the support structures he needed in season two but wouldn’t let himself have. Now that he’s forcefully put himself out to pasture, he’s in a position where he has to let them in or it’s going to get very cold out there. Of course like a sheepdog he has found himself surrounded in cozy things.

This is a Roy who’s gonna be more secure in a relationship. Boy really just needed some time to work on himself. Its the good idea hiding behind the facade of a bad one. He’s gonna be just fine.

#roy kent #ted lasso spoilers #sort of

[familyabolisher]

hello ave ! i was wondering if you’ve watched the 2022 interview with the vampire series and if so what you thought of it

i really enjoyed iwtv! i haven’t read rice’s novel but as far as i understand it, the show was a pretty significant departure from the original text, at least where rice’s engagement with race is concerned—i think the show seems pretty determined to strike out on its own, and thus far seems to be doing a pretty good job of that. i think what i found most interesting was the show’s honing in on a relationship between the coercive enforcement of normative kinship structures and the social abjection of the slave relative to the white master (i’ve been reading vincent woodard’s the delectable negro which expounds on this idea of like, rape + abuse + consumption extant within models of kinship relations, ‘the ideological infrastructure of childhood in slavery’ as he puts it, which i think has a lot of explanatory power around lestat/louis/claudia…); there’s lestat’s ‘teaching’ vampirism to louis which of course then morphs into physical abuse & that the text makes clear can be read parallel to a relationship between a slavemaster and a slave, and there’s the way lestat functions as a patriarch relative to whom we can read louis as the ‘wife’ and claudia as the ‘child,’ and the networks of [physical, economic, emotional] dependency, violence holding them all together.

i’m also quite interested in this idea of a ‘disciplined’ vampirism, or indeed vampirism as ‘disciplining’ (which is of course to say class-enforcing), because of course the dominant cultural narrative of the vampire (& the one with which i have the most familiarity) is that of a kind of nondifferentiated alterity which can be moulded into any number of metaphors. lestat to louis, of course, but also eg. lestat killing the opera singer who performed badly, the opulence of the mardi gras ball at the end (and something about consumption as disciplining—again tapping the vincent woodard sign but the mardi gras attendees coveting a kind of consumption of louis as a Black man only to then themselves be consumed), louis in 2021 comparing vampires who eat humans rather than animals to slaves (‘slaves to their appetites’ or similar, i forget the exact wording used, but it’s the language of body fascism plus the obvious pertinence with which slavery in the show as a whole is imbued—which ofc then invokes ideas around [un]disciplined bodies and racialisation) … it’s interesting how the show kind of plays both positions at once. the alterity metaphor is there, but so is the hegemony of sorts—vampirism disrupts louis’ position within a traditional family structure where vampirism stands for queerness, obviously, but also the intrusion of lestat (which is to say both queerness and slavery!) as a force that destabilises a Black family. it’s an interesting little balancing act and i’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

anyway i also just think it’s a well-written show lol! visually gorgeous, erotic, indulgent, well-paced. i had a good time. no idea what happens next (again, haven’t read the book) but my ears pricked up at the idea of travelling from louisiana to europe … a transatlantic crossing, a reverse colonisation of sorts … there’s a lot you can do with that!

#ask #iwtv #slavery cw #someone could deffo do a reading of iwtv alongside woodard i'd be really interested in that

[raayllum]

Knowledge as a Burden / Subjective & Objective Truth :: A S5 Meta

Now, the concept of Knowledge being a burden is nothing new. It's quite literally baked into cultural consciousness (at least in the West; I don't know enough to speak for East cultural mythos) through both the story of Adam and Eve within the three Abrahamic religions, and its close sister story of Pandora's pithos (more commonly known as a box). We also see it in stories such as Bluebeard, in which a new wife is forbidden to inspect her husband's private chambers and deeply regrets her choice to do so, as well as phrases such as "the grass is always greener on the other side," "ignorance is a bliss," and "what you don't know can't hurt you" (all of which are debatable as phrases, of course).

However, it is one of the rare themes in TDP, I think, that wasn't really present in arc 1 and is introduced as an arc 2 (as compared to most that were already in arc 1, and have just been strengthened/matured) particularly as of S5, hence why I wanted to talk about it.

So let's talk about it (specifically Kpp'Ar, Akiyu, Viren, Rayla, Callum Ezran, Soren, and the Jailer, not at all in that order).

Thematic Origins

Like most things in terms of season four thematically, "Knowledge as a Burden" actually starts in Through The Moon, in a lot of ways. There's the other side of it as well - not knowing what happened to her family or Viren is causing Rayla to be increasingly irate and worried - but TTM closes out on Rayla at least being able to face the fact her family is gone. If that was the only big piece of information she'd learned by going through the portal, she probably wouldn't have left.

R: Right before you found me, he opened his eyes, and I knew... He may be caught between life and death somehow, but Viren is on this side of things. He's alive, Callum! C: I don't know, Rayla. I didn't understand half of what I saw in there. [...] I let you jump into the Nexus alone and I knew right away I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. I could have lost you.

However, she Knew - in her bones - that Viren was alive, and so she had to go after him. Even if it wasn't what she wanted (to leave or to hurt Callum) the knowledge itself felt like it was pressing down on her, that this was what she had to do. That she had no other choice.

That being said, TTM is at its core supplementary material. While it initiates the theme in this way (as does Callum's devotion), it may be worth turning to how S4 originates the theme and pursuit of Knowledge, which is not through Rayla directly, but is through Callum, instead.

(If you're interested in Amaya and Callum's parallels in 4x01 concerning partners and knowledge, you'll want to check out this meta here.)

In the beginning of S4, Callum is where Rayla used to be, left in limbo about the well-being and what's happened to his loved ones. And there is, of course, his frustration and quest to properly decipher the mirror, and anger at Soren, when he believes the man is keeping something from him.

This anchoring in Callum's plot line and curiosity indeed informs the true thematic basis of knowledge in Arc 2 in comparison in Arc 1. In the first three seasons, we always knew where we were going — to the Dragon Queen to notify her of Zym's safety/existence, with Viren's initial Aaravos plotline in S2 being a divergence from this level of certainty — but in arc 2, we're purposefully floundering a bit more. Because in a lot of ways

Arc 2 is About the Pursuit of Knowledge

This isn't particularly a surprise, given the seasons have the official title of "The Mystery of Aaravos," and mysteries involve clues that are in the inherent pursuit of trying to gain answers (i.e. knowledge), but it does mark a structural departure from Arc 1, as mentioned earlier, and informs S4-S5 (and most likely S6) more than we might've initially realized.

A perfect example is that, from 4x05 onwards, the main characters (including Claudia and co. until the of 4x09) up until approximately the end of 5x05 (a full 10 episodes) are simply travelling around trying to find the pieces to Aaravos' prison. To decipher its location, its material, and its very nature. But put a pin in it for later, cause I want to draw attention to another quest for knowledge that runs concurrently in season 5 in particular, AKA:

Knowledge as Power

I've talked before about Finnegrin's parallels to Aaravos, but thus far haven't touched too much on Callum's parallels to Finnegrin, even though they're uh

There, for sure. And of course, both Finnegrin and Callum (and Rayla, with her "We're going to need to know one thing: how do we kill a Startouch elf" + Finnegrin's "I just want one thing") have their own similar reasonings, ultimately, for wanting to kill their chosen targets: to maintain their own control and freedom.

(This isn't to say this is Callum's exclusive motivation regarding Aaravos — it isn't — but I do think we're meant to see the blatant parallels as well.)

Control, freedom, and power are all undeniably, understandably linked, then. But knowledge is the undercurrent (pun intended) of all of it. Finnegrin's awareness of his confines is what's driving him mad; Callum knowing that Aaravos can possess him and what the mirror entailed, things he lived in ignorant bliss of for 2+ years, are what worries him in S4. Knowledge and power are inextricably linked, as Viren's character makes particular apparent, which in the case of Kpp'Ar demonstrates a strong Knowledge of his student (with caveats) as well as Aaravos' assessment of Viren. If you have knowledge, you have power — and if you have power, you have agency and/or worth.

Which I think is the subtextual cue to Viren only having clarity ("This is nonsense!") once he casts down his crown (power) in the dream sequences, as well as his end of season "I finally see the truth" epiphany that also comes with relinquishing power and agency over his own life, while ironically exerting it more than ever. But more on Viren and all that later, so pin in it for now.

We also see this element of Knowledge as power come into play with other characters, most notably Claudia in her utilization of dark magic and the creativity she expresses with it, Callum's knowledge of spells, and even Ezran in S5:

However, knowledge in the 'traditional' sense in show isn't solely about magic or spells or prisons, or even overtly negative. There are far more positive sides as well (even if, like most things, it's a double edged sword). So let's talk about

Knowledge as Self Actualization

Have talked about self actualization in regards to Callum and Rayla's individual development in Arc 1 a few times in overlapping ways, so not going to repeat too much here (each of them examining themselves but also one another's worldview - of the cycle and magic/the war - in order to reach the people they were meant to be in many ways, etc), although I am going to touch on them later as per S4 and S5 again.

For a fresher example, I want to talk about Soren.

Dictionaries define self actualization as the process of becoming your fullest self — often times conflated with the best version of yourself — where you become more You than you ever were before. This is especially true for both Soren and Rayla in arc 1, where although they have dips and bends, they are both ultimately selfless protectors secure in the duties they've finally been able to fully choose (and to make up, to themselves, for prior failures). For Callum and Ezran, their self actualization is more transformative into someone entirely new — more confident, more assertive, more compassionate and with the power to express it — than restorative, but again: put a pin in Callum's arc for a bit, cause we're getting to it.

For now, let's talk about self actualization through recognition of yourself through the other (aka in this case, how Callum and Rayla view themselves through the other's eyes in S4 and S5) as well as love being both a subjective and objective truth (with some moon arcanum stuff for spice).

So objective truth is things that are undeniably real — magic exists in Xadia, Aaravos has been imprisoned. Subjective truth is whether Aaravos was imprisoned for a good reason, or that humans can't access primal magic; these can change depending on viewpoint or access to new/old information. For example, while Aaravos likely isn't lying about what he believes will happen ("The sun will rise and you will not") that doesn't make it objective reality; just because someone is telling their truth and perception of events does not make it unilaterally The truth.

But for a more interpersonal view...

In season four, just like Callum doesn't know if Rayla is alive, he doesn't know how to feel about her coming back. Rayla hopes that they can reconcile, but she also knows that her leaving hurt him — even if Callum won't admit it. She had her reasons for leaving and he has his reasons for being hurt, and although somewhat opposed, they can both exist. This follows what Lujanne and Ezran cite, i.e.:

Lujanne: Sometimes real trust is accepting even the dark parts we will never know. [..] Was it wrong? Or was it just differently true?

with notions of subjective truth, and Ezran's assertion of his truth that

But I think I left something out. I ignored something that was true. I denied something that is undeniable. We are angry! I am angry. I have been hurt. [...] But… It’s not that easy or simple. Because people are still hurting and they are still angry. We can’t ignore that, or pretend it will go away. Somehow, we have to hold it all in our hearts at the same time. We have to acknowledge the weight of the pain and loss, but open up our eyes and allow ourselves to hope and maybe forgive and love again.

Whether one has hope or not that the world can be different often times indicates whether they will be breaking the cycle or perpetuating it. We see these conflicting realities once again with Soren and his inability to get through to Claudia ("You're on the wrong side. I know because... I was too")

versus being able to successfully get through to Elmer:

When you can empathize and relate to others — which is a cornerstone of Amaya's growth as well across season three through to season five — you can lend understanding and self-actualization not only to yourself, but also to them: "You know who you sound like?" "Who?" "Me" much in the same way Soren is able to offer it to Elmer, and Elmer reasserts his own identity — his understanding and knowledge of himself, down to his name — accordingly in addition to becoming an ally.

Knowledge is also the foundation of consistency; how well we know someone is predicated on how well we can predict their behaviour and subsequently rely on them, not only in action but also in reaction and responses. There's few things more disconcerting than someone reacting poorly to something you thought they would take rather well. Moreover, if knowledge of ourselves can lead to self-actualization, then our knowledge of each other can also lead to mutual self-actualization. We see this first hand in Rayla and Callum's Arc 2 dynamic thus far, so let's talk about it:

Mutual Love as Self Actualization: Part 1 — Uncertainty to Certainty (S4)

As previously noted, Callum starts out S4 at both a loss with the mirror, and still coping with the uncertainty and stagnation of his loss of Rayla. When Ezran reaffirms that Callum still loves her, all Callum can helplessly rely that he doesn't "even know if she's alive." Things don't really improve once Rayla shows up, either, even if we see the persistent thread of not knowing vs knowing being knit throughout their arc with one another.

We see this knit through, lightly, in Janai's arc regarding her people and place as queen ("Elves and humans [moving too fast]? ... I don't know" "At least Karim would lead with some kind of certainty") as though uncertainty is nothing but doubt, rather than a journey involving doubt as well as the opportunity for growth just as much as any venture (as Callum and Rayla will soon find out).

After all, Callum soon finds a shred of comfort in said uncertainty, and offers it to Rayla accordingly in an attempt to comfort her:

Rayla: This is all my fault [that Soren is dead/missing]. I left him alone! I shouldn't have— Callum: Rayla. Don't. We can't know what happened for sure. I mean, this is the path to Rex Igneous, right? So maybe he couldn’t climb out of the pit, so he had to keep going. You know him. He’s brave. He’s gotta be down there looking for Rex.

And this is also built upon a foundation Ezran has set earlier with his friends. When he is trying to get Callum and Rayla to work together, he doesn't tell them to set everything aside, or even harkens back to their good old days. He asserts their identities and says, "Don't you remember who you are?" because to him — and evidently to Callum and Rayla, because it works — working together and helping each other has become a fundamental, core part of who they are as individuals. They are that interwoven with each other, and Rayla reflects that in 4x07 with, "Callum, you're the 'destiny is a book you write yourself' guy. No one can control you or make your choices for you" as well as what Callum offers up to her in 4x09 where we see the turning point in their prior uncertainty. Although they've both changed, they are fundamentally still the same people they were when they fell in love, and there is both comfort, sadness, and acceptance in that realization, where Callum says:

Which is the tipping point into season 5, and where they stay for the bulk of season five, so let's talk about that next stage.

Mutual Love as Self Actualization: Part 2 — Certainty and Discovery (S5)

Upon reconciling once Callum has said what we knew all along — "I'm so glad you come back" — Callum and Rayla return to the castle, and their searches for knowledge become arguably more explicitly stated by the text. Their first scene together in 5x01 establishes that Callum wants to know the Ocean arcanum ("I thought it would be about controlling the tides or fighting the currents" thereby exerting control, which he desperately wants over himself post-S4) as well as Aaravos, whereas Rayla is seeking answers about her family: "If I can figure out how he put you into the cursed coins, maybe I can find a way to get you out."

This is, of course, something we know she doesn't trust Callum with yet, not wanting to burden him with her problems especially before she's reached her own conclusion of what to do about it (to delay it for the good of the world) and we see that the certainty and forgiveness Callum found in 4x09 has more than carried over.

Opeli: Don't you want to know what she was up to? Why she did all this? Callum: If she didn't tell me, she has a good reason. I know this: the tides are true as the ocean is deep. [...] It means I trust her. Unconditionally. Let her go. Now.

This scene harkens back not only to the love poetry he quoted and then paraphrases ("To love is simply to know this") where loving and knowing someone is deemed synonyms, but also by his reassertion of Rayla's identity in the wake of her transgressions and her silence: "She's not the elf. She's Rayla" because Callum's love for (and trust in) her has always been rooted in the essence of who she is: "That's what makes her a hero. That's what makes her Rayla."

And we see Rayla's own knowledge of certainty challenged and reformed by Amaya in 5x04:

When I was growing up, my big sister Sarai was the smartest, strongest, bravest person I knew. When she died, I felt lost and weak without her. I hated feeling that way, so I learned to be strong alone. Stoic, strong, and lonely. [That does sound like me sometimes.] But the last two years have changed everything. Meeting Janai, falling in love, I am stronger than I ever was — because we are stronger together. And I realized that was the real truth of me and Sarai too. Love and trust grow a kind of strength that is much bigger than we each possess. To have that kind of strength, it is not enough to love someone. You have to trust them to share the burdens you carry.

And although very uncertain about opening up, Rayla still expresses certainty that she knows Callum could and can be there for her, if he wants to be — if he's ready to be.

Rayla: But I think — I know that I trust you to help me carry this. If you're okay with that?

This is, after all, with both Amaya's encouragement and Callum's reassurance that 1) "You can tell me when you're ready" and that 2) he does want to know from 5x01. Then, we see both their arcs in this way largely — or at least they would, in a perfect world — be resolved in many ways by their interaction later in 5x04:

But that's not where their season 5 arc ends, because 5x08 happens. To talk about that, though, we have to talk about a few other things, namely

Oedipus Rex

Bear with me, because I promise this relates. "Oedipus Rex" is a 5th century BCE Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, detailing the life of a man who's name is mostly (ironically) known for lending itself to Sigmund Freud's Oedipus complex theory. The play and myth itself, however, indicate very much the opposite. Prophesied to murder his father and marry his mother, both Oedipus and his parents are accordingly horrified by his apparent fate, and do everything they can to remove it as a possibility, including abandoning their baby to die on a mountainside, as well as Oedipus leaving the home of the family who saved and subsequently raised him, never realizing he was adopted.

He then goes on to discover the truth of the prophesy when a plague wracks his city that the seers say will not leave until the murderer of their king is found, and Oedipus unknowingly pushes until the point of revelation that it was himself, and that his wife for many years is actually his mother. Even when other characters, such as his mother turned wife, Jocasta, begin to suspect the truth and urge him to stop chasing down the mystery so they can have plausible deniability, Oedipus remains oblivious until the horrifying truth is staring him in the face. Jocasta hangs herself, and he gouges his eyes out and runs off into the woods to die.

The reason I bring this all up is because, in the Western literary canon at least, "Oedipus Rex" is considered the "ur-text," otherwise known as the text that all others are modelled after. Not necessarily in the incest or the tragedy, but the fact that most if not many Western stories (TDP included) are continually propelled towards the point of Revelation or epiphany, and that this revelation is inevitable, whether it is positive or negative.

While Viren and Harrow give an excellent display of a relationship that breaks down due to a lack of understanding and compassion, as well as self-doubt on both sides...

Harrow: Call it what it is. Dark magic [...] I've spent years going along with these creative solutions, and where has it gotten me? Viren: I don't understand. Harrow: I know you don't. Leave me. Viren: They will find you and they will kill you. Harrow: I know this. Viren: But know this: anyone of these men and women would gladly trade their lives to save yours.

Likewise, we see Viren through his dreams seek the form of acceptance ("I hope you know--" "I know") that Rayla has offered Callum, except from Harrow, as well as going further into what Viren has deeply wanted for most of his life and from Harrow in particular; to be listened to, to be valued. (How pure that is in practice is debatable given their dynamic outside of Viren's dreams, i.e. Harrow listening to you does not always mean agreeing with you, but I digress.)

Harrow: You are a brother. You're my family. Viren: I've always thought of you as my family, and you know, I would do anything for my family. However dangerous. However vile. Harrow: [Still hugging him] I know. Viren: It is everything to me, to know that I mean something to you, to know that I matter. It's all I ever wanted.

But what should be a scene of comfort and reassurance turns into a literal nightmare. Into entrapment. Into imprisonment.

Knowledge as a Burden / How Knowledge Can Imprison You

I've said before that Arc 2 is about the pursuit of knowledge, specifically because more than the mystery of Aaravos himself, the bulk of the main characters are trying to unravel the mystery of his prison. Season five, by virtue of offering more clues (the nature of the prison, its appearance, and its location) also reveals more of the layers in both the construction of the prison and the dispersion of the clues. Even the mighty Domina Profundis states, "I do not know where it is," but that "I do know what it is."

Previously, we've mostly talked about knowledge, especially within the text of the show, as a positive thing. It is the foundational rock of a strong relationship, it can lead to positive self actualization, and it helps the heroes keep Aaravos from being unleashed. When you do not have enough knowledge or perceived understanding of someone (Claudia assumes Soren could never understand her, and Viren and Harrow's relationship breakdown), your relationship accordingly deteriorates. When you share knowledge, and share experiences (Rayla to Callum about the coins, Soren to Elmer about abusive cycles), you can become stronger together.

But knowledge is not exclusively a good thing. It can also be harmful, or unwanted, or unwanted precisely because it's harmful. It can bind you to deals or bonds you don't really want, and once you know something, you cannot un-know it, whether about yourself or about others. And we see this most plainly in the story Archmage Akiyu shares about the prison.

Because Aaravos was a master manipulator, the Jailer knew all knowledge of the prison had to be protected... its location, its material, its very nature. She carefully divided information about the prison so that not even the Archdragons had the complete picture. Each knew only a piece. "The puzzle is the real prison," she told me with a proud smile. But I made a fatal mistake.

Akiyu didn't mean to look. She didn't mean to discover, to know. What should've been a noteworthy accomplishment of being trusted to keep the world safe, so it would be a better place for her and others to live in, nearly spelled her doom.

I begged her to let me live. I swore to keep the secret safe, but she said it was too important. "The archdragons will have to kill you," she told me, "to protect the puzzle, to secure the prison."

There's a few interesting things here. We can see, from the severity that Akiyu holds regarding her oath, that the Jailer was genuinely concerned about making sure the prison would hold Aaravos, in addition to the fact that Jailer would be condemning Akiyu to death without having to bloody her hands herself. But the intensity here does make sense; as she just said, "the prison is the real puzzle," and now that's been potentially compromised.

We even get a bit of bonus foreshadowing, as Callum turns to look at Rayla, indicating he hasn't forgotten what he asked her to do in 4x07, and that him gaining more knowledge about Aaravos (or the key?) may not necessarily be a Good thing.

Rayla: [About the cube] It's a toy. A piece from a children's game. I hope it was worth it to you, putting everyone's lives in danger (1x04).

If you have knowledge, you have the capacity to share knowledge, either for a common good with people you trust, or to potentially have it twisted out of you under duress, both of which could've posed a danger if Akiyu had trusted the wrong person...

or if someone (much the same way Ezran put it together) went after her to get information but with less favourable intentions...

And we see that Akiyu was likely aware of this as well:

So I proposed a pact. I made a solemn promise I would die before revealing the location of the prison to anyone. And she spared me.

She ends her history lesson by reaffirming a sentiment she already expressed earlier, citing, "I didn't want to kill you, but you left me no choice. I swore an oath, and I intend to keep it" and reaffirming it here with, "So you see, when you came looking for information about Aaravos, I had no choice. If I didn't deter you, I had to kill you." At best, Akiyu's acquisition of knowledge made her prepared to put blood on her hands (if it isn't there already from previous knowledge seekers) and provides her justification in doing so.

If she could just un-know something, her life and the information would've been much safer for everyone involved, and yet that wasn't really possible. Once you know something, you cannot un-know it. (What is done cannot be undone.) Although what happened was a genuine accident, and Akiyu wanted to live, she still understood the importance of what was transpiring and why the Jailer reluctantly wanted to remove her from the equation ("The archdragons will have to kill you" / "You have to kill me. I need you to promise") to be safe rather than sorry.

And then on the flipside we have Finnegrin, who is punished for 'genuine' crimes (we can assume based on his actions that his prior ones weren't much better, but we also don't totally know for sure), spared without begging for it, and is deeply resentful of the restrictions placed upon him.

So while to get out of her predicament, Akiyu is an Tidebound elf who holds onto knowledge, Finnegrin is a Tidebound elf who wants to get out of his predicament by gaining knowledge — by any means necessary. Because knowledge is power, knowledge is agency, and knowledge is imprisonment. Which means it's finally time to talk about:

Knowledge and the Ocean Arcanum

So if S4 is about beginning to navigate both in spite of and within uncertainty, S5 is about having the safety of that uncertainty stripped away, both in creating more of it, and in removing some of it. Namely, the Ocean arcanum:

Finnegrin: What did you think you could do, boy? I control everyone on this ship. Everyone.

Callum: [Internally] Do not ask how the ocean's blue... or why their time the tides do keep. To love is simply to know this. The tides are true as the Ocean is deep.

Now I've talked more about the specific symbolism embedded in the scene where Callum internally unlocks the Ocean arcanum — the closing of his hand mimicking what he must've done to crush the slug (as well as the importance of hands and consistent gestures throughout the episode), the sea and storm and darkness receding because the arcanum is, ultimately, enlightenment, etc.

And in some ways, Callum unlocking the Ocean arcanum should be outright enlightenment with all the positive connotations that comes with. It's him achieving the goal he wanted from his first scene this season ("I'm trying to get into a place where I can connect with the Ocean arcanum"), it has all the positive light and lack of storm associations, and it allows Callum to triumphantly break free from Finnegrin's blood ice grip, for lack of a better term.

Callum: But then, you already knew that, didn't you? Because it's the secret of the Ocean itself. The arcanum. Finnegrin: Impossible. Callum: You helped me figure it out. I thought it would be about controlling the tides, or fighting the currents. But it's the opposite. The Ocean arcanum is about accepting there are depths you can't see, parts of yourself you can't understand, and things you can't control. You know what I'm saying is true because you were born knowing it. No matter how much you try, you'll never control everything. And that terrifies you.

I'm afraid, Rayla. What if I'm on a path of darkness?

Callum does not frame him unlocking the Ocean arcanum, nor the arcana itself, as a victory. Not to say that either of those things are bad, but that they have layers, and complications, that largely were not present (at least at the time) with the Sky arcanum. While Callum learned in S4 the dark side of potential and how consequences can catch up to you, in many ways, S5 is about deepening that understanding to the fact that no matter how much power you have, you can still not control everything. There will always be moments you feel powerless. There will always be moments you are found desperate.

He chased the Ocean arcanum because he thought, if Sky granted him potential and freedom, then Ocean would grant him control, but the truth was more complicated than that. While it did grant him control (the ability to break free from Finnegrin's spell), it also granted him a rather hard truth he'd rather not know.

The first time he cites his poem about true tides and untold deaths, he is talking about his faith and trust in Rayla — the way he views her: "If she didn't tell me, she has a good reason. [...] I trust her. Unconditionally."

The second time he recites the poem, it is about himself. The untold depths are within himself, are parts he is still trying to understand in full because they are uncomfortable truths. In many ways, Callum unlocking the Ocean arcanum is his version of Ezran's 4x03 speech (see how we looped all the way back? 'Totally' intentional I swear), that multiple things can be, and sort of have to be, true in order to gain new ground, even if there's a part of you that wishes it could be simple.

I had a speech planned for today. It was about peace and love and hope. But I think I left something out. I ignored something that was true. I denied something that is undeniable.  [I'm not a dark mage. I will never help you. -> That's the dark magic you want. Just... just let her go.]

And just like his brother, Callum can no longer deny the truth.

Callum had to accept parts of himself that he was previously denying — where they could lead and what they could do, and how he could be manipulated/coerced/controlled — in order to access the Ocean arcanum. Love both makes him stronger, by his own assessment, and weaker, per Finnegrin's. Losing control made him realize what he'll do in order to have control again, even if it's temporary, even if it might not work, even if it might have disastrous consequences, because what he gains in the process — in this case, Rayla's life and safety - is worth it to him, even if all that knowledge is also scary to him and something he's going to continue to learn how to cope with.

Callum's knowledge of himself then becomes a burden, both a metaphorical and literal chain (undoing his chains so that he can free Rayla, while knowing he's chaining himself further to Aaravos in the process).

With this in mind, the ocean arcanum thereby embodies all the facets of Knowledge we've largely been looking at across S4 and S5 in particular. It is Love ("To love is simply to know this") and self actualization/discovery ("parts of yourself you can't understand"). It is power ("The secret of the Ocean itself - the arcanum" "Impossible!") and it is a burden ("there are depths you can't see" with his hands clasped like chains not for the first or last time this episode). It is freedom, yes, but the Knowledge Callum now holds is also imprisonment.

Conclusion

If you made it all this way, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. While there were other elements this season (Viren's atonement and self actualization arc which begins and ends with him becoming aware of the Truth, or knowledge, of his actions, for example) I felt they were better suited to other core themes or motifs — a general theme of self actualization or the way TDP discusses truth and sight, for example, than being tethered directly to Knowledge in this way.

I expect we'll see this be continued further as the cast chases more knowledge about Aaravos and his past / power in future seasons, in addition to the potential knowledge he and other Startouch elves such as Leola passed down to humanity that had a variety of consequences.

For now, I will see you in the next meta.

—Dragons out

#tdp meta #tdp #tdp soren #tdp callum #the dragon prince #rayllum #varrow #s5 #arc 2 #s4 #analysis series #analysis #listen i got to talk about oedipus rex so i'm happy as a clam

[mysticwolfshadows]

Taken - Zutara

Pt 1 (Here), Pt 2, Pt 3, Pt 4, Pt 5, Pt 6

So, as far as I know, we don't know much (if anything) about Azulon's wife. And I have a soft spot for fics that set up her as the origin for much of Iroh's (eventual) kind nature. Knowing a bit about world building and government structure (thanks DND), Azulon being a very militaristic leader means that the Fire Nation, to survive, would need a second in command (Fire Lady) that kept things stable on the home front. I love fics that include this, too. And we do see hints of that in ATLA. The polluted river? What smart leader puts a factory shooting chemicals into a river right housing a floating town???

Anyway, the fic that I was working on had Azulon's wife (who I called Ilah) as a main character. Basically, Fire Lady Ilah has fallen ill, and out of desperation to keep the balance of their power, Azulon managing the war front while Ilah kept the mother land alive, Azulon searches for something that can be done to save her. The only thing that was suggested that could work was a water bending healer. Of course, the Fire Nation had no access to any water benders. They executed all of the prisoners after Hama's escape, and an assault on the North would take to long to be effective. Thankfully, word had just come that there was a new waterbender spotted in the South.

Some worry its the blood demon (Hama) returned to rally dark spirits. Others hope it is a potential healer for their ailing leader. Either way, an investigation must be made. They must find the waterbender in the South.

When the ships arrive, led by Iroh (maybe Lu Ten, or with Lu Ten aboard), the tribe is helpless. Hama is not there, and hasn't been in decades. No warrior, no matter how many there are, could stand to the well equiped soldiers of three high class cruisers. So when the leader steps out, wanting to see the waterbender, the village can only cower. Hakoda tightens his grip on a spear that will be useless against so many. It's when an officer mentions a rumor that waterbenders instinctively save themselves from drowning, and suggests holding each tribesman under water until the bender is found that Katara, only 8, screams out that its her, so the Fire Nation won't hurt her family.

She's taken, her family screaming, onto the ship. There, she's kept by Iroh and/or Lu Ten, who sits with her and gives her tea. Iroh or Lu Ten explain why they came, how his mother/grandmother is ailing, and needs a healer. He tells her that, while she may be young, she's their only hope of a healer. Katara has no choice but to promise to do her best, knowing her village would take the punishment for her failure.

They dress her in Fire Nation clothes, which she hates, and as they sail back to the Fire Nation, Iroh and/or Lu Ten do their best to trian her. They have her practice on soldiers that are injured either from training or work accidents. She becomes surprisingly competent in a short time, all because she had a master (even though a firebending one) to guide her.

When she finally reaches the Fire Nation, she's taken by how bright and colorful everything is. She's amazed by how load and plentiful the people are. And when she's taken into the Fire Palace, she's shocked by how big everything is.

When she's brought before Azulon, the Fire Lord rages. A peasant child? This is the hope of the Fire Nation?! Iroh asks his father to trust, and they take Katara to the Fire Lady.

And, by some mix of sheer force of will and some miracles, Katara succeeds.

Ilah is able to recover, at least partially, and Katara is placed as her 'ward', always at the Fire Lady's side, lest the sickness return. But Ilah is a gentle soul. She won't have a child acting as a nurse full time. Whenever there is a moment, she makes sure to be where Katara can be around others her age will be. In the Fire Palace, that is anywhere Zuko and Azula will be.

Katara spends a lot of those first weeks stiff and cautious, hesitant to go near the Fire Nation royals. But Azula constantly pokes at her with Mai and Ty Lee. She bites back, snaps when Azula sneers. It is only because Ilah is there that Azula doesn't try to burn her. Later, Zuko starts to come by. He's awkward and kind of rude, but it's not meant in a mean way. Ursa encourages Zuko to be kind, to make friends with her, so Zuko does his best.

After a couple months, Katara isn't skittish or cautious. She surrenders to the fact that she's never going home. Ilah doesn't need her as much, so she is mostly locked in her room, a small room attached to the Fire Lady's personal chambers. With little to do, Katara begins to despair. It's Zuko, still trying because his mother asked and he would never disappoint her, that becomes her ally.

He brings her snacks, books, even trying toys and things, to get her to brighten. Eventually, she opens up, relying on Zuko as her only friend. It brings out more of Azula's spite, and Zuko becomes worried about safety. He asks if Katara would maybe like to come with him to practice instead of sitting around in her little room, hoping to keep her closer in case Azula tried anything.

It's at these firebending practices that Katara starts to learn combat bending. She mimics and mines certain moves when she thinks no one is watching, slowly learning what does and doesn't move the water. She learned, if she loosened her stance, made her body just a bit more fluid as it moved instead of sharp like firebenders, she could waterbend. Slowly, she adapts, teaching herself to fight by changing firebending moves to fit her needs.

It's about a year after Katara arrives in the Fire Nation that it happens. The sickness returns with a vengeance, and Fire Lady Ilah needs full time care again. Katara, attached to this woman whose life she holds in her hands and has been at the side of for over a year, weeps when she realizes she's not enough to save her. At 9, Katara must tell Fire Lord Azulon that she is weak and can not do the one thing that they kept her around for. She cowered as the Fire Lord raged, knowing that it could be the last thing she ever sees.

"It is only by Fire Lady Ilah's will that you live," Azulon tells her after the funeral. "It is her memory that stays my hand. Do not sully it, lest I forget why you are here."

Katara is put into Ursa's care, and is placed in lessons. She attends private classes, learning Fire Nation history, math, and literature. Her life becomes so busy, she barely has time for anything but her studies. Zuko is her only reprieve, and they share their wants and desires. Zuko wants to become someone that his mother and father can be proud of. Katara just wants to go home. Zuko promises that, some day, some how, he'll make that happen for her. Katara thanks him, but she knows that it's impossible.

Next

#zutara #wip #fanfic idea #atla #avatar the last airbender #zuko #katara

[tumbleweed-writes]

Death and the Lady: Chibs Telford X Reader Chapter Two

Chapter one found HERE

CHAPTER TWO: Infatuation

Y/L/N and Sons Funeral Home was located in one of the more affluent neighborhoods of Charming, California. Although, this was more due to it being one of the older homes in town than a sign of the actual wealth of the owners of the property.

A golden placard was proudly displayed by the front door declaring that the property had first opened its doors all the way back in 1910, although Y/N’s father would claim that their ancestors had been undertakers for far longer than that. 

It had been something he was proud of; the history of their family and their profession. It was a respected profession that had been viewed as more of a service by her father. Lloyd Y/L/N’s father had been an undertaker and his father before that and so on. Generations of sons in Y/N’s family had maintained the family business. It was their legacy. It was a family tradition and tradition was to be upheld according to Y/N’s father. 

Now that there were no available sons to take the reins as the town funeral director, Y/N had been left to carry on the family tradition. She was the last undertaker in the Y/L/N line. 

Her father had often boasted about the family history. Photos of Y/N’s ancestors lined the small office that was now her own. They were black and white photos featuring her grandfathers before her alongside undertaker carriages and finally old hearses; the family home and business displayed in the background. As soon as photography had become readily available her ancestors had paid a pretty penny to capture the family legacy. There was even a disturbingly large leather bound photo album featuring some memento mori photography mostly featuring Y/N’s ancestors as well as some of the ancestors of many of Charming’s residents. 

This photo album, of course, was not something that was proudly displayed like the other family photos though. She was quite certain most of Charming’s residents would be displeased to know her family had long held quite a few photographs of their deceased ancestors after they were post mortem. 

The family business had begun during the civil war by one of Y/N’s northern ancestors who took full advantage of the booming business of embalming as dead soldiers needed to be preserved to be sent back home during the war. 

After the war had ended and the popularity of embalming had spread her ancestors had kept up the family business. 

Y/N’s ancestors had traveled out to California and settled in Charming soon after the town began to develop enough of a population to require the services of an undertaker. They’d remained ever since burying generations of Charming residents. Most residents of Charming had passed through the home more than once. It was a place more than one resident of Charming would find themselves eventually at the end of life.

Although the owners of the old home were far from being as wealthy as their neighbors, the appearance of the home hid this fact well.

It was an impressive home and might even be considered beautiful if one didn’t realize just what kind of establishment it was. The lot was quite large compared to the few homes that stood alongside it. It had seemed that not many people had been fond of developing homes alongside Charming’s oldest funeral home.

The home was a massive white Victorian style structure featuring a long red brick driveway. The windows of the home were a fine looking stained glass featuring a rose-design that had been placed way back when the home was originally built. Lovely red and pink rose bushes and large old oak and maple trees lined the property. 

Given that the funeral home served not only as a place of business but a family home, there had even been a glass and iron greenhouse constructed behind the property. The structure that had been built by Y/N’s great great grandmother and was still tended to this day by Y/N herself.

A small pet cemetery sat near the outskirts of the property, another feature that had been added by one of Y/N’s great grandmothers though the small cemetery held mostly family pets; cats, one bloodhound, a few parakeets, even a few goldfish. Y/N could admit that more than one goldfish had been her own childhood pets. When Y/N was a child she’d even been told rumors that there was a horse buried somewhere in the home’s old pet cemetery but she’d not thought that it was likely given her family tended to document every single death both human and pet, and no mention of a horse had ever been recorded. 

Needless to say, generations of Y/N’s family had resided in the home and it held a history far beyond just its purpose to the community. It was an eccentric and morbid history, but it was Y/N’s history all the same.

When she’d been a teenager, she had resented the odd macabre history, but as an adult who had entered the family business she found herself holding the same pride for it her father had always held.

The legacy was uncomfortable to most, but it was hers. 

Due to the more affluent area and the fine looking home, Chibs Telford couldn’t help but to feel out of place as Jax and he pulled Darby’s stolen SUV discreetly into the driveway.

Chibs hated to admit that he felt an odd mixture of both awe and fear as he stared up at the massive home, a chill running down his spine as he spotted the wooden sign displayed in the yard that proudly stated Y/L/N and Sons Funeral Home established 1910.

He suddenly remembered Juice’s words just earlier in the day; Spooky.

He tried to pretend that he didn’t feel a ball of dread developing in his gut as he followed Jax and Juice up the long driveway towards the front door.

He stared at the two panel stained glass front door, his palms growing damp as Jax reached out to ring the doorbell.

The pleasant chime that sounded out didn’t fit what laid inside, in Chibs’ opinion. 

Chibs hated to admit that he felt his heart skip a beat at the thought of facing the fascinating young woman he’d met just earlier that day and would be meeting once again very soon. 

He’d be lying if he tried to pretend that his brain hadn’t been hyperfocused on her all morning. 

She truly did puzzle him. He knew it had to do with more than the fact that Y/N was a gorgeous woman with an odd career. It was the implication of her past and her brazenness when it had come to her establishing that she would be willing to do favors for the SAMCRO in the future for payment of course. He’d been stunned by how willingly she’d been to mouth off to Jax Teller and how comfortable she’d seemed to insist that she would now be the Sons line of contact for future favors regarding anything they may have previously used Skeeter for. 

She was ballsy, he had to admit it. It was an admirable trait. Boldness was a sexy trait in a lass, or so Chibs had always believed.

As hard as Chibs tried to deny it, Y/N was a puzzle he wanted desperately to solve. There was something about her that both excited him and confused the hell out of him.

It was a feeling he’d not had in a long while; being fascinated by a woman. His interactions with women for a little over a decade now had consisted of a quick fuck from the croweaters that hung around both SAMBEL and SAMCRO. 

A woman had not interested him beyond sex since his estranged wife Fiona.

It was a realization that made him feel unsteady and uncertain. He felt so unlike himself and it was terrifying.

As hard as he wanted to deny it he was interested in Y/N as more than just a fun romp in his bed.

He tried to shove thoughts of Y/N in his bed as the front door opened the very woman he’d been entranced with appearing.

She was no longer dressed in the casual blue jeans, tank top, and converse she’d worn in the crematorium earlier.

She wore a black short sleeved sheath dress that could only be described as professional though it did fit against her form well. He suddenly realized her curves were just as lovely as her legs and he couldn’t help but to find it a shame that such a lovely pair of legs were hidden under a pair of black sheer tights. She wore black mary jane style heels on her feet that were just tall enough to look fashionable but not so unreasonable that she didn’t look professional. Her hair had been pulled back into a french twist and Chibs spotted a pair of small pearl studs in her ears. A small golden cross hung from a thin chain around her neck and it glimmered against the otherwise dark fabric. 

She was wearing  makeup this time around though it was soft and subdued making her look elegant. 

Chibs took notice of her hands. Her short nails were painted a soft pink and her hands looked so delicate. He felt a mixture of emotions wash over him at the sight of such delicate looking hands both picturing them caressing his skin but all too aware that they also often touched the dead. He felt both lust and dread at the thought. The thought made him feel dizzy and he had to briefly wonder if there was something quite wrong with him given that the mix of dread and lust seemed more Tig or Happy the Tacoma Killer territory.

Chibs shoved back the thought trying to pretend that he wasn’t studying her so closely.

If Y/N had noticed that she had an admirer in the Scotsman, she gave no indication she rolling her eyes, a soft huff leaving her. “You’re almost ten minutes late.”

Jax gave her an all too flirty smile quick to reply. “Sorry, you know me. Promptness was never one of  my virtues.”

She gave no flirty smile back instead letting out another soft huff. “Hurry up and come in. I don’t need the neighbors gawking.”

Chibs felt a slight frown cross his features both at Jax’s flirty nature and the indication that there were any neighbors close enough to gawk.

The area did seem quite private after all.

He followed his brothers inside Y/N shutting the door behind them.

Chibs studied the large entryway feeling even more out of place. Dark wood floors were covered with fine looking red persian rugs that Chibs was certain must be antiques. He found himself fearing his boots weren’t quite clean enough to cross such fine rugs.

He took notice of a china cabinet against the wall, the antique furniture containing no dishes but a small oil painting featuring lambs, a display of options for funeral pamphlets, and a fake display of garden roses that looked eerily real.

An equally old looking coat rack and soft pink chaise lounge sat near the cabinet. He took notice of the iron light fixtures and tiffany lamps on the ceiling. 

It seemed as though the home was filled with antiques that Chibs had to wonder if they were family heirlooms. This was a family business and it didn’t seem like mass produced items that she’d just acquired to make the home seem sophisticated.

He felt his feet move as he followed his brothers further into the home. He spotted more oil paintings, mostly of generic images; flower fields and hints of religious iconography, more lambs and doves.

He widened his eyes as he spotted an oil painting showing the very home they stood in now. Y/N spoke over her shoulder apparently taking notice of his gaze landing upon it. “An addition added by some grandfather who died long before I was a thought. It’s not the only family painting. The more personal ones are upstairs. My ancestors were obsessed…I am unsure if the portraits were narcissism or just male pride….although I might argue that there is little difference between the two.”

The last comment went over Juice’s head but it did put a small smirk on Jax’s lips and did make Chibs twist his lips somewhat amused that she was willing to make a dig towards the male species in front of men who personified masculinity. 

He was once again reminded that she was courageous. Not many people would make such a dig in front of bikers who prided themselves in being macho. 

“Upstairs?” Juice dared to ask gazing up a grand looking wooden L-shaped stair case it was clear that he felt just as out of place in the home as Chibs though his feelings were more fear filled than his brother’s. 

“Yes, living quarters are upstairs…no access to the public of course.” Y/N remarked, shrugging her shoulders.

“You live here?” Juice spat out his eyes growing wide as saucers, his stomach turning at the thought.

Chibs spotted a hint of a smirk on Y/N’s lips; she clearly accustomed to this reaction and obviously enjoying shocking Juice. “I was born and raised here.”

She cleared her throat dread filling her belly despite her cooler demeanor. She’d debated her choice to go along with this as the morning had worn on.

She’d debated giving Jax Teller the money back and backing out of this. She had a distinct feeling there was no backing out of this now. SAMCRO might not take too kindly to her chickening out now even with her history with them. 

As terrible as she felt, the greed within her heart told her that the envelope of cash that now resided upstairs hidden in a jewelry box in her bedroom was far too precious to part with.

She knew that she’d dug her grave by agreeing to any of this, and now she had no choice but to lie in it.

She ignored the voice that told her that her father would be ashamed. She felt a bitter voice remark that she was in this debt due to him after all. Working with SAMCRO was a means to an end. The money would do her favors and keep the family business her father so prided himself in up and running.

She spoke again, finding it easier to speak about the home than focus on her guilt and fear. “The home has been operational since 1910, though the family has been in the business far longer than that. I’m sure my family has buried members of every resident in Charming’s family. My family has resided here since the home was built. A lot of the town grew around us. Things changed as time wore on but we remained. We’ve always tended to the dead of Charming. Pretty sure a few of my ancestors were born and died upstairs. My father and mother both died in this home and their funerals were held here.”

Juice cleared his throat muttering something similar to the observation he’d made back at the cemetery this morning. “Spooky.”

Chibs found himself hanging on to her words, the statements fascinating him all the more. There was something about her that seemed far more worldly and elegant than the conversations he usually held with the croweaters back at SAMCRO’s clubhouse.

Sure the choice in conversation was morbid, but the calm and collected way she spoke about it showed a level of comfort with the macabre that spiked Chibs’ curiosity.

Juice’s eyes grew all the wider as they rounded the corner passing what was clearly a few viewing rooms, a room featuring casket and urn displays, a chapel-like space, and a lobby area meant for the bereaved to gather. 

They passed her closed office door going down a long hallway that ended with a closed door. The sign outside the door featured a sign with bold letters that stated : ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONAL PAST THIS POINT.

Y/N spoke over her shoulder a sigh leaving her. “The embalming room is in the basement, body storage is beside it.”

Juice spoke a choked gasp leaving him. “We’re going there?”

She gazed over her shoulder, raising a well manicured brow. “You guys wanted a body…that’s where it is.”

They followed her downstairs, Chibs unable to stop himself from asking. “How do you get the bodies up and down the stairs?”

“The casket lift…it’s essentially an elevator for the dead.” She remarked not bothering to gaze back at him clearly accustomed to the question.

Chibs furrowed his brow both fascinated and disturbed by the concept.

Y/N felt her stomach turn trying to ignore the golden placard her father had installed by the closed door to the embalming room. It clearly stated: REMEMBER, Behind these doors lies the most sacred room in this building. Here loved ones come to be prepared for their final rest. Those who work behind these doors must uphold a commitment to the morals of our profession and a promise to serve the bereaved. Conduct yourself in an appropriate manner consistent with those in this profession. 

She felt that sense of horror bubble up deep within her knowing what she was about to do was far from appropriate and respectful for the sacred profession her father was so proud of.

She spoke as she noticed the men beside her also took notice of the placard. “My father and his rules. To be honest he mostly put this sign up as a reminder to one of his old employees…Richardson had a mouth that would make a saint blush. My father wasn’t fond of the F-bombs while embalming.”

She opened the door, the Sons following along behind her the energy in the air tense.

Chibs studied the room unsure of what he’d been expecting. The area seemed so sanitary. The floors were a shiny clean dark tile. Cabinets lined the walls containing a variety of chemicals: formaldehyde, sodium nitrate, methanol, and a few other complicated sounding chemicals that were unfamiliar to the Scotsman.

He suddenly realized that Y/N must be quite intelligent to know just what to do with all these chemicals. 

He felt his stomach turn as he eyed two stark white embalming tables both thankfully vacant though he spotted an intense looking machine beside them, it hitting him that it was most likely used to pump the deceased full of embalming fluid and other preservative agents.

He spotted upper cabinets with clear glass doors that were filled with more tools of the trade. He was certain there was more to be seen in a few of the closed drawers in the cabinets. 

There was a sink beside one of these cabinets and a few anatomy posters on the wall. He spotted a small radio sitting in the corner of the room as well as a CD player hinting Y/N must listen to music or talk radio while working.

Another thing caught his eye; a heavy looking case sat open on one of the cabinets filled with what seemed to be makeup as well as a few other small devices. 

It wasn’t the makeup nor the tools that caught his attention. It was the stickers. The inside of the case and even the outside were lined with stickers, some cutesy, some downright morbid. There was a peace sign and a cartoony looking strawberry. He also spotted a black sticker featuring a hearse that stated: Last Responder. There was also a sticker featuring a cheerful looking cartoon grim reaper that stated: Spoilers, We All Die. There were a few more that seemed to be from some kind of convention for funeral directors, a concept that struck Chibs as bizarre. 

The stickers lining the case made the otherwise sterile and cold room seem less intimidating. He was tempted to walk over to the case and study it closer hoping it might reveal more about the woman who he’d found himself fascinated by, but he remained locked in place sure she wouldn’t be amused by the snooping.

She spoke not paying mind to the discomfort of her guests. She almost felt comforted that they felt so out of place. It served them right for what they were making her do. She felt comforted that they were in her space and it gave her at least the appearance of having the upper hand here.

“The body is in storage. Give me a moment.” 

Chibs shifted in place his brothers and he silent as Y/N disappeared behind a closed door. He was tempted to follow her; perhaps offer his assistance.

He kept locked in place though almost certain she’d turn down his offer. After all, he was sure she must have gotten the body down here all on her own. So, why would she want his help?

Juice mumbled under his breath. “Fucking hate this.”

Jax shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly. “Just chill. We’re going to be out of here before you know it.”

Chibs smirked, unable to stop himself from prodding Juice. “Ya fraid of the dead lad?...Too many zombie movies? Ya fraid of ghosts or somethin?”

Juice groaned, shaking his head. “This place doesn’t give you the creeps?”

“They’re dead. Don’t think they mean any harm. Y/N seems to be alive an’ well” Chibs remarked, shrugging his shoulders though he did feel a small sense of discomfort.

This entire act was quite blasphemous though he had a feeling this feeling had more to do with his Catholic upbringing than any fear of the dead.

The men didn’t have much longer to discuss the general feeling of discomfort in the room and the act they were engaging in as Y/N reappeared rolling a gurney.

Chibs raised an eyebrow impressed she could manage to roll the heavy looking gurney in heels. He had a feeling it wasn’t an unfamiliar task to her.

She spoke, rolling her eyes not above calling out her companions. “Thanks for the help gentlemen. Such a testament to your gender, making the lady do all the lifting.”

Chibs stepped forward first a small smirk on his lips unable to stop the flirty tone from his voice. “Figured ya had it handled lass. Ya seem the type that doesn’ need a man ta handle yer shite.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow uncertain if he was being sarcastic or if this was a genuine compliment.

The feeling it was the latter did strange things to her heart. She pushed the thought from her mind. Now wasn’t the time to let some biker hit on her no matter how charming the accent might be.

She wasn’t the girl who got weak in the knees over a bad boy in a kutte anymore.

She had to admit that the older Scotsman did hold a certain charm. Sure, the scars along his cheeks were disconcerting. She had a feeling that she should fear the person who might have done this to him though instead of him as the victim of what was clearly a past attack. He seemed somewhat unkempt. His shorter hair could use a good comb and maybe a little wash. He seemed older than her; perhaps in his forties at least. 

She’d spotted an intense pair of dark eyes under his shades though that she found to be a lovely rich dark brown that made her think of bittersweet chocolate. She did spot clear dimples that were a lovely feature in an otherwise intimidating looking man.  She also noticed a pair of plush lips under a neatly trimmed goatee.

He was an attractive man though older and far rougher than most men who she paid much attention to.

She shook the thought from her mind. She was not paying him any attention. She refused to go down that path. 

Jax and Juice took notice of the flirtatious tone to Chibs’ voice but neither man paid too much mind to it. Chibs did have a way of talking to most women like they were a lass after his own heart. He was charming when he really wanted to be.

All three men helped Y/N lift the body, thankfully, contained within a body bag up onto a platform that Chibs realized must be that casket lift Y/N had mentioned earlier.

Y/N spoke a sigh leaving her. “I assume you brought a vehicle to transport this to…whatever the hell it is you want with it.”

Chibs smirked thinking of Darby’s stolen SUV as Jax spoke. “Yep darlin’, we got it covered.”

“Aye, won’t need to borrow a hearse.” Chibs added on.

She rolled her eyes fast to respond, treating the sarcasm as a serious remark on purpose. “I have a body transport van for that…the hearse makes the general public a little queasy.”

Chibs smirked again a bit amused by the quick remark. He had to like this girl the longer he spent around her.

It wasn’t until they were back upstairs at Y/N’s home’s back entrance, it being far more reasonable to sneak the body out this way, that she spoke again. “You swear this shit you guys are about to do won’t lead back to me?”

Jax was fast to reply , reaching out to give Y/N’s hand a squeeze. “I promise you.”

Y/N yanked her hand back, rolling her eyes not interested in accepting any comfort from him especially when her bullshit meter was going off. “I am also assuming you using me to gain access to the crematorium at the cemetery later won’t get me in deep shit?”

Chibs spoke before Jax had a chance to attempt to provide reassurance. “I swear on my ma lass.”

He reached out giving her shoulder a squeeze, almost feeling giddy that she didn’t yank from him the way she did from Jax. “Ya got nothin to worry bout. SAMCRO won’t leave a trace ya had anythin to do with this.”

She raised an eyebrow hesitating moving from his grasp, almost finding it strangely reassuring. She pushed the thought from her mind stepping back from his touch, her voice returning to that calm collected tone she’d taken when she’d first let them in her home. “You guys should go. I am expecting patrons very soon. I highly doubt John Meyer would be too amused to have three members of SAMCRO looming about when he comes to pick out a casket for his grandmother’s funeral.”

Chibs smirked, familiar with the older and snobbish man she was mentioning. He was a well known owner of one of Charming’s more upscale restaurants. She was right he might not be amused to have Charming’s criminal element hanging around in such a situation. 

As the men walked away Chibs found himself taking what he hoped was a casual glance behind him at Y/N as she shut the door behind them.

He hated to see her disappear from his sight and was surprised to admit he felt almost excited at the thought of seeing her again at the crematorium.

—--------------------------------

Chibs took a hefty swig of his beer as he sat in the passenger's seat by Jax in Darby’s SUV as it sped along the highway.

Jax spoke nodding to the two dead bodies in the back end of the SUV. “These guys fuckin stink. Y/N must have an iron stomach to handle the stench.”

Chibs smirked, taking a drag of his lit cigarette, his heart fluttering at the mention of her name. “Aye, she mus’.”

He stared at the amber liquid in the bottle of beer in his hand, his mind a mess of questions about the funeral director.

He shifted in his seat thinking back to her interactions with Jax. He had mixed feelings about whatever had happened there.

He was surprised by the hint of jealousy in his gut. A bitter voice in the back of his mind couldn’t help but to snark that Jax wasn’t entirely capable of appreciating an elegant woman like Y/N.

It was clear by her reaction to him that perhaps he’d not appreciated her in the past.

Chibs knew he couldn’t just grill the Sons VP on his history with the woman without it being obvious Chibs had taken a liking to her.

He spoke his voice tight, trying to sound casual and not at all prying. “Ya seem to know tha lass well.”

Jax shrugged his shoulders taking a drag off his own cigarette. “Her brother was in my grade growing up. He was a pretty cool guy until the accident.”

Chibs raised an eyebrow parroting the words curiosity in his voice. “Accident?”

He suddenly remembered Clay’s comment about Y/N’s brother being in the county nuthouse.

“Not my story to tell. Let’s just say it was some tragic shit…really almost wrecked that family. Y/N is still living with the aftermath.” Jax remarked, taking another drag from the cigarette.

Chibs shifted in his seat the comment only making the mystery surrounding Y/N only grow murkier.

He spoke, clearing his throat. “Aye Clay mentioned a hospitalization…guess the lass is his only family”

Jax nodded his head, his eyes keeping focused on the road. “Yeah, I think it was just her, him and her dad. Pretty sure her mom died when she was a kid. She never said much about it. Now it’s just her…or it may as well be given her brother.”

Chibs furrowed his brow, unable to deny that his heart ached at the concept of it just being her.

Chibs cleared his throat taking another drag of his cigarette, the words leaving his lips before he could stop them. “She mentioned bein a club hangaround?”

Jax chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, she might of looked like little Miss Prim and Proper today, but she had a wild streak a mile fucking long. At least she did back when she was like nineteen and twenty. She was a lot of fun.”

Chibs furrowed his brow not quite liking the snark in Jax’s voice at the mention of Y/N being so proper. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked the mention of her being fun either or at least the implication behind it. 

Chibs spoke, clearing his throat voicing a troubling thought. “Lass was a croweater?”

Jax shook his head a snort leaving him. “Not exactly…like I said about her older brother, not my story to tell. Like I said…she hasn’t always been so classy.”

He spoke again gazing at Chibs, a bit surprised the Scot seemed so interested in Y/N. One might think the Scotsman was a little sweet on her.

“She’s a complicated woman.”

Jax noted that the comment earned a raised eyebrow from Chibs it apparently only deepening his apparent interest in Y/N.

The thought puzzled Jax. Chibs didn’t develop schoolboy crushes. After all Chibs had not shown much interest in women other than getting his dick wet with an available croweater. To see him this interested was a foreign concept. 

The man was still married after all, at least legally. His estranged wife had not been stateside in some time and she was tied to the man who had scarred Chibs leaving him for dead and banishing him from the cause. 

Needless to say, Chibs had a lot of reasons to keep romance at arm's length. 

Jax frowned, having to wonder if perhaps Chibs had hopes of getting his dick wet with Y/N. He shook his head, tempted to tell him Y/N would more than likely rid him of his dick if he pulled it with her.

She might look elegant but she didn’t take any bullshit from what Jax remembered. Time may have passed but Jax was certain Y/N was still as prone to calling a guy on his shit as she had been almost ten years prior. 

He bit back the warning, deciding it would be Chibs’ lesson to learn. He smirked, having to wonder if the warning would just present itself as more of a temptation to the older man. Some guys liked the challenge.

He continued to study Chibs, the older man taking another swig of his beer, clearly fighting back the desire to pry further.

It was a strange concept. Chibs had a crush? Or at the very least a clear lust? 

Jax shook his head, having to wonder if Chibs had any clue just what he might be signing up for if he was in fact sweet on Charming’s local undertaker.

#chibs telford #chibs sons of anarchy #chibs telford fanfiction #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #Chibs Telford x reader

[the-s1lly-corner]

Uhh i request you

<-forgot everything about creepypasta after stopping reading fanfics

Uhhhhhhh

Um

...slenderman uhhhhm meeting reader who is the same.. species? Found family????? Reader being chipper and welcoming?? Artistic and calming?? Basically um. I dunno. They also live in the woods and collect poor souls, helping them cope and detach from this world??????

I am.. stoopid.

Slenderman x slender-person!artistic!reader ! (found family)

dusts out my slenderman hcs as well as my au ideas on him aheehee ahoo speed running this since i just put my first round of macarons into the oven and im too impatient to wait until theyre done baking for me to write this NEVER BACK DOWN NEVER WHAT

okay but im getting this idea out of the way before i forget. imagine the reader, instead of doing paintings and stuff for the "artist" thing they make little structures and statues and stuff and have them around in your area. of course theyre all made with forest material; mud, sticks, pinecones, ect ect i dont know, i just love the nature aesthetic with this idea and rrrraaaaaAAAAH

for some reason or another, you make your home in the same woods THE slenderman lives in; or perhaps it was the otherway around? regardless, it doesnt take long for you to become aware of one another....

okay but how funny would it be if you guys bonded over your annoyances over people collecting your stuff. people taking his pages, and people taking your art projects (at least the ones that are portable). like!

though i cannot think of any lore reasons for slendermans pages in my au.... i will one day i promise, i feel like thats too much of an iconic thing to just cut out

it DOES take a long while for slenderman to get used to you, much less foster a friendship with you... but a family bond? i mean yeah sure, hes very reclusive... but thats not just with humans. he doesnt like interacting with other creatures, either

pats your shoulder

my moot

my dear moot, allow me to go on a tangent about my take on slenderman

basic summary is that he and all other demon/most nonhuman creepypasta characters were made by zalgo in my funky au; basically to bring disorder and that kind of shit. but like in a "this is just a part of this universe's nature" way. thus making slenderman himself in my take the be a simple fact of life... thinks.. and he resents his own existence, i think. i mean how cruel is it that he was made to cause issues, in fact he cant live without it (eats people) but he was granted the ability to be able to grasp the complexity of morals and emotion. like thats fucked

i love it

anyways, theres that and him just naturally being reclusive! hell even his supposed "brothers" (splendor and trender, i refuse to touch the third one) hes still.. distant

basically what i mean to say is that you guys probably arent going to be.. outwardly close... if that makes sense. like hes not going to be very affectionate; so dont expect many familial... things... and its not often that he would seek conversation out... though

as i write that, if i recall correctly i did give him the vague craving of connection, and while i usually save that for traditional x reader stuff, i think this would still apply to found family stuff! so actually, i think he WOULD eventually start seeking your company out, just for the fact of having someone else to talk to who doesnt resent his existence the same way he resents his own

sits

given my silly hc i do think he would have some understanding with your relationship with humans/lost souls. would he do it himself? i think it really depends on the situation... like if hes not actively hunting he usually just drives people out of the woods, no sense in wasting.... things... you know?

sits

im all jumbled all over the place my apolocheese im just excited to write for slenderman again

will get annoyed if you snatch away his "meal" since AGAIN, he was cursed to feed on people . like he understands why you did it, and he has mixed feelings around eating human (like not in a "im distressed and i hate it" way more so "its not totally desirable but i cant survive without doing this" way)

sits

i think

im gonna toy around with my slenderman hcs... this ended up being more of a hc dump than a x reader, my apologies

its also that as im typing this i realize how similar my takes on eyeless jack and slenderman are... which is funny because they live in the same woods in my au but they fucking HATE each other

territorial stuff you know

#creepypasta x reader #slenderman x reader #slenderman x y/n #slenderman x you #creepypasta x you #slenderman imagine #slenderman headcanons