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freelancearsonist · 2 months

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Hold Me Like a Knife

Joel Miller x fem!Reader

Rated MA for p in v sex, oral (f receiving), fingering, handjobs, smoking/nicotine use, excessive drinking, characters not knowing how to handle emotions properly (same), ANGST [please let me know if i missed anything at all :)]

6,003 Words

A/N: thank you to the lovely @shakespeareanwannabe for being my ever faithful beta reader ily 🥺

Smoke disperses in abstract swirls from Joel’s parted lips, the tang of nicotine making his taste buds prickle. It’s been a long time since he’s been afforded the luxury of a cigarette and this first drag makes him think he might not want to pick the habit back up, after all. But you worked hard to find these for him after he mentioned he missed having a smoke, and he’s not one to let a gift go unappreciated. Especially now that gifts are off the table.

It’s become routine at this point. Waking up in the middle of the night; reaching for you, realizing all over again that you’re not there anymore; ruminating on what’s happened, how he’s taken you for granted. At least he has his cigarette to keep him company.

There’s no chance of going back to sleep for him–it’s 4AM anyway, close enough to a full night’s sleep. He takes another drag and decides it’s not as bad anymore. He just needs to get reacclimated to it.

He only allows himself to savor half the cigarette before he stubs it out in the ashtray on the nightstand–another gift from you–to save for next time he needs it. He wants to make this pack last; he doesn’t care as much about maintaining the habit as he does about having any little piece of you he can.

Two hours later, he’s bathed to the best of his ability given the stunted resources in the quarantine zone and ready for another day in hell.

He didn’t hate it nearly as much until he started working with you again.

When you see him you wear the same soft smile you always do, nodding your head in greeting as if nothing is wrong. His face remains flat as he nods back. Nothing he can do but play along–pretend you were never his to lose in the first place. After all, if you haven’t heard his heart fracturing into a million pieces by now, you never will.

“Either quit starin’ or go over there and talk to her,” Tess tells him sternly. He immediately snaps his eyes away and tries to shoot her a glare, but he’s a bit too embarrassed for it to actually land.

“M’not starin’,” he grunts.

She actually almost cracks a smile at his denial. “The hell you’re not, you look like a lost puppy. Why don’t you talk to her?”

“She ain’t interested in talkin’.”

“Bullshit. That’s all she wants.”

Maybe Tess is right. Maybe he’s the one who’s afraid. He’s not going to admit that, though.

“If she wanted to talk to me, she’d come talk to me.”

“You probably scared her off.”

Joel slams his hand against the wagon bed, startling everyone within a ten meter radius except Tess. “That’s enough.”

“Touchy.” Tess rolls her eyes but backs off nonetheless, not interested in poking the bear any further.

Joel lets it go and turns his attention back to his assigned job for the day, mentally preparing himself for another night of washing the stench of death from himself and his clothes. Normally, you would do it for him without complaining. Now it’s just another addition to the list of efforts he didn’t appreciate enough while he had you.

Even though he dreads the consequences, he allows himself to become completely preoccupied with his work in a way he normally wouldn’t. It’s a reprieve from the constant swirling of his mind, from the overthinking that keeps him up at night or invades his dreams when he finally finds rest.

The day is over far too soon, and then he’s back in his little apartment with nothing but his own mind for company.

His mind hasn’t been a friend lately.

He looks around and everywhere his dark amber eyes catch, he sees you. You sprawled on the worn couch underneath a threadbare blanket, you swaying your hips to the rhythm of silent music in the kitchen, you casually dropping the towel wrapped around your naked body to the floor as you step out of the shower and lure him down the hall to the bedroom.

He wants to crawl into a deep, dark pit when he remembers what he said and how he chased you away. Your only sin was introducing him to someone as your man, and he played like he was upset about it because that’s not what this was ever supposed to be. There had been an agreement, in the beginning, that feelings wouldn’t be involved. It would be you, him, separate, occasionally helping each other out.

It so quickly turned into you and him, so inseparable you were practically living together. Neither of you even tried to stop it despite the agreement. And Joel was fine with it, liked it even. Until it was put into words.

Because he’s not supposed to be anyone’s. He’s Joel Miller, and he’s not deserving of belonging to anyone; including himself.

He didn’t mean to push you away. It was more out of instinct, an inborn urge to self-destruct.

The instinct has won, because he feels like mere pieces at this point. Like you’ve taken a sledgehammer to his heart repeatedly, which really isn’t fair to you. Space was his decision–you didn’t even fight it.

With a third of whiskey in his hand and an ache in his jaw from having it unconsciously clenched so long, he slumps down on his time-worn couch and begins a long night of rehashing mistakes and feeling bad for himself.

It could be so easily fixed if he just swallowed his pride. It’s a competition of will at this point–a game to see who can survive without the other for the longest. He hates that he’s losing, that it’s not affecting you; that even though it was his choice, he’s the one who’s suffering the most.

He must spill his drink–although he can’t find where it possibly could’ve been spilled, everything around him is dry–because it’s gone within a few minutes. He allows himself another glass as a reward for surviving a particularly shitty day.

When he comes to in the morning, there’s a pounding in his head so loud that it drowns out any other sound he might hear. It takes him a moment to realize that the pounding is on the door–then he processes how blinding the sun is coming through the slats of the tattered blinds precariously hanging over the window.

Joel pushes himself up from the couch with a grunt and stumbles a little, nearly falling right back into place. He curses himself for becoming such a lightweight as he stomps his way over to the door and throws it open.

“Jesus Christ, you reek,” Tess chokes, pushing past him to make her way inside. “I’ve only been knockin’ for ten minutes, what the hell were you doin’?”

“Sleeping,” he tells her with a pointed glare. It doesn’t ruffle her at all–it never does.

“Missed morning shift,” she notes. “How much you have to drink?”

“Not enough.”

“Alright, that’s it,” she tells him with a sigh. “It’s time to stop with the pity party if you’re not gonna play the hand you’re dealt. You know how stupid you’re being? She wants you. You want her. Two words’ll fix the whole thing and you’ll go right back to bein’ the disgusting little lovebirds you are. Apologize.”

“No,” he insists without thinking it over. Because he knows she’s right–he owes you an apology. And he also knows you’ll take him back the instant he delivers.

Which is exactly why he can’t. He knows he doesn’t deserve another chance to take you for granted. He didn’t appreciate you enough when he had you, and you deserve to find someone who will. Asking for another chance would be the most selfish thing he’s ever done, and Joel Miller is not a selfish man.

“Then drink yourself to death.” As much as Tess plays at being frustrated with him, he’s never seen her this legitimately upset. “I’m done cleanin’ up for you. You’re acting pathetic, Joel Miller. Get yourself together or get yourself over.”

And before he can stop her, apologize, beg, plead, do anything besides bite his tongue in pure shock, she’s gone. The slam of the door rings through his head for a good minute longer than it should.

All he can do is slump like a sack of potatoes onto the couch, his center of gravity off balance from the weight in his heart and the churning in his stomach.

It was never supposed to be like this; it was never supposed to get this far. You were supposed to fight him, demand he stay, do anything to make him feel like you really want to be with him. Instead, you acquiesced without resistance. You listened to his offer of space and accepted without hesitance. Almost like you were looking for an out.

That’s what hurts most, maybe. That you can still afford to smile at him like nothing ever happened between you when he feels like he’ll never smile again.

He knows he can’t lose Tess over this–she’s the only friend he’s got and a damned good business partner. He knows it’s time to clean up his act. What he doesn’t know is if he actually can without you by his side.

Baby steps. He decides to start by showering and changing his clothes; the freshness should make him feel astronomically better.

He lets the limited hot water run over his sore muscles and through his hair, trying to wash away memories of you along with the dirt and grime.

He thinks of long nights spent sneaking out after curfew–his pack heavy on his aching shoulders but barely feeling it when you’re so near. He thinks of nights in this apartment together, hours and hours spent reminiscing and planning new trips and even more hours spent in comfortable silence. He thinks of you on your knees in this very shower with him, of how he felt akin to a god beneath your praise and worship.

He lets the thoughts swirl for just a moment, and then he watches as they trickle down the drain.

A towel off and a change of clothes later, and he’s almost a new man. The hole in his chest has shrunk a bit, at least.

One deep breath, then another. Joel can almost feel you slipping through his fingers, and for once the sensation doesn’t terrify him. There’s a quiet solitude, a resignation to his mind now. He’ll never be happy, and that’s okay. He might at least be able to find peace if he can’t have you.

He finds Tess and apologizes–at least in the best fashion Joel Miller can manage. It’s a grunted “sorry” and not much more, but it’s enough.

And then, because he has nothing else to do with his free time, he throws himself completely into survival. Working long shifts at the fires during the day, and even longer shifts as a smuggler at night. The crows feet at the corners of his eyes deepen and his hair grays rapidly, but he finds a way out. He finds a way away from you, and he doesn’t hesitate to take it.

Somehow, you beat him to Jackson. He doesn’t know how–he’s sure you were still in Boston when he left–but you’re waiting there for him when he arrives.

Waiting maybe isn’t the best way of putting it; you look at him like you’re looking at a poltergeist. Not just a ghost of your past, but a volatile and unpredictable one at that.

He can’t blame you. He ditched you, after all–not just emotionally, but physically.

You observe from afar for a while, like a timid animal meeting its first human. You watch his reunion with his brother, how he seems to fit like a puzzle piece into such a tight knit community. You even see him interacting with the young girl he’s brought along with him, and you wonder if he’s changed. If maybe he’s allowed his heart to open even just the slightest fraction.

The whole of Jackson gathers to greet this newest member, and you’re on the very edge of the crowd. But it’s like there’s an invisible string connecting the two of you—like the sea of people parts to make a path for your reunion.

Joel doesn’t know what to say. It’s been so long, and yet it feels like just yesterday he still had you in his arms.

You nod at him and awkwardly shuffle your feet against the cracked pavement. ”Hey.”

”Hey.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets to keep himself from reaching for you.

You don’t show the same restraint.

In mere seconds you’re on him, arms around his neck and lips pressed to his like he’s air—like if you don’t breathe him in you’ll die.

He grunts in surprise at the suddenness, but more at the fact that he can’t believe this is happening. That you’re really here, really in his arms, really kissing him. He doesn’t know if it would be better to talk through everything first, but he’s missed you so badly that there doesn’t seem to be another way to communicate it other than to show you. His hands settle on your waist and pull you tightly against him, lips parting to allow your tongue access. It’s harsh and it’s frenzied, but it’s beautiful in the way a force of nature is.

And then you remember the prying eyes surrounding you and you reluctantly pull out of his grasp.

There’s a bit of muffled conversation and a particularly loud wolf-whistle from Tommy before the crowd disperses, and you’re alone together for the first time in more than a year.

”Sorry—“ “That was—”

He clears his throat, and you nod in signal for him to take his turn.

“How did you get here?”

“It was a fluke, really. I caught a radio broadcast and decided to check it out. The QZ didn’t feel like home anymore after you left.”

Joel tries as hard as he can not to read too far into that, but he can’t help the fleeting hope that it means you wanted to fix things. That maybe you weren’t as unbothered as you always seemed to be.

You clear your throat and continue. “But… what about you? Who’s the kid? Where’s Tess?”

”I’m takin’ the kid to the fireflies. Tess is gone.”

Your face falls instantly. You’ve admittedly always been a little bit jealous of Tess and her closeness to Joel, but you never wished this upon her.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Joel grunts noncommittally, and you’re left to awkwardly shuffle your feet while you think of something else to say. You’ve spent so much time apart, there should be so much more to talk about. But even in the QZ, talking was never your speciality—and it definitely wasn’t Joel’s. More than anything with him, you’re familiar with the comfortable silence that surrounds two people who’ve spent a lifetime together. Your lifetime with Joel just happened to be over the span of a couple of months; but that’s how it goes with someone who matches you so completely. There doesn’t have to be anything said when he already knows what you’re thinking—when you’re two parts of a whole.

”Sorry. About kissing you. I… I’m normally better controlled,” you mumble.

”Don’t be.” He clears his throat, shifts his feet—does everything within his power from making eye contact with you because he knows if he does he won’t be able to stop himself. “Wasn’t bad.”

”We did agree we weren’t gonna do that anymore,” you point out.

”That was back in the QZ.”

”And here?”

The hope in your voice is unmistakable. You’ve missed him, and that’s almost impossible for him to comprehend. Joel wants nothing more than to lean into your hope; to give you—and him—exactly what you want. You’ve missed out on so much time, and there’s little time available to make up for it.

Fuck it, he decides. “Here? I’m pullin’ my head out of my ass.”

And then he kisses you, and it’s not sweet. It burns—with passion, desire, regret. He presses his lips to yours like he’s finally realizing what he’s lost and might never get back. Joel Miller isn’t a man who can say sorry easily, but he says it to you now with his lips, and his tongue, and his hands.

It feels like you’re learning him all over again. You marvel at how tall he is, how broad his shoulders are as you run your palms across them. You revel in the softness of his lips and the contrasting scratch of his patchy beard. More than anything, you’re in awe of the feeling of his hands—how familiar they feel even after so long as they trail down your neck from your face on the way to your hips.

You pull away sooner than you want to, but you both seem to realize that you can’t just snog in the middle of the street. Most of the crowd has cleared out by now, but there’s a few sets of wandering eyes to worry about.

“Tommy didn’t happen to show you your house, did he?”

Joel’s brow furrows in the most adorable way as he suddenly becomes aware of his surroundings.

“I have a house? Is that where he’s taken Ellie off to?”

“C’mon, follow me.” With a wave of your hand, you’re headed down the street. Joel stands frozen in disbelief for a moment, utterly dumbfounded that you’re really here and really still want him the way you used to. He has to jog the few steps to catch up to your side, and then every ounce of effort goes into not grabbing your hand and lacing his fingers with yours.

You clear your throat in preparation for the question you have to ask. “I… I swear I don’t want to push labels or anything, but… what exactly is going on here?”

Joel sighs, and it’s easy to mistake it as a sigh of annoyance. You open your mouth to expand on your question, but he stops you.

”I made a mistake. I know it, I knew it while I was makin’ it. But I didn’t stop myself because… because you deserve better.”

You open your mouth again, and he holds up a hand to stop you. “Don’t argue. You know it’s true. And the thing is… I’ve spent a lot of time bein’ selfish, if fightin’ to survive can be called that. You’re good, and I don’t deserve to be selfish when it comes to you.”

”I want you to be selfish,” you insist as firmly as you can. “Joel, you don’t seem to understand how much I adore you, how much I rely on you. How much it hurt to lose you.”

He tries to shrug, but it’s half-hearted. There’s a kind of sick satisfaction to the fact that you were struggling just as much as he was. ”You seemed fine.”

”I was dying, Joel.” There are tears in your eyes now, and he feels guilty for insinuating that your pain wasn’t real.

”I was, too.”

”I just wish you would’ve talked to me,” you whisper. “I could’ve made it better. Things could’ve been different.”

”But they aren’t.” His tone is firm, but not malicious. He’s not trying to be mean—all he wants is for you to understand that there’s no point dwelling on the past. It’s something he’s learned over twenty years; that no matter how hard to focuses on all the mistakes he’s made and the things he regrets, there’s no way to undo any of them. No point in focusing on them at all, really.

”I… I miss you,” you tell him. “I don’t wanna keep going to bed alone and waking up wishing you were there. I don’t want to pretend we’re just friends with benefits or whatever the fuck we were supposed to have been. I don’t want to lose you over any more stupid arguments. I loved you, Joel. I still do.”

Joel swallows thickly. He’s known for a long time how he feels, and he also knows he doesn’t deserve to feel the way he does. Telling you might be the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. ”I love you too.”

”Then can we… stop being stupid?” There’s a giggle behind your tears, and it brings the smallest of smiles to his face.

”Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” He kisses you again, pausing on the steps of the house he’s supposed to occupy so he can pull you tightly into his arms. This one is sweeter, almost like a promise. Like he’s going to be a new man and this is his seal of authentication.

He scoops you up in his arms despite your squeal of protest, barely pausing enough to read the note on the door.

Took Ellie on a grand tour. We’ll meet y’all at dinner. - Tommy

You glance at your watch, then look up into his eyes. He’s thinking exactly what you are; his dark eyes are burning with tension. ��A whole hour of pure uninterrupted bliss. What’re we gonna do with ourselves?”

”I’ve got a couple ideas,” Joel grunts as he pushes the door open with his back, careful not to jostle you too much. “Startin’ with makin’ up for lost time.”

This time, he kisses you like you’re unbreakable. Like he’s diamond and testing your hardness, and you’re determined to meet his standards. You meet his lips with ferocity and take the initiative to slide your tongue over his bottom lip, reveling in the slight uptilt of his lips as he parts them for you.

You’re still in tune to his reactions, even after so long. You still know exactly where to pull his hair to make his hips buck towards you, where to kiss his neck to make him moan, where to place your hands so he’ll pull you impossibly tighter against him. He’s a puzzle you solved long ago, and even after taking the pieces apart you know where to put them back together again.

Joel’s head is all but spinning as he pulls you deeper inside, ignoring the urge to explore the unfamiliar surroundings for now in favor of finding a place that’s suitable to take you. He’s feverish and hurried, far from gentle because he knows he doesn’t need to be. You’re taking everything he’ll give and more. Later, there will be time for the gentle love-making that he admittedly prefers sometimes. For now, it’s desperate, wild, overwhelming in the best way possible. It’s getting reacquainted after so much time apart—old lovers using old tricks.

His hands have gotten rougher and even more calloused, but they remember you like it’s only been days since they were last on you. His palms trace every curve like you’re precious art. He holds you like water, like the slightest mishandle will send you spilling away from him; in complete contrast to the way he kisses you, harsh and nearly biting. It fogs your mind, sends you into autopilot. Your muscle memory takes command as you strip him bare and toss his clothes to the side, appreciating how little he’s changed besides the length of his hair and the extra gray that’s sprouted. He’s still your Joel, even after being apart for what seems like a lifetime.

”I never appreciated you enough,” he whispers into your neck as he unhooks your bra with a snap of his fingers. “Never worshiped you the way I should’ve.”

”I’m not a god,” you tell him, breath heavy even after parting from his lips.

”You are to me,” he mumbles into your skin, contrasting the honeyed praise with a stinging bite to the precise spot that makes your back arch.

He trails gentler bites down the flesh of your torso, leaving marks that contrast his statement. Gods aren’t meant to be owned, and yet he claims you in every way he can. He lays on you any little trace of his possession he can, because he knows how easily it could be taken away from him. He lost you once before, marks faded from your skin completely. He doesn’t ever want it to happen again.

The scent of you is heady, mouth-watering to a mind that was so sure it would never have you again. He knows he’s pressed for time, and he really does consider taking all of it to drink from you; to get his fill and leave himself unsatisfied if he has to.

But you’re whining and squirming, tugging at his hair in a feeble attempt to pull him up to you, and he knows he’d much rather give you what you want.

You’re wet enough to take him, but it’s still nearly painful when he pushes his full length into you for the first time in so long. He growls at the sensation, at every little pulse and flutter of your cunt around him as you struggle to accommodate him.

Your breath is airy and whiny as you glance up at him. ”Joel…”

”I know baby,” he coos, fighting for restraint so he doesn’t hurt you. “I know it’s a lot. But you can take it pretty girl, can’t you?”

You would take literally anything so long as he keeps talking to you like that.

You nod up at him, but it’s not enough.

”Words, honey. Tell me you can take me.”

He doesn’t miss the way your cunt contracts around him as you vow, “I can take you, Joel.”

”Atta girl.”

He starts off easy, slow enough not to overwhelm you but deep enough to nearly make you choke. His hips are flush with your ass at the base of every stroke, like he’s trying to push even further with each thrust of his hips. Maybe he is. Maybe all he wants is to get deeper and deeper until there’s nothing left out—until you’ve consumed him completely. He already feels halfway there as it is.

Your legs wrap around his waist in a desperate attempt to que him in on what you need—not long, languid strokes but hard, fast thrusts that’ll get the job done quickly. There is a time constraint to factor in, after all.

He grants your wish instantly, glad for the invitation because he’s finding it hard to continue his facade of self-control. He ruts hard and fiercely, one hand trailing from your waist to your knee so he can prop your leg up and allow an even deeper angle.

With the slightest shift of his hips he finds it—the spot that makes you writhe and scream for more. He revels in all the noises you make for him as you toss your head back and forth, like the pleasure is so overwhelming that you want to squirm away yet press closer simultaneously.

“That’s my girl,” he mumbles as his free hand finds its way between your entangled bodies. It’s almost like you’re magnetic, his fingers find your clit so easily. The small, firm circles he rubs against it with his calloused fingers are almost too much, but also almost not enough. Not until he picks up his pace, drilling into exactly where you need him with a fervor you didn’t even know he possessed.

It takes all the effort you can muster to warn him, ”S-so close…”

”I know sweetie,” he purrs, breath heavy against your ear as he shifts his hand to hitch your leg just the slightest bit higher over his hip. “It’s okay. Let go f’me.”

You’re nothing if not obedient, and Joel knows it. It’s only confirmed by the way you squeeze around him in a vice grip, legs shaking in his grip as your eyes practically roll back in your head. It’s bone-shattering pleasure, like he’s pulling you apart stitch by stitch and sewing you back together again with newer, more pleasurable fabric.

He’s quick to pull out, maybe a little prematurely as you’re still twitching with the aftershocks of your own orgasm, but even his pleasure-addled brain knows the risk he runs if he stays buried deep inside you any longer. He gives himself two, three firm strokes, then allows himself to spill over your stomach in thick, hot ropes that make you moan all over again.

He doesn’t hold himself up much longer before collapsing on the too-soft mattress with a heavy grunt.

”Missed this,” you murmur next to his ear as he drapes an arm over your waist. He pulls you in close and hums at the way you nuzzle your face into his neck despite how sweaty he must be.

“How much time we got left?”

You take a peek at your watch, then groan. “Five minutes.”

”Shit.” He’s not ready to let you go yet, but he pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed anyway.

”We could just skip dinner,” you suggest with a hopeful pout to your lips as you stretch out further over the floral bedspread.

As much as he wants to… “Can’t. Gotta grab Ellie. Can’t leave her alone all day.”

”You must really care about her.” There’s no malice to your tone—it’s more surprise.

He simply grunts in response—he’ll never admit it, but he can’t deny it either. “C’mon. Clothes on.”

He gathers the pile from the floor and tosses it to you, practically burying you where you lay.

”Forgot how bossy you are,” you grumble but follow the instruction nevertheless.

It’s a little awkward, sitting across the table from your lover’s family like your legs aren’t still a little weak from being so thoroughly fucked. But Joel’s hand is a constant on your thigh, and you even catch him smirking a little as Ellie grills you with a million questions—mostly about your relationship with Joel.

For once, everything feels normal. For once, you forget about the crumbling world around you. In this bubble with Joel, everything is stable and secure. There’s a future on the horizon and a chance to write your own story.

You drag Joel back home at the soonest opportunity, patiently biding your time while he settles Ellie in for the night. You hear heated conversation bordering on an argument, but he doesn’t say anything about it when he enters the room for the night.

Instead he drags you to him in a heated kiss, his large hands practically engulfing your face as his tongue sweeps into your mouth to re-familiarize himself with known yet long-unexplored territory.

He hates having to tamp down your moans, but he loves being able to swallow them with his own mouth as his fingers trace through your slick folds. You’re still puffy, wet, and sensitive from his earlier onslaught, but it doesn’t deter you one bit. He revels in each little whimper and gasp, all the involuntary squirms and twitches as he brings you to the brink on his thick, calloused fingers. He swallows every little sound with a fevered kiss until your lips are swollen and red—and then you turn the tables on him. You take him in your palm, whispering praises about how your hand can barely close around him while stroking him with the gentle, languid movements that you know drive him crazy. He fights to keep his sounds down as you settle close in his lap, chest pressed to his and legs locked tight around his thighs until the moment he has to pull your hand away from fear of finishing too fast.

This is the exact foil of the way he fucked you earlier in a frenzied, desperate passion. Now it’s soft and languid, more like searching and exploring than trying to find the end goal. It’s hot and sweaty and sticky from where your skin is pressed so tightly against his, but his strong hands only drag you closer and closer and you really don’t even consider pulling away—not when he gently tugs your hair to tilt your head back for a deeper kiss, not when he lifts you up so effortlessly to help you sink down on his achingly hard cock, not even when his hands squeeze your hips hard enough to leave bruises at the feeling of bottoming out in your soaked cunt.

You couldn’t count the minutes you’re on top of him even if you cared to try. It’s an eternity of softly rocking hips and open-mouthed kisses, like if he breathes air from anywhere besides your lungs it’ll poison him. He doesn’t even care that it practically feels like torture—like not enough but simultaneously far too much as you do nothing more than rock on his length. It takes a lifetime before he loses his patience and anchors your hips in his capable hands so he can fuck you properly. He guides you to bounce on him, hitting deeper with each perfectly matched upward thrust of his own hips.

You’re falling apart before you even know what’s hit you, biting your lip almost to the point of drawing blood to keep your sounds under control as you fall limp in his arms.

And Joel—sweet, sweet Joel—has the foresight to check in with you before he does what he has to.

”Good, baby? Feel okay? Wanna stop?”

You shake your head, and it takes you a moment to find breath enough to tell him, “Don’t stop. Come in me.”

The demand is so unexpected that it hits him like a tidal wave—and before he knows it, his cock is twitching with forceful spasms as he paints you from the inside out until you’re dripping his spend out around his softening length.

Evidently, you’re not the only one caught up in this bubble of paradise within the walls of Jackson.

He doesn’t say anything, just rolls onto his side so he can hold you closer without his cock slipping from your warmth. That’s exactly how you fall asleep—him snuggly inside you, kissing your hair and whispering the sweetest of nothings into your ear.

When you wake up, you feel empty in more ways than one.

There’s dust particles swirling in the sunbeam streaming through the far window, and your stomach sinks when you reach over and feel Joel’s side of the bed completely cold.

You try not to jump to conclusions, but you know exactly what you’ll find even before you read the note left on the nightstand.

Easier not to say goodbye. I promised I’d take Ellie to the Fireflies, and you know I always make good on my promises.

I promise I’ll come back for you.

Joel

It’s not a promise that he can make with complete certainty, and you know it. You’re sure he knew it, too; and yet he did it anyway, promised you the impossible.

You remember far too suddenly that there’s risks involved with literally anything done in this crumbling, broken world—and just like that, the perfect little bubble you’ve lived in for the past sixteen hours has popped. There’s no fairytale endings here, no happily ever afters.

There’s you, alone and aching, hoping beyond hope the man you love will return to your side.

And there’s Joel, out in the wilderness somewhere, wondering if he’s even worthy of returning to your side.

Maybe he’s not. But maybe making good on this promise—dropping Ellie off so they can find a cure—will tip his scales. Maybe he’ll be worthy of finally settling down with you the way he wants to after this one last job. He knows he’ll have to spend hours upon hours apologizing to you for it, but it would be worth it to know that he finally made the world at least a little bit better rather than worse—to know that he’s finally done something for you to be proud of.

He knows he has to prove himself one way or another before he can return to your side. And he will.

After all, Joel Miller is a man who always makes good on his promises.

THE END

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#cece writes #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller smut #the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us smut

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total-dxmure · 11 months

Text

✦MATCHING →【ELLIE WILLIAMS】

pairing: modern!ellie williams x fem!reader

summary: ellie and her girlfriend are getting ready for pride. the reader decides to buy matching shirts. . . and a little something for joel, who’s tagging along, too.

warnings: just absolutely heart melting domesticity, this is for my delulu girlies who want to live in their fantasy of ellie being in love with you, joel is the best dad ever, “i love my lesbian daughter”, no use of y/n

“You can’t wear that.” You propped a hand on your hip, giving your fiance a once over.

She stopped dead in her tracks, slowly looking down at her outfit. She was wearing one of her usual casual outfits. You’d never told her to change before, not even when she took you to that one nice restaurant. She rocked back on the heels of her boots, pulling at the blue flannel button up that she had thrown over a perfectly good black tank top.

“You like this flannel. You called me ‘cute’ when I wore it last Thursday.” She remembered every time you called her cute, but especially when you did it in public.

An old man had turned around on the sidewalk just to gawk at the two of you, trying to decide if you were just really close friends or actually dating. That was usually the case with the older generation though. The poor fools still couldn’t grasp the fact that lesbians weren’t burned at the stake and labeled as witches anymore.

“No, no. You are cute, but I got us matching shirts that I want us to wear for pride.” You said happily, practically skipping over to a target bag that you had somehow snuck into the house when Ellie wasn’t looking.

She pointed at it, raising an eyebrow, but you decided to ignore the incredulous look she gave you. You sighed, rolling your eyes in that delicious way that she couldn’t help but stare at. She loved it when you acted bratty. It gave her a reason to punish you, that way you couldn’t playfully complain when she was a little rough with you.

“Look, I haven’t been to Target in a week.”

“It’s been four days. Not a week.” She made sure to point out.

“Four days is an eternity. Besides, I knew that their Pride collection would be slim pickings if I didn’t go yesterday.” You pulled out two t-shirts, flashing her a wide smile as her jaw dropped.

“Uh. . . They sure are bright.” Her lips pulled up into a nervous smile before she began nervously itching at the back of her neck.

“I saw them and thought they’d be super adorable to wear for the parade. Look, I even got Joel a rainbow bracelet.” You reached back into the bag, pulling it out.

That made Ellie chuckle, and she sauntered over to you, taking the bracelet from your hands. She turned it over a few times, then fell into another fit of laughter.

“I love my lesbian daughter?” She read outloud.

“I’m sure we could guilt him into wearing it. Or we could lie and tell him that straight people have to wear rainbow to get in?” You leaned against the back of the couch, unable to wipe the smile off of your face as she snapped and pointed at you.

“You’re a genius. An evil little genius.” She stuffed the bracelet into her back pocket, but her eyes fell back on the shirts that you were still toting around.

“Will it make you happy?” She sighed, reaching out for the cream colored shirt, a brightly colored rainbow wrapping around both the front and back. She didn’t have many colorful items in her closet. She mostly stuck with more. . . muted pieces.

“Ecstatic.” You answered smugly, already ripping the tag off of yours so that you could throw it on.

“Alright, I’ll wear it,” She told you, doing the same. You pumped your fist in silent victory. “Under one condition.”

Ah, you should have known. You half expected her to ask you to do the dishes after dinner. Or maybe bathe Charlie, which was a feat for you all in itself. Your golden retriever was a little escape artist, and was just about as strong as you were. Ellie was the only one with enough muscle to hold him down in the tub.

“While we’re changing, you gotta take your top off real slow-” She was cut off as the doorbell rang. “Of fuckin’ course.” She muttered under her breath, but made sure to give your ass a sound slap as you jogged past her to open the door.

Charlie was barking from the kitchen, already running down the hall to visit with Joel.

“Grandpa’s here.” Ellie riled him up, scratching behind his ears as he came to stand beside her, his tail slapping the back of her knees all the while.

You unlocked the door, opening it wide for the aging man. He was shielding his eyes from the bright summer sun, squinting against the rays.

“Are we goin’ in my car or yours?” He asked, in a hurry to get there before the parade started.

In perfect dad fashion, the man was already trying to wrangle up the kids. He hadn’t even stepped into the house yet. Ellie let go of the grip she had on Charlie’s collar, the dog bounding over to Joel, who bent down on his knee to give him his required attention.

“Our trucks are going to be too big to park seeing as all the nice spaces are already taken. We’ll go in her car.” Ellie pointed her thumb at you, her new shirt slung over her shoulder.

“Ah, a’course. We wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to use your new eco-car.” Joel teased, flashing you a small wink.

You shook your head, wagging a finger at him. “You talk all that shit about my Prius, but I’ll be the one laughing all the way to the bank when it saves me hundreds on gas.” You retorted, moving to the stairs so that you could quickly change into your planned outfit.

“Come on in, Joel. We just have to change our shirts, and then we can head out.” Ellie said, getting ready to follow you, but paused as she remembered what she had in her pocket.

“A gift. From the happy couple.” She teased, pulling out the rubber bracelet to hand to him.

His eyebrows furrowed as he turned it over in his hand.

“I love my lesbian daughter.” He read outloud, much like Ellie had done just a few minutes ago.

“Damn right you do.” She called out to him before turning on her heels, already halfway up the stairs before he could complain.

✦ wanna know exactly when i post? message me about being put on the taglist!

@viswifetotallyreal @lillysbigwilly @overtrred28 @corpsebridenightamare @gimalo135 @erikaar @i-love-milfs2 @lllijeu @softieciubs

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jackharloww · 1 year

Note

What about bath time with Gracie and her and Jack being goofy like making bubble beards and then him cuddling her to sleep while reading a bedtime story

Daddy and Gracie

“Will you guys be alright?” You asked Jack and Grace while they were sitting in her playroom having a tea party. Today was your friends birthday so you were going out to celebrate her.

“Yes mama” Grace answered while she drank the tea from her cup, pretending to slurp it

“Yes mama” jack said after Grace and sent you a wink, “go have fun babe, be careful and please call if you need anything” he continued and gave you a serious look. You had been having a lot of back pain’s lately and the doctor had told you to be careful. But you’ve been at home for a whole week so Jack felt bad and wanted you to go out and have fun.

“I will” you bent down and gave Grace a big kiss before leaning over to Jack and doing the same to him. He put a hand on you bump while he kissed you another time “I love you” he said as he pulled away, with a big smile on his face.

“I love you too” you smiled back “I love my Gracie bear too” you said and she turned her head to you with a big smile on her face.

“Love you mama” she giggled “bye” she continued and jack bursted out laughing

“Well looks like someone wants me to go already” you laughed and told them both bye before finally going to the restaurant, leaving them at home playing.

“Daddy you have to wear this” Grace got up and went to her box of princess clothes and pulled out a pink crown for Jack to wear.

“Okay” Jack stood up from the ground, the tutu she made him wear was sitting nicely on his hips, he grabbed the crown and put it on his head “am I a princess now?” He asked and Gracie nodded while giggling.

“Cheers” Grace said as soon as he sat back down next to the table, she gave him his cup and they raised their cups and drank from them. Grace picked up a cake and took a bite.

“I’m hungry daddy” she pouted and put down the fake cake

“Come on let’s go eat, mom made us nuggets”

“Yeeeiy nuggets” Grace jumped off her chair and they both walked to the kitchen to eat, their tutus and crowns still on. After they finished eating and goofing around, Jack filled up the bathtub and Grace got in.

“Bubbles” Grace giggled as the tub got filled with bubbles all around her. She played with the bath toys she had as jack washed her hair. When he was finished with that he grabbed a lot of bubbles and put them on his face.

“Look Gracie I got a bubble beard now” he said as her laugh filled the air. The type of laugh only Jack could get out of her, deep from the stomach.

She followed his lead and did the same thing, not stopping her laughs for even a second. Jack laughed and his heart warmed at his favorite sound. He grabbed more bubbles and put them on top of her head.

He quickly dried his hand on the towel next to him and took a picture of her. He quickly sent it to you before returning to Grace and doing the same thing to his hair.

“Silly daddy” Grace giggled. After a while of playing around in the tub Jack emptied the water and quickly washed Grace body before wrapping her up in the big, fully and warm towel. He picked her up and walked to her room to get her dressed.

He put on her pajamas before grabbing her brush and beginning to brush her hair. Thankfully it was wet and it was easy for him to brush it down, if it wasn’t wet Grace would often complain about it hurting a bit.

“Daddy I want a braid” she told him and he nodded and started to braid her short hair. It took him three tries until he finally figured it out and Grace got a very small and cute braid. He snapped another quick picture

- better than yours 😌- he wrote before hitting send to you.

“Let’s go watch a movie” Jack stood up from her bed and they walked out to the livingroom.

“Can we watch Mulan” she gave Jack her big puppy eyes

“Again?” Jack sighed, but he knew he couldn’t say no to those beautiful big eyes, “fine”. He put on the movie and went to the kitchen to make them both popcorn and more snacks. He returned back to Grace singing, Jack smiled and continued singing with her and sat down next to her.

Grace quickly stopped and put her tiny hand over his mouth “no daddy, you have to do it like auntie Em” she sighed. Emily was the one who introduced Grace to Mulan, and god knows how many times they’ve watched it together. Jack stifled a laugh and shook his head as Grace continued to sing along with the movie.

When the movie ended Grace looked up at him “another one?” She tried but Jack shook his head

“You have to go to sleep now little miss” he poked her nose and she rolled her eyes at him “but daddy” she tried giving him her puppy eyes again but Jack only shook his head.

“Come on, get up” he picked her up and walked to his and your bedroom “you can sleep in here with dada tonight” he said and received a big smile “yeesss” she screamed and laid down on the middle of the bed. Jack laid down next to her and grabbed one of her books that was in your room and started reading it for her, Grace snuggled closer to his side and let out a big yawn while she rubbed her eyes. Jack finished the book and looked down at his daughter that was deep in sleep and smiled to himself. He planted a kiss to her head, “I love you” he whispered and slowly got out of bed to go clean up before you came home.

—————————————————

taglist: @hoodharlow , @pianoisland , @harlowcomehome , @itsyagirljaz , @neon-lights-and-glitter , @heavyhitterheaux , @nattinatalia , @harlowsbby

#jack harlow #jack harlow fic #jackharlow #jack harlow fluff #jack harlow concepts #jack x reader #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow stories #jack fic #Grace Harlow #jack harlow x you #jack harlow imagines #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow x y/n #dad jack #fan fiction

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bimobuddy · 1 year

Text

Flames and Feathers

Howl's Moving Castle

SFW Tickle Fic

Lee! Howl, Ler! Sophie, Ler! Calcifer

Summary: Howl is being a dramatic little diva and Sophie and Calcifer are tired of putting up with him.

Sophie muttered to herself as she swept up the shed feathers that Howl carelessly left on the floor. It was months after their adventure had taken place and since the war ended. Sophie was young again and she was no longer the cleaning lady, but she still liked to keep things tidy around the castle since she new Markl and Howl wouldn't. Especially Howl, this was his mess. Markl at least had half a mind to at least help Sophie sometimes.

"What is he even doing to shed so many feathers? I thought he didn't like turning into his monster form, isn't it exhausting?" Sophie asked aloud. Calcifer, being the only other one in the room spoke up. "It's exhausting when you have to shift quickly and then immediately go deal with a war without allowing yourself to rest. Howl's been practicing more recently to make shifting faster and easier."

"Well he's making a mess! He can at least sweep up his own feathers. He's been nothing but careless recently." Sophie huffed. She bent down and picked up one of the feathers. It really was beautiful, shining almost a purple hue in just the right light. They were incredibly soft too. She smiled to herself, putting it in her pocket. It couldn't hurt to keep at least one.

"Careless and bossy," Calcifer snapped, " 'Calcifer heat up water for my bath,' 'Calcifer move the castle east, west, north, south, up, down, land, fly,' why not just ask me to move the castle through dimensions too? And I never even get a thank you." He complained.

Sophie hummed in thought, looking at her friend. She was pulled from her thoughts when she heard boots coming down the stairs. "Calcifer, move the castle west." Howl said. He was back in his human form, but he looked tired. He must have just shifted back, Sophie thought.

She leaned her broom against the table. "Howl, your feathers are all over the floor." She pointed out. Howl glanced up at her. "Huh? Oh, and you did a wonderful job sweeping them up, Sophie." She huffed, a little irritated. "I wouldn't have to if you'd clean up your OWN mess that YOU made." She placed her hands on her hips.

Howl's eyes widened. That wasn't a good sign. Hands on the hips meant Sophie was upset. However Howl only dug his grave deeper. "Well yes, but I'm so tired when I come home and uh- you.. you're so good at what you do, it's why I kept you as my cleaning la- uh.. oh no that's not right-" "Buddy, you're really hammering the nail in your coffin huh," Calcifer said, "Calling your girlfriend your cleaning lady, when you and I both know she single handedly saved your life and broke three curses. Slay, Soph."

Howl went pale. "That's not- I didn't mean it like that! Sophie-" He turned to look at his partner, who still had her hands on her hips. Only she didn't look angry, she looked like she was thinking. "You've been carelessly leaving your feathers for me to clean up, and bossing poor Calcifer around without any please or thank you.. Hmm. What to do with you?" She walked around behind him.

Howl tried to stay calm. "Honestly, I think I've learned my lesson, Sophie, thank you for having this talk with m-mEE-" He covered his mouth to muffle the squeal that had torn itself from his throat. He whipped his head back to look at Sophie, who was laughing at his offended expression. In her hand was the feather she used to oh-so-viciously attack his ear with.

Howl would have been fine with Sophie knowing he was ticklish but he froze when he heard Calcifer cackling from the fireplace. "You're ticklish?! Howl, the great and widely feared wizard-" "Oh shut it, Calcifer-" He began to snap but Sophie had slipped the feather down the back of his neck, right into the collar of his shirt.

Howl let out a childish squeal, giggling as he slumped down in his seat, trying to escape the tickling. He ended up falling out of his chair and onto the floor, causing both his friend and his girlfriend to laugh at him. Howl got back up, attempting to run out of the room, but Sophie was too quick, grabbing at his waist. Her hands squeezing his hips, his knees immediately buckled, making it difficult to stand. "S-Sohohophihie! Nohoho, stahahap!" Sophie giggled, "Oh I'm sorry, it sounds like you're trying to make demands again."

Howl threw his head back once Sophie's fingers found his tummy. "Nohoho! Sohophie plehehease!" ''Oh so you do have manners! You just choose not to use them." Sophie teased.

"Sophie, bring him over here!" Calcifer called. Sophie, trusting him, gently guided Howl (not that hard when his legs are weak from being tickled), over to the fireplace, sitting him down on the stone edge. Howl was still giggling and gently trying to pry Sophie's hands away without accidentally hurting her. Once he managed to push her hands away, he felt.. warm. But it wasn't the normal warmth of family he felt. It was the heat of betrayal.

Calcifer had spread his flames over to Howl, though with Howl being magic and naturally keeping protection charms on him, the fire didn't burn him. It tickled. It tickled bad.

Howl threw his head back in laughter again, curling up into a ball. He kicked his legs out at nothing. This was so much worse than Sophie. At least with her, he could grab her hands and escape. You can't grab fire. You can't push it away. "Cahahahaha! Cahahahahal stahahahap ihihit!" "Maybe I'll stop of you consider saying thanks every once in a while. Moving your castle isn't easy y'know." He said, focusing on his tummy, no matter how much Howl curled in or tried to protect it.

"AH! Okahahahay okahahay! Cahahahal I'm sohohorry!" The tickling slowed to a stop, and Howl felt himself cooling down, letting him know that Calcifer had backed off. He laid there, still curled up on the ledge of the fireplace, panting and giggly, unable to stop smiling after all that. "So that's it? You just wahanted an attitude change? You couldn't have just sahaid that?" He asked, sitting up.

Sophie sat next to him. "Nope." She smiled.

"I could've, but who else gets to tickle Howl Pendragon to stitches?" Calcifer chuckled.

Howl just smiled. He felt warm again but he knew it was from fondness this time.

"Right then. I'll start cleaning up after myself, Sophie. And Calcifer, thank you for moving the castle. I'll keep in mind to acknowledge you more."

#tickle community #sfw tickling community #tickle fic #tickling #howls/moving/castle #lee!howl #ler!sophie #ler!calcifer

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lifesver · 18 days

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@taliaromanova cont. from here!

eyebrows raise in soft surprise. he’s not entirely sure if he believes her — but her words settle his nerves some. natasha was really good at that. even if she was just trying to make him feel better. maybe it was the way she spoke, how even-keel she always seemed to be, even in the face of monsters and death. like connie, he thinks — always honest with him, when he needed it. even if it hurt.

she bumps his shoulder, and pulls a small laugh from him; ❝ sticking with you makes me less scared, too. ❞ he thinks on her words for a moment. it was a familiar sentiment. in the guts of that rotted farmhouse basement, the safety of his friends had been the only thing that got him off the ground. got him to fight, and keep fighting, even when all he could taste was his own blood. again, and again. he's found himself doing the same for the others, here. he hoped the people around them at the campfire considered him a friend. he hoped natasha did, too.

leland clasps his hands, wrings them distractedly; ❝ my mom told me, as long as you know what you’re fighting for, you just kind of, find a way to keep going. don't think she was picturing a place like this, though. ❞ it makes his chest squeeze to think of her — images of a warm, light-bathed kitchen coming to mind, and the sun-bright, but faceless silhouette of his mother. a feeling of safety he’s not sure he’ll ever find again. this was probably as close to it as he would get. talks at the campfire with natasha felt a little like being at his mother’s kitchen table. complaining about school, or practice — stupid stuff like that.

leland’s eyes lift again, like he’s snapped out of a reverie. he watches natasha, and the way the fire-light disappears against her hair. ❝ ... hey, nat? do you ever.... miss home? ❞ he asks her, quietly. do you think we’ll ever see home, again?

#ok but fog big sister nat makes me cry every time please #taliaromanova #( ☆ ) ⸻ THE FILM WHICH YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE... / ic.

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tricksterfiction · 7 months

Text

Prompt #7 Noisome

"You reek."

Sen automatically tugged at the collar of her shirt to take a long, useless whiff of herself and not smelling anything out of the ordinary she shrugged at the spirit.

Kaze was in a mood, a southerly wind was blowing, the moon was waning close to new. For the short time they had known each other now, weeks at most, this was the first she heard Kaze complain about anything. More likely to hear their terrible cackle, a riddle or some other cryptic advice. A trickster, first and foremost.

They had been travelling largely at night, on foot through underbrush in the back country of Yanxia. The humidity reminding her that her shirt was sticking to her back. Her chocobo, Moonshine was keeping pace behind them - alert to danger.

Their time spent initially together in the other world had been both long and short, and now having returned to her body she apparently smelled bad.

"When we arrive to the enclave, I'll have a proper bath."

"See that you do." The kitsune replied, snotty as ever.

Sen curled her lip with distaste, "What's your problem, huh? I'm the one indebted to you, I'm the one who's going to be running around at your beck and call."

Kaze jumped in front of her, growing far larger than his small, convenient and arguably cute fox size, towering over Sen. Her hand was automatically at her hilt. Moonshine dug at the ground, flapping her wings aggressively.

"You should be honoured that I had interest in helping the poor, witless mortal pitifully crying at my shrine." Kaze snarled, head bowed low, tails snapping like whips. "Need I remind you of all the details of our contract, Little Breeze? What is subject to my whim, my say, and my mood?"

Her eyes hardened bitterly, she was still as a statue.

"No, you do not need to remind me of anything."

Kaze stepped closely shoving their snout into Sen's face, staring daggers into her. She could smell what they had caught earlier for dinner - the spoiled smell of rotted roots.

"Need I remind you, that I am not your friend nor companion?"

"No."

"Need I remind you that what skills I share are for my use, for my tool?"

She swallowed, not breaking eye contact - not once, not willing to concede. She took a gamble, "...Are you hungry?"

The silence drew out, the pair stared each other down.

"...Yes."

She shoved Kaze's snout away, "Fuckssakes, you could have said so."

Sen proceeded to help them hunt a few bits of fresh game, taking care to pray while she skinned. She shared the game with Kaze primarily but spared some for Moonshine as well. The kitsune returned to their normal travel size soon after eating, rolling on their back cackling with the free meal and successful prank.

#ffxivwrite2023 #ffxivwrite #prompt 7 #Noisome #ffxiv #writing prompt

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kim-hao-han · 10 months

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ℜ𝔞𝔦𝔰𝔢 𝔞 𝔊𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔯 𝔗𝔴𝔬 - Part 1

“NO-” He screamed and sat up from his slumber. Body drenched in sweat, hair disheveled and stuck to his forehead, Tartaglia reached to turn on his bed side lamp. The same nightmare haunting him ever since he woke up at the hospital all those years ago. The same nightmare taunting him and reminding him of the burn marks on his body. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes and reached for his phone.

-5:30, No Messages-

‘Great...Just enough time to get over the shock and move on with my life’ he thought and got off the bed. While waiting for his coffee to brew, he decided to take a long cold bath. One could say it sounded stupid but for Tartaglia ha had sworn not be anywhere near something warm. During his training at the police academy, he had grown accustomed to quick freezing showers so he wasn’t really complaining.

After what seemed like hours just staring at the ceiling of his bathroom and his relevantly quick morning routine he headed to work. Reaching the police station, he greeted everyone with a smile. He was known for being the sneaky, goofie -like policeman who everyone adored and respected at work but no one except his close friend really knew him. “Ah- Lieutenant Beidou, good morning! Looking stunning as always” he said passing by his lieutenant throwing a wink her way.

Arriving at his desk, he didn’t expect to be greeted by a girl or as he would actually say ‘a whole ass’ woman. Stunning he may add? Clearing his throat, the woman turned to face him and immediately stood up. “H-How may I help you ma’am?” he gave her a soft smile and mentally face-palmed. Did he just stutter? Even if they were both standing, he was towering over her. Not much difference in height but he could easily handle a woman like her. He snapped out of his thoughts by her laugh. What a cute laugh..

Extending her hand, the woman gave him a smile. “Agent MC. I’ve heard quite a lot about you and your achievements Mr. Ajax-” “Tartaglia...Colleagues and friends call me Tartaglia. And I have a feeling we will get acquainted soon.” he said and shook her hand squeezing it softly. MC gave him a nod before pulling her hand away and sat down on his desk. Subconsciously, Tartaglia moved closer to her and leaned on the desk. “Then, let’s get straight to the point. I am currently working on a complicated drug case or you could describe it as an underground scheme. Rumor has it you have your own connections and I need your assistance.” She said and watched him closely.

Tartaglia pushed his hair back and moved to his chair sitting down. Spreading his legs apart, he sat back comfortably. “My ‘connections’ are people I trust. I am not willing to expose them or turn my back at them” he said and crossed his arms watching her. MC’s eyes scanned him up and down before making her move. Jumping off the desk, she walked behind him and ran her fingers down his exposed neck slowly until she reached his chin. She pulled his chin up and leaned down just a few inches away. “Cocky and overconfidence. That’s what your spread legs tell me” His eyes widened, cheeks flushing, swallowing hard. With a winning smirk she pulled back and walked in front of him turning his chair so that he faced her. “I know more about you than you even know abut yourself. Your sister is a victim in all this.” She said and pushed his hair back.

Tartaglia felt his breath hitch. Was it learning that his sister was actually alive or the mere presence and aura of the agent?

Her body moving in slow, calculated moves.

Hips swaying left and right gracefully.

High heels clicking on the floor in a slow almost seductive rythme.

Tartaglia swallowed hard. That woman, he barely knew, was intoxicating to him but he had to remain professional. Or did he? “You mentioned my sister. I have been looking for her to no vain. How could you find her?” He asked watching her closely. She crossed her arms, a smirk stuck to her face. “First, I need to know if you are in. I wont give you any intel until I’m sure you will help me”. He rolled his eyes. Sexy and cunning. Tough combo but he didn’t need any more convincing.

“I’m in”

#genshin impact #genshin imagines #childe x reader #childe #tartaglia #tartaglia x reader #ajax #ajax x reader #just for fun #18+ fanfic #violence and guns and blood #strangers to lovers #older reader #reader is called mc

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myshortstories2023andbeyond · 6 months

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Halloween Gone Wrong

Halloween is my favourite time of year, so you can imagine how disappointed I was when my mum had forgotten to make me the proper costume she promised to make me. I had asked her to make me a creepy-clown costume because all of my friends were going together, and we had agreed last month to be clowns. That gave my mum plenty of time to work on it. I was so annoyed when she said I should wear my Count Dracula costume from the year before! I did not want to. Every year, since I started taking Halloween seriously, I had something new to wear. This was going to be an embarrassing Halloween.

I went upstairs to my room and put my costume on, and of course, it was too small. I could hardly fit my head through the neck hole. I went downstairs. I complained and complained to mum until she snapped at me to shut up. For a short time onwards she thought about what to do due to my rather persistent complaints. Her face lit up as she rushed to get her sewing kit. She then whipped up some scrap fabric and strutted to her office, arms filled with equipment and materials. A few minutes later, she walked out holding a scrappy looking costume. "Try it on, Dan!" she said with a wide grin. I went back upstairs, again, and tried on my costume. I wanted to complain, but it was too late. My friends were here to pick me up.

I reached the front door and opened it. My friends gave a sudden smirk. I knew what they were thinking. I knew they were thinking I looked like an idiot. Suddenly they laughed out. Noah giggled out, "Did your mother make that with a stapler? Hey, Mrs Housekeeper, did you forget this year?" My poor mum peaked around the door frame and whispered sadly but loud enough so they could hear, "Yes. Yes I did." I felt sorry for mum and how I treated her earlier. My friends made fun of her every year she forgot since we were in second grade. Before that none of us really cared because I could wear my costume from the year before, as I didn't grow so much.

I gave them the look, and they stopped immediately. Before we left they apologised to my mum, and told her what time they'd drop me home. We got to the first house, and I could tell by the lady's face that she thought I was strange. We got our sweets and left. The same thing happened every single house we visited. Worst. Halloween. Ever.

When I got home, I put my sweets on the table and went upstairs. When I got out of the bath and put on my skeleton pyjamas, I went to the dining room downstairs to have dinner. My mum asked me how my night was. I told her it was ok, but people kept giving me strange looks. She looked down. That meant something. "Speaking of weird looks," my father started, "when you and your friends left this afternoon, Mrs Complainalot came over and growled at your mother for making 'such an ugly costume' and threatened to call child services for mistreatment." I felt terrible, especially because they treated me like I was the only thing that mattered to them. I promised her I'd no longer pressure her to make my costumes in the future, and that she is always welcome to buy costumes from the discount department store. She smiled and we hugged.

The end.

#halloween story #short story #halloween #young author

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aikasjournal · 1 year

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January 13, 2023

I think I’ve reached another level of negativity.

Lately (or maybe for quite sometime now) I have been the biggest complainer. I complain, complain, complain, complain. At first I thought I was just venting my emotions or stating my emotions, something I considered therapeutic. I’m a firm believer that we should be able to label our emotions as they come and then embrace them, good or bad. Especially bad. I thought it’s a healthy thing to be aware and to recognize the feeling when I feel it. It gives me a sense that this particular feeling is only for the now, and that it’s not going to last forever.

BUT... It seems like it has become a big bad habit. I complain about every little thing in my life. Sometimes I catch myself moaning and it’s vivid to me how I lack perspective on most things. At the end of the day, I am very thankful that I’m alive and healthy and my family and loved ones are alive and healthy. We have enough food on the table, we can buy some excesses if we want to, again we have our health, so what is there to complain about?

Apparently a lot. I complain that I feel like a zombie most days because I follow the same schedule everyday and I’m even more stuck at home than I was during the pandemic. I work. I breastfeed Noa. I look after and worry about Noa. I think about what we’ll have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I work. I take Noa for her nighttime bath, read a bedtime story, feed Noa, massage her as she drifts off to sleep. I work again in the remaining hours. Sometimes I take a bath. Then by midnight, I’ll try to get some sleep only to be woken every three hours at best, or an hour at worst, to feed Noa through the night. Sometimes shIe wakes up screaming even if I just fed her. So basically not much sleep during the day. Then I wake up or rather Noa wakes up and I do it all over again.

I complain that I don’t have time for myself. Not much time to putter anymore. To possibly read a book for a couple of hours. Write something. Bake something and practice my photography. Wander around the mall aimlessly. Take a walk in UP. Do yoga in peace. Have a decent cup of coffee. Eat somewhere nice and expensive. Have some legitimate alone time.

But then I also miss Noa when I’m away. I want to always be beside her but also to get a break from her. What is this thing?

I snap at Jed for not listening to me vent. I assume he’s fed up with me and my complaining. He feels like everytime I open my mouth I’m going to complain or point out something he needs to fix about himself. I hate him for it. We end up arguing and feeling unheard. He feels the same.

I know it’s not true but I feel like I have no friends. No friends to talk to. No friends to vent to. Much less no friends to commiserate and have long chats with and leave feeling heard and satisfied. I really, really miss that feeling, of being seen, being understood. Again, I MISS THE FEELING OF BEING HEARD, OF BEING UNDERSTOOD. In the old days, I use to get this from my best girlfriends. They’re not here anymore.

So what do I do now?

I’m not yet ready for the solutions to be honest. Again, I just want to vent. But again, Aika, for how long?!

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erodasfishtacos · 3 years

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*CHICAGO*

i write for free - so if you would like to support my work, you can donate here. (plus my bday is today!!!!!!! 🎂)

if you liked please reblog, recommended, like, and come talk to me about it!

——

The public didn’t know that some of the pictures that are posted of Harry that are tagged and credited to the on tour photographers were actually taken by his wife.

For example, after Chicago, the picture of Harry in the tub - completely bare and worn down from his show, you actually think the photographer took that?

No, that was snapped with YN’s iPhone, like some of the other pictures he’s posted.

Just like the one where he’s asleep on the hotel bed in a robe in Paris with all of his stuff splayed around him - allegedly taken by helene. ***

But no, it had been his wife, they had just taken a shower together and she had stayed in for a bit longer to shave her legs - when she had come out and seen him passed out.

She had to tug a bit at the robe so he wasn’t exposed and make it x-rated, then she pulled out her phone and snapped the picture - sending it to Jeff with a teasing caption.

yn: It’s exhausting being a popstar

And just like that, it appears on his Instagram for fans to go crazy over.

Or what about the snapshot of his tank that had his famous slogan embroidered into the side of the white fabric. ***

His wedding band reflecting in the flash of the light, a subtle glance at his rippled muscle below the attire as they work on his hair.

“Mm, I’m gonna save this for a lonely night,” YN jokes as she tucks her phone away.

Harry’s hand comes to cup her jaw, looking down at her where she’s sat on the floor, “Y’so fuckin’ pretty, y’know that?”

YN’s eyelids flutter a bit as she glances away from his intense gazes - he still gives her butterflies.

“Don’t get shy on me, baby. Can I not tell m’wife how gorgeous she is?” He asks, bring her hand up to kiss the back of it, “Look s’good with tha’ ring on.”

And the one that made fans go crazy.

On a warm evening, in a hotel room between venues in Italy, where they had been lounging around all day.

YN in just a thin gauzy dress that accentuated the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra and Harry just in the trousers he’d worn to get them coffee earlier that morning.

“You just took a picture of me! It’s my turn,” YN giggles, getting on her knees on the old squeaky couch and snatching the camera off of him.

“I took a picture because y’tits look nice in tha’ dress. I can see y’nipples and it’s turnin’ me on,” Harry defends, holding up his book as she snaps it.

“H, c’mon,” She pouts but squeaks when Harry tugs her into him, dropping the book and the camera as he adjusts her on his lap.

“Gonna let me take a picture of y’all nice and fucked out, darling?” He rasps, ignoring her pout and hiking her dress up her hips.

And it’s happened throughout the years, so many pictures that were littered over the internet where just uncredited snapshots from YN.

Just like the one from 2013, they were on tour, and Harry was supposed to be recording for the next album after soundcheck and before the concert. ***

Instead, after soundcheck, Harry and YN had snuck off to a little meadow and lake to have a swim. He had shimmied down to his briefs and waded in.

YN stood back, snapping a picture of him and his friend as the complained about how freezing cold it was.

“Baby, c’mon. Come get in!” Harry had shouted back to his girlfriend on the dry land, “I need some warmth, s’freezing!”

YN grimaces, just in Harry’s shirt and a pair of yoga shorts, dipping her toe in and shaking her head - “I’ll enjoy from here!”

“Please, bug,” He pouts, motioning for her to come in.

She does after a moment, squealing at the temperature before quickly finding her way into Harry’s arms.

“Only have fun on tour when y’with me,” He had murmured into her ear before he dunked her underwater and they play fought until their stomachs hurt from laughing.

And then came the notorious picture that had gotten a million likes in thirteen minutes, oh, the chicago ice bath.

Harry had been achey since tour had begun, constantly complaining about his back and ankles from the shows.

“Baby, just rub m’back a lil’ longer please?” He had whimpered the night before, the tour bus bed did not help him much at all.

When his trainer had recommended an ice bath immediately after the show - YN had made sure to arrange it despite his protests.

After exiting the stage in his black and lilac outfit, he’d been lured into the bathroom with a promise of sex but instead was a steel tub filled with ice water.

Jeff, Lambert, Tommy - everyone was watching on in amusement as he adamantly tried to deny that it would help and the peer pressure wasn’t make him anymore convinced.

“Alright, everyone out,” YN had finally tittered, shooing out the circus before closing the door for privacy.

She helps strip her husband out of his close as he looks at her reproachfully, “You promised me sex.”

“After,” YN assures him, kissing his puffy lips and asking softly, “Just try it, if it doesn’t work - you don’t have to do it again.”

He grumbles a bit, muttering, “Don’t look at m’bits, they’re gonna shrivel up.”

YN giggles, “As if I haven’t seen your bits in every shape and form.”

As he slips in, YN has to snap a picture of his eyes wide and lips pursed at the shock of the freezing water cooling down his hot, sticky skin.

“Holy fucking shit,” Harry hisses, lowering self until he’s sat - his nipples instantly hardening and he’s breathing roughly out of his nose.

“Five minutes, I’ll set the timer,” YN says, setting it on her phone before sitting down next to the tub as he tries to relax.

“Baby, fuck. Reminds me of that really cold lake in Boston, ‘member?” He squeezes his eyes shut and reaches until YN intertwines their hands.

“Yeah, that wasn’t as cold as that one time you convince me to skinny dip with you on the coast of france.”

“Oh yeah, that one was really fucking cold too,” Harry murmurs, keeping his eyes closed and steadying his breathing.

(During WWA tour - ***)

“Harry, are you insane? Anyone could see us? Paul could walk out or the boys. I’m not-“

She’s cut off when Harry shucks off his swimsuit bottoms, his skin’s glowing in the moonlight and the light waves lapping at the shore are soothing.

YN swallows harshly, tries not to stare at how handsome and overwhelming beautiful he is as he turns to step towards the water.

She looks over her shoulder nervously before stepping out of her one-piece, he waits for her at the shoreline.

“Y’so so stunnin’,” Harry tells her, thumbing at the soft curve of her breast and leaning in for a soft kiss when he feed her shake.

“You could have anyone,” YN whispers against his lips, “Every girl on this earth wants you like this. I’m just some girl from before all this,” she motions to the extravagant bungalow they’re staying at.

“I don’t know why y’think tha’s bad. I want t’experience all this with you, m’first love and m’only love. I’m going to marry y’soon, you know tha’?” He replies, lips tracing the curve of her neck.

“You better,” She giggles, hands going to his shoulder as he sucks a mark into the thin skin.

He pulls back with a frown, “M’not jokin’, I don’t care that we’re young - M’gonna do it.”

“I can’t wait,” YN kisses his jutted out lip, squealing when he tugs her into the water and the chilled waves crash against her hips, “H, it’s so cold.”

“M’gonna keep y’warm, hush up,” He titters, pulling her into his chest until her breasts are smushed against his strong pecs and his arms are around her shoulder, “Love experiencing this w’you, everythin’ w’you.”

YN is brought back from her daydream by her husband wiping his finger under her eyelid, “Darling, wha’ is it?”

She hadn’t realized she had teared up thinking of the fond memory, “I want to go back to that bungalow. We had such a good time. I…I just love you.”

His wife chuckles like she’s pathetic for crying about it but he leans out of the tub, cupping her jaw and pulling her in for a hard kiss.

“Don’t be embarrassed, flower,” There was no teasing in his voice, it was sincere, “If anyone should be embarrassed - I’m the one who travels around the world t’sing love songs ‘bout you.”

Their lips join again, his tongue finding its way into her mouth when Jeff, Lambert, and Tommy barge through the door.

“Jesus Christ, only you could be trying to get some while sat in an ice bath,” Jeff scoffs with a smile but instantly knows they’ve fucked up.

“Get out, the fuck?” Harry sits up, “Don’t interrupt me and m’wife. Get out!”

They stumble out and just then the alarm goes off.

YN helps him out, tucking him into a towel and helping him dry off - his head tucked into her neck and hand on her belly - massaging.

“Do you feel any better?” She hums while getting some stray droplets on the nape of his neck as he nuzzles into her warm skin.

“Mm,” He agrees drowsily, hand slipping under her shirt for more heat and she jumps at his icey touch, “Want t’sleep.”

And when they get to the hotel, YN logs onto his Instagram and uploads the ice bath pictures with nobody knowing the story behind it.

Hope you enjoyed!

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fortuositywritings · 3 years

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Tattoo Heart

Summary: Tony and you make a dumb drunk decision. He gives you a tattoo.

“Um, what the hell, Tony! You said it wasn’t that bad.”

“It’s not! It’s well-proportioned. Really it’s the best heart I’ve ever drawn. I don’t know why you’re so upset. It could have been worse.”

“The heart isn’t the problem. You tattooed Wanda’s name on it!”

“Yeah, I can see why you’re mad.”

You poked your sore arm. Out of all places, he had to tattoo it on your arm above your elbow where everyone could see. Talk about bad placement.

You pout, “How am I supposed to hide this?”

“Baseball tee’s could make a comeback. You’ll be a trendsetter,” he suggests, not helping at all.

You glare at him. “You’re paying for it to be removed.”

“I expected no less,” he concedes. You’re still touching the tender spot, frowning. He stops you. “Poking it is not going to make it go away.”

“Fuck! I’m never getting drunk with you again,” you vow.

“You say that now, but come Friday night, whiteclaw in hand, you’ll have no recollection of this ever happening.”

“Getting a tattoo with your crush’s name on it is kind of hard to forget, Tony,” you spit out. He wears a sheepish smile. Speaking of the party on Friday, “Shit!”

“What?” Tony asks, clearly not processing the situation you’re in as fast as you are.

“Wanda’s gonna be there,” you remember.

“Well, yeah. It’s Pietro’s birthday party and they’re twins so,” he comments sarcastically.

“It’s a pool party. How am I supposed to hide this?”

“Just don’t get in the pool. Or you know what, just don’t go. Say you got sick,” Tony suggests.

“I can’t do that. She expects me to be there and I don’t want to let her down on her birthday,” you explain. Wanda had personally invited you to her party, saying you were going to be her partner for beer pong.

“Fine. Don’t worry about it too much. We have all week to figure something out,” he reasons. You guess he’s right. No use in stressing too much.

Friday afternoon comes too fast.

You’re stressing as you look at yourself in the mirror. You look ridiculous.

“You’re literally a genius and this was the best you could come up with?” you complain. You already feel yourself sweating. You hadn’t thought of what to wear. You only had your one piece bathing suit. Tony told you he had something and you trusted him. What he brought you, a long sleeve rashguard to wear over your bathing suit.

“Makeup was just going to wash off. We couldn’t chance it. This way, you can get in the pool,” he says.

“I look like I’m going surfing, not a pool party,” you huff.

“You look fine. If anyone asks, you burn easily. Now let’s go. Your girlfriend is waiting on you,” he rushes you along, grabbing your stuff for you. You throw on some shorts and slip on some sandals.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” you mumble, blushing as he pushes you out the door.

“Oh, I know. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if she was.” He closes the door.

Pietro opens the door for you and Tony. You both hug him and congratulate him on another year of being on this earth or as Tony puts it, “Congrats on being one year closer to death!”

Technically, their birthday is tomorrow but they always have a birthday dinner with their parents, so they celebrate with their friends either the day before or after. You and Tony hand Pietro your present for him.

“Just don’t open it in front of your parents,” you warn. He decides to unwrap it right then. You roll your eyes at his impatience to wait until tomorrow. To his satisfaction it’s running shoes with a bottle of alcohol in each shoe. He laughs, thanking you for his present. He notices you looking around, searching for a certain somebody. He already knows who you’re looking for.

“She’s in the kitchen,” he tells you, a smirk appearing on his face when you blush at being so obvious. You thank him and go find Wanda.

As Pietro said, she is in the kitchen fixing some appetizers to bring outside. What you weren’t prepared for was her already in her bikini, like she’s ready to jump into the pool. Her two piece bathing suit doesn’t leave much to the imagination but you’re quite the daydreamer it seems. You’re snapped out of your trance by Wanda clearing her throat.

She wears a smirk much like her brother’s and you splutter an embarrassed, “H-hi! Happy Birthday. You, uh, you look good. Great! You look ready for the pool.”

She smiles, amused by your awkwardness. “Thank you. You look ready for the beach.”

You blush. “Yeah, I burn easily,” you lie and quickly move on, handing her the present you got her. “Here.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” she says, but you shake your head. “Of course I did. It’s your birthday tomorrow. You can open it now if you want. Your brother did.”

“Unlike my brother, I can wait. Let me go put it in my room. I’ll be right back. Wait here,” she requests. You nod and she leaves with her present. You respectfully turn your gaze to the appetizers, not wanting to ogle her backside.

“Cowabunga, dude! What the hell are you wearing?”

“No way. I almost wore the same thing. Good thing I didn’t or that would be embarrassing.”

You roll your eyes, turning around to see Sam and Rhodey, both clearly amused by their own jokes. You give them an unimpressed look and they laugh harder.

“Haha. So very funny,” you deadpan.

“Seriously, Y/N, why are you wearing that? It’s like a thousand degrees,” Rhodey asks.

“Maybe I’m insecure and you guys laughing just makes me feel worse? Maybe thought of that?” you retort, but neither buy it. They look at each other and start laughing.

“Insecure, my ass. You almost give Tony Stark a run for his money in the size of ego,” Sam says between laughs. You just roll your eyes.

Wanda returns to find the guys pressing you about the long sleeves.

“Hey, Wanda. I think you might have given Johnny Kapahala the wrong address. She’s gonna be late for the competition,” Sam jokes and you hate that you get the joke. Wanda doesn’t and looks adorably confused. All she knows is they’re referring to you so she looks at you for an explanation but you ignore her in order to throw your own remark.

“At least Johnny wasn’t afraid to swim at the beach,” you bite, making Rhodey and Wanda laugh and Sam take offense.

“There are sharks!” Sam defends himself, making you all laugh.

The three of you help Wanda bring out the appetizers to the backyard. They’ve got a table and a bunch of chairs laid around. Wanda asks if you’d like a drink and goes to fetch one for the two of you while you greet other friends.

“You didn’t want one?” You ask her when she returns with only one drink. “If we’re going to be beer pong partners, you can’t leave me drinking alone.”

She giggles and takes a swig from your drink. “Happy?” She asks when she returns the drink to you and smirks upon seeing the slight blush on your cheeks.

You get a few more remarks about the rashguard but with a few drinks in everyone’s system, the pool is more enticing than poking fun at you. You didn’t plan to get in the pool but with a simple “come on” from Wanda, you’re cannonball jumping into the deep end.

Once it’s dark, you all begin to vacate the pool in order to play games. You and Wanda play two games of beer pong seeing as neither of you are very good and you think you’ll surely be sick if you play another round.

You eat, you dance, you sit around and talk to your friends, and Wanda is with you the whole time. It’s midnight and you’re right beside her as everyone sings for her and Pietro. She hands you the first slice of cake, which you eat standing up just to stay next to her as she cuts a piece for everyone.

It’s nearing 2am as people begin to leave. Wanda and Pietro make sure everyone is getting home safely, either taking a LIFT or having a designated driver. You and Tony stay later to help the twins clean up, which they greatly appreciate.

Almost an hour later, the house looks as if there hadn’t been a party. You and Tony wish them happy birthday once more before he pulls out his phone to call an Uber. The twins insist you two stay, that it is way too late and they’d feel better if you do.

Tony wiggles his eyebrows discreetly at you when Wanda invites you to sleep in her room. You spare him a warning glance before following Wanda to her room. She offers you some pajamas and hands you a long sleeved tshirt like you ask. You excuse her questioning glance saying you get cold at night.

You change in the bathroom. When you return, you find Wanda also in her pajamas sitting on her bed with the present you gave her earlier in her hand.

“You want to open that now?” You ask, amused at her eagerness to open it.

“I mean it is my birthday now,” she reasons. You nod, closing the door and going to sit next to her. “Or is this one of those ‘open when you’re alone’ presents?”

You quirk an eyebrow. “What kind of presents are those?”

“One of those romantic ones like in the movies that show that you’ve always loved me or something,” she replies. Your palms feel sweaty all of a sudden with the way she stares at you. She reads the nervousness on your face and takes pity, continuing, “Or a vibrator.”

You burst in giggles. “Damn it. How’d you know?” you joke.

It’s not a vibrator, obviously. You got her two necklaces, one gold with her name and the other sterling silver with her initials.

“I was going to just get you the gold one but then I thought maybe you wanted one to match all those rings you wear so, that’s why there are two,” you explain.

She puts the box aside and throws her arms around you, pulling you flush into her. “Thank you. I love them.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I could totally return those and get you a vibrator if that's what you want,” you laugh. She pulls back immediately, a frown on her face.

“No, they already have my name,” she protests, pulling a chuckle from you. She hands you the golden one that says ‘Wanda’ and asks, “Will you put this one on me?”

At your nod, she twists around, turning her back to you and sweeping her hair up. You struggle with the clasp a little due to your nervousness, but you get it. Had you paid closer attention, you would have noticed how Wanda shivered at your touch.

She turns back around and you admire her with your gift around her neck. “It looks great on you.”

She leans toward you again and you assume it’s to give you another hug, which you wouldn’t mind one bit, but she doesn’t move her head to the side the way one does to hug someone. Her nose bumps into yours and you realize she’s going to kiss you.

For some damn reason you pull away before her lips reach yours. She looks embarrassed and begins to apologize, “Sorry, I misread that. I thought with the present and the way you’ve been looking at me all day, shit.”

“No, you didn’t misread anything,” you reassure her. She relaxes. “Can we try that again? I was just nervous, but I’m ready now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Wait.” You get up and make a show of shaking off the nerves and pumping yourself up before you sit back down. “Okay, now I’m ready.”

She giggles, grabbing your face and pulling you into her, kissing the life out of you. She moves to lie back on the bed and you follow her lead. You’re kissing and it’s getting hot and she tugs on your shirt. You remove it without a second thought. You begin kissing down her neck pulling sweet noises when you leave a love bite. She gasps and grips your arm, right above your elbow.

You flinch in pain. The sudden intake of breath tips her off and she pulls her hand away. She asks worriedly, “Are you okay?”

You remember the tattoo and the fact that it’s not so hidden right now. You start to panic. “Yep, why? Are you okay?”

She narrows her eyes in suspicion, but you kiss her with the intention to make her forget. A minute later, she does it again, grabbing right on that spot. You try not to, but she hears the small groan and she pulls away. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” you lie.

“Then why do you flinch every time I grab your arm?” She moves to grab your arm again to prove a point but you move it away.

“Nothing’s wrong with my arm,” you deny. She sits up and reaches for your arm. Once more you pull out of reach.

“Y/N, let me see your arm,” she demands.

“Okay.” You try to save yourself from some of the embarrassment by explaining, “But before you look, just know I did it on a drunken dare and I didn’t know until the day after what Tony actually wrote.”

That piques her curiosity and she shuffled around you to take a look at your arm. You can’t watch, so you hide your face behind the palm of your other hand. You expect her to either laugh at you or get upset, but moments pass and you don’t hear anything.

You get the nerve to look over your shoulder at Wanda. She looks indecisive about what she wants to say, but she doesn’t look mad. Finally, she says, “I guess I don’t have to ask if you like me or not.”

You groan in embarrassment, hiding your face again. She laughs and pulls you into her as she lies back down. “Don’t laugh. It’s embarrassing enough getting your crush’s name tattooed on you. I don’t need her to actually make fun of me.”

“Aww, you have a crush on me?” she coos.

You pull away, giving her a deadpan look. “No, I get girls’ names tattooed on me all the time.”

“Having your crush’s name tattooed is embarrassing,” she agrees.

You narrow your eyes, thinking she's just making fun of you now and that was the last thing you need but she continues, “So how about we say it’s your girlfriend’s name?”

Your eyes widen. Wanda bites her lip nervously, waiting for your answer, and that’s how you know she’s serious. You blush, “That would be less embarrassing.”

“I think so too. So what do you say?” She asks, wanting a clear answer.

“I would love to be your girlfriend,” you answer.

She smiles and kisses you. You can’t help the giddy laughter that comes after.

“You know, he didn't do too bad. It’s pretty well-proportioned.”

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda maximoff x you

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bloodycassian · 3 years

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Reader x Cassian - Hellish Prompt: Reader is an assassin/spy that was caught and azriel has spent months torturing her for information and can’t get anything out of her and cassian eventually goes to see who this assassin/spy is and the mating bond snaps and cassian beats the $hitt out of az bc of the mating bond instincts and rhys has to intervene and break up the fight (i was thinking this could switch between azriel’s POV at the start and then switch to cassian's POV)

AN- this was SO fun to make. Please more requests like this!! I love the idea of unexpected mates!

TW -blood/ blades.

Drip, drip, drip. Copper smell filled the small room. Blood leaked down the drain in the floor. You wheezed a laugh bitterly and spat on the ground at his feet. Azriel's rage simmered calmly under his dark shadows. They coiled, ready to strike. Wanting to strike. The sound of your feeble laughs was practically the only sound Azriel had gotten from you for the first week of torture. The second week was worse, even for him. Truth teller revealed nothing when he gouged into your skin from the bottom up. Truthfully, he was impressed beyond measure. But that didnt mean that he could stop the job at hand. He had to know, and wished he didnt have to do this kind of thing to get the information from you. "Listen..." He sighed, cleaning his blade. He was always nervous whenever he had a back turned to an enemy, no matter how well they were restrained. But he trusted his shadows enough to tell him if something was wrong. "If you just.. Cooperate and tell me where the Queens are, we can let you go. No trouble, just releasing you back to Rask." He tried to keep his tone neutral, but he was nearing an exhaustion point. Torture every day for two weeks had its toll not only on the victim, but the dealer as well. His shadows seemed to be growing restless too, waiting for a chance to strike. He watched your reaction from the corner of his eye. Noted the way your head hanging loosely seemed to gain a bit more strength before you spoke. "Losing your touch, Spymaster?" You revealed a row of bloody teeth to him, and grunted when the chains at your wrists stung the magic that weakly attempted to help you. Azriel could have sighed. He could have laughed and bled you dry. Have a healer come and patch you up enough to keep you alive. The idea was tempting, but he didn't like having anyone besides his brothers see him in this mode of darkness. He could have brought Rhys down to attempt to break into your mind again. After the first attempt and Rhys' reaction to being blocked, he wasn't eager for that again. So he sighed, and brought out the potions laced with Faebane. + He was convinced you weren't a normal Fae. After months of his best torture methods he was a wreck. "She just-" He tried to hide his frustration, but his brothers knew him best. Cassian smirked by the fire, warming his wings. Rhys seemed a bit more concerned, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Azriel had never been one to spend a long time on torture. Rhys saw the frustration flowing from him after every session with the stubborn Fae in the dungeon cell. "I dont know what to do anymore. She's the only one to have never broken." He ran a hand though his hair. His shadows seemed weak, exhausted like him. Rhys considered for a moment, looking between his two brothers. Cassian seemed to be enjoying Azriel's frustration. Maybe a bit too much. Rhys sipped his wine then, with a look of innocence, "Maybe we will have Cassian end it. Perhaps seeing the Lord of Death in front of her will knock something loose." Cassian's stare whipped to him, a silent plea on his face. "We should leave it to our expert Rhys-" Azriel laughed, cold and bitter. "The expert hasn't got a damn thing out of her. We either kill her or send her back to Rask with all the information she's collected about us. With nothing in return." Shame lined his features. The sense of failure to his high lord was a heavy weight to bear. "Cas...I expect you down there tomorrow afternoon. It will be her last chance." Rhys' no nonsense tone shut down Cassian's retort. His jaw locked with distaste. He hated the cramped cells below the house of wind. Hated the way going underground made his wings feel like they needed to stretch. The worst was when that stale air was laced with the rotting smell of dead mice or old blood. It made his skin crawl just thinking about it. "Come on Cas, dont you want to see the only one that's outlasted me?" Az asked with a mock grin. He couldn't give the same smile back. Turmoil spilled inside him at the thought of going so far below the mountain. + Cassian took a long time to go to bed that night. His restlessness about the next day made him wake up over and over, never having more than an hour of peace before being waken up. Azriel held up a mug of tea to him the next morning. "You look like shit." He handed his brother the mug with a small smile. Cassian glared at him, but took it anyway. He went to the balcony, his heavy wings needing to feel the fresh air. It was like taking a bath after being covered in grime. He sighed in relief, letting the late morning sun graze his body. The cold wind from Illyria was beginning to come in for the winter, and the familiar smell ignited something in him. He felt a draw, but shoved it to the back of his mind. He knew what he had to be this day. "Why the hell do we have to keep them so far down again?" Cassian complained. Around and around and around. Down deeper and deeper into the pit of the mountain that the house above was carved out of. Cassian felt like his lungs were collapsing the further they went. He tried not to let his nerves show, but he knew Az's shadows would pick up on it anyway. "Remember when you broke your arm chasing down that Attor?" Azriel could have laughed at that memory, but the story surrounding it made the experience soured. More shame on top of the guilt already there. Cassian hummed in approval, welcoming the distraction the memory brought. He tried not to focus on how each turn of the staircase got darker and darker. How the air seemed to compress around him. He locked his eyes on the scar on one of Az's wings. "And we spent a week fixing the top story of that apothecary?" He asked, keeping his voice steady. "Yes. Dont you remember how the Attor got out?" Cassian shook his head, and Azriel huffed a laugh. "I left the door open for just a second to get a new knife and..." He shook his head, part in anger and regret, part in shame. "It had escaped before I turned around. I dont know how it happened, to this day." Cassian stared at the back of the shadowmaster's head. The dark ripples around him seemed to spike. "It happens Az, you can't be perfect." "It's not perfection, its basic thought. After that we moved all enemies to the lower dungeons. No matter the threat. Rhys even put wards on the arches." He ran a hand over the walls, his fingers catching a few of the grooves that linked each spelled archway to the other. Cassian left the conversation at that. At least his brother wasn't brooding as much as before. The dim lights began to come into view, and his heart began hammering. Adrenaline singing through his veins. His polished siphons glowed, reflecting red off the dark stone ceiling. He had polished all his black armor the night before, when he couldn't sleep. Something poked, prodded at him all night. Keeping him awake. He figured he may as well make use out of it. "She's not going to talk to you unless you show..weakness first." Azriel said in a low voice. Cassian nodded, reaching the end of the stairwell with him. Cassian couldn't see the dark figure in the cell, but he felt the presence nonetheless. The dark draw that you demanded. He wondered how Azriel had dealt with that pull this whole time. The tantalizing draw to you. He shook his head, pushed the hair out of his face and nodded to Azriel. He opened the door, then began his ritual. At the start of every session he would toss a bucket of water over your body, then a bucket of salt. It made the wounds that handn't healed fully scream in pain. You jolted at the suddenness of it this time. "Good morning, shadowsinger." You ground out, voice rough with strain. Cassian watched in awe at his brother. Cassian was never one for torture. There was a reason Azriel was appointed to this position. Watching the calm cruelness of him was jarring, but Cassian kept his face straight. He stood behind you, watching the flimsy attempts to pull at the shackles holding your arms up. Lacerations dotted each arm, some light pink scars. Some were still scabbing over. A chill ran down his spine. "You have a guest today, would you like to see him?" Azriel's voice was cool, calm. Like he was speaking orders to a group of soldiers. He began slicing new lines into your arms, moving up to your neck. He had left your ears in tact, as a last resort if you refused to speak to Cassian. The pull Cassian felt was overwhelming. He walked a bit too quickly around you, plastered on a wicked smile for show, then crouched down. The smile faded when he finally saw your face. Your dripping hair was a horror on its own. Plastered to the skeletal cheekbones, and pale eyes. Those eyes were brighter than anything he'd ever seen. A field of flowers down the slope of Illyrian mountains. His world shifted, drawing the breath from him. "Mine." His mind seemed to roar with that alone, but in a thousand different variations. "Lover, friend, partner, mine mine mine. Mate. My mate." His lips quivered with the realization. With the way his heart soared, and the way he moved without realizing it. He choked a gasp, and fell forward on his knees before you. He saw the same astonishment in your reaction. Azriel dropped his sword, confusion and concern alert on his features. "Cas wh-" Before he could finish, before his shadows could detect that Cassian had even moved, his brother was on top of him. Cassian's knuckles stung with every punch. A new kind of rage flared inside him. It made his muscles yearn for violence. Made his teeth crave the flesh of those that so much as looked at you wrong. There was no mercy for Azriel, it was as if he was an enemy on the battlefield. Cassian held nothing back. You hung limply from the chains that bound you. Crunch after crunch sounded from Azriel. He eventually managed to push Cassian off of him. Then they locked together in battle again. Clashes of armor against armor were deafening. The snarls they ripped at each other were loud enough to make you cringe. Your heart squeezed at the sounds of Cassian's breath. At the scent of blood spilling. You pulled feebly at the chains, your mind roaring to protect him. Your mate. You tried to watch the battle, but the weakness in your body refused to let you turn more than a few inches. They were panting, Cassian fighting with a ferocity Azriel had never seen. His eyes flared with rage, like he was possessed. "Cas-" Azriel grunted, shoving his brother backwards. His back hit yours, pushing you down and digging those stone cuffs into your wrists. You hissed in pain. Cassian roared and lunged at his brother again, and again. The darkness that boomed outside the cell was jarring. The stone ceiling shuddered, small rocks and dirt falling from it. Cassian did not stop. He didn't hesitate, coming at Azriel with punch after punch. His fist crushed the wall behind where Az's head had been.

"Enough." The high lord's cool command was enough to make you still your weak attempts at looking at the two. Cassian's chest heaved as he tried lifting his arm to punch Az again. Pure fury in his heart was enough to make him disobey Rhysand's order.

Then Rhys' talons gripped him. Freezing his mind, stilling him. Rhys' face shifted to surprise at what he glimpsed at there. "Oh.." He breathed. Azriel panted, backing away from his brother, out of the cell. He locked the cell and wiped the blood from himself, his wings hanging limply behind him. "What- the hell." He panted, nursing his arm. Cassian's eyes locked to your small frame. How your muscles quivered, how your arms shook with the effort of holding yourself up. He felt Rhys' claws recede slowly from his mind, releasing each part of him one by one. He rushed to you. He picked up Azriel's sword and with a clean, masterful swipe, broke the enchanted stone that bound you. The weak sigh that came from you was heartbreaking. His eyes pricked with tears, and he caught you before you could fall to the floor into the puddle of dried blood. He didnt notice, or care that it was there. He sat there with you, cradled you and shook with you.

"Cassian... She's.. Cassian's mate." Rhys said slowly, astonished. He didn't take his eyes from his brother in the cell. Azriel froze in place. For a moment, the dungeon was completely still. Totally silent, as if the world waited for what was to come next.

Azriel turned on a heel and left, trudging up the stairs. Rhys dared not touch his mind. "Cassian...." He spoke, trying to get his brother's attention. He did not glance at Rhys, just curled around your body more. Protecting, nesting almost. Rhys knew the feeling too well from the weeks after he and Feyre's bond snapped into place. "We will check in tomorrow. Be safe, brother." Rhys spoke to Cassian's mind. It was nothing but an ocean of rushing thoughts. Cassian could have bared his teeth, could have tried to fight his brother through the bars of the cell. Hell, he could have probably broken through those bars with the primal strength flowing through him with the rush from the bond.

But he didn't. He stayed, his warm body pressed against yours. Those siphons glowing against your skin like a fire. He stroked your hair soothingly, his tears like rainfall on your body, through your bloodstained clothes. He didn't remember falling asleep there, but it was the most restful, peaceful night he'd ever had in his existence.

#acotar #acotar fic #reader x cassian #cassian fic #cassian #azriel mention rhys mention #cassian x reader

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theladyofdeath · 2 years

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Nyx is a mama’s boy and takes after his father’s protectiveness 💕

Feyre would never grow tired of going to the Rainbow.

It brought her nothing but joy to find that Nyx was just as fond of it as she was.

Rhysand had business to attend to in the Illyrian mountains that morning, an errand that he had spent an hour complaining about as he bathed and dressed. It wasn't very "High Lord" of him, but Feyre found his childish whining endearing - especially once Nyx stormed into their bedroom and told his father that he was acting like a baby.

The interaction had turned into a tickle fight that Feyre had found herself in the middle of. As she and Nyx walked through the Rainbow of Velaris, her boys' delighted laughter still sounded in her mind, making her heart feel a little bit lighter.

"Mama, puppets!"

Suddenly, Feyre was being dragged by a five-year-old Nyx to a makeshift puppet stage cart where two homemade puppets, dressed in tiny replicas of the latest fashion, were putting on a show.

"Puppets!" Nyx shouted as they stopped and watched.

His excitement caught the attention of a few people passing by who stopped to watch the show as well.

Feyre was laughing quietly at a joke that one puppet made to the other when she heard, "Why the fuck are you looking at my mama?"

Feyre's head snapped down to Nyx, who was standing, arms crossed, staring at the man on Feyre's opposite side. Her mouth fell open, then snapped shut, then she spun to the man, who was standing flabbergasted with pink-stained cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, my Lady, I didn't mean to offend-."

"Oh, no, it's me who should be sorry," Feyre said, the words spilling out of her mouth. "I don't know what's gotten into him-."

"I just didn't recognize you at first and when I did-."

"It's really okay," Feyre said, shaking her head. "You must let me make it up to you."

After another round of apologies and an invitation for the man, a local florist, Feyre had learned, to join Feyre in her art studio for a one of a kind piece of his choice, Feyre grabbed Nyx by the hand and dragged him away from the bustling street.

"Nyx-."

"I protected you, mama," Nyx said, his fierce eyes lit. Feyre had seen that look before in the eyes of her husband, her mate, many times. "Daddy says I should protect you. He says it's our job."

Feyre blinked, the words sinking in before she sighed and squatted down to Nyx's height. She brushed the dark hair out of his face. "I like that you want to protect me. That shows me that you have a very kind heart. But, that man did nothing wrong and the people of Velaris are our friends. We cannot go around snapping vulgar remarks - which reminds me, where did you learn such naughty words?"

Nyx replied without missing a beat. "Uncle Cass."

Feyre took a deep breath. She'd be paying Cassian a visit once he made it back to Velaris with Rhysand that afternoon. "You're five. You don't say such things. Understand?"

Nyx's tough expression turned sheepish as he nodded.

Feyre leaned forward and kissed Nyx's forehead. "It's our job to make sure the people of Velaris are taken care of. That's hard to do when we are blaming them for nothing and being rude to them in the streets. Besides, it's mommy's job to protect you, not the other way around."

Those little arms crossed over his chest once more. "I don't need protecting."

Feyre just rolled her eyes as she scooped Nyx into her arms and began kissing his cheeks. His giggles filled the air as head fell back, that mop of black hair blowing in the soft breeze that was coming off the Sidra.

When Rhysand came home, he would certainly get a good laugh out of the story. He would also go to the man himself and apologize, because that's the kind of man Rhys was. As far as role models went, her husband was the best of the best for their son.

Even if that meant that, occasionally, Rhysand's words caused their child to curse at strangers on their strolls through the Rainbow.

#acotar #acomaf #acowar #acosf #acofas #fanfic #fanfiction #oneshot #drabble #tara answers prompts #prompts #asks #rhysand #feyre #feysand #nyx #cassian

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wishicouldpostfromsecondaryblogs · 2 years

Text

"Have you seen my bottles, Geralt?" Jaskier says as he hops down the last of the kitchen steps. "Someone has obviously broken into my stash and while I can't really begrudge them for it, considering the horrific shitshow that went down here, but not even a witcher could finish all of them in one go. Are they here? Could you smell them out if I tell what kind they are, do you think?"

"I took them," Geralt says shortly and Jaskier stops flinging open cabinet doors to look at him. He's surprised at it for long enough that Geralt pauses in peeling the potatoes- oh, nice alliteration there- to meet his gaze. "I'm not giving them back."

"Wha- what?" Jaskier huffs out, voice a bit unsteady as he tries to process that. "Geralt, what the fuck?"

Amber eyes flick up to him and then back down. "You're drinking too much. You need to stop."

Jaskier's mouth falls open at that. He's shocked silent for a few seconds more before abruptly he's angrier than he's ever been in his entire life.

"And you get to decide that, do you?" He says dangerously, voice soft. Geralt carefully puts the potato down, eyes wide and confused, clearly trying to figure out where he stepped wrong. It only makes Jaskier angrier, never mind that usually he'll just sputter in offense and complain loudly about it until they bicker their way to a compromise, that this is just how Geralt shows he cares. "You get to choose what I do and don't do?"

"You know you're overdoing it," Geralt argues, even as his gaze flicks towards the exit and he continues to look wrongfooted. He takes a step back as Jaskier steps forward, holding his hands out. "You're going to hurt yourself like this. And you- you care about what people think of you, what impression do you think you're going to make on Ciri and the others if you're just going to lie around drunk all day?"

"I don't give a FLYING FUCK what your family thinks of me, Geralt!" Jaskier shouts. "Much less the girl you spent twelve years snapping at me about, every time I reminded you she existed!"

Geralt's face twists in hurt, the one expression Jaskier had never managed to pull from him. "Jaskier."

Jaskier falters but he's too angry to stop. "And I'll be the judge of what hurts me and what doesn't, you hear me? I'll mix all the damn potions in your lab and drink if I damn well want to!"

"And just like the excessive drinking, it'll BE THE FUCKING DEATH OF YOU, JASKIER!" Geralt shouts back, getting his grip, face creasing in sudden anger. "You can't fucking remain drunk for the rest of your life!"

"Oh, I am sorry," Jaskier laughs angrily, hands clenching into fists, "That I prefer to drink through the misery rather than take out my hurt on the nearest people around me unlike someone else I know, Geralt."

Geralt flinches, but rallies quickly, slamming a hand down on the table next to them. "And you think seeing you wasting away and losing yourself to alcohol doesn't fucking hurt? You don't even fucking sing anymore, you haven't bathed in weeks, I can smell your misery throughout the halls, you don't think that fucking hurts, Jaskier?"

"Oh, get fucked," Jaskier hisses venomously, reaching out to shove the witcher into the wall. "Like you have the right to fucking care- we aren't even friends, remember?" Geralt full-body flinches back, shooting him a wounded look filled with twenty three years of history. "You aren't my friend and I'm certainly not yours, we're just two people who make their fucking living off each other and nothing more, so you don't get to fucking care about me, you absolute fucking dickhead!"

"That was bullshit then, Jaskier, and it's bullshit now," Geralt snaps back at him, although his voice is heavy with hurt and tinged with tears. "And I am sorry for all the shit I said, but I'm not going to let you fucking drink yourself to death!"

"How stupid do you think I am, Geralt?" Jaskier scoffs, drawing back to throw his hands up. "Do you really think I'm dumb enough to actually reach that point?"

"I don't know, Jaskier, you tell me. Does a carton of beer strong enough to make a witcher drunk sound like something a not-stupid person would have?"

"Fuck you," Jaskier hisses. "I had to watch my friends die at the hands of the Nilfgaardians, you asshole, I'll cope with it how I fucking want to."

"You've just recovered from your fucking illness, Jaskier," Geralt snarls back at him. "Are you going to respect their memories by dying of the fucking bottle?"

Jaskier stumbles back a bit, pain shooting through him at the words. But two decades of friendship means that they both know where exactly to twist the knife. "First of all, don't tell me how to mourn the people that actually cared for me-"

"I do fucking care for you, you dumb fuck!"

"-And second, WHOSE FAULT WAS IT THAT I WAS ILL IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

Geralt freezes, looking like he's been stabbed. "Jask- Jaskier."

"If I ruin myself with drink, it'll just match the rest of me, won't it?" Jaskier's voice cracks, his own anger flickering shut. He chokes on his tears, "Match my ruined fucking hands and be just as fucking useless as the rest of me."

"They're not fucking ruined, Jaskier, " Geralt chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut tight. "Your hands will heal."

"You're just hoping that," Jaskier says scathingly, crossing his arms. He isn't even fully angry anymore, he just wants to hurt. "Because you don't like that the stupid little bard got tortured because of you."

"Don't like- Jaskier, I never wanted you to get hurt because of me!" Geralt opens his eyes at last, and Jaskier's heart skips a beat as tears slip down Geralt's cheeks. "Even back in fucking Posada, I didn't want you to get fucking hurt because your stupid teenage self thought it was a great fucking idea to follow a witcher around! I am sorry I wasn't there to stop you from getting tortured, I'm sorry for every time I said we weren't friends, I'm sorry for blaming you for everything, but I am not- I am not going to lose you because you're not taking care of yourself and I am going to find a way to get your hands healed, no matter what I have to fucking to do for it, even if I have to fucking cut my own hands off and give them to you!"

They stare at each other in silence once Geralt finishes, tears running down both their cheeks, out of words.

Twenty three years, hundreds of horrific memories, a thousand terrible secrets and not once through all of that has Jaskier ever seen Geralt cry.

He grapples with his anger for a moment, unwilling to let go- but no matter what either of them says, they're still fucking friends and he lets it slip through his fingers and drift away.

"Don't be stupid," He says hoarsely. "Your meaty fingers would be of absolutely no help on the lute."

Geralt huffs a surprised watery laugh, shaking his head, and Jaskier continues in the same quiet tone, "And you can't be sorry because I was tortured, it wasn't your fucking fault. Besides, you've stepped in front of monsters and weapons for me countless times, haven't you? Call this- eh, recompense."

Geralt exhales a sob, looking so utterly wrecked by their argument that Jaskier steps closer. "This is not fucking recompense, Jaskier-"

"Oh, you know what I mean," Jaskier sighs, letting his arms drop to his sides. Geralt searches his face hesitantly before reaching out for one of Jaskier's hands. Jaskier reaches back and entangles their fingers. "The devotion is the same, isn't it?"

"It is," Geralt says with naked relief, and tips his head forward to press their foreheads together. Jaskier shuts his eyes and lets Geralt pull them gradually into an embrace, hugging each other silently in the middle of an empty kitchen. "Tell me how to help you, Jaskier. Let me help."

Jaskier sighs. "Well, you did have a point with the drinking. I might have been going a smidge overboard." He nuzzles into the woollen shirt, wiping his tears off on it and sniffing. "You can...take some of the bottles, I guess, but don't fucking treat me like a child over it. And just-" His voice cracks. "Can we spend...some time together? I haven't been able to talk to a friend in months, Geralt, and it's honestly driving me a little insane."

"Of course," Geralt murmurs, muffled by Jaskier's doublet. "I- I want that too. I've really missed you, Jaskier."

Jaskier huffs. "Yeah. Yeah, I missed you too."

"...Can I sleep with you tonight?" Geralt asks. "Not like- Just-"

He trails off and Jaskier smiles into his chemise. "Of course. But let's... stay like this a while longer, okay?"

Geralt hums and Jaskier leans into him with a sigh and a smile. They tighten their arms around each other at the same time and Jaskier finally relaxes and lets the cracks between them heal at last.

#geraskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier #the witcher #my fic #yen triss and twenty witchers listening in on this drama from different ends of the Keep: what the fuck #tw alcoholism #how has it been an entire hour jfc #theyre best friends your honor #that includes knowing each other inside out even when you dont want to

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houseofhurricane · 2 years

Text

hearts bring back the light

Summary: The war is finally over, and Nesta Archeron spends solstice figuring out what comes next.

Pairings: Nessian with sides of Elucien, Feysand, Gwynriel, and Emorie

Word Count: 5,523

Notes: This is an @acotargiftexchange fic for @writtenonreceipts, who wanted Feysand, Nessian, and/or Elucien, and something at least moderately fluffy. I hope you enjoy!

If you'd prefer, you can read this fic on Archive of Our Own.

Nesta tries to pull her coat shut and fails, the thick wool refusing to stretch over her belly. Solstice is still a week away but Velaris is in the midst of an early cold snap, snow falling on a freezing wind. She scowls down the burgeoning abdomen that’s growing steadily more chilled, glad the child fluttering inside her can’t yet see her face, that they’re still shielded by her skin and blood.

She already regrets telling Gwyn and Emerie that she wanted to do her solstice shopping alone. In her mind, she’d stroll through the snow, peruse the windows lit by twinkling faelights, and instantly find the perfect, thoughtful gifts her friends and family deserve. Instead, she’s already freezing and her stomach churns ominously, and ten thousand stairs lie between her and her bed.

A shadow falls over her, a flash of crimson light, and Cassian stands next to her, his landing silent in the snow.

“I thought you had a meeting in Illyria,” she says by way of hello, though she can’t keep the smile off her face as she steps closer toward him, beckoned by his warmth.

His large hand fits itself over her belly, as it has for the past six months, ever since her scent changed.

“Emerie sent me on an errand.”

He holds out his other arm and there’s a large, flat box topped with a bow the color of Cassian’s siphons, dusted with fat flakes of snow.

“Who are we bringing this to?” she sighs, and he bumps the box against her arm.

“Emerie and Mor thought you might want to open their solstice present early.”

She bites back a smile and slides the box open, revealing a navy woolen coat and a fluffy red scarf shot through with silver threads. Cassian quickly removes her too-small coat and replaces it with the new one, and there’s plenty of space for the baby to grow. As he ties the scarf around her neck, Nesta realizes that she’s already warm.

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, a silent thank you and an invitation.

“They thought I looked too big for my coat?” she asks after she pulls away, continuing in the direction of the shops.

“Everyone thinks you look perfect. Especially me. Where are we going?”

“I’m trying to find gifts for everyone tonight.”

“The House will do that for you if you ask nicely.” He flashes a grin at her and rests his hand on her back, his fingers over the exact place where it aches, and Nesta is sorely tempted to let him fly her home and remove her warm new coat.

Instead, she flashes him the look he’s dubbed the “I will slay my enemies” glare and points out, “It’s not the same if it’s the House and you know it.”

“Gwyn won’t mind as long as you give her a pegasus.”

“Azriel will make us keep it,” she retorts, pushing her boots through the snow.

He wraps his arm around her, pulls her close against him without missing a single stride.

“Then I’ll help you find a gift my brother won’t complain about.”

Hours later, Cassian is loaded down with bags and boxes he refuses to let Nesta carry, and they have bickered and laughed and drunk several mugs of molten chocolate and spiced cider, than gone frantically searching for a bathing room for Nesta, but there’s a gift for everyone except Cassian.

“I have everything I need,” he says when, walking through the streets that sparkle with faelights and fresh snow, she asks what he’d like for solstice.

Instead of answering, he pulls her toward him and wraps his arms around her, his hands over her belly. The child inside her spins and flutters under his touch.

“I’m sorry you think so,” she’d told him after she’d kissed him thoroughly. “Because I’m about to change your mind.”

Cassian only laughs and sweeps her into his arms, flying them towards home.

Below them, Velaris sparkles like a treasure, and Nesta finds herself wishing that the child could behold this sight, their home at its most brilliant.

Though the war finally ended a year ago, Nesta sometimes still wakes with nightmares, which have grown especially vivid with her pregnancy. She can feel Koschei’s magic crawling on her skin, hear Elain’s screams as she plunged into battle, heedless of the cost, smell the iron scent of Cassian’s blood outside his body. That they all survived, that they’ve entered at last into their hard-won peace, does not register in her sleeping mind. The old nightmares return, too: sometimes the Cauldron still laps at her, sometimes she still watches her father die, hears Cassian prepare her for their next life.

She wakes up, throat raw and cheeks sticky with half-dried tears, to Cassian’s embrace, her back held against him so that she does not feel suffocated. He knows, now, how to hold her, how to soothe her, how to bring her back to their life in peacetime.

“What if this is the dream?” she asks him, still half-asleep as she wakes in the night a few days before the winter solstice, when Velaris is covered in a blanket of snow that makes the darkness a luminous blue.

“Then we enjoy it until we wake,” he says, his voice low in her ear. He brushes the hair away from her face and runs his hand over her belly. The baby aims a kick at her lungs, the strongest she’s felt yet, and she exhales with a little gasp, controlled by the little being inside her.

Instantly, Cassian is looking her over for any sign of danger, placing himself over her body. As if he too is worried that this peace is an illusion, that malevolent forces still loom.

“It was the baby,” she says, her voice lowering, falling out of her panic, the dreams pushed further away as she settles her mates fingers over the place where their child lashes out with their tiny feet once again.

In the moonlight, she sees the joy and fascination on his face. Her Cassian, who has triumphed against enemies older and more powerful than Nesta can imagine, who goes to battle despite impossible odds, who will be the hero in countless legends, actually wells up with tears at the feeling of their child’s first fierce kicks.

“She’ll be just like her mother,” he says, kissing her even as she rolls her eyes. “Good for everyone that I’m fond of my Valkyries.”

Instead of answering, she pulls him toward her, easing his soft sleeping trousers off his hips, wanting the reassurance of him fitted tight inside her, and Cassian, her beloved, the best male in this whole beautiful sorry world, pulls off her nightgown and kisses her heavy breasts, her laden belly, the throbbing place between her legs before fitting himself inside her.

“You’re not dreaming, Nes,” he says when they’re breathless and sated, into the ringing silence. “We really saved this world.”

She cups the back of his head with her palms, his hair silken between her fingers.

“Then why does it feel like it could all be gone in an instant?”

“Because the world is always in need of saving in one way or another.”

He lifts her against him, so easily, and she rests against his chest, lulled by his heartbeat, the fortress of his muscled arms.

They had conceived the child in the Summer Court. The moment the final treaty was signed, Rhys had all insisted they relax, enjoy the peace, and Nesta and Cassian had thought up all the places they wanted to travel, in Prythian and on the continent. Without a battle or a mission or a war to prepare for, there was no hurry, and Cassian flew them everywhere, to a cabin in the sparkling mountains of the Winter Court, through the perfect sunrises of the Dawn Court, over the tulip fields of the continent, which made her think of Elain, already settling in at the Day Court. They visited a hundred markets and tried foods with spices even Nesta, the daughter of a merchant, had never tasted.

Nesta savored the sun on her skin and the wide open spaces of this world, the mountains and forests and oceans beyond anything she’d imagined when she lived in the cabin, or when she fought battles at the balls of human aristos. She’d wept in his arms over the fallen Valkyries, the losses in the unit of female Illyrians that Emerie had led, and felt his own tears on her skin as he mourned the losses of his men. She watched as the lines around Cassian’s mouth faded, as his grief wracked him less and less, felt the echo in her own body.

When they’d reached the Summer Court, sun-drunk and giddy over Tarquin’s forgiveness at Cassian’s past antics, they’d spent entire days on the beach, fucking in the water or sometimes in the sky above, Cassian alternately swimming and sunning his wings, and Nesta splayed on the sand while she plowed her way through dozens of romance novels. When the long days darkened into evening, they’d watch the stars appear over the dark expanse of sea, the waters sighing until they were both lulled to sleep.

It took weeks of that sultry peace before Nesta asked, “What do we do, now that the war is over?”

She’d been more and more aware of the fact that her gifts were meant for battle. For all of Gwyn’s research, the histories never recounted what the ancient Valkyries did during peacetime.

Cassian had kissed her and said, “We enjoy it, Nes. We build our new world as we think it should be.”

Later, she will be grateful that he didn’t press his own vision onto her, that he simply allowed her to think and dream for weeks. Her daydreams filled with a thousand futures, strengthening the women of the Night Court’s vast territory in every way she knows, lobbying Rhys until the laws reflect the equality they all feel in their bones, and fluttering around the edges of those visions are two small girls with Cassian’s dark hair and Nesta’s steel blue eyes, laughing just like her mate does. And Nesta realized that she was hungry for all of it, to fight until the peace is worthy of its name for everybody, to build her home with Cassian, with the children the Mother granted her. Still, she waited to tell him, wanting to make sure that she was certain. Because she knew that once she told him, she would not stop until this was her future.

So Nesta savored their lazy sunkissed routine, until one night, dining on fish and sea vegetables and the sweet indulgent fruits that only flourish in Tarquin’s court, she’d been unable to keep the words inside herself any longer.

She’d told him, among other things, “I want to have a child.”

Nesta had never seen such a smile on Cassian’s face as he swept her into her arms.

That night, she stopped taking the contraceptive potion, and, two months later, newly arrived in the Day Court at the invitations of Helion and Lucien and Elain, Nesta had vomited spectacularly at Helion’s feet. His new consort, Lucien’s mother, had tended to her with a calm manner and a knowing look, offering ginger tea and cool wet towels and fresh air, but it hadn’t been until the next morning, when her scent changed, that Nesta and Cassian fully realized what was happening. Despite the delays and complications the High Fae faced, Nesta had become pregnant almost as soon as they’d started trying.

The Mother, apparently, had wanted them to have a child as much as they did.

Despite her persistent nausea and exhaustion, Nesta found herself eager to begin her new life, and Cassian began snarling at every male who so much as glanced at his mate too long, so as soon as they toured the Day Court and she assured herself that Elain was well and truly happy there, with her mate and her sunlit gardens, she and Cassian flew to the Night Court.

Nesta breathed the air high above Velaris, cold and bracing even in the height of summer, and knew that she was home.

Now she wakes to sunlight on snow and a note from Cassian that her meeting with Rhys and Feyre has been moved to noon, a lunch at the river estate. She suspects that Cassian had suggested this, had known she would want to sleep late after her nightmare.

There’s a stack of books on her nightstand, the House’s latest smutty favorites, a cup of molten chocolate laced with peppermint, and a cheese pastry redolent with butter. As she heaves herself to sitting, she hears the faint strains of what she’s come to recognize as solstice carols.

“If I didn’t know better,” she says, “I’d think you wanted to celebrate the solstice with just the two of us.”

The blankets shift around her, perfectly covering her shoulders, and the smell of cinnamon wafts through the air, which Nesta takes as the House’s agreement.

She reads for hours, the child fluttering inside her, as if they too are following this tale of unlikely lovers bound by promises and protocol in the Dawn Court of centuries ago, though Nesta hopes they do not follow the sections on wing play, even as she decides she’ll try it with Cassian soon. She sips her chocolate, which never grows cold, and when she finishes her pastry, the House brings her fruit to nibble on.

Later, when she rises to prepare for her meeting, she finds that her wardrobe is stocked with new clothing, all soft and in her favorite colors, cut to accommodate her new and shifting body. There is a crimson dress which she supposes is intended for the annual solstice party, and the coat from Emerie and Mor is neatly hung with its matching scarf.

“Can you help me think of what to buy for Cassian?” she asks the House, but its only answer is to pull out a thick gray sweater for her meeting, which Nesta supposes is one way of saying she’s asked for a bit too much, this time.

When she arrives at the river estate, Nyx and Seren run to her, Nyx taking flight straight into Nesta’s arms, and Seren toddling across the marble floors, her violet eyes shining as she screams something at Nesta that she barely understands. She scoops them each into hugs and leaves smacking kisses on her cheeks, surprised as always by how easy it is to share this tenderness.

“I see I’ve been replaced,” Cassian drawls just as Feyre and Rhys appear.

“You’ll get used to it, brother,” Rhys retorts with a smile.

Meanwhile, Nyx is telling Nesta about a recent lesson in Fae history, an ancient king who went into battle with a shining sword, and how Papa and Mama have promised that he can have a sword for his next birthday.

“I’ll teach you how to use it,” Nesta promises as he wraps his arms around her neck, his wings tucked in against his shoulderblades, small and perfect.

“You aren’t very fast, Aunt Nesta.” His voice is sweetly matter-of-fact.

“Just you wait,” she says, trying to bend to pick up Seren with her other arm and failing. Cassian swoops her up in his arms instead and she lets out a perfect shrieking laugh, which makes Nyx jump out of Nesta’s arms and fly towards him.

Feyre quickly moves to hug her, then leads her to the meeting room where Nesta’s recommendations on changes to Night Court policy are waiting in a thick stack on the table. On top, the topic for today’s discussion, is a law to let all interested females out of the Hewn City before their freedoms are stripped away.

As they often have in the months since Nesta returned to Velaris, Rhys and Feyre agree with her in theory, but raise the practical implications, the matters of execution. Nesta is getting better at not rolling her eyes and letting out aggrieved sighs, and two hours later, after only a few heated arguments, three pointed glares at Rhys, and only one suffocated scream from Nesta, they’ve finished a platter of sandwiches and come up with a plan to offer more freedom to those who feel trapped in the Hewn City, the way Mor did.

The plan will still open to debate and amendment by Amren and Mor and likely there will be a mostly ceremonial discussion with Kier, but to Nesta it feels like real progress, reminds her of the inexorable tide of battles that win a war, and she lets herself sink into her chair with a contented sigh when Rhys rises, kisses Feyre, and leaves for another meeting.

“You’re coming to the solstice party?” her sister asks.

“I didn’t know I had a choice,” she says, softening the words with a smile, then adding, so that Feyre will know she’s not the villain in Nesta’s story, even for an evening, “Emerie and Gwyn will drag me if I’m late.”

Feyre grins back, then gestures at Nesta’s belly. “You’re feeling all right?”

“Happier than I thought I’d be.”

Madja had explained that pregnancy would make her crave strange food and scramble her emotions, but at these words, which aren’t quite an answer to Feyre’s question, her eyes fill with tears.

Because Nesta Archeron was born and trained for battle and misery and grit, even when her world was only as wide as the night’s ballroom. But here, in the peace she’s helped to win, she’s finding that she is not out of place, and it’s a marvel.

Her little sister rises from her seat and wraps her arms around Nesta, leans her head on her sweatered shoulder.

“You might get used to it.” Feyre’s voice is so sweet and sure that Nesta knows her sister, no matter what she accomplishes in the Night Court, will forever be written in Prythian history as beloved.

“Have you?”

“Maybe in a thousand more years.”

When she arrives at home with Cassian, the table is filled with delicacies and new faelights and candles twinkle all over the House.

“I think the House is spoiling you,” Cassian says, his eyes widening as he considers the table, the roast pork that makes Nesta’s mouth water, the fruits of every color, each one perfectly ripe.

“The House is always nice to me.”

As if to prove its point, a solstice carol begins somewhere in the background. Cassian sighs.

There are times when it’s easy to forget that Cassian needs anything from her, that there’s anything she can give him.

“How was your day?”

He rubs his temples, turning toward her, away from the food..

“Sometimes I wish I could unleash you on the Illyrian commanders,” he says.

“I’m not sure if I should be proud or wounded.”

“Proud.”

He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth, but Nesta doesn’t let herself become distracted by the touch or the compliment.

“You’re trying to change their world,” she says, thinking of her months of arguments and deliberation with Rhys and Feyre, how the progress so far has been small compared to what’s in her mind.

“You should see Emerie,” he says, his tone contemplative. “She always knows what to say at these things. I should put her in charge of Illyrian reforms.”

“You should.”

He smiles at her, rueful but accepting her words, and when he reaches for her, Nesta fits herself against him, his lips against the mass of her braids, her everyday crown.

“Part of me is worried I’ll get left behind. That I’ll become some wartime relic.”

“You’re more than the Lord of Bloodshed, Cassian.”

“Well said, Lady Death.”

She rolls her eyes at the nickname and then asks, “What did you do the last time there was a lasting peace?”

“I never trusted it. And I was still young, then, proving myself in Illyria and the Hewn City. Nobody believed a bastard-born Illyrian could lead the armies of the Night Court.”

Nesta thinks of him, younger and more uncertain, standing before war-tried males who dared to look down on her mate, and her heart clenches in her chest. She wishes they had been born in the same moment, in the same place, so that she could have shielded him from everything he’s had to endure.

“Then what do you wish you could do?”

“I wish I could remake the world in the image of Velaris. Make sure everyone is safe and content and able to do as they will. That there were a way to let Illyria and the Hewn City have their customs without all the evil and brutality. That we could rule over all these principalities as one united court.”

She has never heard such a speech from Cassian, the words spilling out of him, sure and decisive, as if they’ve been curled up inside him for a long while.

She stands on her tiptoes so that her eyes meet his hazel gaze, the warmth and vulnerability in it.

“You could do all of it, you know,” she says.

He looks away, training his eyes on the sparkling city laid out before them, preparing for the darkest night, the ending of the first year of peacetime.

“I’m no courtier.”

“You’re something better.” At the certainty in his voice, he turns toward her again, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Like he wants to believe her. “Everyone already likes you.”

He laughs at those words, deep and musical, but she can tell he’s not dismissing the idea. Instead, they spend the next three hours making their way through the House’s feast and, bit by bit, as night deepens around them, Cassian tells her all of his ideas.

“Have you gotten a solstice gift for Azriel yet?” Nesta asks, raising a mug of spiced cider to her lips. Around them, the lights twinkle and the air is filled with the scent of pine and spruce, another gift from the House.

Gwyn’s smile is only subtly judgemental as she says, “Weeks ago.”

“Of course you did,” Emerie says, raising her goblet of mulled wine to her lips, the gesture just like Mor’s. “Don’t tell me you’re spawning too.”

Gwyn swats at her, laughing. “I had to fit it around a mission.”

After the Blood Rite, Gwyn had discovered a talent for spycraft. Nesta had sometimes gone months without knowing her exact location, only to have her return to Velaris or the war camps with shadows under her eyes and relief in her smile, her hand nearly always clasped in Azriel’s. Days later, there would be sudden changes in their strategy, or key figures on the continent would go missing.

Gwyn still works as a spy, and sometimes Nesta wonders at the former priestess she’d met in the library, at the secrets she keeps and the ways she’s transformed. Even if, when she’s in Velaris, she’s in and out of the library more than Nesta.

Now, though, she just rolls her eyes at her friend and says, “Just promise me it’s not a pegasus.”

“Or you’ll need one as well?” Emerie cuts in.

“I don’t want to hear Az complaining about it. Anyway, I have you and Cassian to fly me around.”

Emerie’s wings have been healed for years now, and sometimes Nesta finds herself taking it for granted that her friend can fly between Illyria and Velaris and Mor’s estate in the span of hours. There’s nobody, not even Cassian or Rhys or Azriel, who loves flying as much as Emerie does.

“Only if you get me a very nice solstice gift.”

Nesta’s groan as she rises is only a little faked, but she’s smiling by the time she returns with her friends’ gifts, which she’d ordered weeks ago.

Soon the jeweled bracelets, in the colors of the woven bracelets they’d made for each other years before, are fastened to their wrists, and Emerie declares that she will indeed fly Nesta wherever she likes.

Dawn still grays the horizon when Nesta startles awake with an idea and rises from her bed, then settles at her desk. Hours later, Cassian hovers in the doorway but she waves him away. In the dead of night, his solstice gift had come to her.

When she sees him at the training session above the House of Wind, now run primarily by Ros and Deirdre, the priestesses who survived the war, he raises an eyebrow.

“I’ve never seen you write like that,” he says as he racks the wooden swords, an old habit that Nesta knows the priestesses nevertheless appreciate.

She kicks at a drift of snow, wondering if she should have worn another pair of socks.

“I had an idea,” is all she has to say before Azriel and Gwyn fly in, followed by Emerie and Mor. It’s rare, now, that their old training group is fully reunited, and as grateful as she is for the interruption, she’s brought almost to tears by the sight of them. The fact that they all survived.

“I never thought I’d see the day when Nesta cried,” Emerie says with a smirk.

“You’ve clearly never seen her in--” Cassian begins, before Nesta covers his mouth with her hand. He licks her fingers.

“We survived,” is all she says, her voice cracking on the last word.

“Now we show everyone else how to do it,” Gwyn says, her own eyes bright as she wraps an arm around Nesta’s shoulders. Gwyn, who has never feared her. “But first, can any of you explain why no one has ever bothered to heat this damn ring?”

“I would’ve thought a Carynthian wouldn’t be so soft,” Azriel retorts, his smile taking the insult out of the remark.

“As if you haven’t tried to fit in Gwyn’s flannel-lined leathers,” Emerie points out. “We talk to each other, you know.”

“We’re extremely aware,” Cassian says, and Mor laughs, and although nobody will let her spar, and she swears, while running sprints and holding her lunge, that her child has doubled in size over the past week, and she’s half-distracted by what remains to be done for Cassian’s gift, all in all, Nesta spends a very pleasant morning in training.

Nesta will bring her daughter into the world on a spring morning when the air is filled with the scent of flowers, though she won’t smell their fragrance in those hours when she’s wracked by each contraction, when her body is tight as a bowstring, when Gwyn whispers prayers to the Mother and Emerie stands over her with cool towels for her forehead and Cassian holds tight to her hands, her shoulders as he tells her how strong she is, how powerful, how lucky their child will be to grow up with such a mother. Every word that arrives through the haze of pain seems to sweep aside all her fears.

At some point, Nesta will realize that the pain and the adrenaline and even the fear are more like battle than anything.

Except that when her daughter, slimy and squirming and already wailing, is laid on Nesta’s chest, she realizes that this victory is nothing like the battlefield, when winning feels so similar to loss.

Nesta will trace her daughter’s face with her fingertips, kiss her rosy cheeks and the top of her head, already covered with a fuzz, Cassian leaning over her shoulder to study their baby, and she will know that this moment will be held forever in her mind, perfect.

They will name her Fenna, which Gwyn has said means peace in the old dialects, and, right from that first moment, Nesta will promise her daughter a better world.

But now, the night of the winter solstice, Nesta rests her hand on her belly, nervous as she watches Cassian and Lucien discussing sports. For all the time she’s spent on Cassian’s gift, she’s still not sure if he will like it.

Elain appears at her elbow.

“I have no idea how they find so much to say about a ball hit back and forth,” she says, twisting her hands. The gesture is so unlike Elain’s usual cheerful elegance that Nesta reaches for her sister’s hands. Even now that they’re grown and Elain has come into her power, she still wants to soothe her sister.

“What’s wrong?” Nesta asks, instead of the clever retort she’d thought up, comparing sporting events to the ballroom.

Elain sighs and says, “I’m pregnant.”

There has been a rash of babies since the signing of the peace treaty, but Nesta has not felt such a clamor inside her as she feels now, when Elain gives her the news. Her sister always envisioned herself as mother to a large family, and Nesta has wondered why, in the years since her mating ceremony to Lucien, there have been no children. She wondered if the question was too painful, though, and so she didn’t ask it.

“Why do you sound afraid?” she asks, now, her fingers still tight around Elain’s. She’s aware of the expanse of her belly between them, the child that kicks below her ribs.

“This isn’t the first time. There have been-- I’ve lost them, early. And I’ve had visions of my children but I wonder if they’re false. If I’ll lose this one too.”

There is no real comfort she can provide to the anguish in her sister’s voice, no assurance she can give. A child lives or it does not, and Nesta has lost her powers to say otherwise. Only now does she think of that fact with regret.

“Have you seen a healer?”

Elain twists her lips into an expression between a grimace and a smile. “I’ve seen seven. Lucien and I -- we wanted to be sure, this time. Whether there was anything we should do. If we could get our hopes up. All of them have said the child is healthy and growing as they should. That I’m all right.”

“And how long has it been?”

“Nearly four months.”

Nesta looks at Elain’s gown, more closely than she has all evening, at the way it flows loose around her waist, disguising the slight but unmistakable curve of her belly, the way the neckline draws the eye to her sister’s breasts, full for the first time in Elain’s life. The way the deep green fabric could fool someone into thinking that the moonglow of her sister’s skin is due to the flattering color alone.

“I wanted to tell you--” Elain says, misinterpreting the look on her face.

“Shut up and let me hug you,” is all she says, and pulls Elain into her arms.

Over the course of the evening, the news circulates among them all, to laughter and hugs and wry statements that of course Nesta and Elain’s children would practically be twins, and it’s in this haze of merriment that she settles on the couch next to Cassian, sinking deep into the soft cushion.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up,” she grumbles even as she leans against him and his wing circles around her.

“Good thing your mate is a big strong Illyrian warrior.”

“You can say that if you win the snowball fight tomorrow,” she says, and then, because nobody is paying attention to them, she lays her gift in his lap.

It is a slim package, hastily wrapped, but Cassian smiles as he opens it to reveal the notebook inside. Half of the pages are covered with Nesta’s handwriting, which to her eye looks sloppy as he thumbs through the pages.

“I didn’t know what to get you. But this is our story,” she says, looking across the room, to where Seren is braiding Emerie’s hair while she had Mor gossip with Feyre. She doesn’t want to see a hint of disappointment on Cassian’s face.

“Did you run out of time to finish it?” he asks, though she can hear the smile in his voice.

“I wanted to leave room for the rest of it. For everything we’re going to do next.”

He does not speak and finally, Nesta’s curiosity overwhelms her. She turns toward him.

Cassian’s eyes are bright with tears as he reads the first page, where she’d written about his appearance in her home, the instant spark between them, the love and attraction she’d tried to deny.

“This is perfect,” he says, marking the page with a careful finger as he takes her in his arms. “This is fucking perfect, Nes.”

“I love you,” she says, an explanation and a declaration and a promise.

When he kisses her, she forgets that they’re in the middle of a party with their family and friends, about all her obligations and fears and dreams. There’s only Cassian in her arms, their child curled up inside her, and cinnamon and spruce in the air. Nesta thinks, pulling Cassian closer and relaxing into this moment, the peace she fought for and won, that maybe this truly is what peace and joy and home feel like. That it’s actually fucking perfect.

More Notes: I know this is kind of bittersweet fluff, but I hope you enjoy it? I had the Stars song "In Our Bedroom After The War" in my head when I was drafting it, which includes the line the war is over and we are beginning, and that really informed the vibe of this.

Also, I've never written Nessian as a focal couple before and I really enjoyed it! Writing Nesta's snark and their banter together is delightful.

@writtenonreceipts, if you hate it, please let me know, and I'll write you something better 🧡

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a happy holiday season! 🎄

#acotar gift exchange 2021 #nessian #nessian fanfiction #domestic nessian #nessian pregnancy #elucien #feysand #gwynriel #emorie #acotar solstice fic #acotar fanfiction #nesta supremacy #nesta archeron #fluff and angst

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