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smuttysabina · 6 months

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Gahyeon vs The Tentacles: A Tale of Interdimensional Terror and Sex

(Gahyeon x Tentacles, 2.7k words) CHECK THE TAGS

Tags: Filthy sloppy demonic sex, highly dubious anatomy, extremely questionable interdimensional reproductive cycles, tentacle sex, more tentacle cum then her body has room for, tentacle impregnation, egg laying, call your therapist- tell him he's a rich man, no orifice is left un-violated (okay well actually a lot are but...), illegal demonic summoning, birth, unspeakable degeneracy, consensual sex

Happy Halloween you degenerates

Gahyeon flips through the pages of the grimoire, bored beyond belief; who would have thought that finding a good demon for an orgy would be so hard! She scowls as she haphazardly tosses the book aside before snatching another one from the pile next to her roost in the old armchair. Halloween was fast approaching, and it was Dreamcatcher's hallowed tradition that every member would have to bring a demon along for their yearly spooky gangbang. Gahyeon's demon for last year had been a terrible disappointment, a Baphomet with meter-long cock; what the fuck was she supposed to do with a dick that huge? Okay, it had been pretty fun getting literally hosed down with demon-semen, but still! Flicking peevishly through the pages, she spots something that catches her eye, now this might work! Gahyeon would have to test it out first though, nothing was more embarrassing than trying to summon an interdimensional sex-partner only for the spell to fizzle in front of everybody...

Moving with confidence, Gahyeon quickly gathers the materials needed for the summoning; thankfully no virgin blood was required this time. Do you know how hard it is to find a virgin working at a Kpop company? Slopping her brush in the bucket of (ethically sourced) blood, Gahyeon swiftly sketches a pentagram on the library floor, then she bends over to draw the circle enclosing the symbol. Fell hieroglyphs and bizarre runes are carefully added around the perimeter ring, as Gahyeon busies herself with the fine details. She adds candles to every point of the pentagram, before as a final touch she dumps some leftover calamari in the center as a medium. Perfect. (What, its totally normal for an Idol to trespass the dark infinites to find a fuck-buddy; do you really think your favorites aren't doing it too?) Gahyeon calmly adjusts her outfit, as she prepares to start the incantation; first impressions are Important, you can't just greet your new friend butt-naked and bent over! (Well you can, it's just impolite) Unwords spill from Gahyeon's perky lips, scarring the air itself as she slowly makes several circuits around her summoning circle. An unhealthy light begins to grow around the discarded food-scraps, until they are burning with unnatural colors; then with a disgusting shlorp they disappear. Gahyeon blinks, did it work? Then a glowing pool of liquid appears, filling the circle until it is bubbling up the wards on the sides; a success!

Gahyeon squats in front of the unearthly puddle, impatient for any sign of the being she had supposedly just summoned. She starts as a long pink tube languidly rises out of the liquid, halting when level with her face and swaying gently. Gahyeon perks up, and cheerfully introduces herself, "Greetings almighty TZARNIGLOTHIFLORGUMALRQ'VSHYTUOPLONOAL, I was wondering if you wanted to go to an orgy next week with me?" The tendril bobs excitedly, and she beams, "Awesome! But um, let's get to know each other a bit better first okay?" The tentacle palpitates before ducking back into the pool, making nary a ripple. Gahyeon blandly stares at the pool, did she just get dumped...? Then a new tentacle erupts from the portal, much thicker and more purple than the last one, with a bulbous, fleshy tip. It quests slowly towards Gahyeon, pausing at the edge of the barrier; she rolls her eyes, and with a wave of her hand dispels it. The tentacle kisses her lips, and she opens her mouth to allow it inside of her.

The tentacle fills Gahyeon's mouth, probing towards the back of her throat before pausing, lulled by licking of her tongue. She slurps upon the squishy appendage, playfully sucking it off with surprising skill, her hands stroking its length. A sickly sweet fluid starts to appear in her mouth, and she redoubles her efforts, realizing that this must be some sort of precum. The tentacle wiggles and pulsates inside of her mouth, expanding until her tongue is pushed entirely down, leaving her throat clear. Warm, slick liquid spurts into Gahyeon's mouth, which she handily gulps down, but it is soon followed by a flood of gummy balls that slide easily down her well-lubricated throat. She gags, arms flailing as she tries to swallow the seemingly endless stream of boba-like spheres pouring into her stomach. Eventually the deluge ceases, and the tentacle deflates and withdraws from Gahyeon, leaving her coughing and clutching at her belly. She rubs herself while glaring at the now spent purple appendage, why does her tummy feel so strange, just what sort of demonic semen is inside of her? One thing for sure, Gahyeon feels a bizarre need for anal sex, like, deep, hard plowing. With a mischievous smile she lifts the hem of her dress up and pulls down her panties, "Well, surely you've got more to show me..."

Smooth, pink tentacles erupt out of the eldritch pool, slithering around Gahyeon's body and lifting her into the air. More tentacles hold her legs open while others snake underneath her clothes and slither sensuously around her breasts. She simpers at the overwhelming sensations assaulting her skin, so focused is she on her own pleasure that she barely notices the growing pressure against her anus. Gahyeon gasps as she feels something hot and slimy enter her ass, slowly but steadily pushing deeper inside of her; expanding to fit the contours of her innards. The tentacles coiling around her body begin to secrete the same fluid that had presaged the purple tentacles orgasm, coating Gahyeon in a thin layer of slime. She moans, writhing in the tentacles grasps, her nerves made extraordinarily sensitive by the tentacles' fluid; demanding that her demonic lover continue rubbing her. She climaxes messily when the tendril inside of her quests even deeper, delving into her small intestine as it slowly fills up her belly with its fleshy length. Gahyeon's eyes roll back as she cums repeatedly from the novel sensation of having her guts fucked; her tummy bulging obscenely. Then the tentacle within slowly begins to wind its way out of her, leaving behind a warm, slippery trail of fluid that makes her tremble with a strange excitement. Gahyeon's eyes widen as she feels something start to flow down her guts, what the fuck...?

A smooth, pliable ovoid plops wetly out of Gahyeon's ass, making her shudder with sickening delight. She groans, "What the fuck is that?" before any further questions are stopped by a veritable flood of eggs spewing out of her anus. Gahyeon's arms spasm frantically as her asshole sputters noisily, as if the world's longest string of anal beads was getting yanked out of her ass. She cums so hard from her sensitive ass getting violated that she blacks out, only regaining consciousness some time afterwards; her ass gaping in the cool air. Breathing heavily, Gahyeon manages to gasp out, "Did- did you just impregnate my fucking guts? Ugh... Fuck that felt so good though!" A salacious gleam fills her eyes, her mind hazy with lust, she reaches down to spread her other hole, "You dummy, don't you know you're supposed to knock up a human using this hole? Fill me up again! I want to birth your spawn using my cunt this time," Gahyeon haughtily demands. A pink tendril noses at her entrance, but she bats it away irritably, "No! Use a purple one I said!" She licks her lips when she sees another bulbous, purple tentacle emerge from the pool, wiggling her hips with excitement as it approaches.

Gahyeon moans as the tentacle slides inside of her sopping pussy, squirming around as it examines her hole until it pokes at her cervix. Its flesh tip kisses the entrance to her womb, before worrying at it as the tendril seeks to enter her most sacred place. Gahyeon slows her breathing, drawing upon her lessons with Jihyo to relax her cervix, allowing the tentacle to slither inside of her uterus. She spasms a little as the fleshy tube explores her womb, now this was certainly a new sensation for her! Gahyeon grunts as she feels a surge of warm fluid and eggs spewing inside of her, thank goodness her cavity was designed to be stretched out... The purple tendril slips out of her pussy, before a familiar pink tentacle takes its place, already slopping lubricating fluids all over her crotch. Gahyeons pouts in annoyance, "This is the most boring tentacle rape I've ever been to. Like, I don't mind being forced to birth you eggs and shit, but can you at least fucking violate me while I do? I want at least, one tentacle fucking all of my holes at all times; and I had better be getting pumped full of so much cum I look pregnant! What's the point of screwing tentacles if I'm not getting ruined? Oh- and if you could fuck my tits too that would be great." The tentacle poised to insert itself pauses for a moment, as Gahyeon blandly watches the shimmering pool for an answer. Several dozen more pink tentacles menacingly rise out of the water, and she claps her hands in delight; now this is more like it!

Gahyeon gurgles happily around the fleshy tube shoved down her throat, sucking upon it with all her might. Two more pink tentacles make an absolute mess of her cunt, slopping fluids all over the floor, while another is busy filling her ass with cum. Several small tendrils also invade Gahyeon's more exotic orifices, wriggling inside of her nipples and urethra before filling those with creamy liquid as well. Under such an assault, its no wonder that Gahyeon is orgasming almost continuously, her abused holes spasming around the tentacles fucking her brains out. The tentacle occupying her esophagus pulsates, and she feels a seemingly endless surge of hot liquid spew into her stomach until it sloshes with every movement she makes. Finally spent, the tentacle unclogs Gahyeon's throat only after her face has turned rosy from lack of oxygen. Panting, she still manages to tongue it gratefully as it withdraws, sucking on it until it emerges from between her lips with a sensual pop. Then the tendril squirming between her huge breasts explodes all over her chest, painting her chain and neck with a slick of filthy fluid.

Now thoroughly in heat, Gahyeon rubs the resulting aphrodisiacal mess into her breasts, causing her nipples to swell up even as they are toyed with by smaller tentacles. An utterly perverse idea crosses her mind, and at her urging, two fresh purple ovipositor tentacles nose at her teats. Her nipples are forced wider as the ribbed tendrils slowly press inside, before starting to pulsate with a now familiar rhythm. Gahyeon groans with ecstasy as her breasts are impregnated, as eggs slop into her unused mammaries until they are heaving with slick spheroids. She gropes herself forcefully, relishing in the feeling of her already large breasts now swollen to capacity with weighty eggs. But it's still not enough for the lustful slut, who is now indulging in her wildest fantasies. Even as the pink tendrils return to lubricating the insides of her tits, she hauls another larger one towards her mouth, "Don't stop until you come out the other side..." Gahyeon accepts the tentacle into her mouth, allowing its meaty length to curl down her throat and towards her stomach. In bends slightly, allowing air to flow into her lungs, while plumbing ever deeper. Now it was literally in her stomach, already roiling with lubricating fluids, before pushing onwards...

Gahyeon squirms as the tentacle winds its way down through her innards, cumming as she wordlessly demands her for her cunt to be stimulated. Then the tentacle was through the tight confines of her organs, and was freely wriggling its way out of her already abused guts. She whines as she feels her asshole birth the thickening coil, her eyes glazing over as it raises back up to her face, as if showing off. Gahyeon convulses, she was being impaled, she had been reduce to filthy fucking meat-tube! Only after enduring what seems like an endless orgasm, does the pink tentacle deign to withdraw, leaving her feeling worn and violated; not that she was slowing down. The tendrils fucking her breasts had not been idle while Gahyeon had been filled all-the-way-through, and her tits were now burning with a grotesque heat. She looks down in shock, that was fast, her hands squeezing her boobs as they start to leak and pulse. Gahyeon squeals as the first oviod forces its way out of her gaping nipple, rolling down her shaking stomach before falling to the floor. A tide of eggs follows, spewing out of both of her breasts as she watches with amazement the sight of her tits giving birth. She croons as she gently massages her blown-out breasts, fuck she needs more and more! With daemonic energy she demands that the ravaging of her holes recommence, Gahyeon doesn't need to rest, she needs to get destroyed!

After nearly another hour of rapacious hole-fucking, Gahyeon writhes from overstimulation, as she feels a familiar heat begin to grow in her belly. She looks down in surprise as several more tentacles snake inside of her, filling her holes to capacity and more; gushes of fluid pouring out of her with every thrust. Her moans grow higher in pitch as the supreme moment approaches, her uterus pressing downwards against the knot of tendrils occupying her cunt. Gahyeon gasps as her cervix slowly begins to open, the pressure within forcing its lips to part, "Oh my god its coming out! Oh fuck I'm giving birth! It hurts so good!" Gahyeon wails as the first egg squeezes its way out, the tentacles swiftly pulling out of her pussy to give her space. Then the next one emerges, followed by several dozen more; every egg prompting her to moan and squirt, the tentacles in her guts continuing to pleasure her innards. Her hands frantically stroke the tendrils in her hands, milking them one-by-one into her mouth in a frenzy of degenerate lust as her mind goes blank...

When Gahyeon had finished birthing the slimy ovoids, the tentacles gently lower her to the ground, leaving her on her knees in a puddle of lubricating fluid. Her blown-out holes sputter weakly, and she clutches at her belly that was so swollen with cum it looks as if she was pregnant. Then Gahyeon notices that she is alone once more in the room, the portal of glistening liquid fast receding. She pouts, is it over already? A singular purple tentacle emerges from the pool, fluted and ribbed; bobbing gently in exhaustion. With a mischievous smirk, Gahyeon grasps the flesh tube and takes it in her mouth, her wily tongue slithering inside of the tendril's hole. Holding it steady, she teases and plays with the pseudo-cock until it is leaking into her mouth; then she starts to suck and it quivers. Gahyeon gracefully swallows egg after egg, her throat so well lubricated that even though they are larger, the gummy balls slide down her gullet with ease. When it is finished filling her with its spawn, she removes it from her mouth, before giving its bruised tip and sloppy kiss. "So, I'll be seeing you in a week, right? I'll incubate the babies you plopped into my tummy until then, but next time... Next time you had better impregnate all of my holes, oh and violate me even harder; the fact that I'm even conscious right now is really not great." The tentacle pulsates in her grasp, and Gahyeon finally allows it to escape back into the hellish dimension from which it came; the portal closing behind it with a wet shlorp.

Gahyeon staggers towards the exit of the library, her leaking holes leaving behind a slippery trail of fluids. She was looking forward to having her innards invaded again, the other girls would be so jealous of her! She doesn't think any of them had given birth while getting fucked before either, so she was really going to be able to show off! Gahyeon tenderly strokes at her protruding belly, feeling the eggs squirming inside of her; who knew that serving as the breeding-pouch for an interdimensional demon would be so fucking arousing?

Well, maybe Gahyeon, but she did read a little too much hentai for her own good...

#kpop smut #dreamcatcher smut #gahyeon smut #tentacles #smut

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celestialsister0918 · 4 months

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Fireside: A Sirius Black Christmas Oneshot

Happy holidays, loves! Here is a gift for my Sirius Black friends. Tumblr exclusive for now, probably cross-posted to my AO3 and Wattpad eventually.

A few warnings— it’s EXPLICIT smut. 18+ interaction only, please.

It’s a Sirius x You (fem-reader) fic, but you have a House. It was necessary for the plot. Hopefully you are House-flexible or can be for the next 6k+ words.

Get warm and cozy and enjoy… and please let me know what you think… reblogs are much appreciated, as are likes and comments. I love chatting with readers and fellow Sirius lovers.

You stood at the doorway to Number Twelve with your heart beating wildly against your chest. Harry and the other students had left for second term just a few short hours ago, with the Weasleys close behind. They were giving Arthur the chance to continue his recovery at the Burrow, hoping to speed his efforts with the comforts of home rather than the sullen, dreary darkness of Grimmauld Place. At least that’s what you’d overheard in their whispers after last night’s dinner, which had followed the last meeting of the Order for the year.

The whispers, of course, were for the benefit of the one inhabitant of the house who wasn’t granted the choice of leaving. No matter how dark and dreary, no matter how much his spirits needed lifting. And they certainly seemed to need lifting last night. As soon as the meeting had adjourned, Sirius Black retreated upstairs with nary a goodbye. Harry had seemed disappointed at this. It was only natural he’d want to soak up every minute possible with his godfather before returning to Hogwarts. But Black had fallen prey to another “fit of the sullens,” as Molly liked to label them with a disapproving shake of her head.

You understood those types of fits all too well, having suffered your own tragedies throughout the Wizarding Wars, as well as typical adolescent heartaches and disappointments that seemed to continue into your early adult years too. Maybe you simply took things too seriously. Life just seemed to come easy to more carefree witches and the wizards that worshiped them. You’d heard stories that Sirius Black himself used to fall into that lighthearted, devil-may-care category many years ago. But he’d experienced unimaginable darkness, and you knew the last thing he needed was to hide away alone, even if he fought you tooth and nail over it.

With a sharp intake of breath, you broke through the warded door with charms meant only for official gatherings of the Order. You prayed to the gods that there wasn’t some terrible punishment for doing so. You sighed with relief when you were greeted only by the eerie silence of cold, dark air— which was a sound unto itself, strange as that seemed. The familiar dank smell filled your nostrils, but it didn’t bother you. It simply set the ambience of a home filled with magic and mystery and stories, dreaded though some of them may be. The walls were alive with history, and there was something intriguingly romantic about the place, if you were honest. You knew the man you were about to encounter would adamantly disagree and would probably throw you out on your arse for thinking so. You’d be sure to keep your strange admiration for the place to yourself for a while, at least until he warmed up to you a bit.

That could take awhile indeed, you thought grimly. Rather than start on such a task right away, you chose to descend to the kitchen and make yourself a calming cup of tea. Perhaps a drop or two of schnapps for some liquid courage were in order also. As the kettle warmed, you made your way to the flocked tree in the rear of the kitchen and smiled as you studied the ornaments there. Sirius himself had conjured and crafted most of them just days earlier, when he’d been noticeably more joyful. The anticipation of Christmas had lifted him out of his funk, and he’d been determined to replace his family’s fancy heirloom ornaments with much more colorful, animated, and exciting ones. You enjoyed examining them while you waited for the kettle to whistle. They were a glimpse into his true self— the fun, whimsical side you always heard about in tales from the older Order members.

You’d seen that side a bit in your interactions with him so far. He had a certain glint in his eye as he teased you for your lack of coordination, which coincidentally had landed you in his lap one evening when you’d hooked the toe of your boot unceremoniously under the crossbar of the wooden kitchen bench.

“I- I’m so sorry,” you had stammered, your face painfully hot. He’d caught you with an arm scooped under your back.

“I’m not,” he’d quipped back with a glimmer in his blue gray eyes. And he’d given your thigh a couple quick pats with his large palm, just fatherly enough that you weren’t quite sure if he saw you as a cute, clumsy, overgrown kid— or something a bit sexier, as that glimmer in his eye along with his comment might have suggested.

Subsequent meetings were difficult after that fateful fall. You couldn’t stop your eyes from straying in his direction. In spite of his scraggly, unkept stubble and perhaps accelerated aging from Azkaban, he was undoubtedly a beautiful man. The Black family genetics were famous for a reason. Their symmetry and grace, smooth skin, full and shiny hair, and silky, aristocratic voices were mesmerizing. It was no wonder they drifted toward the Dark Arts; with gifts like that, they could clearly coerce lesser mortals into doing anything.

Sirius was made only more handsome by the tattoos that covered the previews of skin he revealed— a sexy “fuck you” to the house, the Black family line, and anyone who may chide him for daring to be different. You admired the confidence his swaths of ink portrayed, and each passing meeting made you yearn to study them up close. For academic purposes, of course. Continuing education in Ancient Runes. Field work.

“Do you not take sugar in your tea?”

The voice was quite light and innocent, but it startled you so much you spilled said tea straight through the holes of your wool sweater.

“Fuck!” you hissed. “You scared me, Black.”

He smiled and strode behind you, reaching around your front to grasp a kitchen rag that hung from the lower cupboard handle. He spun you around with hands on your upper arms and promptly began absorbing the spill. Of course he could have taken care of it with a mere wand wave. Interesting that he chose the more manual route.

“I scared you?” Sirius mused. “And to think you’re the one breaking and entering and stealing my tea. Which, strangely, you’re sipping black at the moment. Is this because you don’t know where to find the proper accompaniments, or are you simply that odd?”

“Simply that odd, I’m afraid,” you admitted, leaning back against the wooden counter with legs outstretched. “I like it black. Enjoy the flavor.”

This was met with a slightly arched eyebrow, but he recovered quickly and reached around you again to grab his own mug.

“I prefer it quite sweet, and loaded with cream, personally,” Sirius commented, voice still maddeningly silky and light. It tickled over your eardrums like a melody. His tongue snaked out as he tilted the mug to his lips and slurped.

“Don’t you Blacks have to attend some finishing school before you’re sent to Hogwarts?” you teased him. “Don’t they teach you not to slurp there?”

Sirius didn't miss a beat. “You’ll find I’m a bit of a dog, darling. I’m rather noisy and messy with my mouth.”

That rush of heat filled your cheeks again, and you found yourself trembling a little with adrenaline at how quickly things had escalated. Or did they? The conversation was quite innocent, on a service level. Perhaps your building desire for him had you reading things that weren’t there. You decided to change the subject and try to calm your racing blood.

“You seem quite a bit… happier… than the other day,” you offered as he continued to enjoy his tea. “Did you have a nice day today?”

Sirius seemed to snort. “I had a fucking awful day. How could I have anything but in a place like this?”

“I’m sure it’s not so bad, with the right company,” you pointed out nervously, suddenly scared you might piss him off enough that he’d order you to leave.

“I’ve had nothing but company for weeks,” he replied. “It can help, I suppose. But I’m still trapped.”

You weren’t quite sure what to say to this, so you busied yourself with your own mug, roving the kitchen slowly to avoid eye contact while you plotted where to go next.

“Is that why you’re here?” Sirius continued softly. “Do you believe you’re the ‘right company?’” His expression seemed skeptical.

You shrugged shakily. “I— I dunno. I guess I just thought… you shouldn’t be alone. I… I like being alone occasionally. But you… you don’t really seem like that type.”

“Not a bit,” he agreed. “But it’s not just about the company. It’s about experiences. And I’ve experienced everything there is to do here. Millions of miserable times over.”

You bit your lip, knowing you could never be so bold as to suggest novel experiences he might try. You were pretty sure he hadn’t had many of those— if any— within these walls. Not with multitudes of pureblood portraits staring him down. Of course he very well could have fooled around with pureblood girls here growing up, right? Just because he wasn’t a supremacist like his forebears didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a dip in the pureblood pool from time to time.

“So,” he continued, addressing you by your name as he crept closer, step by step. “What experiences are you bringing with your company? How will you keep me from being bored?” His eyebrows arched and narrowed adorably with his words as he challenged you.

He stopped just short of invading your space, so you could still view him easily from head to toe. He wore a thick velvet robe in deep burgundy overtop a black and green pinstripe shirt that was honestly a bit… Slytherin-like, when taken in isolation. Perhaps he hadn’t invested in a new wardrobe upon his return and simply relied on the house’s contents. But it suited him nonetheless— this regal contrast of the two houses adorned with his double Albert chain and shiny brown dress shoes. Of course the colors were befitting the season as well, a reminder that Christmas joy still lingered in the air, if one looked for it. You imagined that the house once saw splendid Christmas feasts— glittering, elegant affairs filled with firelight and extravagance as the Wizarding World’s upper crust filled every floor. Personally you enjoyed picturing something more intimate, more cozy, within those old walls.

“Let’s light a fire,” you suggested, setting your teacup down and leading the way to the parlor.

Sirius scoffed behind you but followed nonetheless. “Why would we do that? The entirety of the house is under a warming charm, darling.”

“Hogwarts has fires in the common rooms, does it not? They were nice.”

“Nice, but obviously unnecessary,” he continued practically.

“You need some actual warmth in this place,” you insisted, setting to work lighting the floo. “The kind of warmth that feels good on the inside too. Comfort. A glow.”

“You’re a Hufflepuff, aren’t you?” Sirius asked with a snicker, reclining in a large, faded velvet armchair. He spread his legs in a wide slouch, and you couldn’t help but gaze downward at the movement. Thick, ribbed corduroy slacks hugged thin legs and tapered down to fine silk socks, above which you saw the faintest glimpse of pale skin and dark hair.

“What does my house matter?” you returned in a non-answer. The fire roared to life in the large black marble, and instead of joining him in the companion armchair, you chose to settle on the rug right in front of the flames. Your skin was already on fire, of course, from the turn-on of his earlier proximity and banter. But the added warmth felt nice, and you hugged your knees to your chest.

“Your house doesn’t matter,” he agreed. Just simply a guess. Now, what about that experience you’re going to offer me? Still waiting for an answer on that one.” Sirius rested an elbow on the chair arm, his fingers toying with the ends of his long mustache where it met the unruly stubble on his chin.

“Come down here with me. This is an experience,” you responded, patting the empty space next to you on the rug. It was thick and smooth, richly woven, and of course very expensive. You could feel thick loops of fine threads beneath your fingers as you traced its intricate pattern.

“Sitting by a fire?” Sirius asked incredulously. But he did make a move to join you, settling down in the spot you indicated and then shifting closer. His robe brushed the sleeve of your sweater, and he made no move to back away.

“Well, what kind of experience did you have in mind?” you shot back.

Sirius shrugged innocently, eyes twinkling in the dim light. “No idea, love. You’re the one who showed up on my doorstep, remember? Don’t you have a plan for these things? Or are they spontaneous? Maybe you’re a Gryffindor then?”

You gave a small smile, refusing to answer the question. Instead you studied the details of his face you’d never noticed from afar, features augmented by the dancing shadows of light. He had a very well defined facial muscle that gave an intermittent sexy twitch. And another defined crease on the underneath of his nose that made you curious if you had one; you had always just envisioned it to be smooth. But most magnificent was the way the firelight bounced off of every soft curl — a bountiful dark mahogany crown that would be the envy of any woman alive. You longed to run your hands through it, betting it was even more luxurious than the tapestry rug beneath your increasingly aroused bottom half.

“I’m beginning to feel rather exposed,” Sirius declared, amused. “I don’t think I’ve ever been examined in such detail before. Is this for ‘science,’ as the Muggles say?”

You cleared your throat nervously. “Uh, yes. Wizarding genetics, I guess. You’re just very… impressive.” You winced at the terrible recovery.

Sirius responded with a sweep of a tattooed hand over your cheek. “I’m flattered, coming from a witch as exquisite as yourself. Not to mention young. I believe I have quite a few years on you, yes?”

Your heartbeat was painfully audible as you tried to craft an answer. His fingers still explored your face, alternating with occasional twists of an adjacent lock of your hair. Each sweep of his skin over yours seemed to make your veins tremble.

You truly didn’t know how to respond. Your Muggle friend had once informed you that the term for your specific brand of fixation was “daddy kink,” but you weren’t sure admitting that would do you any favors. You liked how his touch was so self-assured, and the richness of his scent, and how he always knew what to say without hesitation. You liked how the hard lines of his face and hands denoted strength and experience. And you liked how he made you feel small and fragile and protected just by being near you. You wished you could tell him all that without sounding ridiculous. But you were fairly certain you were already communicating it with your parted lips, panting breath, and love-drunk eyes.

“You are going to make my night interesting after all, aren’t you, little one?” Sirius husked, and the bud between your legs danced frantically up and down in response. How did he know to call you that? Your eyes closed with the dizziness of your anticipation, and the hand that had drifted so gently over your cheek now rested fully on your throat. His scent became even more pronounced, alerting you to his closeness just before his mustache tickled your upper lip in the briefest of warnings.

The kiss he gave you was chaste and just enough for you to learn the shape of his lips before he pulled away.

“If you don’t want this, you need to tell me,” Sirius said, his voice low as it drifted directly across your ear. “I’ll stop if you ask me to— at any point. But this is the only asking I’ll be doing myself. Once I begin, you’ll find I’m far too busy to stop and check in.”

His forehead rested gently on yours, his deep blue eyes smoky in the dim light.

“Busy doing what?” you whispered— half teasingly, half desperate for the fire between your legs to be stoked by all the dirty things he would promise.

Sirius chuckled lowly. “You like dirty talk, little one?”

Your affirmative answer came as a whimper, which elicited another devilish chuckle from his lips.

“Very well,” he said silkily. He punctuated the words with another firm kiss on your lips, this time allowing the very tip of his tongue to trace the outline of the bottom one before planting light kisses along your jawline to your earlobe. He paused there, allowing a breath to tickle your ear before he spoke.

“I am going to make every part of your body come alive, as if I cast a spell. But there will be no wand— only my hands, my mouth, my voice. I will make your delicious cunt so wet it will be weeping for my cock. Then I will bury it in you so deep you scream… so loud you’ll wake every portrait in this house and make them curse your sweet, beautiful name. You will ride my cock for as many mind-numbing orgasms as your body can handle, then I will take my pleasure and fill you so full of my seed that it trickles down these soft, smooth thighs all day long tomorrow. You’ll feel it and remember me, and you’ll want it all over again.”

Sirius accompanied his filthy murmurings with firm strokes to your inner thigh, hand already buried inside your skirt. You let out an almost agonized groan in response— all intelligible communication now impossible. Your body literally shook just from his promises, and you knew the look you gave him as he came to a kneel on the rug was one of complete and utter submission.

His hands came beneath your head to cradle it, hands swept in the tangle of your hair as kisses became more insistent, open-mouthed, and allowed you taste the salt and firewhisky on his breath. His tongue explored in gentle licks followed by long sweeps of your mouth, as if it was truly a mission to discover inner parts of you and not just kissing.

You became eager for his hands to move elsewhere, but they still held your head still for his mouth to continue its wicked work. His kisses made your head spin, but the rest of your body felt in heat and neglected. You came to your knees yourself, hands introducing themselves to the sturdy velvet of his jacket, your legs making a move to straddle one of his trousered thighs. He let out a low laugh.

“So eager,” he chastised. “I’m the one who hasn’t shagged in fourteen years, yet I’m the one demonstrating all the patience.”

“I want you!” you defended yourself breathlessly, not even caring if you sounded desperate now. You just needed relief, and to have this wizard covering every inch of you.

“Ah, there it is. The answer I needed to my question,” he said with a wink. “You needed to give me permission, you know.”

“You have it,” you insisted, and as a visual aid to your words, you took the initiative to shrug out of your own sweater. Your breasts swelled over the cups of your lacy, favorite-colored bra. You noticed Sirius became strangely still at the sight, his mouth parting.

“Fucking beautiful,” he managed to mutter, and he cast his own robe aside to free his movement as he reclined you both onto the rug. His fingers gently slid one strap from your shoulder, replacing it with his mouth and soft whiskers. The detailed attention he paid to a spot as random as your shoulder reminded you of his promise to awaken every part of your body. Sirius planned to make every cell literally beg.

His kisses danced across your collarbone in a similar fashion, tended to the next shoulder, then came to center on your pulse point, where he began a gentle suction. You let out a cry at this and took the chance to enjoy his gorgeous, thick curls while he worked his mouth on your upper body’s most sensitive spot.

“I’m going to have wicked marks if you keep doing that,” you teased with a whisper. Sirius’s nose brushed your earlobe as he went for the other side, sucking the sensitive skin beneath like he was starving.

“Good,” he finally broke to whisper back. “And your neck’s not the only spot I plan to mark you.” He added teeth to the mix now, grazing lightly over your throbbing pulse. Would he bite? Would you even care if he did? But he only threatened such before moving lower, working your arms out of the dangling bra straps to reveal your breasts to him. His breath caught in his chest as he appreciated them with his eyes first before cupping them hard, one in each hand. His rough thumbs drove your nipples into peaks, watching each little bump emerge with fascination.

You observed him with a smile, arms leaned back behind you to prop you up for his amusement. You realized of course that it had been over a decade since he’d played with such toys, and though your body was humming for more, you granted him his boy-like fun. Sirius alternated between circling your nipples into painfully hard peaks and kneading your breasts like dough before finally suckling the left into his mouth. The action caused your eyes to roll back in your head. This wizard knew what he was doing. It was more than just taking the soft, pliable tissue into his mouth— he created a firm, merciless suction whose movements echoed between your thighs in violent waves. Your legs parted reflexively, and you grabbed his hand, encouraging it down to feel your burning heat.

“Please touch me,” you begged. “I’m so wet for you.”

Sirius responded to this with a hungry growl, releasing your breast to reveal brand new marks as promised. He gave the other another very rough squeeze before grabbing at your skirt, ripping it downward. He sent it hurling away, narrowly missing the fire. The rip of lace echoed through the air as your knickers followed.

“Am I supposed to walk home with no knickers tomorrow?” you mused above the noisy kisses he planted to the soft skin of your stomach.

“You’re not going home tomorrow,” he replied quickly. “And you’ll be naked all day. And you certainly won’t be walking by the time I’m finished with you.”

“Oh, so you— you like it rough then?” you asked between gasps, shuddering as his fingers traced the tops of your inner thighs, which opened to the hot breaths drifting over your sex.

“Not always,” he answered, grinning up at you from between your parted legs. “But the Black family genetics extend to other endowments as well. In both size and stamina. Even sweeter lovemaking can lend itself to the need for pain potions, love. Do you still consent?”

You licked your lips and lowered your eyes, feeling them burn with sultry want. “I thought you weren’t going to ask anymore?”

“Gryffindor chivalry,” he dismissed with an adorable pursing of his lips. “It’s a curse sometimes.”

“Yes, I consent,” you answered with a grin of your own. “But before you touch me like I asked, I want you out of those clothes. I need to see this endowment of which you speak.”

Sirius sat up and gave your thighs a swift tap before closing them. Your own wetness was dripping onto them at this point, and you could smell sex on the air already.

“You don’t believe me?” he inquired with raised brows.

“Well, you know, Gryffindors are fond of bragging…”

Sirius let out a deep laugh. “So I can assume you’re not a Gryffindor, then, with a comment like that.” He stood and began disrobing, his thumbs drifting over the buttons of the dark green shirt. Each tattoo he revealed made you salivate. He wore a thick, shiny belt buckle now displayed over a prominent bulge in his trousers, and you imagined he was growing quite uncomfortable in there.

“Still not telling you my house,” you replied, shifting your closed legs from one side to the other as you watched your strip show, offering him tantalizing glimpses of your cunt and arse but never separating your thighs for a full view. Sirius never took his eyes off of you, and when his trousers swiftly lowered, you were greeted by the surprise of no underwear— followed by the thick, glorious inches of a very hard, uncut, pureblood cock on display. Your jaw dropped open.

“Already opening up for me?” Sirius commented silkily. “Good girl.”

You nodded, ready to have your mouth fucked speechless if that’s what he wanted. But Sirius seemed to have other plans, pouncing back on you in under a second. He parted your legs almost violently, his face voracious as he plunged his nose into your soaking wetness to inhale before licking furiously.

“Oh, fucking gods!” you moaned, arching into his frenzied movements. He was truly very noisy and beast-like with his mouth, as he’d warned. His tongue alternated between flat, all-encompassing licks across your entire slit, and tiny, strong, targeted flicks around your bud. He approached your sensitive, nerve-filled opening with his tongue in a stiff point, swirling it around to beckon wetness from you in droves.

“I’m fucking drowning you down there,” you moaned, arching your back against the soft rug.

“I told you I like loads of sweet cream,” Sirius responded with a murmur. “Keep it coming, love. Soak my face.”

His tongue rammed your g-spot now, his whole stubbled face buried in your cunt. Your smell filled the hot air and was so sexy you wanted some yourself. Sirius seemed in tune with your needs because his fingers found your hole as his tongue drifted upward to concentrate on your swollen bud again.

“Let me taste your fingers,” you whispered.

“So you do like sugar and cream after all?” he chuckled before obliging with a rather rough shove of his soaked digits into your mouth. His wet stubble scratched your face as his words sought your ear. “Or maybe you’re just a very dirty girl.”

You sucked the delicious sweet-salty combo from Sirius’s fingers, offering kitten licks, strong suction, and previews of all the things he could expect once that glorious cock was in your mouth. His hand found its place within your slit again and began purposeful movements, the back of his palm massaging your clit as his fingers found the g-spot again, kneading the spongy, swollen tissue.

“Please fuck me,” you begged. “I need your cock.”

“Oh yeah?” he mused delicately, leveling his heady eyes to yours. “You don’t like what my fingers are doing to you, darling?”

“I love it,” you panted. “But I’m gonna come!”

“Then come, sweetheart. You can still come on my cock. Promise.” Sirius’s hand picked up its pace so any resistance was hopeless. His mouth returned to your neck to secure you in place as the waves took over your body, your whole frame convulsing in one giant shake after another with your beautiful release against his hand. Sirius’s wet mouth closed over yours, his tongue invading as he situated his warm, taut body between your legs. Your bud was still tingling with aftershocks when he touched the head of his cock to it, angling for pressure.

His girthy shaft sought its spot between your glistening lower lips, hips driving the thick tip up against the underside of your clit, and his hard, veiny surface sliding against your still swollen vulva. Sirius wasn’t going to let the pressure ease for even a minute, making sure to build another climax even stronger than the first for his cock to work you through.

“Inside me, please!” you breathed into his mouth.

“I think you can come just like this, darling,” he argued. “Don’t you?” The ridge of his cockhead massaged your clit furiously with his back and forth, and your body gushed messily all over his shaft. Your nails made deep half moons in his tattooed shoulders.

“Y— yes, I can come for you.” You arched up to grind into his impossibly hard length, seeking the rhythm and friction you needed to push over the edge. It required wild gyration and complete abandonment of any self consciousness. Your breasts bounced against his chest, and you clung so tightly to him to ground yourself that your nose was buried in his curls, smelling his animalic musk.

You screamed as you reached peak again, the tremors tinier this time but still exquisite. Exhausted, you fell limply to the rug and took him with you, giving grateful caresses to the smooth skin of his back. Of course you were still aware of his inches throbbing against your thigh, and you knew you had to summon more energy if you were going to give Sirius the satisfaction he needed. The man hadn’t lain with a woman in nearly a decade and a half, and you wanted his cock thoroughly and ecstatically drained. You’d be lying, though, if your twice-satisfied cunt wasn’t worried about such a massive invasion. Your gratitude for the blissful, explosive orgasms aside— you kind of wish he’d honored your request and fucked you when you were swollen, open, and on fire.

Sirius raised himself on his elbows, gazing down at you with a lazy smile.

“You’re really fucking beautiful, you know that, Slytherin girl?”

You blinked and jumped. “What?”

Sirius gnawed at his lip and continued to grin, deep blue eyes sparkling. “You heard me.”

“What makes you say that?” you demanded. “You haven’t even guessed Ravenclaw yet!”

“You let me fuck you way too dumb to be a ‘Claw, and I haven’t even fucked you yet,” he pointed out. “I’ve had my fair share of Ravenclaw witches, and they never quite know when to shut up, Merlin love them.”

“Hey, Slytherins are smart too,” you said with a narrowed brow before you could stop yourself.

Sirius gave a hard smack to your arse before pulling you onto your side, his erection buried in your stomach. You laid breasts to chest, feet and legs entangled, faces flush.

“Tell me,” he said with a slight scowl. “How did they let another Slytherin into the Order? Do they not have standards anymore?”

“Oh, fuck you, Black,” you muttered.

“You’re still doing that, darling, don’t worry. No slithering your way out of that one. You know I’m just trying to rile you up and get you going again so you can handle my cock. Maybe a hate-fuck would be a nice game, now that our alliances are on the table? Would you like that?” His fingers tickled down your ribs and hips before finding the triangle he sought, just his fingertips easing lower to scissor your bud.

“Our ‘alliances’ are the same, you prick,” you laughed, accepting his fingers with an approving arch of your hips.

“Yes, but this new tidbit makes it so much more fun,” he insisted. “You’ve delivered on that new experience I wanted. A fine Christmas present indeed.”

“So this is your first time with a Slytherin?” you asked, doing nothing to hide your pride at that possibility.

“Virgin,” Sirius confirmed with a nod. “As if twelve years in Azkaban didn’t revirginize me enough, this makes it official. Now, show me what I’ve been missing.” He collapsed rather dramatically on the rug, hand behind his head, curls strewn about the intricate paisley pattern. His body was breathtaking— glowing in the firelight, each turn of muscle accentuated by shadow, each tattoo taking turns in the spotlight with the maneuver of flames. And at the center of the beauty was that cock, which hadn’t lost a bit of wind with this latest reveal of information. A generous leak of precum glistened at the tip, and you lowered your mouth to drink it in, your hair tickling his thighs. The first taste left you craving more, and your mouth slid over his huge shaft like a sleeve, locking him in your throat. You heard a grunt of shock escape his mouth.

“Fuck, that was fast,” Sirius groaned.

You eased off of him teasingly, lips forming an up and down suction which you accompanied with twists of your hand. He tasted positively feral yet clean and refined, just as you would have imagined. His tip leaked loads into your mouth, feeling like it would burst at any second if it weren’t for his exceptional control.

“Mmm… you taste good, Black,” you moaned approvingly. “Almost good enough that I’d settle for your load in my mouth if I didn’t want you to fuck my pussy so badly.”

“On your knees, fucking snake cunt,” he ordered with a wink, the fact that it was a game unmistakable. You gave one long, final suck up his shaft and gave a squeeze to his balls, drawing another deep groan from him.

In an instant Sirius’s hands were in your hips, holding you in place while his dripping head found your center. He was right— the banter had you on fire again, and your swollen walls took every inch of him as he pushed inside without hesitation.

“Ahhhh!” you cried out, unable to help yourself. His hips were a frenzy, abandoning every bit of his previous control now that he was within your tightness. Your breasts bounced in mad circles with the force of his pounding, and sure enough, you could hear the portraits stirring down the hall from the primal noises the two of you made.

“Oh, Sirius, yes,” you breathed, enjoying the repeated raking of his tip, ridge, and underside along your spongy, swollen front wall. He knew just how much to drag back and surge forward, never breaking the rhythm you needed to build to another crest in a matter of minutes. His chest was sweaty when it made contact with your back, and he occasionally dropped open-mouthed kisses to the skin of your shoulder blades with his forward surges. Every so often he broke his rigid support on the rug to squeeze your breasts, kneading them so tightly you knew you’d have bruises for weeks.

“Feel good, love?” he husked, and you knew he knew full well you were beyond good. His ego just wanted to hear it.

“Yes, Sirius. Fuck yes. Please come inside me.”

And it was truly your foremost want in that moment — to fill his hot cum paint your insides and have the satisfaction of giving him what he’d needed for so long. He renewed his lock tight grip on your hips and granted your request, resuming the pounding of your g-spot but faster now, the friction very much for his benefit— with yours as a mere pleasant side effect.

“Fuck, yes, I’m gonna fill you so full,” he promised breathily. “And you better come for me again. You better scream.”

You reached around to toy with your clit and make sure you obeyed his command, but he swatted your hand away and replaced it with his own, his fingers taking on a rhythm to match his snapping hips. All you could do was let out a long stream of moans and buck furiously in return, knowing that chasing your own pleasure would only increase his. His escalated moans confirmed he was approaching release, and you grinned as you picked up the pace even more feverishly, wanting to torture it out of him.

“Fucking GODS!!!” Sirius yelled, and he emptied into you with one hot jet after another, so much it ran right back out over his trembling cock. You kept your pace even after his cock stilled, the added lubricant from his release making easy work of your movements. The thought of being filled with him made your orgasm deliciously hot and dirty as your walls burned with pain and need. Sirius recovered enough to resume the pace of his fingers on your clit, and you spilled over the edge, lurching forward in a series of shakes that wracked your entire body.

You fell forward onto your belly, a mess dripping from your insides, your muscles and bones useless, your skin bruised. It was every way you should feel after a proper fuck. Your brain positively hummed with endorphins, and you breathed in the deliciousness of your combined sex on the air. You could hear Sirius struggling to regain his breath behind you, and you knew he looked sexy as fuck back there. But you were too exhausted to lift yourself up and look.

You weren’t even sure how much time had passed when you felt his arms encircle you, along with the cold rush of air as he lifted you from the warmth of the rug. He wasn’t a huge man, though you’d heard from other Order members that he was considerably stronger now than when he’d escaped the sea prison two years ago. He carried you easily up multiple twists of stairs until you reached a Gryffindor red room on the very top level. Then Sirius nestled you gingerly into a brightly colored duvet.

“Will you be able to sleep with this much red, or should I move you to the green room next door?” he asked dryly, shuffling his naked body next to yours and leaving you little choice in the matter.

“Well, it is Christmastime,” you reminded him sleepily. “The two play rather nicely together right now.”

Sirius responded by nuzzling into your shoulder, his whiskers scratching tiny red prickles into your skin.

#orderofthephoenix #older sirius black #post azkaban sirius #gary oldman #sirius black x you #sirius black one shot #sirius black x y/n #smut #christmas smut #sirius black smut #sirius black imagine #oneshot #grimmauld place

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lorcandidlucienwill · 4 months

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Coriolanus wished he had money for a gift of some kind, but he had nary a cent. As they passed the mess hall on the way out, his eyes fell on the ice machine, and he had an idea. In this hot weather, the soldiers were permitted to take the ice freely for their drinks or to cool off. Rubbing cubes over their bodies provided a little relief in the sauna of a kitchen. Cookie, whom he’d won over with his diligent dishwashing, gave Coriolanus an old plastic bag. The day being so hot, he agreed it would be all right to take some ice on their outing to ward off heatstroke. Coriolanus didn’t know if the Covey had a freezer, but by the looks of the houses he’d passed on his way to the hanging, he thought that might be a luxury few could afford. Anyway, the ice was free, and he didn’t want to go empty-handed.

You can cry all you want about how depraved and obsessive and possessive and diabolical and evil Coryo is, but the way he always came to her with a gift even when he had nothing is the most romantic shit ever and you can't change my mind.

#coriolanus snow #coryo snow #coriolanus x lucy gray #snowbaird #tbosas

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therobotmonster · 10 months

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Misrepresenting the nature of your powers is the #1 underused trick in superhero universes.

Got injected with crocodile serum like some Always Save(TM) Kurt Conners? Don't go on about how you're a creature of scientific glory. Go to the museum gift shop, buy some cheap souvenir, and make a gargantuan, purple-prose drenched deal about the mystical talisman of the Leviathan or whatnot at every possible opportunity.

Sure, every two-bit sorcerer worth his double-mortgaged soul is going to want to be your nemesis, but they're going to be trying to banish you back to the eternal sea or block you with mystical wards with nary a dose of antimutagenic serum to be seen.

Inspired by this post.

#superheroes #metafiction #trope savvy

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andypantsx3 · 2 years

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you’re the one that i haunt | 2 | bakugou x reader

pairing: Bakugou Katsuki / Female Reader

length: 3,500 of est. 13,000 words | 2nd of 4 chapters

summary: Ghosts aren’t real. At least, that’s what you tell yourself when the spirit of pro hero Dynamight suddenly starts haunting your apartment.

(A Halloween adventure, in which your cooking is criticized, your showers are rudely interrupted, and you must work together with Bakugou Katsuki to figure out if his disappearance is a trick–or a treat.)

tags/warnings: romance, Halloween, snarking, (not actual) character death, aged up characters, eventual smut

Forty minutes later found you tidying the kitchen, mulling over the series of tests you and Bakugou had just done.

You’d quickly discovered that he couldn’t go much beyond twenty feet away from you, which hadn’t exactly been a problem while you’d been absently wandering through your tiny, cramped little apartment. But it did not bode well for Bakugou’s freedom, sanity, or notoriously short store of patience.

You’d also discovered, when a neighbor came out into the hall to check on why you were clopping up and down the corridor, that Bakugou was invisible to anyone else–a seriously disturbing turn of events that had you reeling from the implications.

You had retreated back into your apartment, where further conversation with Bakugou had revealed that when he’d first found himself in your apartment, he hadn’t been able to touch anything. Then, over the course of a few days, he’d slowly been able to sometimes move things, which is how he’d worked your drawers open in the middle of the night.

Shortly after that, he’d thought you’d been able to feel that he was there—which explained the feeling of the pair of eyes on you while you were stuffed up in bed. He’d thought you had something to do with his situation, and would make your play soon enough, so he’d taken to following you around, yelling at you, insulting you, judging your every move in an attempt to annoy you into revealing that you could see and hear him—

And then, as he was critiquing your cooking, you had.

It seemed like, from the way he’d described the events of this week, that his presence was becoming more and more solid every day, somehow. Almost like he was an outline slowly being filled in, which you thought privately did bode well for the Bakugou laying in a coma several wards away.

What happened when this Bakugou became more and more real?

As you scrubbed pasta sauce off your wall, a thought occurred to you.

“I think we should go find your body,” you told Bakugou, who’d been lounging nearby, expression and manner completely insouciant. Not that he could have done anything to help you, seeing as his hands sometimes went through things–but you got the impression that he wouldn’t have been assisting you, even if he could have.

He stared down his perfectly straight nose at you. “We already know where it is, idiot.”

You sighed. “Not like that. Like, we should go to your body and see if we can just like…lay you back down in it or something.”

Bakugou scoffed, but his expression looked contemplative. It seemed like he couldn’t find anything to argue with, so he eventually deigned to allow it. “Fine,” he growled.

He hovered over you menacingly as you pulled on a jacket and sneakers, huffing when he attempted to stomp ahead of you and just ended up slamming into that invisible forcefield.

His ghostly outline looked even creepier in the dim, like a watercolor diffusing over a canvas. You felt like he was liable to dissolve into the cold evening air. But he stayed with you resolutely, following you soundlessly down the street into the subway station.

On the train, he looked even more pissed off, as commuters packed into the car along with you, stepping into his body with nary a care. Bakugou became an arm, a scowl, and a tuft of blonde hair poking out of someone else’s body, and you found you couldn’t even look at him without getting grossed out.

“Oi, get out of me you old fucking hag,” you heard him grouse at one point, and you let out a noise that was somewhere between an incredulous laugh and a retch.

Eventually the train dumped you out in front of Tokyo Memorial Hospital. True night had fallen while you’d been on the subway, and the streetlights had come on, bathing the sidewalk in an orange halogen glow.

You immediately noticed a significant police presence outside the hospital, two officers posted on either side of the door, and a man in what was clearly a hero uniform lingering nearby. Across the street, two more heroes in matching purple suits watched you move towards the entrance.

There was no doubt in your mind they were there for Bakugou. You could only imagine the types of people who even now would be crawling out of the gutters to get a shot at the number two hero while he was down. It added a whole new level of stress to the situation you’d found yourself in–the longer it took you to get Bakugou back into his body, the longer villains had to come after him.

“It’s like you’re the fucking queen or something,” you muttered irritably, eying the security, then squared your shoulders and moved towards the door.

Tens of pairs of eyes followed you as you passed into the reception lobby, where another policeman and two heroes were waiting alongside the reception desk. Bakugou scoffed, muttering something about overreactions.

“Hi there,” the receptionist said to you, leaning in to catch your attention. “What brings you in today?”

It struck you suddenly that you had no plan on what to say, and you couldn’t exactly tell her, “Hey there, well I have Bakugou’s ghost with me so if you would let me scoot on into his room and lay his ghost back down into his body I’ll just be on my merry way.”

“I’m, um, here to see someone,” you said instead.

The receptionist smiled. “Can you give me the patient’s name?”

You hesitated. “Um. Bakugou Katsuki.”

The receptionist’s smile froze and from the corner of your eye, you could see all three men perk up in interest. A sense of foreboding settled over you.

“And your relation to the patient?” The receptionist asked carefully.

How to explain this one? Acquaintance? Reluctant associate? Hauntee?

“I’m um. The last person he saved. Before he—uh—you know,” you said, hoping this would give you some kind of credibility. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

This was apparently the wrong thing to say.

The receptionist’s smile vanished entirely and she crossed her arms over her chest. “If you’re aware that Bakugou-san is here then you must also be aware that he is in no fit state to receive guests.” Her tone was no longer very friendly. “Aren’t you?”

“I–well, yes,” you said. “But I had hoped that I…um…”

She cut you off again before you could answer. “Visitation is limited to family and designated friends only. Do you have any idea how many other people have wanted to see him? How many other people he’s saved?”

The scrape of your heel anxiously scuffing the floor echoed in the lobby. “Well, probably a lot, but—”

“But no exceptions,” she said. “I’m sorry, miss, but you can’t be let in to see him. We have a strict visitation policy, and as I’m sure you can imagine, there are safety requirements we have to adhere to. The answer is no.”

Bakugou’s voice next to your ear made you jump. “Fuckin’ unbelievable. Tell this idiot to stick her no up her ass.”

You stared resolutely ahead, reminding yourself not to answer him in front of anyone, lest you look deranged. “Is there, um, any friend or family of his I could contact to request an exception?” you asked.

The receptionist shook her head. “The final answer is no.”

One of the heroes beside her stepped forward, and you got the impression that the final answer would actually be a one-way trip to a holding cell if you continued to press the issue.

You nodded quickly, turning on your heel. “Um, I see. Thanks for your time,” you said.

“Oi–!” Bakugou called out behind you, but you darted out of the building before he could say more. He was forced to follow you, spitting and swearing.

You did your best to ignore him until you were a couple blocks down the street, out from under the eye of the hospital guards.

“Go back in there and tell those idiots you mean business,” Bakugou demanded, looming over you. His mouth had a mean curl to it, sharpening its normal soft sensuality.

“And do what?” you said hotly. “Hit them with my quirk?”

Bakugou looked annoyed. “I’ll do it.”

You considered this. “Can you use your quirk?”

A quick flicker of Bakugou’s scarlet eyes across your face told you that your apartment had been a test subject already. And that meant the answer was no.

“You pass through most things, what are you supposed to do to a bunch of policemen and multiple pro heroes?” you asked. “Are you trying to get me killed? Is this revenge for somehow putting you in a coma?”

Bakugou huffed. “Out of all the brats in the world to get stuck with, and I get a quirkless one.”

You took offense to this. “Hey. Maybe if you gave me a heads up ahead of time I’d have a plan or something.”

Like, Batman didn’t have to have super powers to defeat his enemies. He just had resources and plans. Although you had considerably fewer resources and no martial arts training or whatever. But still.

Bakugou was looking down his stupid perfect nose at you like he could guess what kind of nonsense was going on in your brain.

You sighed. “We’re taking a loss for this evening but maybe we can think of something,” you said. “Let’s go home and do some research.”

Bakugou huffed, but he didn’t protest, which you took for agreement. Your stomach churned, knowing how frustrating this would be for you if you were on the other end of things.

You turned on your heel and headed back to the subway, knowing Bakugou would follow after you.

“We’ll get you out of this somehow,” you promised him. “I owe you one, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, brat, you’d fuckin’ better. Just make it quick.”

You nodded, determined to make good on that promise. You didn’t know how, but you would make it as quick as you could.

Things did not progress quickly.

Over the next few days, you dedicated yourself to levels of research not seen since college. Google searches of “villain with ghost quirk” and “what to do if someone starts haunting you before they are dead” yielded few results, but did lead into some highly specific forums that you went through with a fine-toothed comb.

Bakugou was always nearby, reading over your shoulder, occasionally startling you when he accidentally brushed you and a chill raced up your spine. He scoffed openly at the spookier of the forums, grumbling, “I’m not a ghost,” at pointed intervals to remind you. He also vetoed the idea of trying to exorcize him, smoke cleansing him, or saying “weird fucking shit” from any faith over him, leaving you to mostly pursue the villain with a ghost quirk route, which proved almost equally as frustrating.

He also was not a helpful houseguest. Not that he could be, given that he was mostly immaterial at any given point in the day. But he made a point of following you around, passing judgment on you, as if to annoy you into hurrying up and solving his dilemma.

He critiqued your laundry folding, providing completely unasked-for tips on arranging sheets into a perfect square–-to which you glared at him, balled them up, and shoved them in your storage closet defiantly. He criticized your cleaning methodology when the state of your apartment finally caught up to you— “You’re supposed to clean top to bottom, idiot, otherwise the dust resettles,”–and complained loudly about your choice of podcast as you did so.

He was the worst in the kitchen, where everything from your choice of ingredients to your knife technique to your plating was constantly under fire.

“Curl your fingers inward, brat, and move the carrot forward into the knife as you chop, feeding it through,” he commanded from over your shoulder.

“Well aren’t you a talented little houseghost,” you told him irritably. “You can’t even eat it so what does it matter to you?”

“Yeah but I have to look at your uneven fucking pieces,” Bakugou said imperiously. “This is almost worse than the jarred sauce.”

You huffed, wishing not for the first time that he was corporeal so you could put him in a headlock–though the shape of his biceps told you you’d have plenty of trouble keeping him there–and then you could throw him bodily from your apartment, never to be seen again.

“If you weren’t a ghost I would feed this carrot up your ass instead,” you snipped. “It can sit right up there with the stick.”

The whip of a dish towel on your own ass told you that this had irritated him enough to try touching things again.

“Hey!” you yelped, moving away from him. He smirked and tried again, but the towel dropped through his hand, plopping onto your kitchen floor.

“When you’re alive again, you’re gonna get it,” you told him darkly.

Bakugou’s mouth curled meanly, and he leaned forward towards you in a way that had the breath catching in your lungs, as though he really were physically looming over you. “When I’m alive again, you’re gonna get it, brat.”

A weird little shiver went up your spine, almost like you’d stuck your hand through him again.

“We’ll see about that,” you sniffed, and went back to cutting your carrot again, making sure to do it even worse than before just to annoy him.

Several days passed like this, the two of you stuffed together doing research, bouncing ideas back and forth, and completing chores. For all that he was annoying, you found you kind of didn’t mind Bakugou lounging there in your periphery—as long as he kept his mouth shut.

Eventually, you tried to settle on a plan.

“Listen,” you said finally, shutting your laptop. Bakugou’s scarlet eyes turned on you, hot like a searchlight. “I don’t exactly believe in it either, but I think we should try a medium just to see if there’s something there. Like, if they actually can sense you, that would tell us there’s maybe actual ghost shit afoot, wouldn’t it?”

Bakugou made an annoyed noise low in his throat. “I told you I’m not a ghost.”

You nodded. “I don’t think so either but shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to try to narrow stuff down?”

Bakugou rolled his eyes. “If it gets you off your ghost shit then sure, whatever.”

No points for enthusiasm, then.

You scrolled on your phone for the closest medium whose website wasn’t in an approximation of comic sans, and found an open slot early that afternoon. Then you showered and got dressed, accidentally flinging your hair brush across the room when Bakugou poked his head through the literal wall and told you to hurry up.

He smirked, like he’d done it on purpose to scare you, and you grumbled your way through the rest of your routine.

The medium’s office–or, what did one call a medium’s place? A lair?–was on a busy street just off a main square. You did not find the neon moon, stars, or crystal ball in the window all that reassuring, nor the intense scent of patchouli incense when you walked in the door.

A middle-aged woman with a plain face and violently red fingernails came out to greet you, telling you she was the spiritual medium. She made a big show of checking you in and swiping your credit card first, before gesturing you through a clicking set of beaded hanging curtains to the back.

You wondered how much of her office was decorated this way based on the expectations people had for mediums, or if she’d maybe become one because she was so into the vibe.

The room the medium led you into was heavily curtained, with shelves of books and tapestries covering every wall. She sat you at a table covered in a dark cloth and piled with all sorts of strange paraphernalia–pink and silvery crystals, a waxy halfway-melted candle, several glass balls slightly larger than marbles, a deck of cards, and a golden dish with ground herbs piled up in it.

Bakugou trailed you in and walked a tight circle around the room, inspecting it, letting out a noise somewhere between a laugh and judgmental scoff. “I will eat one of my gauntlets if this lady can tell you anything more helpful than a bunch of hocus pocus bullshit,” he said in his rasping tone. “Fucking unbelievable.”

You ignored him as the medium asked you what had brought you to her.

“I think I’m being haunted,” you told her, trying to sound serious.

“Interesting,” she said, visibly perking up. Her voice was dry and crackly, like crisp paper. You wondered if it was an affect. “What makes you say so?”

You conveniently skipped over the specifics of Bakugou’s situation. If she was legit, you were hoping she could tell you that you were being tortured by the petty specter of an annoying pro hero.

“Um, there’s this presence with me always,” you said vaguely. “And stuff around my apartment has been moving–drawers opening and closing, pillows shifting, um, that kind of stuff.”

She looked excited, asking what you could tell about the presence.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” you said, avoiding an answer. “I’d like to know more about it and what it wants.”

“What I want is to fucking ditch this bullshit,” Bakugou grumbled. “And for you to fucking stop using knives like an animal.”

You made a face at him as the medium ducked her head.

“We will try to get in contact with it,” she said in dramatic tones. “Place your hand on the balls here.” She gestured to the collection of glass spheres, the ones that had looked like marbles.

Bakugou made an ugly noise that you realized meant he was fighting down a laugh. “Place your hand on the balls,” he snickered.

You resisted the urge to grab one and lob it at him. Reluctantly, you pressed your hand onto the spheres, trying to school the irritation off of your face as Bakugou’s rasping chuckles grew louder. The spiritual medium placed her red-clawed hand on top of yours.

She closed her eyes and chanted a couple invocations, inviting the spirit to speak to her. When she opened them, she stared directly into your eyes.

“It’s the spirit of a young man,” she said. “Handsome and strong.”

You froze under her touch, eyes inadvertently darting over to Bakugou where he was leaning over her shoulder. His scarlet gaze moved to yours, and a questioning blonde brow went up.

“Something ties him to this plane,” the medium said. “Someone there in his final moments.”

You knew you couldn’t help the look on your face. But, was she legit? A young man, handsome and strong, someone there in his final moments. Did she actually see Bakugou? Did she know what happened, that you’d been there with him right as he’d gone down?

You gave him a significant look, widening your eyes.

And then the medium opened her mouth again, and said, “He was a sailor, a hundred years ago.”

And you instantly deflated.

A sharp smirk split Bakugou’s features, the edges of his smile pointed. “A sailor,” he mouthed smugly, over the tones of the medium continuing to make her pronouncements.

It was only the medium’s hand pressed over yours that stopped you from flipping him off.

It took you a further fifteen minutes to extricate yourself from her, thanking her for her insights. Bakugou looked even more pleased with himself as the minutes passed, and positively gleeful as you left the medium’s shop, keeping pace with you as you trudged back towards your apartment.

“What are you so happy about?” you asked him when you finally turned down an empty street. “It didn’t work.”

“Obviously,” Bakugou said. “I fucking told you.”

You rolled your eyes. “Hey, I said I didn’t really believe that stuff either. I just wanted to rule it out.”

“Sure looked like you believed it at the beginning,” Bakugou said, edging in front of you so he could look into your face. “Should have seen your fucking face.”

“Oh I did not,” you said.

Another knife-sharp smile edged onto his mouth, and you hated the way your eyes snapped to it, your skin prickling.

“Sure fucking did,” Bakugou pronounced smugly, “As soon as she was all, ‘A young man, handsome and strong.’ Think I’m handsome and strong, huh?”

Your cheeks flashed red hot. “No. I think you’re fucking paranormal and annoying.”

But Bakugou was not to be dissuaded. “I fucking saw you, brat. You sat up all straight and looked right at me.”

“I did not,” you said, even though you knew you had. “Shut up.”

Bakugou didn’t say anything more, but there was no shutting up the smug fucking look on his stupid face, and embarrassment boiled within you the entire way home.

Soon, you promised yourself as you shed your shoes at the door. Soon, you’d figure out a plan to be rid of him. And then he and his stupid handsome and strong fucking presence needn’t bother you anymore.

With your motivation renewed, you returned to your research.

You’d return him to his body soon enough. And then you’d put him in a headlock for good measure.

He could just wait and see.

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugou

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exasperated-viewer-on-air · 2 years

Photo

Nari Ward - “I’ll Take You There; A Proclamation”, April 28–June 4, 2022

installation view @ Lehmann Maupin, NYC

#Nari Ward #art #contemporary art #installation

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sculpturegallery · 1 year

Photo

Nari Ward

#Nari Ward

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jomiddlemarch · 3 months

Text

Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future

Taking in-house on-call at St. Mungo’s on Imbolc wasn’t the absolute worst, as far as Hermione was concerned. It wasn’t a major holiday and the Scottish weather, an unfathomably vile mix of sleet and snow accompanied by icy gales that defied any warming charm, lent itself to staying in. As her social life was not exactly riotous post-break-up with Ron, however amicably resigned and rueful they’d both been about it, staying in at St. Mungo’s, with its endless supply of ginger biscuits and at least one interesting patient per ward, was tolerable. Acceptable.

It could have been, anyway.

“You like being on-call, Granger?”

That was Draco Malfoy, her fellow senior registrar, academic rival, and star of far too many risqué dreams she continued to blame on eating cheese late at night. He’d grown significantly after the final battle, which she refused to capitalize when she thought of it, just as she refused to refer to Voldemort as anything other than Tom Riddle. Draco, no longer beholden to a genocidal sorcerer who had far too close a relationship with his voracious familiar and thus no longer suffering from an untreated ulcer along as well as the fear of watching his mother being tortured in her own sitting room, had put on a good 2-plus stone of muscle along with several more inches and somehow managed to make the lime-green robes St. Mungo’s insisted on look like something that would get an approving nod during Fashion Week in Milan. It should be a fourth Unforgivable that someone so silvery blond didn’t look anemic, bilious, or curdled in the next hue over from chartreuse. He looked edible.

Delicious.

Hermione looked like a generous dollop of the Seafoam Salad her American Cousin Luella brought to every summer tea-party Hermione’s mother had ever thrown, despite being told she was such a dear but she needn’t. Hermione tried to take comfort in the many extendable pockets she’d been able to spell into her robe’s inner lining, but nothing could fully offset the color.

At the moment, Draco had opened his robes and put his feet up on the coffee-table in the staff break-room, his collar unbuttoned, his tie loosened. He’d stopped using whatever charm or enchanted pomade he’d relied on when they were at Hogwarts and his hair looked silky, a lock threatening to fall across his forehead. If they were called to an emergency, he’d probably cast a wandless Reparo vestis and immediately look the part of a Pureblood senior registrar, but in the meantime, he was…louche. Unconscionably, unbearably erotic.

Hermione thought back to the tea she’d hurried through before heading to Dangerous Dai at a brisk clip. She’d had nary a bite of Brie. Or Cheddar.

She had no plausible deniability.

Still, he was helping a bit with the judgy curl to his lips and that gleam in his grey eyes which was somewhere between curious and condescending. She’d lean into the condescending part.

“I don’t mind it. It’s part of the work, being a Healer. If you have a true vocation, you don’t resent being on-call,” she said.

She sounded like an impossible prig even to herself but needs must.

“Bollocks,” he retorted, but not meanly. “Don’t you miss your cat?”

“Crookshanks is part-Kneazle,” she said.

“Fine, your part-Kneazle,” Draco said. “Wouldn’t you rather be home with him, doing whatever it is you do away from here?”

“Are you fishing for details or trying to mock me? You’ll have to decide,” Hermione said.

“I’m trying to say it’s just the two of us here, you don’t have to pretend you love being stuck at St. Mungo’s overnight,” Draco said.

It occurred to Hermione that if she suffered a cardiac event in the next three seconds, Draco would be the one to resuscitate her and that no one ever looked their best post-resuscitation, even when magic was the primary intervention. Vanity, that’s what would keep her from having a heart attack.

Just the two of us.

For Sweet Circe’s fucking sweet sake.

Draco gave her a searching look because the pause had lengthened notably. Anyone else would have said something like Earth to Hermione, except they’d have to be Muggleborn to say that, because Wizards still didn’t grasp that Muggles had been to the Moon and sent rovers to Mars. They didn’t grasp a dog had been sent into space.

“It’s all right. I don’t actually mind it all that much myself, if I’m being honest. And before you feel compelled to point it out, yes, I am Slytherin but I am capable of candor, especially when it suits my needs,” he said.

“It suits you to be honest with me?” she said.

“We’re a team, aren’t we?” he said and she nodded before she could stop herself and ask what exactly he meant, she’d happily taken four feet of parchment on the topic. “Lying, keeping things from each other, it won’t help us. I know you don’t trust me—”

“I—” she interrupted, breaking off when she realized she wasn’t sure she wanted to say she did trust him or that she wanted to, very badly.

“I know we agreed to a fresh slate when we started training here and I also know if was too much to ask of you,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Yes, I was under duress. Yes, I was seventeen. Yes, we’re all allowed to make mistakes. But I still have a brand on my arm from a group that wanted you dead and defiled and the best I did on your behalf was to pretend I didn’t know you for a few minutes,” he said.

“What else could you have done?” Hermione said, shrugging.

“I could have risked my life. I could have died,” he said. “Potter did, when he saved me from Fiendfyre—”

“I’m not nearly as nice as Harry,” Hermione said.

Draco laughed, rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You’re a better person than I am and you don’t have to argue with me about it. Some things are simply true. I’d like you to trust me, that’s what I’m saying, albeit terribly clumsily,” he replied.

“Albeit?” she repeated. Using humor to deflect was a time-honored tradition and she didn’t know what to do with her sizable attraction when it was suddenly not only about his broad shoulders and narrow hips, the feline grace of his gait, the North Sea of his eyes and his impossibly deft hands (Nimue help her, Draco’s hands…) but also his mind, his insight. She’d known he was clever, her equal in most fields, slightly ahead of her in Charms (though behind in Arithmancy) but she hadn’t appreciated how thoughtful he was or had become. How he could be gentle.

“I use overly formal language when I feel out of my depth,” he said. Admitted.

“You were totally at ease then, when Crispin Fillament was hemorrhaging? All I heard was good old Anglo-Saxon obscenities from you while you were trying to shove the blood back into his aorta,” Hermione said, grinning.

“That bugger. He wasn’t helping at all, and I don’t mean his choice to sing operettas,” Draco said. “It was like his blood didn’t even want back in. It felt oddly sentient—”

“Operetta can be polarizing,” Hermione said. They were having an absolutely insane conversation, Thickey Ward caliber, and she was more relaxed than she’d ever been around him while also being turned on. Draco’s expression shifted from entertained to speculative. Assessing. She resisted the impulse to touch her hair or fiddle with the collar of her robes, glad she’d kept her shoes on, regretting her laundry day choice of striped tights.

“We’ve worked together for nearly seven years and you still don’t trust me,” he said.

“I don’t suspect you of, well, anything in particular,” she replied. It seemed a weak response, even to her. It might not even be fair, but she couldn’t necessarily feel her way into being fair to him. Even if there were times when she wanted to.

“I know. It’s good of you,” he said. “It just, it’s not enough.”

“It’s not enough? You dare to demand I—”

“I’m not demanding anything, Hermione,” he interrupted. “I don’t expect more. I don’t deserve more. I only want more.”

“You want more,” she repeated. She sounded somewhere between incredulous and stupid. As he’d spent a significant amount of his youth the Crabbe and Goyle, the stupidity shouldn’t bother him as it did her.

“I believe Weasley liked to refer to me as a greedy git. I don’t pretend to have entirely outgrown that,” he said.

“That was because you hogged the pudding,” Hermione said.

“Well, I’ve outgrown that. Though I do still like sweet things,” he said. He tilted his head to one side and should have resembled an owl but of course, he didn’t. If anything, he looked like a fallen angel, though he probably wouldn’t have recognized Lucifer if she’d mentioned the name. The Bible was given short-shrift in the Muggle culture studies required at St. Mungo’s where they ran more to Pasteur, Salk and gene-sequencing. “If I want more, I must give more.”

“Is this some sort of rudimentary physics equation?” Hermione said. “You do know Newton covered this area already.”

“I mean, if I want you to trust me, I need to give you more reason. I need to share more, so you feel I’ve earned it. That it’s, I’m worth it,” he said, nodding as he spoke. Hermione felt herself flush and wanted to argue but she couldn’t think of anything compelling to refute his assertion.

“Shall I tell you why I became a Healer?” Draco said.

“If you like,” Hermione replied diffidently, as if she hadn’t wondered nearly every time she saw him and had frankly obsessed over it for the first six months of their training. Obsessed as in Ginny staged an intervention with Padma and Susan and Gabrielle on the Floo, with Luna playing mother over the teapot joining in the chorus that maybe Hermione needed to let it go or go ahead and jump Draco’s bones. She had been so far gone Luna Lovegood had told her she needed to get some perspective (which she suggested would be helped along with a tincture of canawaddle blossom and raging iron jaguar tears. Hermione had just taken the full glass of Shiraz Padma offered and nodded.)

“Because of my parents,” he said. It had been his idea to discuss his reasons but he seemed uncertain how he’d explain or uneasy about her response.

“It was their idea?” Hermione hazarded a guess. It wasn’t a good guess and she’d be shocked if she were right but it was within the realm of possibility in a world where there were both cellphones and wands threaded with a phoenix’s fiery tail-feather.

“Fuck no,” he said, almost choking on a laugh. A bitter one.

“It might’ve been,” she retorted.

“Only you would believe that possible and before you get horribly offended and flounce off, I mean only you could believe them capable of such humanity. That they would care about other people, that they would care that I did something worthwhile with my time,” he said. He made a calming gesture with his hand, the one he wore a signet ring on. It wasn’t the Malfoy signet though. “You also forget they are the most terrible snobs and think any kind of work is beneath a Malfoy or the bloody scion of the Most Noble House of Black. My mother thinks I’m overly sentimental and my father thinks the whole thing is crass and degrading.”

“I don’t flounce,” Hermione said because what he’d said was a lot to unpack and she couldn’t risk him thinking flouncing was within her repertoire.

“I stand corrected,” he said.

“Why did you become a Healer? How were your parents involved?” she asked.

“They ruined so many lives. My father, I’ve never asked, I’ve never wanted to know, but I think he’s a murderer and my mother went along with it all. Whatever she told herself about how she had to put me first, it was all an excuse,” he said, holding her gaze the whole time. “Other families left Britain. Other families refused to take a side. Millie’s parents sent her younger brothers to Ilvermorny. Zabini’s mother cast some spell on Blaise that kept Voldemort from touching him, something Darker than Dark, she called in favors all over Europe and West Africa. My parents ruined my life. This is the best way I could think of to make something of it all.”

“That’s, I don’t even know what to say, Draco,” Hermione replied.

“You don’t have to have something to say. It’s just how it is,” he said.

“Is it enough? Atonement?” Hermione asked.

“Mostly. And I like the craft. Snape played favorites and he gave me extra lessons, tradework secrets. The man was frankly a bloody genius. Sectumsempra was his juvenilia. I’m good at Potions and I was taught by one of the best Potions Masters in the past three hundred years,” Draco said.

“It’s nice to hear you admit it,” Hermione said.

“The special treatment or Snape’s brilliance?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, making Draco smile.

“I wished I could have saved him,” Draco said. “Though I don’t know what surviving would have meant for him. He was broken.”

“He wanted us to let him go. After he gave Harry the memory, he didn’t want to have to live anymore. I tried to stay. Harry and Ron didn’t see his eyes, but he looked at me and I knew it,” Hermione said.

“He doesn’t haunt me. In case you’re wondering,” Draco said. “His portrait often has a choice remark for me, but that’s all.”

“I became a Healer because of my parents too,” Hermione said.

“Yeah?”

“When it was getting close, that last year, you know, none of the adults made any plans to keep my parents safe. They told me not to worry mostly. All Dumbledore cared about was Harry and the Elder wand. Tonks, she was your cousin, she was the only one who said I should look out for my own people,” Hermione said. Tonks’s hair had been a rich chestnut streaked with white when she’d said it, her eyes the glittering green Hermione had always wished to see in the mirror, and she hadn’t minced words. She’d been as serious as Hermione had ever seen her, serious as death, and then it wasn’t spoken of again. Hermione had hoped there would be a time to tell Tonks, to thank her. “I Obliviated my parents and relocated them to Australia, I gave them new identities. I erased myself from their minds. Entirely.”

“What?” To his credit, Draco looked 90% stunned and 10% impressed. Harry had looked 100% horrified and Ron had physically recoiled when she told them.

“I did some research, figured out how to Obliviate them in the way that would keep them safest,” she said. “Voldemort wasn’t going to care about two random Muggles named Wilkins in bloody Melbourne. Other than you, your father and Snape, none of the Death-eaters were smart enough to figure it out and it turned out Snape was a double-agent, so my odds were even better than I’d counted on.”

“That’s advanced charmwork,” Draco said. “That kind of Obliviation.”

“I had to use Arithmancy too. And runes,” Hermione said. “It had to work. I couldn’t ruin their lives. I couldn’t be the reason they were killed.”

“It worked,” he said. “You saved them.”

“Yes. But it was harder to reverse than I’d hoped,” she said. She said hoped but she meant thought, planned, expected. She’d been wrong. “And when they remembered, they remembered I never asked their permission.”

“You didn’t?”

“They’d never have agreed. I cast the spell behind their backs. An assassination, my mother called it,” she said. She hadn’t told them about being tortured; they couldn’t understand Cruciatus the way anyone magical would and she didn’t want them to ask why she hadn’t confided more in them. Didn’t want them to feel guilty or worse, to accuse her of trying to make them feel guilty to justify her actions.

“You saved their lives,” Draco repeated.

“That’s what I tell myself,” she replied.

“Do you plan to specialize in memory curses? Because of your parents?” he asked.

“No. It’s not that. I became a Healer because they can understand it. They are dentists, Muggle Healer for teeth, and I was able to preserve all of that when I Obliviated them. They would have said, once, I should take up whatever career I felt called to, but they value healing. It’s something we can talk about. Without much…rancor. They see what we do as another science, this training similar enough, the way the American medical system is similar to the British one,” she said.

“Do you even want to be a Healer?” Draco said.

“It’s fine. Maybe I would have ended up here anyway. You have to master a lot of different magical disciplines and there’s some research to be done. There’s always other people around and you can get a decent cuppa in the canteen,” she said, shrugging. “The robes don’t suit me, but that’s a small price to pay.”

“You wanted something else though,” he said. “You don’t have to lie to me. I won’t try to convince you to leave St. Mungo’s.”

“There’s a course on ancient magics in Alexandria. And the Wizarding Library there, they do archival work and Anatomia liborum,” she said. “I read about it when I was researching the Horcruxes. It sounded intriguing.”

“What else?” he prompted.

“In Japan, at Mahoutokoro, there a witch studying arithmancy and algorithm engineering. That’s a Muggle science, it has to do with computers and programming, which you probably have no idea about, but it’s cutting edge work,” Hermione said.

“Instead you’re here,” he said.

“It’s not so bad,” Hermione said. It was easy to say, because she’d said it to herself about a thousand times. “I’m learning a lot and it’s important, to be able to heal people, and sometimes what’s wrong with them seems impossible, but in an absurdly funny way. My parents like it, when I tell them about work, even if I have to tone it down so they believe me.”

“Doesn’t seem like enough. Not for you,” he said.

“You’re here,” she replied, before she thought better of it.

For a moment, Draco was so still she wondered if she’d cast a wandless Petrificus totalis without consciously registering it.

“It’s not what you think,” she said.

“What do I think, Hermione?” he asked. He didn’t sound sly or arch, not remotely mocking, though he could have and she wouldn’t have been able to blame him. He sounded serious, as if she was the final arbiter of his fate, the Chief Witch of the Wizengamot pronouncing his sentence.

“It wasn’t a grand declaration,” she said.

“I didn’t think ‘you’re here’ was a grand declaration,” he replied. He’d relaxed a bit. Bully for him. Hermione felt like she might spontaneously combust, which coupled with the lime-green robes, was certain to be unattractive.

“You’re clever and well-read and you don’t cave when I argue with you but you don’t try to squash me either,” she said. “You think of things quite differently than I do, but in a good way. You’re my peer, intellectually.”

“I’m your peer, intellectually. That’s what you meant,” he said.

“You spent your formative years with Crabbe and Goyle. It’s not nothing,” she retorted.

“I played chess with Blaise Zabini for seven years. Theo Nott taught me Sanskrit and Pazu Veda in his spare time,” he replied. It felt like an obscure jab at Harry and Ron, neither of whom would claim to be excellent student, but who each had their strengths. They were, perhaps, not ones that lent themselves to spirited discussions, especially since Hermione had an admittedly limited grasp of chess and no real motivation to learn it. She wouldn’t risk the conversation devolving into a cranky argument, relitigating their school-days.

“Theo Nott was fluent in Pazu Veda?”

“They don’t teach necromancy at Hogwarts, so I can’t vouch for his fluency, but he could read it and translate,” Draco said. He crossed his legs at the ankle, a gesture of pure insouciance. His grey eyes studied her and she lifted her chin. “You’re stalling.”

“I’m not,” she said. For possibly the first time she could remember, she wished to be paged to the receiving area to attend to a disgustingly feculent and smoking heap of Wizard burping up turds, suffering from an unknown but obviously not life-threatening curse or potion.

“If you don’t want to talk about it anymore, we won’t. I wanted you to trust me and that won’t happen if you feel like I’m grilling you or prying. I’ll try to keep doing whatever it is that makes me being here make St. Mungo’s worth it to you,” he said.

He was a Slytherin but he’d spoken as directly as an Gryffindor, as thoughtfully as any Ravenclaw, as kindly as any Hufflepuff.

“I like you,” she said.

She was not going to mention lust, her own for his face, his shoulders and his hands, the nape of his neck, the line of his thigh when he crouched down to talk to some patient on the Thickey Ward who thought they were a mole. His lips when he smiled. His eyes when he had a new idea that she was going to hate at first. She was courageous, not foolhardy.

“I like you too. Very much,” he said. “Exceedingly. I don’t want you to worry, having said it first, that your feelings are unrequited. They are very, very requited. Maximally requited.”

“I only said I like you,” she replied.

“I know. You don’t make grand declarations. I do. When they are called for,” he said.

“And it’s called for now?”

“We’ve worked together for seven years. We’ve known each other since we were eleven. You just admitted you like me. I’m not risking waiting another decade for you to understand how I feel about you,” he said. “Wizards have long lives but I’d hate to have this conversation with a white beard down to my navel.”

“You will never have a white beard down to your navel. You’d never do something so cliché,” Hermione said.

“You’re probably right. But I still prefer telling you tonight,” he said. “It means that when I ask you if you’d like a cup of tea and a biscuit in the canteen, you’ll know I don’t just mean a cup of tea and a biscuit.”

“But we’d still have those, right?” Hermione said. “Because I skipped lunch today.”

“I will buy you every biscuit in the canteen,” he said. “And breakfast tomorrow morning. Somewhere where you can get a decent omelet.”

“So, someplace Muggle,” Hermione said.

“Most assuredly so. At least until we both have a weekend off,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Then I take you to Paris.”

Five hexes, three Dark-adjacent curses, nine (nine!) misbrewed Potions causing inflammation, exudation, and one case of rapid-fire recitation in Norn, an unlicensed researcher’s run-in with a surly matagot, and a family suffering from mazy measles, meant that no biscuits, chocolate, ginger or lemon, were consumed and the tea in the canteen’s urn remained untasted by either of them.

They did, however, make quick work of a passable cheese omelet at a very nice café once they’d given sign-out to the day’s team.

And Draco Side-alonged her home, giving her a kiss on the cheek at the door.

Hermione kissed him back. Not on the cheek.

She wasn’t about to wait for Paris for a French kiss, not when they had so little say over the on-call schedule.

Not when he looked at her with those sleepy grey eyes.

Not when he murmured her name against her lips.

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imaginedreamwrite · 11 months

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The first real nice pre-summer day warranted a trip outside of the asylum walls to the grounds for an art class beneath the whisky clouds and sunshine. While certain patients and rooms were not able to be out due to some misbehaviour, and even a mix of children, men and women were scattered within a certain radius to get some fresh air, which in itself had seemed to be an unusual kindness.

As one of the few nurses who were able to intermix within the wards, save for the children’s ward which you refused to work in, the doctors on duty for the outdoor excursion had relayed the task of helping with the art class for the afternoon. The resident head nurse had been cordial enough to task you with handing out the drawing pads held together with twine and extended certain blindness toward yourself and Steve, especially when his eyes had lingered too long upon your frame while in passing.

You didn’t want to openly embrace the flutter of your stomach and the rapid beat of your heart when he slipped a hand upon your lower back, nor had you wished to revel in the whisper of your name as it fell from his lips. It was hard enough not to be captivated by the hero the government had turned its back on, and even harder not to be completely overtaken by the beauty of his blue-green eyes when they were centred on you, as if you were the only steadfast hold he had on this earth.

“If you remain on your best behaviour,” the doctor in charge had relayed his order as if this event outside was the greatest extent and reach of his empathy, “we could spend the rest of the afternoon outside.”

Only the best-behaved and most calm, at the moment, got to enjoy nature. Only the best got a temporary reprieve from the hell beyond brick walls.

“Draw something that inspires you, something you find beautiful.” Beatrice, the head nurse extended kindness that was so hard to find within the nurses you worked with, had been a favourite among the patients and you considered yourself lucky to work with her.

There were few friends to be made here, few nurses who had wanted to do good for the patients they cared for. Many other nurses were coerced to follow doctors' orders to be unwittingly apathetic and unable to provide gentle care, many of those apathetic nurses were scared for their careers. The doctors had a tight hold on the patients and nurses alike, threatening pain for the patients and a ruined reputation for the nurses.

There was hardly any winning in this asylum, hardly any escape and many nurses had either been taken advantage of by the doctors or had unwillingly given in due to fear of what could happen with denial. Beatrice had remained steadfast in her ability to treat the patients with care and empathy, Beatrice had also remained courageous and determined to protect as many nurses in her wings as she could.

Steve was your protector, and whether he had openly admitted it or not, he had placed a claim on you. One that you were grateful for.

“I will always keep you safe. No one will touch you.”

“It’s nice out today, warm.” Annie, a mother whose child had died from the flu, had spoken to you as you passed, stopping you from walking too far. “It reminds me of her.”

You looked at the bare bones of her painting, the outline of flowers surrounding a sleeping angel in a flowing dress. There weren’t many details embedded yet in the painting and yet you could tell that Annie’s hands were gentle as she sketched her lost daughter, every motion of her drawing pencil taken with care. Like the dress she wore, one that was innocent and lovely, her daughter's hair was flowing around her head like a halo and her eyes had remained closed as if she was only sleeping.

“Your daughter was beautiful.” your voice was nary a whisper, something as soft as the petals she was drawing. “You don’t deserve to be in here, Annie. You’re not crazy.”

“No one is crazy here, nurse. We’re all forgotten. Unfortunate and unwanted.” Annie clutched your wrist and turned it over in her hand, her eyes soulful and intense, though afflicted by unshed tears. “I hear the children crying, i can hear them from my room. S’not right, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry, Annie. I wish I could do more.” Your heart broke for her, broke for the children she could hear.

“I’m meant to be a mama. I need to be a mama.” She let you go and turned back to her canvas, her eyes fixated on the pillow of flowers around her daughter's head, and then she pushed her curls out of her face.

You exhaled the breath you’d been holding and stepped past Annie, your eyes drawn toward Steve. It was innate the way you were reeled into his presence, flocking there as if he was a beacon to lead you home. You had stepped forward and the world fell away around you, the walls of asylum shifting in place to become a softer world of tall swaying grass and overhanging trees. With every step, it felt as if you were crossing a meadow to a place of serenity, a place in which neither Steve nor you were held down by barriers hidden agendas.

A place where he was the hero he’d been made out to be, a place where he was given the respect and honour he deserved.

“You’re too good for this world.” He spoke to you before you could address him and his hand found yours, turning your hand over to expose your palm. “You are meant for so much more than this.”

“Steve,” you found yourself staring at the image before you, the lines and shadows that had retained a scene like you imagined on the way over here, “is that me? You drew me?”

Though there was a lack of colour, you could picture the golden tresses brushing against the edge of a skirt and the soft glow of the sun as it peeked through tree branches. You could picture the colour of the sky barely marred by clouds, you could hear the soft chatter of birds from beyond the treelike as they revelled under the summer sun.

Steve took the risk to lift your hand to his lips, pressing a soft and sensitive smile to the inside of your palm. Your heart fluttered, just as your eyes had when his smile had shifted and a kiss to the creases on your palm and his free hand had come to settle on your waist. That singular kiss had spoken a thousand words, and the scene he sketched upon canvas, and even on his drawing pad, had relayed the message that he envisioned a similar ending as you had.

“One day,” Steve had pulled his hand from your waist and guided your fingertips to the edges of his artwork, specifically the golden grass that was brushing against your dress, “we’re going to be living this.”

“It’s beautiful,” your breath was a whisper, your heart flooded with hope and promise, “God it’s…”

“Home,” his voice was barely audible, a vow he was making to you, “this is going to be our home.”

And when you thought he was done making promises, he made you one more. “I am going to marry you, Y/N. I’m goign to be the best husband I can be for you.”

#asylum!steve rogers x reader #asylum!steve rogers x nurse!reader #1940s!steve rogers #1940s!steve rogers x reader #1940s!nurse!reader #Steve Rogers x reader #1940s au #1940s asylum au

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zeciex · 6 months

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A Vow of Blood - 29

Warnings: This fic includes noncon, dubcon, manipulation, violence and inc3st. Tags will be added as the fic goes on. This is a dark!fic. 18+ only. Read at your own discretion. Please read the warnings before continuing.

Summary: “You will be trapped by the obligations of love and duty, unable to escape the web of expectations others have woven around you,“ the witch said….

Chapter 29: Little Nightshade

AO3 - Masterlist

In the halls of Dragonstone, a small boy, no more than seven winters, hurriedly made his way through the castle’s labyrinthine corridors. His round face was flushed with exertion, and his red hair tousled by the wind. Clutching a small letter tightly, he searched for the princess, his big eyes scanning every nook and cranny.

Finally, he spotted her on the battlements overlooking the beach and ocean, seated on the bench and wrapped in a thick cloak lined with fur. The wind tugged at it, but her gaze was steady and welcoming as she looked up at the boy approaching her.

The young messenger boy almost tripped up the stairs in his haste, but he managed to reach Daenera without a scrape. Gasping for breath, he waved the letter in her face, trying to speak amidst his quick, shallow pants.

“A-a letter has come…come for you, princess,” he managed to say. “M-maester Geradys told me to give it to you. He said I was a big boy now. That I could be of use.”

Daenera smiled warmly at the boy’s efforts. “Thank you. You did a wonderful job. I will certainly tell Maester Geradys how well you delivered the message.”

The boy’s eyes lit up with delight at her praise. “You will?”

“Yes, indeed,” she replied with a nod.

Grinning from ear to ear, the boy turned on his heel and rushed back down the stairs, his mission accomplished.

With the young messenger gone, Daenera’s attention turned to the letter in her hand. It piqued her curiosity; there was no seal on the wax, and its contents were a mystery. The handwriting, though fine, felt oddly familiar. Intrigued, she broke the wax seal and carefully unfolded the letter to read its contents.

Nyke umbagon aōha narys, byka sȳndor bantio rūklon.

I await your poison, little nightshade.

Her eyes canned over the words written on the parchment repeatedly, her heart skipping a beat. Alongside the written message was a delicately drawn illustration of nightshade. The ink-rendered petals formed a beautiful star-like shape, the thin petals stretching out. Her fingers traced the lines.

It was the details that gripped her the most. A singular berry was meticulously sketched growing from the flower, a defining characteristic of the most poisonous variety of nightshade. It sent a shudder down her spine.

The boy with the stars in his eye will capture your heart, but be weary of the danger he represents. Twin flames, one soul. This is the love that awaits you.

Daenera held the letter tightly in her hand, her heart pounding rapidly within her chest. The words on the parchment were etched into her mind, burned over her skin. Why would he send her this? To mock her? To remind her of the power he held over her?

He couldn’t be the boy with the stars in his eyes. She tried to convince herself that Aemond was nothing more than an annoyance, a thorn in her side, a moment of weakness. But deep down, she knew she was lying to herself. Despite her attempts to resist, she had grown fond of his presence in some inexplicable way.

“What does the letter contain to make you look like that?” Rhaenyra’s gentle voice broke the silence.

Daenera’s heart skipped a beat, and she quickly tried to hide the letter by folding it. Her mother’s perceptive gaze made it difficult to keep secrets.

“Like what?” Daenera asked, feigning ignorance, hoping her mother wouldn’t press further.

“Like you’ve come to a mournful realization,” Rhaenyra replied, undeterred. She settled down beside her daughter, her cloak wrapped tightly around her to ward off the biting chill of the wind. With a tender gesture, she brushed a strand of Daenera’s hair behind her ear, but the wind quickly freed it again, causing it to dance wildly in the air.

Daenera frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why are you out here?” Rhaenyra persisted, seeming to sense that something was troubling her daughter.

“I needed some air,” Daenera replied, hoping her mother wouldn’t push further.

Rhaenyra followed her daughter's eyes, looking out over the stormy sea, the waves crashing relentlessly against the shore. The dark, brooding clouds mirrored the heaviness of the moment, promising an impending downpour.

“What does it feel like?” Daenera’s question broke the silence, and she looked back upon her mother. “Love.”

Rhaenyra seemed to search her daughter's face, curiosity mingling with concern. She drew in a breath before answering. “It depends…”

“What did it feel like with my father?” Daenera pressed, her heart heavy with the longing to understand. There was no need to specify, they both knew who she was asking about.

“It felt… like coming in from a storm to warm yourself by the fire,”she described, a wistful look crossing her features as she recalled the memories of her past love. “The storm was still raging outside, but I was warm and content. It was… a solace. We both knew our duty and that nothing could come of it. We could never marry. It would have to be a secret, and he understood that. He never expected more of me, never… never demanded more.”

Daenera listened intently. There was a bittersweet undercurrent to her mothers words, and acknowledgement of the torment that had haunted her those years. Ser Harwin’s devotion to her mother had been unconditional, it had been understanding. Daenera knew her mother didn’t love him as she loved Daemon, but Ser Harwin had provided her mother with the solace she had needed.

“He must have loved you very much,” Daenera remarked softly.

Her mother’s smile was tinged with sadness as she acknowledged the truth. “He did. He was very devoted to me… to us.”

“And Daemon?” Daenera inquired further, her curiosity now turning towards the present, wanting to know about the love that now consumed her mother’s heart.

Rhaenyra’s eyes brightened, a coy smile forming on her lips as she spoke of Daemon. “With Daemon, it is like I can finally breathe again. It is all fire and passion. He is part of me, and I am part of him.”

Twin flames, one soul.

“He sees me, not as the princess, not as what others think I am. He sees me for who I am, with all the good and the bad that accompanies that. He makes me feel powerful,” Rhaenyra continued, her voice filled with emotion, revealing the intensity of their love.

“It seems like a rare thing,” Daenera acknowledged, feeling her heart twist in her chest.

“It is,” Rhaenyra agreed, her brows furrowing with concern as she observed her daughter. “And rarer to have found it twice… Why do you ask, sweet girl? Are you worried about your betrothal?”

Daenera’s heart pounded in her chest, torn between the truth and the pretense she desperately clung to. She remained quiet, unable to find the words to explain the turmoil that rage within her. The question she asked her mother had only led to more confusion.

Her mind replayed the contents of the letter, the drawing of the nightshade flower etched into her memory. The image seemed to mock her, a reminder of the dangerous game Aemond played. He was cruel, weaving lies and charm to ensnare her in his web. She couldn’t allow herself to be deceived by it.

“It is not about the betrothal,” Daenera finally answered, breaking her silence and meeting her mother’s gaze. The words felt rehearsed, and she hoped her mother wouldn’t see through the facade of it. “I know my duty, and I shall fulfill it.”

Rhaenyra’s expression softened, and she tenderly touched Daenera’s cheek, the warmth of her touch a comforting reassurance. Her voice was gentle and understanding. “Those are Daemon’s words. If you do not wish to marry Baratheon, you do not have to. I do not wish to force you into a marriage you do not want.”

Daenera knew her mother wished to afford her more agency than she herself had had. Rhaenyra had wed Laenor out of duty. There was no more love between the two than that of friendship, and Daenera knew that even then, her mothers heart had belonged elsewhere–belonged with Daemon.

Before she could respond, her mother continued. “Is there someone else?”

“No, mother,” Daenera replied, feeling slightly exasperated. “I told you, my maidenhead remains, and so does my honor.”

“I trust you,” Rhaenyra said, a soft smile gracing her lips. She nodded her head, then continued. “That is not what I meant. Is there someone you’d rather marry?”

The question caught Daenera off guard, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. Marrying Aemond was an absurd notion, and loving him was a terrifying prospect. Her feelings were nothing more than attraction, a physical infatuation that she knew she must resist.

“Gods, no,” she replied, trying to mask the unease that tugged at her. “I… I was just curious. I wondered what it might feel like to be in love with someone.”

The letter in her hand seemed to weigh heavier, its warmth almost burning her fingertips. I await your poison, little nightshade .

“Daenera,” Rhaenyra’s soft voice broke the silence, her head tilting as her eyes sought her daughter’s. “If you do not want to go through with it, you don’t have to.”

“I want to marry Boris Baratheon, Mother,” Daenera replied firmly, trying to convince herself as much as her mother. “It is my duty, and it will secure the Stormlands.”

“Those are Daemon’s words,” Rhaenyra remarked, her skepticism lingering.

“They are my words. I want to do this,” Daenera insisted, even as doubt gnawed at her insides.

Rhaenyra let out a sigh, her expression both concerned and resigned. “All I want for my children is that they’re happy.”

Daenera forced a smile, hoping to alleviate her mother’s worry. “I will be.”

Whether her mother truly believed her or not, Daenera couldn’t be certain. Still, she reached out and took Rhaenyra’s hand, gently placing it onto the one that held the letter. She trapped her mother’s hand with her own, offering comfort and warmth.

Your first marriage will be loveless and your second cloaked in betrayal.

“Do you believe in prophecy?” Daenera’s voice was barely a whisper, almost drowned out by the howling wind and the crack of the banners whipping in the air. Yet, the words reached her mother’s ears, and her expression shifted with apprehension and unease.

“I believe to some extent…Why do you ask, sweet girl?” She inquired.

“A beggar gave me a prophecy once,” Daenera lied, her heart heavy with the memories of both the witch and the beggar. “She told me that I shall marry twice and that my first marriage will be loveless, and the second cloaked in betrayal… She told me I was destined for fire and betrayal.”

In reality, it had been the words of the witch that haunted her the most, not those of the beggar. But the weight of the truth of who has spoken the words felt too burdensome to share, especially with her mother. She couldn’t tell her about the question yet to be asked or the words given to Ser Harwin about the fireflies. It was simpler to condense it, to leave out the rest.

“I believe some prophecies are meant as a warning, as with Daenys and the Doom. Her dream warned about a coming threat. And some are meant to scare, but hold no greater truth to it,” Rhaenyra said, her grip on Daenera’s hand tightening slightly. “You cannot believe the words of a beggar. You are the one who decides your destiny, not a beggar on the street who likely spewed the same nonsense at others.”

“Ser Harwin once told me that to know one’s future is to tie a noose and hang oneself with it,” Daenera mused, the echo of Ser Harwins voice echoing in her mind, distorted and vague, like smoke filtering out into nothing. She barely remembered his voice at all.

The old knight had known his future, yet he had chosen to ignore the warning. It was difficult to fathom how mere words could shape one’s fate so profoundly. Was she destined to suffer as the prophecy foretold? As Ser Harwin had suffered?

“Do not concern yourself with the words of someone inconsequential,” Rhaenyra advised, trying to soothe her daughter’s troubled thoughts.

Suddenly, a thunderous roar pierced through the air, carried by the whirling wind, and a massive gust wrapped around them, billowing their clothes. Above them, Jace crackled as he and Vermax soared past, heading towards the sea. Following closely behind was Luke on Arrax, the dragon smaller but just as agile and swift. He waved down at his mother and sister.

“We are dragons, Daenera. Our destiny is different from others,” Rhaenyra reminded her, her eyes filled with maternal warmth and strength.

Daenera’s hand curled around the letter, and she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

In the haze of his dream, Aemond found himself lying in bed, draped in the soft sheets that seemed to caress his skin like the gentlest of touches. He turned his head and saw Daenera beside him, her blue eyes reflecting the deepest of blues.

Aemond’s heart pounded in his chest as he watched her, captivated by her every moment as she turned, her hair falling around her head like the twisted roots of a tree. She smiled at him, her plump lips blooming upon her face. He found himself reaching for her, tracing the outline of her face with his fingers, savoring the warmth of her skin against his fingertips.

She leaned into his touch, brushing her lips against his in a chaste kiss as her heat enveloped him. He could feel desire burn in the pit of his stomach, feel it course through his veins.

As she pulled back, his lips chased hers in desperate need. She smirked at him, cruelly, wickedly.

His hands tightly curled in her hair, preventing any chance of withdrawal. In an impassioned kiss, he pressed his lips firmly against hers, savoring her essence with every breath. One of his hands slipped from her hair to grip her hip with a bruising force, and she willingly spread her legs for him, her pink cunt on full display.

With seamless ease, Aemond slid inside her, eagerly seeking the divine heat of her cunt. Her moans resonated in his ears, sweet and effortless. As he thrust his hips against hers, their bodies melded in perfect harmony, as if they were made for each other.

His need for her was desperate and destructive. A guttural growl erupted from deep within his chest, reverberating through his throat as he increased the temp, thrusting into her with relentless fervor. The sensation of her tight cunt embracing him, her moans filling the air, was intoxicating–primal.

Beneath him, Daenera mewled in pleasure, willingly accepting everything he bestowed upon her. Her lips parted to release a symphony of moans, her brows furrowing and her eyes fluttering as she lost herself to pleasure.

A faint knocking on the door pierces through the hazy realm of his dream, and Aemond’s consciousness stirred. From a distance, he heard the sound of someone entering the room, the soft shuffling of their movements echoing into his bedchamber. Sleep slipped away from his grasp like elusive smoke, leaving him painfully aware of his erection pressed against the mattress.

As Aemond desperately clung to the image of Daenera writhing underneath him in pleasure, it seemed to waver and dissolve, fading away into faint and blurry wisps. The dream dissipated, leaving him aching and unsatisfied.

Aemond found himself lost, drifting in and out of consciousness while the elusive dream remained just out of reach. His efforts to recapture it were in vain, and he lay there, the discomfort of sleeplessness allowing his senses to become acutely aware of his own arousal.

In an attempt to quench the fire burning within him, he ground his hips against the mattress, trying to conjure up the memory of Daenera. He envisioned her on her knees, her lips a delicate shade of pink and enticingly parted, her moth beckoning him with a gleam of desire. The image of her body became vivid in his mind–the graceful swell of her breasts, the seductive curve of her hips, the soft, inviting expanse of her thighs, pale and alluring as they spread open for him.

A guttural moan escaped from Aemond’s lips, his hands clenching the sheets in a desperate attempt to find release from the unyielding desire that consumed him. His hair fell over his shoulders as he rolled his hips, grinding against the mattress.

Aemond recalled the enticing shoulders she made, the breathy gasps that escaped her lips whenever he entered her wet, welcoming cunt. The image of her biting down on her bottom lip in a futile attempt to stifle her moans filled his thoughts.

Her resolve would crumble, and she would surrender to the pleasure he brought her. Her moans would fill the air, would resonate within him and coil in the pit of his stomach. Aemond took immense pleasure in discovering the precise angles and movements that would make her voice rise to higher pitches, her mewls becoming more urgent and desperate with each movement of his hips.

The way she surrendered to him, letting go of any inhibitions, filled him with a sense of power and satisfaction. Knowing that he could bring her to such heights of pleasure ignited a fierce desire within him to claim her completely, to make her his in every sense of the word.

It was a disgusting, wretched feeling.

Aemond shifted his position, rolling onto his back and propping himself up against the headboard. His arousal was evident, as his throbbing cock stood erect, pressing against his lower abdomen. The ache of his pulse echoed in it, urging him to seek release. With a deep breath, he spat into the palm of his hand before firmly wrapping his fingers around his length.

A guttural sound escaped from deep within his chest as he began stroking himself, his head tilting back to gently bump against the wooden headboard. The pleasure surged through him with each stroke, and he closed his eye, momentarily losing himself in the sensations that coursed through his body. The image of Daenera, her soft lips and inviting body, fueled his desire, intensifying the pleasure he derived from his own touch.

He imagined her hand, her fingers gently wrapping around his hardened length, and the memory of their first intimate encounter resurface. He vividly recalled how, in the beginning, her touch had been tentative, unsure of herself. But slowly her confidence grew, and her strokes became firmer.

Aemond mirrored her actions, his own calloused fingers tracing the shape of his cock, the sensation eliciting a sharp intake of air. He was lost in the remembrance of her learning and adapting to his desires.

The memory of her intense gaze, her eyes a captivating clash of hatred and desire, that stirred a deeper longing within him.

Aemond’s thumb gently caressed the sensitive head of his cock, spreading the leaking seed along its surface before trailing his hand down again. With each touch, he allowed himself to envision her touch, her hand, her lips, and her tight, wet cunt.

Every stroke of his hand drove him to the edge of madness. He imagined her soft fingers gripping him, her warm lips enveloping him, and the sensation of her slickness as he explored her depths.

His lower abdomen stirred with a tantalizing heat, a relentless fire that surged through his veins. His testicles tighten painfully, signaling the impending release that he craved.

Once more, the doors to his chambers swung open, and the intrusive sound of heavy footfalls echoed through the room as someone entered, seemingly oblivious to the notion of privacy.

“You are up unusually late, brother,” Aegon’s voice called out from the other room. The sounds of shuffling and movement followed as he made himself comfortable. Aemond could distinctly hear a chair being dragged across the floor and the clinking of cutlery.

Aemond’s frustration was palpable; the intense fire that had consumed him just moments ago now doused by his brother's appearance. His arousal weaned, leaving him only half-erect and still unsatisfied.

The sun had begun to rise above the walls of the Red Keep as Aemond cast a weary glance out the window. The frustration of his interrupted morning lingered, and he shifted to the edge of the bed with a sigh. Hastily, he hitched up his trousers around his hips, concealing his half-erect cock within them and loosely tying the lace to keep them in place.

Emerging from his bed chamber, Aemond found his brother, Aegon, seated at the table, helping himself to the food that had been brought to Aemond earlier. Aegon’s teasing grin greeted him, his eyes playfully roaming over Aemond as he approached the basin to splash his face with water.

“And you are up unusually early,” Aemond remarked, taking note of his brother’s appearance.

The lingering taxes of Aemong’s recent week-long illness were evident in his appearance. His once robust cheeks had hollowed out, giving his face a gaunt look, and his already pale skin seemed even more sallow. The dark circles under his eyes betrayed the toll the sickness had taken on him, and he had visibly lost a significant amount of weight.

Aemond had gleaned information from their mother about Aegon’s ordeal during his illness. The gravity of his suffering had been apparent –he had been plagued by relentless bouts of vomiting and shitting, his body trembling violently, and he had drifted in and out of consciousness. Aegon’s condition had been so severe at one point he had even lashed out at Master Orwyle in a state of delirium.

There had been a moment, Aemond had wondered whether Daenera truly didn’t intend on killing him.

Now that the illness had passed, Aegon seemed intent on regaining his strength by consuming whatever food he could find, even if it belonged to Aemond.

“You look dreadful,” Aemond remarked, wiping his face with a piece of cloth.

Aegon retorted with a sly grin, his appetite undeterred despite his weakened state. He took a bite of the buttered bread topped with strawberry jelly and smoked sausage, though it seems his sense of taste had been somewhat compromised by his recent illness.

“So do you, brother,” Aegon teased. “Dreadful and unsatisfied .”

Aemond adjusted his undershirt, smoothing out the creases and tucking his hair out from under the collar. He scowled at his brother.

“Why are you really here?” Aemond questioned.

Aegon feigned innocence, raising an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Can’t I visit my dear brother without ulterior motives?”

Aemond remained skeptical, knowing his brother’s tendency to approach things with a hidden agenda. “You never come to see me unless you want something.”

Aegon put down his bread, brushing the crumbs off his fingers and fixing Aemond with a mischievous glint in his eye, a sure sign that trouble was brewing.

“Oh, you haven’t been told?” Aegon drawled, clearly relishing the opportunity to bring Aemond this information.

Aemond moved towards the cabinet, retrieving his eyepatch that he had previously discarded, laying his back open for Aegon.

Aegon’s voice had a sharpness to it, like the pulling of a bowstring before releasing an arrow, as he continued with the news. “Mother has received word that the princess is to be married.”

The touch of the leather eyepatch in his hand felt familiar, weathered and worn. Aemond simply hummed in response, concealing the emotions stirring within him.

“She has accepted an alliance with Boris Baratheon,” Aegon revealed, relishing in the stiffness that befell his brother.

In that moment, the leather strap of Aemond’s eyepatch snapped, leaving it broken and useless in his hand. His gaze fell to the broken piece. Ruined. Destroyed. Useless. It gnawed at him. He tossed it to the side and picked up another, placing it upon his face before turning to find his brother grinning at him.

“Does it come as a surprise to you, brother?” Aegon’s mocking tone sliced through the air, taunting his brother. “After all, wasn’t it you who offered Baratheon advice on how to win her heart?”

Aemond tried to maintain his composure, but the revelation hit him like a sharp blade. The information felt like a physical wound, cutting through his throat as he swallowed it.

Aegon’s laughter echoed in the room, adding salt to the wound. “Just imagine their wedding night! Boris Baratheon will surely ravish her, using his massive sword to split her open.”

Aemond’s jaw clenched, trying to suppress the tumult of emotions surging within him. His brother’s words were like daggers, striking at his vulnerability and igniting a storm of conflicting feelings –rage, envy, and bitter regret.

“Does that bother you, brother?” Aegon jeered. “I mean, it’s not like there was anything between you and the princess, was there?”

With Aegon’s mocking laughter still ringing in his ears, Aemond gripped his sword and stormed out of his room with the excuse of sword practice. Aegon called out after him, reminding that the morning practice was long over, but Aemond didn’t care. His steps were heavy and purposeful as he made his way through the corridors of the Red Keep. Each stride carried the weight of his frustration.

He needed to clear his mind, to escape the suffocating walls that seemed to close in around him. Outside, the cool morning air greeted him, the son cast long shadows on the tiltyard. Aemond’s heart pounded in his chest, matching the rhythm of his footsteps.

He unsheathed his sword and unceremoniously began his assault on the strawman. Aegon’s taunts replayed in his mind, clawing at him as he brought his sword down on the wooden straw man, the blade biting into it with ferocity.

Aemond’s grip on his sword tightened even more, his knuckles turning white. He wanted to forget, to bury the feelings that threatened to consume him. But each swing of his sword only seemed to bring him closer to the thoughts he fought so hard to suppress.

It was nothing more than a cruel fantasy to think it would have ended anyway else.

He growled as he sliced through the air, striking the strawman where his collarbone would have been, the blow reverberating into his hands.

Boris Baratheon. Boris fucking Baratheon.

With every swing of his sword, Aemond channeled his pent-up frustration and imagined the wooden dummy before him as Boris Baratheon. He visualized Baratheon’s tall, muscular frame, broad shoulders, and massive arms wielding that intimidating greatsword of his. In his mind’s eye, Aemond strategized how to defeat him, picturing the perfect angles to strike beneath the armor, where to exploit weaknesses in his defense.

Each strike was driven by anger, the blade biting into the wood and straw with force, as if trying to cleave the very essence of his imagined opponent. Sweat trickled down his neck, and his hair clung uncomfortably to his damp skin.

As the sun slowly traversed the vast expanse of the sky, sinking below the Red Keep’s towering walls, Aemond continued his relentless assault on the strawman. Time became a blur, and he lost track of the hours spent in his furious training. The physical exhaustion was tangible, but it didn’t deter him. He swung the sword until his hands grew num, uncertain whether he could even maintain his grip, yet he pressed on.

Panting heavily, his shirt soaked through with sweat, Aemond observed the strawman, now a mere semblance of its former self. Both arms were gone, and the wooden frame was splintered and mangled from his relentless attack.

Aemond halted mid-preparation for another swing, his sister’s voice breaking through the haze of his mind. Helaena stood nearby, her expression sweet and concerned. Her eyebrows were knitted together in worry as she observed her brother.

“I…I just needed to clear my head,” Aemond finally admitted, his voice low and raw.

“And has it cleared?” Helaena asked, head tilting as she seemed to search his expression.

“No.”

Helaena let out a breath, nodding. “I’ve had a bath prepared for you. Come.”

Aemond’s body felt heavy with exhaustion as he shifted on his feet, his weary muscles protesting each movement. His grip on the hilt of his sword remained tight, almost as if his hand had become one with the weapon. He knew he needed to release it, but his fingers seemed unwilling to let go.

With a deep breath, he bent down to retrieve the sheathe lying on the ground. He carefully slid the sword into its rightful place, ensuring it was secure before attempting to peel his hand off the hilt. His bones seemed to groan like old wood as he gradually loosened his grip, and his joints emitted faint creaks, the sound of a body pushed to its limits.

The muscles in his hand protested the release, but eventually his fingers relaxed their hold on the sword. He flexed his hand several times, trying to restore some circulation and alleviate the stiffness that had settled in.

Aemond followed his sister back to his apartments, feeling the exhaustion weighing him down with each step. As he entered, he was greeted by the sight of a bath already drawn, steam rising from its surface.

Taking a seat, Aemond placed his hand on the table as Helaena requested. She wetted a piece of cloth and began to gently clean the blood and dirt from his skin. The blisters on his hand were painful, but he did not react to the pain.

Helaena worked in silence, her touch gentle and caring. Once she deemed the wounds clean, she reached for a small pot and opened it to reveal a creamy substance. With careful precision, she applied the ointment to Aemond’s hand, making sure not to burst any blisters.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Aemond asked, “What is this?”

Helaena looked up briefly from her task, her expression softening. “Daenera made it for Jaehaerys when he fell and scraped his hands.”

Despite the pain in his hand, Aemond felt a wave of conflicting emotions wash over him at the mention of Daenera’s name. He clenched his jaw, unsure of how to respond to his sister’s revelation.

“What is this about?” Helaena asked gently.

Aemond closed his eye and leaned back against the chair. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his sister. No one could know. It was a wretched feeling, weak, and utterly pathetic to be affected by someone who meant nothing to him–or at least, that’s what he told himself.

The truth was, he couldn’t understand why he still cared so deeply. It had been nothing more than a game, a way to ruin and destroy her… but there had been a moment of weakness.

Aemond scoffed bitterly. He despised the way she made him feel, the way she had managed to get into his blood, the way she had poisoned him. It was infuriating and he found himself resenting her for it. He wanted to erase her from his thoughts, to be free from the torment of her–and he wanted her. Desperately. Pathetically.

“Daenera once told me that the distinction between poison and medicine is the dosage,” Helaena mused quietly. “It seems the body doesn’t know the difference.”

Aemond supposed he didn’t know the difference either.

It was later that night that Aemond sat down and wrote the letter.

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