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emeritusemeritus · 2 months

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You think you know someone. [Fred Weasley x Reader]

Title: You think you know someone.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Timeline: OOTP- canon and timelines altered for purposes of the story. Some bits have been exaggerated for artistic purposes. Based more on the films than the books. Reader joins DA but what if instead of Cho ratting them out, it’s you?

Summary: You had everything during your time at Hogwarts- good friends, Fred Weasley as your boyfriend and a promising future, until Dolores Umbridge turns up.

Warnings: This one turned out a little dark. Mentions of injury, torture, bullying, wounds, blood. Umbridge is a bitch. Snape is a bully. Use of unforgivable curses. Punishment. Kissing, pranks, swearing. Dumbledore’s Army and resistant forces. Brief mentions of Voldemort and probable war. Pet names: baby, sweetheart, princess. Not beta read. Happy ending I promise.

Word count: 9.3k (I feel like I’ve written a novel here)

This work is gifted to @kellyxo1 thanks to the wonderful request that I couldn’t turn down! I’m sorry it’s taken me a while to get this out but it’s been a complete labour of love and I hope you like it!💕

You knew Dolores Umbridge was trouble the moment you spotted her in the Great Hall, her gaudy pink outfit and matching pink cheeks made her stick out like a sore thumb amongst the classic, muted colour pallet you knew to be Hogwarts. Her smile unnerved you, the cold expression in her eyes never once matching the infallible twisted, sadistic smile that so often painted her face. Everything about her rang alarm bells in your mind.

Fred and George had been sitting either side of you at the banquet table in the Great Hall as she took centre stage and delivered her speech about being very good friends, as ominous and foreboding as it seemed.

"That's likely," the twins had mumbled, resting their heads on their hands, elbows on the table as a small act of rebellion against the airs and graces she clearly put on. You'd subconsciously scooted closer to Fred when she stood, reaching for his spare hand under the table that he'd offered you, sensing a little of your discomfort. Fred was always acutely aware of your emotions, able to read you like a book, you supposed it was a natural consequence of being together for so long.

You'd met on the first day of Hogwarts when you'd stepped into the train compartment he shared with George, locked eyes and the rest was history. You'd been dating since your second year, both of you unable to deny the childlike crushes and stolen glances of your attraction and as you grew up, you grew together. Now you were in your last year, with big plans ahead of Fred and George's business which you'd planned to help them with initially and bigger promises of moving in together in the flat above the shop. The natural progression of a happy relationship and an exciting prospect that kept you motivated to finish school on a high.

The atmosphere at Hogwarts was different this year: understandably tense and foreboding, not just because of Cedric's death and the rumoured return of Voldemort but of the disquiet around Harry's claims and the propagandistic reporting from the Daily Prophet refuting Harry's claims. It seemed everyone was divided into wether they believed Harry or if they believed what they were reading in the media. It was evident that the ministry had worked hard to deny and deflect Harry'a claims, disparaging and slandering him publicly. Of course the arrival of a certain Pink adorned dementor didn't help things, especially when she, as new defense against the dark arts teacher, did away with the old curriculum and removed any defensive, practical teaching in favour of simple theory- which would be of no use in real life situations, of which you were all undoubtedly facing. Then the educational decrees began where she was appointed Hogwarts' high inquisitor and sought to change anything she was as unsatisfactory, backed by the ministry, which seemed to propel the whole school further and further away from what it should be teaching and how it should be preparing it's students for what was inevitably happening.

"She can't do this! It's ridiculous, George is fuming, never mind Fred," you overheard Ginny say as you were about to take a seat for dinner but quickly stopped as you gave her a questioning look, not knowing what she meant, her eyes focusing in on your frozen form.

"What?"

"You haven't seen the new decree?" She asks curiously, placing down her fork onto the plate. You shook your head briefly before walking quickly out of the hall, dinner be damned to examine the wall of decrees, trying to fix your eyes onto the new plaque on the wall.

Educational Decree No. 30: All Weasley products will be banned immediately.

You rushed upstairs to the common room, split in two minds about wether they would be there or on the quidditch pitch, trying to expel their frustrations... until you remembered that broom flying had been outlawed unless part of a lesson or during Quidditch games, as few and far between as they were coming due to the constant cancelling.

When you found them in their dorm, George was pacing the room, kicking the wooden frame of his bed after every circuit whilst Fred sat perched on his own bed, face downcast and eyes filled with anger.

You knew it wouldn't stop them, nothing ever did, but the business they forged from nothing had suffered for a while as students were afraid of the repercussions of being searched and found with their products.

"Can't sell my products, can't fly a broom, can't even kiss my own girlfriend unless I find a way to snog her from six inches away!" Fred had been furious and rightly so but there seemed to be no hope in sight.

It seemed no one was unaffected by the drastic measures Umbridge was taking and you were all facing the consequences of the increasing restrictions, in multiple ways. You'd been given detention for the stupidest things, including casting a spell to undo the jinx Malfoy had placed on Neville one afternoon, another leg lock jinx that you'd fixed for him, received another for the muggle book in your possessions and another for deigning to be within six inches of George. The punishment was cruel and twisted but you'd hidden it from Fred, knowing how protective he was and how he'd act out to retaliate against her which would only land him in worse trouble. She seemed to focus on you in particular, for whatever reason you weren't sure but she hardly hid her distaste for you publicly. Fred said it was because of your connection to him and George but you weren't sure, it seemed more personal than that.

It had been Hermione's brilliant idea to forge a sort of rebellion in order to actually learn the practical side of defence and you'd been eager to sign up after attending the first meeting at the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade, knowing that you had to arm yourself in whatever way you could, the feeling of unease at the current climate always looming overhead. You'd been pleasantly surprised by the turn out, seeing many familiar faces as you'd walked hand in hand with Fred into the small, freezing cold room as you waited for Harry, Ron and Hermione. Cho, Luna, Neville, Ginny, Michael and so many others from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff had turned out to fight for the cause and as you looked around the room of friends and familiars, it was evident that this could work.

You'd signed the parchment Hermione had brought with no hesitation, lining up between Fred and Ginny, clearly marking your name under his in the pencil provided. As you walked back to the castle in a group, Fred's arm around you and his hat in your head to keep the cold away from your ears, you felt determined and inspired to make this work. You'd just need to find somewhere to practice away from the prying eyes of the inquisitor.

Then came Educational Decree No.68: All student organisations are henceforth be disbanded. Any student in noncompliance will be expelled.

This time, you weren't angered or afraid of the newly instated restriction but instead felt empowered to rebel. Neville, in a feat of brilliance, had discovered the room of requirement one Saturday afternoon as he made his way down the seventh floor corridor. It was perfect, exactly what was needed, and you'd all wasted no time in putting the room to good use.

Within just two weeks, you'd mastered disarming spells, stunning spells, hexes, jinxes and defensive charms that you'd never thought you could do. Ginny had proven herself to be incredibly skilled and you'd stood watching in amazement as two magpies flying around the room, both coming from your boyfriend and his twin. The twins had taken to placing bets, mostly against Ron, all of you in good spirits about finally being able to do magic again. You and Fred took full advantage of being shielded away from the eyes of Hogwarts and had taken to lingering in the room after the sessions so you could be close to each other, to kiss freely and be intimate again. It had seemed so long, so cruel to have to keep away from him, at least in public and as you watched him master spells so effortlessly and looking so deliciously hot as he did it, often with messy hair and rolled up sleeves, it was exactly what you needed to relieve yourself of the building frustrations.

Fun and laughter had once again returned to Hogwarts, though shielded from the regulating eyes, it was just like before. The twins had even taken to pranking again, no longer concerned by the changes, including giving Filch laced chocolates which made him erupt with giant, puss-filled boils on his face when he got too close to the scent of your secret gatherings.

Educational decree No. 82: All students will submit to questioning about suspected illicit activities.

Umbridge had began to gather students for an inquisitorial squad which would earn them credit for joining, most notably the Slytherin students that weaselled their way into Umbridge's good books. Most probably by being pure bloods. They took great pleasure in pulling up the younger students in particular for punishment or questioning and abused their powers frequently.

Then you returned to school after winter break and the news of the Azkaban breakout happened, constant storms were forecasted, Umbridge's cruel regime heightened. Everything felt so restrictive, so unnecessary, so twisted. The only place you found solace was during DA meetings when you could be yourself, free to act and perform as you wanted surrounded by your friends and boyfriend. Always alert at the imposing threat, knowing Filch was on to you all and the rest of the inquisitorial squad which only fuelled you to keep discreet.

It had been a regular day of classes until your DADA lesson where you'd been required by the toad to write an essay on the benefits of conversational reasoning as opposed to practical magic to handle disputes with half breeds and lower class species, such as centaurs. You'd almost immediately refused to write such things, particularly due to the disgusting terms used to class different species but also due to the ridiculous concept.

"I am teaching you verified way of effective communication, in which you do not have to use your wand," she defends with a sickeningly fake smirk.

"Or our brains by taking away our autonomy," you'd argued, not even under your breath.

"Are you questioning my methods of teaching miss y/l/n? By all means if you think you can do better I should like to see you try."

"Can't be hard, Professor Quirrel did a better job and he shared a head and a singular brain cell with Voldemort."

A murmur of concealed laughter burst from the students around you and for a singular moment you felt the victory of it, empowered even.

"Detention!" She's utterly outraged, her face turning a dangerous shade of fuchsia. You could feel the eyes on you, most notably your boyfriend and his twin from across the room but you didn't care. Since returning to school you'd been torn away from Fred, unable to be anywhere near each other and certainly not in a group with your friends as it would break at least three decrees. You were frustrated and had hit breaking point, anger simmering in you but why you didn't know. You'd completely had enough.

"It's a date Dolores," you said sarcastically with the sickliest smile you could muster. More snickers erupted around you and even a clap that sounded suspiciously like it came from the direction of your future brother in law.

"My office, now!" She screams, pointing with her pink tipped finger towards the door. You grabbed your stuff from the desk and walked out without a single look in anyone's direction. On your way to her office, you pulled the special coin from your pocket and checked over the date and time to check you had it right. There was a DA meeting later that evening and you'd hoped this would be over quickly so that you could still attend.

Only, that never happened. Instead you'd been tortured for hours in the cruelest of ways, repeatedly questioned over your involvement with the alleged group and had been forced to drink truth serum until the words had slipped out of your mouth. You'd had no control over it, no way of resisting any longer and with great shame, you'd told her about the room of requirement, completely unable to stop the words from coming out.

The inquisitorial squad was on you in mere moments, as soon as Umbridge had signalled them from outside the door and Malfoy's grubby hands were pulling your weak and exhausted body from the chair before you could even register the intrusion. The things you'd been through, the pain and the anguish, it was nothing compared to the fear you felt at the DA being discovered; you could only pray that you'd held out long enough so that the meeting was over.

"Where is it?!" Umbridge screamed into your face when you wouldn't disclose the exact location of the room of requirement, having already inadvertently let slip that the room was your meeting place. You gave her your darkest look, no longer feeling controlled by whatever she had obviously put in your tea. When she didn't get an answer, her hand struck you hard right across the cheek but you hardly flinched, hardly feeling the pain anymore.

"I know the way Ma'am," Filch said, his saggy face appearing around the corner creepily, his features twisting into a vulgar, perverse smile. You could hardly look at Umbridge's face as it twisted into a pleased, twisted grin as she fixed her jacket and allowed Filch to lead her. Malfoy grabbed hold of your robes tighter in his fist and you were dragged along with them until you reached the seventh floor.

You felt sick to your stomach, wanting to scream and cry, resist in anyway you could as you fought against Malfoy's hold but you were physically tired and weak. Crabbe had grabbed hold of the other side of you, your thrashing too much for Malfoy to hold down by himself and his hands were much tougher against your skin, no doubt leaving bruises in their wake. When the door to the room of requirement didn't appear, you felt hopeful that she'd realise you were lying, even if that meant horrendous consequences for you. There was no way of warning them, nothing you could do to allow them to flee, you'd have to watch as they were all caught redhanded. They'd think you ratted them out, your friends, the love of your life. You knew it was exactly what Umbridge wanted, to turn everyone against you- and she was undoubtedly going to get it.

"Bombarda Maxima," her eerily calm and squeaky voice rang out as she pointed her want at the wall. Your scream mixed in with the large bang as a giant hole was created in the wall, depris and dust flying everywhere.

When the dust cloud cleared, you were dragged off from the side viciously by Malfoy and Crabbe until you were presented in front of the Army- your friends. You didn't want to look up from your spot on the floor, still fighting against their holds on you but something made you look up. And then you met his eyes.

Fred had never looked at you that way, ever. The looks of love and adoration you'd become accustomed to over the years, the playfulness and the intimate looks, it was all gone. The look in his eyes would haunt you forever, the coldness, betrayal and the resentment and it was explicitly clear what his expression told you.

He believed that you ratted them out, believed that you could ever do that to him, to them all.

You had to look away, desperate to see any hope that someone believed you, that someone sympathised with the torment you'd endured but as your eyes travelled across to George, you stopped short. He looked furious with you, disgusted and despite everything you'd been through in the past few hours, you'd receive no sympathy or chance to explain yourself to the people you loved.

You were dragged away as Umbridge dealt with the Army, bestowing threats and punishments upon them that you couldn't hear. You no longer fought against the holds of the Slytherins but instead went willingly, feeling guilty, shame and simply dirty for your role in all of this, even if it wasn't your fault.

Members of the ministry arrived not too long after, having been alerted prior to the discovery of the DA. You couldn't look at Kingsley, much too distraught to see his look of disgust at you, no doubt planning to tell the Order what you'd done. Harry was ushered in not long after having been caught in the skirmish. His newfound hatred of you seemed to radiate off him as he stood beside you and this alone made you want to scream and cry out of frustration, tears welling in your eyes that you wouldn't allow to spill.

The final straw was when Percy walked in, without so much as a glimmer of recognition towards you and took over from Malfoy to restrain you and Harry, keeping the shoulder of your robe balled up in his hand. The minister ordered him to dispatch an owl to the Daily Prophet and he diligently nodded, trying to manoeuvre you along with him.

"Get off me Weatherby," you demanded viciously, fighting against his hold and managing to break free, only to be stopped as you all looked on in amazement as Dumbledore disappeared out of sight in a magnificent display.

You'd hoped after that, you'd be able to get Harry alone, to explain yourself to him, to tell him what had happened but he'd completely avoided you, blanked you entirely. You hardly blamed him but you needed to explain, to clear your name. Umbridge then commanded Harry to join her in the hall where the punishment was being conducted, all of the DA together.

You'd been permitted to return to your dorm after the meeting had finished but you stood outside of the hall doors, desperate to see Fred and explain yourself, hoping he could bring you at least an ounce of comfort. Your head was pounding from the pain earlier and the marks on your arms were throbbing, sore and weeping though you fought not to look at them, knowing the pain would only be worse when you saw what was tormenting you. You couldn't go to Madame pomfrey, Umbridge had made that very clear and so you suffered in complete silence until you could reach out for your friends.

You lingered outside of the door for what felt like hours, the anxiety and the nerves you felt seemingly freezing time. When the doors opened, the members of the DA began pouring out with soured looks on their faces which only heightened when they caught sight of you. It was never hard to spot Fred and George amongst a crowd, their towering height easily distinguishable amongst a sea of people.

The look on everyone's face was near identical, the disgust and the resentment evident in their eyes as they spotted you but none clearer than the twins. George looked like he detested you, his face scrunched into a look of utter distaste, eyes glaring into you as he walked past without a care. Fred looked away, ignoring your presence completely as he glided past you without muttering a single word, his face stone cold and void of expression.

"Freddie, please," you said weakly and emotionally, with tears in your eyes, turning around in the spot as he walked past you. But nothing, he didn't turn, didn't react, simply walked away without so much as a single glance.

"Harry," you implored, taking a step towards him but he too blanked you again, pushing past you and walking quickly up the steps to avoid you.

You stood alone in the cold and empty corridor, feeling more isolated and alone than you ever had and finally allowed yourself to cry. Silent tears fell down your cheeks, shoulders sagging as you cried for everything you had undoubtedly lost, for the treatment you'd received and for the pain you still felt in your head and arms. Finding a spot in a hidden corner, you finally allowed yourself to pull up the sleeve of your robe and look upon the damage that Umbridge had inflicted with her sadistic quill. It was horrendous, an onslaught of slurs and vicious words etched into your body, no doubt intentionally done to leave the scars as a permanent reminder.

You sobbed your heart out in that little nook between two cold, stone pillars as you tried desperately to heal the marks but no spell was strong enough even to numb it in your weakened state.

You eventually made your way to Gryffindor tower, stepping through the portrait and finding the common room practically deserted. You sighed and walked up the stone steps to your dorm, only to find that the door had been shut and your blanket and pillow had been thrown outside of it, a clear sign you were not welcome even within your own dorm. You were painfully exhausted and wanted nothing more than to curl up in your bed and cry into your pillow until you eventually passed out. But you didn't even deserve that.

With a heavy sigh, you collected your blanket and pillow and trudged down the steps back towards the common room, eyes blurry through a mixture of tiredness and tears. You stopped short the second you crossed the last step, seeing Fred and George step in through the portrait hole, your stomach flipping nervously as you anticipated a barrage of insults or horrible pranks, their allegiance turning from you now.

"Fred, Freddie please," you begged, dropping your makeshift bedding to walk towards him, trying to reach out for him. You paused as you saw the redness on the back of his left hand, a clearly fresh punishment, 'I must not break rules'. George intercepts immediately and barges past you, blocking you from getting to Fred as he turns his twin away from you.

"You think you know someone," George mutters as he gently nudges Fred up the stairs, sending you a vicious glare before he walks up after him, once again leaving you alone. Fred didn't even spare a single glance at you, not even to recoil away.

You curled up in a corner armchair as soon as the tears appeared, pathetically dragging the blanket over you and cried until you fell asleep in the uncomfortable chair.

The two weeks that followed were the absolute worst weeks of your life. Umbridge had stripped you of everything you loved in one fell swoop, turned everyone against you and left the place you called home feeling miserable and lonely. You deserved it, you knew that, having ratted them out. You'd antagonised her and now had to live through then consequences, as cruel and twisted as they were.

The glares from everyone you had once called friends hadn't stopped, especially from George, which hurt the most. Fred had outright ignored any effort you'd made to reach out to him, no matter how desperate you'd sounded or how hard you'd tried to make him understand. He didn't care. He believed the lie.

The first week you'd tried to take your meals with the rest of the Gryffindors but it was made abundantly clear to you that you were not permitted nor welcome to join your friends and had been cruelly banished to the end of the table, beside the first years. The second week you'd stopped attending meals at all, not able to push through the shame and embarrassment of being cast away, exiled from your group. Lessons were monotonous and any down time was utterly excruciating as you were left enclosed with the other Gryffindors, namely your ex boyfriend, though no one would make any contact with you. You'd tried to sleep in your dorm but the girls had done nearly everything to prevent you from actually sleeping, talking loudly, setting off whizzbangs inside your curtains and had even transfigured your blanket a few times to varying degrees of horrid things. At the end of the night when you were certain everyone was asleep, usually very late, you'd creep down to the common room and huddle into your uncomfortable chair to sleep, only to be woken mere hours later when the first of the easy risers woke up. Your life was hell.

"There's just something I don't understand," Hermione says as they all stand on the bridge, the golden trio, Ginny and the Twins, all wrapped up in warm clothes and sweaters as they discuss the changes put into place since Umbridge had taken over as Headmistress. Naturally, the conversation had diverted to you, something Fred was entirely displeased about. The group turn to Hermione after her words, intrigued by the change in tone. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes before opening them again, as if building the strength to say her next sentence.

"I jinxed the enrolment parchment, for Dumbledore's Army," she admits, not quite meeting the gaze of the group around her. "It was purely a preventative measure, incase we were betrayed by one of our own. The person who disclosed any secrets would be jinxed to break out in spots, to spell out 'sneak' across their forehead, so we knew who the betrayer was. Y/N didn't have that, she never even had a single spot."

"Blimey Hermione," Ron says a little breathlessly, disbelieving she'd have actually gone that far.

"I know," she says a little defensively, "I just can't work out how she got around it!"

"Maybe she wrote her name wrong? Did she know about the jinx?" Harry suggests but Hermione shook her head, at the very same time that Ginny replied.

"I was behind her, I saw her write her name. It was right."

"Maybe the jinx didn't work?" Harry suggests carefully but stops himself when he receives a forceful glare from Hermione at the very notion of her failure.

"What does it matter? She dobbed us in wether or not she's covered in spots!" Ron says rather harshly, leaning against the wooden bannister.

Fred can't listen anymore, completely overwhelmed by the conversation and the thought of you betraying them. He turns and walks off back towards the castle without so much as a word to the others, not even his twin, and ignores their calls of his name as they watch him fade into the distance.

Spotting you sitting alone in the corner of the room when he returns to the common room, he frowns to himself. He'd known you since the moment you stepped on the Hogwarts express and had loved you for nearly just as long. It was wrong to see you sat alone, so sad and without the usual spark you naturally emitted. Everyone had always been drawn to you, your humour and wit, your dazzling smile, the fact you made everyone aroun you feel comfortable and valued. Too many boys had been drawn to you for his liking but you'd never even given them the time of day, never once wavering in your loyalty to him or ever made him doubt that it was him you wanted. You'd spent years supporting him, helping him and George develop their products, cheering for him loudly at every Quidditch game and had wormed your way into the hearts of every single one of his family members. Secretly, it crushed him to see you so lonely and tired, even if he still felt the sting of your betrayal.

It didn't add up, though he wouldn't disclose this to any of the more angered members of the group, why you would do such a thing. You'd been excited to start the DA, had joined in enthusiastically, kept the secret for so long and most of all you completely despised Umbridge. He couldn't deny that he still loved you, even though he was conflicted with his feelings now, he still held out hope that this would all go away, that there was a reasonable explanation but his anger wouldn't allow him to listen. It killed him to push you away, wanting nothing more than for things to return to normal but he felt a deep sense of betrayal that he couldn't shift.

"Fred?" He heard from behind him, pulling him out of his musings making him realise that he'd been staring at you all this time as he turned towards the person addressing him. Her name was Emery Atkinson, a Gryffindor from the year below that he'd never really acknowledged or spent much time with.

"Yeah?" He replies politely though he couldn't escape the edge of irritation after being pulled away from his thoughts. He watches as the girl giggles as soon as he acknowledges her and tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

"Oh good I got the right twin!" She giggles, ignorant to the blank look she received from Fred. "I was wondering if you had some canary creams I could buy? My brother loves them and it's his birthday soon. Your inventions are so clever, I don't know how you and George find the time between your studies and Quidditch, it must be exhausting. You're so good as Quidditch, I always cheer you on. Plus your girlfriend, but I heard that you weren't together anymore right?"

Truthfully, Fred had only registered the first half of her speech, tuning out after Canary Creams but his attention had been drawn back at the mention of you. He can't help but feel that little stab of sadness at the mention of you, especially someone referring to you as his girlfriend, or Ex rather. In the back of his mind he wonders if you heard that, from your short distance away, he hoped not.

"I still can't believe it, why would she do that? If I was with you I wouldn't even dream of ruining it." She sounds faux-scandalised and quite frankly, rather bitchy as he reaches out to touch the sleeve of his sweater. Fred doesn't humour her and instead takes half a step back subtly, reaching to scratch the back of his head as a discreet way of getting her off.

"Er, yeah I think we have some creams leftover, I'll send George over with some later, alright?"

"Not you?" She says with a sad little face, trying out her best puppy dog eyes that have absolutely no affect on him.

"George deals with the confectionery," he says a little too quickly; which is a complete lie. "Sorry, I've got somewhere to be but I'll let him know you're interested in buying."

He breaks away, giving her a forced but polite smile and a brief, parting wave but it's awkward and he's inwardly cringing as soon as he puts his hand down. Turning to where you had been sat in the chair, he notices you've disappeared and he is instantly overcome with a wave of guilt. You'd heard it all.

—

The next few days passed in blur for Fred, his mind wandering between what he was doing and thoughts of you, like he couldn't concentrate for more than a minute. He felt so conflicted within himself, made worse by the time spent apart from you, the longing beginning to set in. He'd never really been apart from you for very long, at most only a few weeks during the summer holidays and even then you'd have sent numerous letters by now, keeping in contact as much as you could until you were back beside each other. Now it was just torture, having you so close but so far away and the knowledge that he was the one that had pushed you away only furthered his guilt and internal conflict.

Fred was in a terrible mood, battling his thoughts, surviving on very little sleep and now the threat of her sadistic punishment was the icing on the cake of a really crap day when he and George had been forced to Umbridge's office. Harry had been caught trying to use the floo, to alert the order or escape and had been caught red handed by Umbridge. Each member of the DA had been frogmarched into the office, shoved and restrained by members of the inquisitorial squad and each member looked as uneasy as the next. His stomach turned when he saw Ginny held down by Goyle and he fought to get out of Graham Montegue's hold but it was useless when Umbridge mindlessly cast a spell to subdue him.

Harry was sat in the chair in the centre of the room, the first to be questioned with Umbridge hovering dangerously close to him, her temper boiling over as she speaks frantically in his face.

"You were going to Dumbledore weren't you?" She says, leaning down threateningly in front of Harry.

"No," Harry responds.

"Liar!" She screams back and in a move that shocks each member of the DA, she pulls back her hand and slaps Harry hard around the face, the harsh sound echoing through the otherwise silent room.

She pauses for a moment, simply glaring at Harry until her face twists into a sick, twisted grin as she straightens up and composes herself, each movement carefully thought out as she turns her back to him.

"Very well, you give me no choice Potter," she says with an even cadence, her tone dangerously low. "As this is an issue of Ministry security, you leave me with... no alternative, unless Professor Snape arrives within moments."

Fred feels like he can hardly breathe, the tension and unease in the air so thick that the room feels like it's getting smaller by the second. The unpredictability of the woman before them was alarming, the dangerous undertone of her voice despite her light and breezy tone was almost scarier than his worst nightmare.

"The cruciatus curse ought to loosen your tongue," she says, adjusting her pink jacket.

"That's illegal," Hermione states in outrage but Umbridge hardly flinches. Instead, she reaches out for the photo frame of the minister on her desk and pauses briefly to look at it before turning it over and lying it down flat on the desk, so that Fudge could not see her next move. She straightens herself and extends her wand, only to stop when Snape appears by the door, his eyes fixed to her outstretched wand that was pointed directly at Harry.

"You sent for me Headmistress?"

"Snape, yes," she says, taking a step back and everyone in the room exhales, relaxing only slightly. "The time has come for answers, wether he wants to give them to me or not," she says, her eyes flicking to Harry only briefly.

"Might I suggest against the cruciatus curse this time headmistress," he says evenly and carefully, "the consequences of such an audience might be... disagreeable. In fact I would hesitate in conducting any of the prior disciplinary methods in this instance.""

This time? She'd used the cruciatus curse before? And on a student? Prior disciplinary methods? Fred thinks, did he mean the quill?

"Very well," she says after a moment of pondering, her arm falling to her side as she relents, eyes wandering over the all too familiar Quill that sits proudly on her desk before her gaze shifts back to Snape. "Have you brought the veritaserum?"

"I'm afraid you've used up all my stores, the last of it interrogating Miss y/l/n."

Snape carries on speaking but Fred doesn't hear a single word, blood rushing to his ears as his heart pounds. He feels like he's received a stray bludger straight to the chest, his stomach dropping with fresh shame, sadness and overwhelming guilt.

Suddenly it all made sense. She'd tortured you into giving out the information- the cruciatus curse, veritaserum, what else had she done to you?

He couldn't help but let out a dry sob at the information, sensing everyone's eyes on him at the news. He struggled against the holds with everything in him, needing to fix what he'd broken.

He'd believed them, so quickly, believed that you could have betrayed them like that. The pain you must have felt, the loneliness and the guilt and then after your whole ordeal he had cast you aside, pushed you away and never given you a single chance to explain.

He eventually turned to look at George who looked utterly broken by the news, his regretful inner thoughts so evident upon his face. Each member of the DA looked a mixture of guilty, sheepish and sad, realising how wrong they'd been about you and what they'd done to someone who had once been their friend, someone who had suffered so much for all of them.

The meeting seemed to go abhorrently slowly until Umbridge left with Harry and Hermione on a sort of mission based upon a quickly constructed lie and Fred didn't waste a single moment before turning around on the spot and punching Graham Montegue straight in the face as soon as Umbridge had left. Seizing the momentary upper hand, the remaining members of the DA turned on the inquisitorial squad and fired an array of jinxes and spells at them in order to get away.

"Fred, Go!" George had urged whilst stunning Crabbe, allowing Ginny to step free. Malfoy fought back but he was quickly matched by Angelina who covered for Fred, blocking the exit.

"Go, she needs you!" Angelina shouted as she sent a jinx flying towards Cassius Warrington's smug face.

Fred didn't hang about and immediately ran out of the office and towards the common room where he was praying you'd be. It was quiet on the main staircases, perhaps it seemed much quieter because of the lack of portraits and bare walls but even to the few people Fred passed, he offered no explanation nor cared about what they thought. He needed to find you.

"Y/n!" He said bursting through the portrait hole and scanning the common room for you, checking the chair you'd so often occupied but found nothing except a couple of bewildered faces at his strange outburst.

"Y/n?" He called again, walking up the stairs towards the dormitories but received no reply. In his haste, he accidentally misstepped as he climbed up to the girls dorm and nearly triggered the blocking slide to appease but fortunately managed to regain his balance and stress carefully over the path he'd taken so many times before, the secret message in the steps that allowed him to breach the rules.

He threw open your dormitory door and stopped blankly when he found nothing. Your bed looked like it hadn't been slept in, there was hardly any of your things around the bed and the room. Had he come to the wrong room?

"Fred?" Your voice said shyly from behind him and he whipped around to see you looking up at him hesitantly from near the door, holding a few things in your arms and your robe tied tightly around your chest.

"Y/n," he says with a sigh of relief, moving forwards quickly to reach out to you but once again stopping short as he noticed you visibly flinch at his sudden movement. Suddenly the overwhelming agony of guilt and regret hit him anew and he vowed to slow down, hoping not to scare you away.

"I'm so sorry," he said, voice breaking slightly as he looked at your tired, sullen face and those wide, scared eyes. He'd never seen you look so broken and it killed him.

"I didn't, I don't ," he stutters, dropping to sit on the side of your bed. "You haven't been sleeping here have you?"

There's a minor pause and he wonders if you're actually going to reply to him, if he even deserves it, until you step forward and place your things down onto the bedside table. He watches in silence, noting the large book and a few packaged bandages that slip onto the table as you gingerly take a seat beside him, your feet no longer touching the floor.

"Kind of hard to when you're banished by the rest of your dorm," you reply quietly. He can't detect the tone of your voice, expecting it to be sarcastic or unhappy but it actually sounds flat and completely void of emotion.

"The chair," he realises, "you've been sleeping in that chair?" He's slightly bewildered and profoundly ashamed now, not having clicked until now that you'd been there early in a morning and late in the night, much later than you'd ever typically stayed up before. You shrug and turn your attention away, though you're yet to actually meet his eyes.

He drags a deep breath in through his teeth, resisting the urge to hang his head low on his shoulders.

"Y/n, I am so sorry, I, I don't even have words," he says, stumbling over his words- something so uncharacteristic for him that it briefly startles you. "You didn't deserve this, even if you had told Umbridge about us, no one deserves this. We were all so shocked that it could be you, of all people. We never stopped to think of why," he pauses again, steadying himself. "Snape admitted what she did to you, she tried to use it on Harry but he stopped him."

"But the quill was broken? How could she use it on Harry?" You say, finally looking up with a look of complete confusion.

"What quill?" Fred asks, completely lost himself, "the black quills? I meant the cruciatus curse, she, I mean she, on you, didn't she?"

Your silence says everything and he has to close his eyes and steady his breathing at your silent confirmation.

"What quill?" Fred feels a little bolder now and reaches for you but you pull your arm back and place it in your lap, trying not to wince as you catch the healing scars. "This one?"

He holds out his hand and shows you the faint markings from his punishment, 'I must not break rules' barely visible now. He frowns when you shake your head but don't offer any other explanation. He's frustrated that he's not getting anywhere but it's internal and he knows it's not your fault, he just wishes he could help, or go back in time and fix everything.

"Tell me, please," he says, keeping his eyes locked in the side of your face, trying to urge you to look at him. "What happened in that detention?"

"It doesn't matter," you say quickly, hopping down off the bed and stepping over to your trunk to get a fresh shirt from the laundry pile, knowing it would need changing. "I've got to shower."

You go to turn away but Fred lunges for you and grabs your arm to stop you from leaving, making you cry out in pain as soon as his fingers make contact with the tender skin. As soon as the shock wears off, he frowns, looking down at your arm before looking up to your face, seeing tears falling down your cheeks.

"Please baby, please just tell me," he says, voice breaking as his own tears well up in his eyes.

"She told you about the veritaserum?" You ask, assuming anyway and Fred nods. "Then you know what you need to know."

"No, I don't," he says quickly, trying to think of ways to stop you leaving without hurting you. "She used an unforgivable curse on you! Gave you truth serum, you cried when I touched your arm and you have bandages on your bedside table, please just tell me what happened!"

"Fine," you say, pulling your arm back. "You want to know? She tried to force it out of me, tried to get me to drink the stupid tea but I wouldn't. When that didn't work she pulled out that little stupid quill and wrote anything she wanted all over me. You wanted to know about the bandages? Fine," you said viciously, clawing at the fastening of your robe. Underneath was your once crisp, white shirt that had a considerable amount of red blood staining the sleeve. You didn't stop undressing, all but ripping the buttons away as you fought to show Fred what was underneath.

Bandages littered your forearms, with blood oozing out the sides. Fred's frozen as he looks at the bandages on your body, sick to his stomach already.

"Did you know Snape is a skilled occlumens? I didn't, I do now. So after she was playing with that sadistic little quill, writing whatever she wanted into my skin, he enters my mind and shows me every single fear I've ever had, every nightmare. But I didn't say a word, not a single fucking word. Do you know what it's like to have visions forced into your own mind of your boyfriend dying in front of you repeatedly, over and over until you start to go mad? All whilst your skin is slashed open just to get you to talk? Only it didn't work, so she dropped the quill and picked up her wand. I've never felt closer to death in my life but still so far away from it. But I wouldn't talk. So she forced veritaserum in my mouth and I couldn't stop it, she got what she wanted no matter what I'd fought for. And the best part? They don't heal, not truly. Nothing I do stops it, like a constant reminder of what happened."

"Princess," Fred chokes out, tears streaming down his cheeks, fighting to hold back his sobs at your words.

"No, not princess," you say sternly, emotions all falling from your face. "Not anymore."

"Please, I want to make this right, anything I can do, I want to support you," he says, nearly begging. "I have to make this right, I can't lose you."

"No."

Your voice is harsh and stern, your face expressionless again. "You believed them so easily, you all did. You believed I could do that to you, without hesitation. You didn't let me explain, never even looked at me because you were so certain that I could have done it. I've been exiled, banished and forgotten by all of you I called friends without a single thought. So you and your stupid brother and the rest of Dumbledore's friggin army can go fuck yourselves, it's not my fight anymore."

Fred flinches as the door slams shut behind you and he's left to sob openly, his devastation consuming him. Eventually when he returns to his own dorm, George says nothing upon seeing his twin's stricken face and his curtains fully closing around the bed.

The next morning, Fred has already left the dorm by the time George wakes up and doesn't see him at all around the common room or the hall, though he's not surprised. But when he doesn't show to his lessons, George worries and goes in search for his twin with increasing worry. Eventually, he finds him in the library, pouring over an array of books from the restricted section, most of them about healing spells and anatomy.

"Freddie?"

When Fred looks up with red rimmed eyes and an intense look in his eyes, it's clear to George that Fred hadn't slept. "Whatever it is, let me help."

One week. It took one week of endlessly pouring over book after book until they finally found options.

It's early morning on a Saturday when Fred creeps down to the common room was before the sun has risen, seeing you hunched over in your chair. Angelina had told him that they'd apologised profusely to you and had accepted you back with open arms back to the dormitory but you'd simply walked away and carried on sleeping by the fire, not yet willing to forgive them for the treatment you'd endured.

"Y/n, y/n, wake up," he says quietly, carefully touching your shoulder, trying to avoid anywhere that he had seen bandaged.

"Freddie?" You ask sleepily and his heart soars with hope at the noise, the familiarity of it abs the softness of your voice so heartwarming.

"I have something to show you, me and George," he says lightly, waiting for you to wake up.

"Told you both to get fucked," you mumble, squashing any hope he had, but he perseveres.

"Just this once prince-y/n, please," he says quietly. You open your eyes, seeing him still dressed in his pyjamas, pleading with his eyes and looking so vulnerable that you relent and agree to whatever he had planned. Throwing back the blanket, you surprise a groan at the stiffness in your neck and diligently follow him back up the stairs towards his dorm, accepting his hand as he guides you. Your hand fits perfectly into his, just as it always had.

"Where's Lee?" You say as you walk into the dorm room, seeing only George who gives you a small but timid smile.

"Bunking with Ron," Fred says somewhat vaguely, gesturing for you to sit on his bed. The room looks exactly as you remember albeit slightly less dishevelled than you'd experienced previously, but you don't mention anything. Fred takes a seat beside you and George moves forward, grabbing a book from the chair beside his bed.

"We don't know if this will work," George says.

"But it's better than nothing," Fred finishes, gingerly reaching out for your hand.

"What?"

"The wounds," George says gently, "Fred told me, we just want to make them better. Might not get rid of them completely but it's worth a shot."

"Found this in an old healing book, it's a counter curse for wound healing by curse," Fred says, taking the book from George to show you. "Figured Umbridge's quill must have been cursed so this might work. Please let us help."

All it takes is a nod from you, albeit slightly hesitant but truthfully there was no one you trusted more than the twins, before at least.

You could hardly look them in the eyes as you pulled away the bandages, the vile words etched into your skin by her personal sadistic quill. You heard George inhale at the deepest cut along your inner right forearm but didn't react, knowing it would be shocking to anyone.

"Take my hand, if it hurts too much all you have to do is squeeze and we'll stop, okay baby?"

Biting down on your lip to stifle your cries, you hold Fred's hand tightly as George begins to cast the counter-curse, each of you watching on with rapt attention and slight amazement as the cuts begin to slowly knit together. It was working.

You whimper as he works over the deepest, the same one Fred had accidentally caught the week before and Fred's hand squeezes yours automatically for support.

"You're doing so well sweetheart, it'll be over soon I promise," he says quietly in your ear, comforting you in anyway he could.

After the last cut is sealed, George immediately drops down to sit onto his bed, his concentration and energy depleted from focusing so hard. You can't believe it as you look down at your arms, no longer seeing blood and only able to see the faintest of marks and redness where the wounds had once been. Only then do tears begin to fall from your eyes as you launch yourself towards Fred, throwing your arms around him in appreciation. He steadies himself after a moment of being caught off guard and holds you tightly against him, shushing you gently as you cry. His arms wrap around you so perfectly, so protectively and his smell comforts you like to no other, exactly as you remember.

"You did so well, so well, it's okay baby," he coos into your ear. You pull apart slowly and immediately walk over to George, pulling him into a hug though it's a lot less intimate.

"Thank you both so much," you sniffle.

"You're welcome," they answer at the same time, making you smile.

"We've missed you," George says after a moment. "I'm so sorry for what you went through and for what I said. I should have known it wasn't your fault, you've been my best friend for so long and I'm so ashamed of myself for how easily I believed her over you, that should never have happened."

"And you know how sorry I am," Fred says, walking over to you and kneeling down until he's directly in front of you.

"You're the best thing that has ever happened to me and I was an idiot for ever thinking it was you. I know things can't ever go back to how they were before, but I love you so much that I can't lose you. Seeing you hurting almost broke me and I know that you might need time or never see me again but you need to know exactly how I still feel about you."

"It's not just you," you say in reply, heaving out a long breathe, "I pushed people away."

"We deserved it," George says.

"Baby," Fred says gently, getting your attention. "I don't know how to fix this or how to make things better, but I'll do anything. I was an idiot, a complete git but I'll spent the rest of my life trying to make it up to you. Please say this isn't ruined."

For the first time since the incident, you allow yourself to feel hopeful that things could get better, that Fred could love you again. Sat surrounded by the two people you loved most in the world, you finally felt the love and protection you'd been needing since that awful night.

"I want that," you say quietly, picking at the blanket under your fingers, "I just want things to just go back to normal." You raise your eyes up to Fred's to see him smiling back at you, clearly pleased with your words.

"Well, let's start with this then," he says with a mischievous smirk, leaning towards you painfully slowly as if he's giving you plenty of time to say no or push him away. His soft lips press against yours gently and you can't help but feel a warmth spread all over your body, almost like you were defrosting and returning back to you're usual self. His hand reaches up to cup the side of your jaw and you're certain you can feel a fear hit your cheek, though it doesn't come from you.

The next morning, you walk hand in hand with Fred into the great hall for breakfast and sit right back at the centre of the table with your friends. You assume Fred or George had threatened them not to say anything as everyone around you acts normal, pretending the previous weeks didn't exist, though one by one they all apologised to you, most notably Ron and Harry. Ginny thought you were badass for everything you'd been through, not relenting even though you'd been tortured into eventually revealing the secret. Hermione had apologised so eloquently and thoroughly that you both ended up crying in the common room as she explained about the jinxed parchment and how she'd held out hope that it hadn't been you.

Each person made it up to you in anyway they could, admitting their mistakes and regrets and though you would probably never forget, you chose to forgive.

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#emeritusemeritus #emeritusemerituswrites #harry potter #fred weasley #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley masterlist #Fred Weasley angst #request #taglist

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acknowledgetheabsurd · 2 years

Text

2013 Camus book count: 13

2022 Camus book count: 185 :’)

#albert camus #camus #absurd #absurdism #camus book cover #notebooks #a happy death #the stranger #the plague #therebel #the myth of sisyphus #the fall #resistance rebellion and death #the first man #lyrical and critical essays

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gremlingottoosilly · 5 months

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I know there’s a human resistance rebellion they could probably snatch some baby humans from or something, but what about like human breeding or something? is that a thing in this universe? Since they’re more akin to pets I was wondering if there was some sort of like human breeders.

Since there’s also like selective breeding for pets there could also be selective breeding for only the most fertile humans (even if it technically doesn’t work that way). They might not even keep the males, it could be like how they just harvest sperm and artificially inseminate them?

Just worldbuilding from your silly local rice ball lover 🍙

That's a really good point, thank you, Onigiri anon!! Yes, some humans are kept as nothing more than breeding mares to move humans. Unfortunately, in the initial uprising, a large population of humans, especially the most vulnerable ones, were killed by monsters, hunger, and the elements when the civilization fell into dystopia for the first time. Monsters quickly learned that just killing every human they see isn't really a viable scenario, and someone had to pick up where the others have fallen. Men and women are both viable for reproduction, esp for species that lay eggs, like Konig or Gaz. With monsters of egg-laying type, no matter if they are birds or reptiles or sea life, they are using humans as incubators, since they need warm and soft bodies for the eggs to nourish on. It's more like a reverse seahorse situation, when you're inserted with eggs, but don't really have a genetic intake on how the babies are going to turn up. There is a chance of a more traditional pregnancy with children resembling both parents, but it's extremely rare and frowned upon by monsters - after all, humans are deemed inherently weak by any monster. Selective breeding saves both male and female specimens, as long as they have more advantages to raise the monster brood properly - I imagine wider hips, softer bodies in general, resilience to pain, and the submissiveness that gets really stuck in their heads as a result. With humans sold in pet shops, it's no wonder that some monster species are taking their role as caretakers and raisers of new human generations for further breeding - as fucked up as it might be. some humans get released by human resistance, although if a person comes from this indoctrinated, monster-pleasing background, they wouldn't be able to survive in the wild, in most cases. Also as a fun fact, humans have much larger life spans than any human would - Konig can easily clock up at least 100 years and more and more, as long as he isn't killed - but the thing is, that human's biology gets irreversibly changed after a prolonged and repeated exposure to monster semen. Our poor breeding wifey, she doesn't even know that aging isn't a problem anymore( death of old age isn't going to help her get free of Konig, they have mated, and she will be alive for much, much longer, her life span increasing with every time an egg or semen gets deposited in her.

#cod #konig x reader #yandere konig #konig #tw: monster fucking #monster!141 #cod x reader #monster!konig

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sprout-fics · 2 months

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simon + royal ball + "you are the bane of my existence--and the object of all my desires. night and day i dream of you." :3333 thank you!

Bane of my existence (Valentines Day requests)

Tags: GN Reader (Though aimed more towards male reader), Royalty AU, Bodyguard Ghost, Brat coded reader, Confessions, Possessiveness, Forbidden love if you squint

They call your protector the specter of death.

Clad in dark armor, an obsidian sword in his sheath, your knight sports a helmet with the engraving of a skull- a warning to all that dare approach him that he himself has escaped the grasp of the grim reaper.

Ghost, he calls himself, the dark knight that is your constant sentinel, following ever at a distance and caught in your shadow. He refuses to divulge his real name no matter how you attempt to pry it from him, offering only short, curt remarks to your questioning. He speaks little, your bodyguard, hardly seems to eat or sleep, adheres to his oath of your safety even as he seems to not even notice you are there.

You were still young when he was assigned to your side, still a young heir who was carefree and naive about the danger that surrounded your life. You had been sick for days with the assassination attempt, the poison curling low and viscous in your inside until you’d miraculously awoken. Ever since, the man who becomes your constant guard had remained at your side to keep you safe.

You resisted at first despite the fear left inside you from your near death. You had try more than once to shed him, had snuck out windows and crawled down trellises only to find him standing irritated at the bottom, had dressed a maid in your likeness and stealthily escaped to the stables, only to find him leaning against the stall with your beloved mare, waiting. You’d tried to annoy him so he’d leave you alone, but the ghost who had become your knight seemed to not notice your childish antics. He’d only offered wry, cutting remarks that had you demand he be taken from your service- only to be told no other knight in the whole kingdom was as skilled as he.

He’d endured your petty attempts to shake him at first, bored and annoyed at your behavior. When you’d ridden too fast in the glade outside the castle he’d cast your mare’s reins and led you back to the stables despite your protests. He’d caught you as you slipped from one of the roofs in an attempt to climb it, had even tossed you over his shoulder despite your shrieking protests when you’d attempted to dip your toes in the rushing, flooded river near your garden.

He’d muttered under his breath, had called you petulant, spoiled, naive, all the things you were, you’d been enraged.

Yet as the months and years had passed, and the weight of your future crown began to weigh heavy on your head, you’d learned to listen to him as he scathingly scolded you for sliding down the banister, for climbing a tree to rescue a kitten, for getting too close to a sword fight in your desire to watch.

Older now, you’d grown out of your youthful childishness and into a true heir to the throne. You know now the grave responsibility of your birthright, realizing your previous frivolities were nothing more than a immature rebellion in an attempt to find freedom despite your destiny. Ghost, likewise, had eased as you’d matured. At first your knight, he’d become your instructor, your ally. It had been Ghost who had taught you to wield a sword, to make a bow from scratch and hunt birds for the arrow feathers. It had been Ghost who’d strictly overseen your sparring practice, who had reluctantly offered his advice in your studies of battles and armies. And so, a deep friendship and bond has blossomed forth between you over the years, one unshaken by the forces that guided the ruler you would be.

Neither of you would ever say it aloud, but ‘friends’ felt too shallow a term foe the thing Ghost had become to you. You trusted him innately, sometimes more than yourself, easily offering your life into his hands so he could keep it safe. For him his duty to protect you always came first and foremost, but you knew that he too had grown fond of you.

You felt it in the way he offered dry humor to your conversation, stepped before you at the first signs of danger, indulged on rare occasions with a drink that had him lift his helmet to expose his plush, pale lips. You recognized it in the way he indulged the remaining reckless streak of your youth, raced after you on horseback or sparred with you. It annoyed him still, the occasional bout of rebelliousness you offered if only to fondly annoy him, and you knew he allowed it only because it was you.

And secretly, in the midnight darkness of your chambers, you pined for him.

When it came time for you to marry, you sought further camaraderie with him as you offered wry commentary on your matches he was all but happy to return. You were stubborn about the whole affair, had sent away multiple suitors in endless frustration to your father the king. Yet when he had looked to Ghost to speak sense to you, Ghost found himself with his eyes anywhere but towards his liege.

In the glittering lights of the ballroom, you sip idly on wine as another suitors tries desperately to curry your favor.

“The wine sours with the company.” You remarked to Ghost, and your suitor froze before exiting dejectedly. Ghost sighs, exasperated, and you grin at him.

“If I climbed from the balcony to escape here, would you follow me?” You ask him, cheeks warm with the bitter taste of liquor.

“Maybe I should let you fall.” He answers back, eyeing you with a side-long gaze. “Might teach you a needed lesson.”

You know he doesn’t mean it, and it makes your heart grow all the fonder.

“How soon do you think I can escape this?” You ask, nodding to the lively music and twirling couples in the dance hall.

“You should stay.” Is all Ghost offers.

“And if I don’t?” You inquire

You needn’t ask. You know he’d follow you. If you were to ever walk to the edge of the earth, you know he’d jump first if only to catch you.

“I’m sure if you took your helmet off you’d be the talk of the ball.” You tell him in a meek attempt to see the face you’ve never been witness to.

“Hardly.” Ghost scoffs.

“Are you ugly?” You ask, and Ghost levies a clever stare towards you.

“Far from it.”

You tell yourself the warmth that rises to your cheeks is just the wine.

It’s a few more minutes before you sigh, stand and make your way to the balcony with Ghost trailing after you. You stand there in the cool night air, looking to the stars beyond the palace walls and wondering if they can somehow see your future.

“Will you leave me when I ascend the throne, Ghost?” You ask quietly as he stands by the doorway.

Ghost pauses.

“No.” He answers at last. You huff, head drooping as you refuse to look at him.

“Why not? Your duty was to ensure I survived to become monarch, nothing beyond that.”

Ghost remains silent, and you try to ignore the way your chest clenches around his refusal to speak.

It fails, for you turn to him, expression bitter, and ask him: “Is that all I am to you? A charge, a duty? Something to be protected and then abandoned when the time comes?”

In the light cast by the ballroom, you see Ghost's eyes go wide.

The silence hangs between you, and as it stretches on you struggle to tear your eyes away from his.

At last, Ghost steps towards you, and in one fluid motion removes his helmet and sets it at your feet. His gloved hands cup either side of your face, and you gasp at the full display of emotion on his face as he finally speaks.

"You are the bane of my existence--and the object of all my desires. Night and day I dream of you." He tells you, chest thrumming as his voice deepens. “I will follow you to the throne, into battle, I’ll lay down my sword if you commanded it. If ever you should desert the crown, I will follow you there too.”

You listen with widening eyes, chest thumping as your heart threatens to tear itself asunder.

“Ghost.” You manage at last, emotions strangling your throat so his name is nothing more than a garbled gasp.

“As long as you command it, I will stay by your side.” He tells you, hands suddenly tightening as if he’s restraining himself from the cataclysm of his own confession. “You are mine to follow.”

You hands, shaking though they are, find his as he raises your face to his.

“Then stay with me.” You whisper as his lips draw closer. “Until I have nothing more to give you. And even then, stay longer so that I can have you by my side.”

The kiss that you bestow upon him feels like the epilogue of a long, wondrous tale.

#ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost x reader #simon riley x you #simon riley x reader #valentine's day requests

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moondirti · 1 year

Text

genesis

But the white light highlights the captain’s silhouette; grown-in mutton chops, broad shoulders that double your own. He’s wearing a beanie, pulled to his brow, melting into the shadow that conceals his eyes from you. It’s the first time you truly see him – this much of him, anyway. And he’s startlingly younger than you would’ve thought, hair still packed a uniform brown, the occasional wisp of grey speckled in the midst.

pairing: Captain John Price x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ mdni) word count: 8k summary: the progression of a spite-fuelled relationship warnings: enemies to lovers, literally 4k words of unfettered smut, virginity loss, reader is given a backstory, light corruption kink, tummy bulge, choking, mentions of death, mentions of torture, kidnapping, alcohol, alluded misogyny notes: this became something else entirely and i apologise. credit for the 'choking with an arm' thing goes to @sprout-fics and, by extension, @yeyinde 's anons lol

The first time you meet the captain, his edges blend in with the wet asphalt and gunmetal downpour. Midnight adrenaline, vision bleary with disrupted sleep; you’re only able to make out the flickering end of a fat cigar, tucked between his lips and smouldering orange, somehow still alight despite the weather.

You suppose it’s that ironclad conviction, the one you’ve heard of in passing on base. Smelted to every bullet, carved to fit the crows feet that frame his eyes. You see it now, tainted with a conscience rebellion – non discrete, as they’d called it, enough to bend nature itself to suit his tobacco fix.

You still, pausing for him to give you the rundown. He doesn’t approach you, not yet, caught in a hissed argument with one of his men. Their voices drift in the howling wind; his, like smoke, curling with a rough aggression.

Hair plastered to your forehead, water gathering on the tip of your nose; you quietly thank your hasty decision to throw on a lab coat before coming. It proves to be the only barrier between the rain and your dishevelled self – loose pyjama bottoms coming to your calf, knitted socks that start to soak through your army-grade boots. Not a state you commonly adapt for first impressions, though it’s not like you’d had much of a choice.

Paramedics swarm the helicopter Price had emerged from, pulling out a limp body, blood splattering on the landing pad to be washed away without a trace. It’s nothing you weren’t expecting as the medic on call tonight – the shrill beeps of your pager were enough of an indication that something had gone wrong. Yet your mind reels to pinpoint the face that lulls onto the stretcher. Wrinkled nose, quivering lips – they’re alive, but only just.

You don’t recognise them. The cooling relief is stupidly selfish.

A minute later; two soldiers hop off the craft, trooping off with their guns tucked near their chests, entirely dutiful. You note the direction they take, heading towards Laswell’s office – assigned report duty, no doubt.

Five minutes pass, and the pilot disengages as well. The chopper powers down from a loud roar to a disruptive quiet. The storm still boils overhead, thunder a cracking whip to what had been a peaceful night. You resist the urge to wipe the drops that weigh your eyelashes. You’re soaked to the bone, now.

Ten. The patient would have reached the hospital bay. An irking sort of impatience begins gnawing on your gut, dangerously fiery for the situation at hand. You cough, despite knowing the captain won’t hear you, and square your shoulders as you take him in again. He hasn’t so much as looked in your direction, locked into a series of gruff nods and whispered commands with the sergeant.

Is his comrade’s life really of that little urgency to him?

The thought leads you down a path you do not want to take. It’s decidedly destructive, a match to the rush of fuming petrol that courses through you. Breathe through it, a clipped voice echoes back to you, reverberating on starched walls and a cold leather couch. Rationalise. Your psychiatrist’s office, post reassignment. I’d wager you didn’t take that time to think before the incident in Bulgaria, hm?

Pompous bitch.

You draw in a long inhale, holding it until your chest aches with blurring hypoxia. Black dots your vision, spurring a pounding alarm at your temples. Your fists clench, unclench, then clench again, nails digging crescent moons into the pruned skin of your palms. You wait, and wait, and think you puncture yourself, a new warmth pooling into your cuticles.

Then, when Price’s conversation dwindles, the flame tempers, mental barricade forming in its stead. A necessary precaution; you steel yourself and prepare for the likely gruesome incident debrief as he breaks off and starts to approach.

Only, he marches right past you.

You’re stuck staring ahead, frozen in paralytic shock. Heart lurching, your body thumps with it, disorienting when you turn to his shrinking form.

“Captain!” Your yell whips with the gale. He tosses you a brief look over his shoulder, pulls an especially large drag from his cigar, and keeps walking.

You snap to your senses and jog to catch up.

“Bulle’ to the chest, punctured a lung. Concussion from tumblin’ rubble but not much else.” He keeps a quick pace ahead of you. It takes all you’ve got not to slip as you disentangle his words from an ashen irritation.

“Was he given any medication that might interfere with the anaesthesia?”

“Negative.”

“Was the wound sealed to keep air from being sucked in?”

“Affirmative.”

“Did he lose consciousness at any point in time?” You strain, legs screaming as you finally come side-to-side with him.

“Doctor–”

“I need to know these things for the procedure to run as smoothly as pos–”

“Doctor.” He snaps, stomping to a sudden halt before facing you fully. You’ve come to the right wing’s entry, secured with a strict-access passcode your rank is not privy to. The most you know of it is what you can see through the doorway window; a fluorescent hall, illuminated despite the late hour. An office at the end of it. Shepherd, perhaps, engraved on a nameplate.

You shuffle in place. Your pyjamas cling to your skin, dewy disposition a reminder of how ridiculous you must look. Lip quivering, you tuck it underneath a sucking tooth and glare up at him.

“Sir.”

“You’re wastin’ your bloody time with this. One of my men is choking on his own blood,” His finger prods to the general direction the patient was taken in. “And you’re here, mm. Why is that?”

“It’s procedure.” The statement escapes as more of a hiss than anything else, his hypocrisy clawing at the gummy lining of your lungs.

“Procedure can fuck off this once, that shit’s for the textbooks. Things differ on the field, Doc.”

It hits you, then, who he sounds like. The revelation bleeds into your tone. “Excuse me?”

“You’re excused. Now go and make sure my sniper doesn’t die on me.”

The rain’s eased to a drizzle now. He leaves you molten, steaming with a sulphurous rage.

“Stop moving.”

“Can’t exactly do that now, eh?”

By the fifth time you cross paths with the captain, you’ve already decided you don’t like him.

To the outside eye, your position does nothing to suggest it. Lewd at best – you sit, crouched between his legs, your elbows propped up on muscled thighs to stabilise the tremor in your hands. The floor beneath you rumbles, the humvee rolling over rocky terrain in its attempt to exfil. Price, stabbed; once in the left lumbar, twice in the umbilical region.

Ichor soaks through your compress. Your fingers are tacky with dried gore.

The car is stiflingly hot, a vessel for the trapped Uzbekistanian sun and high tensions. Large gulps of air prove insufficient; oxygen runs scarce, recycled through the systems of the several soldiers present. You’d given your seat to Garrick – who, currently, has no use for it, stuck halfway out a window to shoot at your pursuers.

It’s loud. It’s chaotic. The sergeant driving has no goddamn idea how to do so without messing up your work and your clothes chafe over sweat in the most excruciating way possible. It took you fifteen tries to thread the suture through the needle. It’ll take ten times that to actually get his wound closed.

And it’s not his fault. None of this can be pinned on him.

Yet–

“Can’t understand why you don’t take the time to reload your ballistic plates. This whole thing–”

“Jus’ do your damn job, doctor.”

You swallow the snarl that tears up your throat, burying it alongside a grave of acrid emotion you reserve for men just like him. This situation is profoundly familiar. Bulgaria; the crunch of your general’s nose under your fist. Betrayal sour on your tongue, a sting like you’d never before felt it. It took a whole team to hold you back as he spit upon your bruising temple.

A cunt. That’s what you are, girl.

Pray tell, then, what does that make you?

Your next seam is done with fervent hostility.

It’s only when your penultimate knot is tied that you force yourself to reel in your wandering mind and focus on the task at hand. You’ve one more laceration to mend after this, the length of it throbbing underneath a wad of temporary gauze. It’s that, maybe – festering evidence of the raid you’d just survived – that flushes you in further warmth, a boiling panic still itching beneath the surface. Rip release grenades, the dust of unsettled gunpowder. Your calf twinges from where it was caught under a pile of debris.

C’mon, doc. Up. Yeah… yeah, there we go. You broken?

Fine.

Or. Perhaps–

Giving flesh. Not rock-hard with chiselled definition – his body doesn’t carve into pronounced sinew – but solid, all the same. Packed brawn underneath a stretch of ivory skin. His shirt, rucked up to his chest. A trail from beyond his waistband, curly hairs, stark against a crimson backdrop.

Your conviction warbles, so you say nothing when you move to pierce him again.

It’s unfortunate timing, really.

His hips jolt at the cold bite of the needle head. The car rocks over a pothole. Some greater destiny, a cackling trio of asshole fates, weave their inexplicable thread. You’re only able to pull your hand back in time – the threat of stabbing him yourself a looming prospect.

Your face isn’t so lucky.

It comes into full contact with the swell between his legs.

His grip shoots to your hair, winding at the roots to hold you firm. It’s enough to steady you as you pull back almost immediately, but the phantom feel of his crotch shoved to your nose is slower to leave.

For a painstaking moment, the two of you lock onto each other’s stares. Price’s brows buoy, hooding over florentine eyes that spark with an untapped choler. You pretend not to notice the way his lips twitch, how his hand – still on your head – clenches the slightest bit tighter.

Ticking bomb, wedged in the divet between two floorboards.

Click, click, click.

One. Two. Three.

Three beats until you clamp your jaw shut, gathering your surely obscene expression to one of mortified irritability. It’s all you allow yourself.

“I told you to sit still.”

Despite the way your words slip between clenched teeth, they sound with whopping pliability. Like he could grind them down, pestle on mortar, and watch as they unfurl, syllable by syllable, to shape some semblance of truth.

(Honesty; a notion tucked along with happier memories of staying up longer than you should, facing your bunkmate with a bottle of cheap tequila on your lap.

There’s gotta be something you can drink to.

You’re just wild, Tess.

Fair, fair. Hmm, alright. Never have I ever…

She cackles at the grimace you pull.

–given head. Yeah! That’s easy, right?

Hm.

Wait. Seriously?

Everyone’s intolerable.)

“You watch your tone.” The growl rips from him then, laden with the scratch of singed newspaper, tobacco clustering at the back of his throat. It’s not so much a command than it is a reminder, a recall to your second meeting where you’d found the captain pouring over your file. Swilling the last amount of amber liquid from a glencairn: you nee’ to learn to control yourself, doc. Not everyone is so forgiving.

You’d only meant to collect a batch of vaccination records for his new recruits. You’d left as you seem to always do with him, rage burrowing into claggy marrow.

Forgiving. Right.

“Sorry, sir.” It’s the farthest thing from genuine.

You don’t know what you hate more. The husky chuckle that erupts at your hushed admonishment, or the fact that you miss them when his fingers leave your hair.

Something shifts between the sixth and the seventh time.

It isn't forfeit, not by a long shot. The gods wrote you with a deathly stubbornness; acquiescent Sisyphus, bound to roll your boulder up an impossibly steep incline. Your back will ache, and your tendons could tear, and you’d continue pushing for the sheer fact alone. Palms sliced open on abrasive rock, you’ve long since stained your white flag with blood and the pink salt of lake atanasovsko.

(You used to compliment Tess on her hair – ice blonde, almost white. Her face had matched that deathly pallor when you pulled her up on the grassy bank.)

No. It’s a lot more subtle.

As subtle as kidnapping can be.

A cramped safehouse, post-evacuation. You’d commandeered the one bathroom for a moment alone, crouched over a pail of tepid water functioning as a sink.

Sand clings to you like second skin, grime piled in impossible crevices you can’t clean no matter how hard you try. It’s Price’s gore that washes off first, tainting the murky pool for any who wishes to use it next. Rippling red; it doesn’t disgust you to cup it up and wash your face.

Three raps strike on the rotted-wood door.

“Yeah?”

“There’s, uh… there’s a slight issue we need you for.” Gaz says.

Drawing a sharp inhale, you shrug on your coat and leave to find him standing by the hall. He quirks his head towards the main space, where various voices overlap one another in an effort to make themselves heard. You’re able to single out his amidst the mix, a clipped bark that’d hold more weight had he not been stabbed.

A kid, as it turns out, is the source of such contention. A local who’d seen the red cross on your armband and recognised the universal symbol.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to figure that out. I speak a rough Uzbek. Think she mentioned something about her mother being sick,” A sergeant – the one driving earlier – briefs you.

“Right.” You lick your lips, locating Price in your peripheral before crouching to meet the girl’s height. “Is she nearby, sweetheart?” Her feet curve towards one another, clad in flower-adorned sandals that have seen brighter days. You smooth down the flyaways at her temple, noting the way she searches for meaning in your gentle expression. Hindsight tells you she looked terrified.

But before you can ask again, you’re met with a gruff command.

“You’re not goin’ to help, doctor.”

Incredulity spikes, a ruthless parallel to his own dismissal. You slowly turn to catch his eye, piercing from the end of a table. He’s still in his tactical gear, his shirt darkened and sticky across the front. You hadn’t had time to wrap his wounds.

“Come again?”

“It’s not our mission.”

You can’t miss the meaning camouflaged in his vague rejection. Current company dissipates into ash; tunnel-vision – all you see are pursed lips, bearers of an apathetic verdict. Not goin’ to help – like it isn’t your sole reason for being here.

Temper flaring into a whistling fusillade, you shoot to your feet. Your tone is the first victim, piquing with violent emotion. “She’s just a girl!”

“We don’ know that for sure–”

“Jesus fucking christ, captain. If you think the enemy’s got their talons this far out, then what are we even doing here?”

“All I’m saying–”

“I don’t want to bloody hear it! She’s come to me for help, so I’m the one who’ll make this decision. Should I be ambushed, or worse, you have my full bloody permission to leave me behind.”

Usually, the bitter aftertaste of citrus rage scalds you. But when you had walked out into the dust-clogged afternoon, you felt nothing but grim satisfaction.

It only lasted as long as it took for a bag to be placed over your head, a blunt force accompaniment, the butt of a gun to your cheek that sends you spiralling into a brutal goodnight.

The seventh (technically, eighth, as you come to learn) is at a bar in Belgium, two months later.

Littered in novel scars, the largest one spanning your cheekbone, you swish a dram of soju and drum your fingers on a tacky bartop. The patrons that had originally crowded the space have long since filtered out – your original distraction funnelled to just the drink in your hands.

So, you sit and think of nothing.

(Everything, actually, but memories fizz like static. Your period as a hostage stands out as the sharpest of the bunch.)

It’s been a week since you’d been dismissed from the hospital – though you can’t say the same for your stay there, days fused together to stretch over an undisclosed amount of time. You’re usually on top of things, but being the one in the clinical cot had thrown you off your element. For good now, you think. You prowl Belgian streets with little aim and direction, pardoned from duty until they figure out what to do with you.

Which makes you wonder how exactly he finds you.

It’s a hole-in-the-wall, seedy establishment. Swallowing light, artificial lanterns a mild buffer to vignette shadows, slithering up brick walls.

Still, the captain gravitates to you in your lowest moment – as he evidently has a habit of doing – and takes the stool next to you like he belongs.

“Nice to see a friendly face.” You chortle.

Nice gives him all the updates he needs. A debrief on what changed since Uzbekistan; the new woman whittled by torture and the painful consequence to her own derision.

“You look older.” He nods.

“Wishful thinking?”

“Maybe.”

He urges the bartender for scotch with a water back, neat, and toasts the foot of a cigar. You hide your simper behind your bottle. Not everyone is different.

“How’s the damage?” You point to his gut. He looks confused for a second before remembering the circumstances of your next-to-last interaction.

“How’s yours, mm?”

“Healed.”

“I can see that. Looks better than it did when you’d been extracted.”

You skim over the fact that he was there for your rescue and breathe in the smoke that twines. Wood, burnt ochre that’s become synonymous with him. You suppose you’d missed it; that rendezvous point for when you were beaten within an inch of your life. It’d been a far warmer scent than rusted metal and sour mattresses.

The conversation dwindles to silence, then. Part of it is the ache that stones you, the revelation that you don’t hate him as much as you’d convinced yourself on. A nebulous inkling that you’d dreamt about him, more than once, curled in on yourself and sore with rue.

You have my full bloody permission to leave me behind.

But it’s prickling, too. You don’t have it in you to revisit her; you – Doc – whoever emerged all those years ago with an ingenuous vengeance. You focus on the present for the first time in forever, content to relish in it.

So–

The two of you sit like that for a long while after, soaked in dim light, basking in an old dynamic that hasn’t quite found its footing yet. It isn’t until Price finishes his drink do you pinpoint the courage to interject again.

“You were right.”

He ponders your confession, turning it over while he takes you in anew.

“I was.” It’s gruff, short.

And it could end there. A brusque exchange doubling as your apology, more than you ever thought you’d give. But something gnaws on your chest, cramming up in the space between your pounding heart and a rib; the need to spill, to make yourself known, so – if they decide to decommission you – you leave an honest crest in his impression. This might be the last time.

Pyjamas and waterlogged socks. Naivety that bites. You haven’t exactly been the best version of yourself.

You can’t speak the full truth of it, so you start on a tangent you hope will paint it for you.

“I was a soldier before I was a medic, y’know. Fought in the Bulgarian spec-ops.”

“Mm. I read your file.” Still, he takes another drag and settles an elbow on the table. Whether he’s curious or genuinely wants to hear you out, it gives you the go-ahead to continue.

“We were cornered, once, out near the Black sea. Every single one of us was shot. By the end, two were killed, with four following in close footsteps.”

You knock back another swill of soju before continuing.

“The general ordered an immediate exfil, but the chopper only had space for four bodies. They made the decision to pull every man out of the water, KIA included, while leaving the only other girl and I for dead.”

Florentine eyes. They flicker with a concern you might have seen before, but were too busy spitting at to properly appreciate.

“Tess was my oldest friend. Couldn’t save her, so–”

“You try to save everyone else.”

Your lips pull in a thin line.

“But you can’t.”

“Yeah.” You chuckle. “I know that now.”

“So where are you headed, doc?”

“What–”

“I mean. What are you goin’ to do with yourself, now that this noble mission’s been fried, eh? They’re discussing your discharge. Should that happen, you’d be a civilian.”

“I get that. There’s nothing for me out there, though.”

“Start with what you haven’t allowed yourself this far, then.”

And he places something on the table in front of you. A hotel keycard, Navarra Brugge printed in a decadent font across its length. The building two blocks away. You bite your lip, mind reeling with every connotation to what the gesture might mean.

You settle on the most plausible.

“How’d you know?”

Looking up at him, your chest flutters when he grins. Handsome. How’ve you never noticed that?

“Saw it on that pretty face the first time we met. I figured, a girl so far up her own ass. Probably never had the petulance fucked out of you.”

You scoff with faux offence.

(Part shame).

So, something shifts between the sixth and seventh time you meet.

Maybe it’s the way you seriously consider the four digits after he leaves – scrawled in black ink, the number to his room.

Hands like the blistering end of a cigar, searing skin as they keep you in place. Your jaw seized in one, the other curled firmly around your waist. You think he’s trying to savour it, the sight of you keening for him, glossy eyes that hang on to the last bits of defiance. Stupid, drunk – not from the sip of soju you’d taken earlier, but off the scent of suede and ash alone.

You lean forward, searching for slightly chapped lips. He lets you get close enough that his moustache tickles your nose, imbued with tobacco, before pulling away. It’s hellsent, some tantalising choreography he’s undoubtedly danced before. But your consequential whine is short-lived, tempered under a severe look when his eyes meet yours. Fingers crushing together, squeezing, so your cheeks pucker up for him. A promise. A warning.

“How do y’want this to go, mm?” He says, low enough for the words to reverberate through you. Punctuated – his voice is hoarser at this hour.

In the dim lamplight, your brows knit together. He must read the confusion.

“You want me to take it easy on you, dove?” His palm smooths down your waist, eye contact locked while it does, looking for something you wouldn’t be able to pinpoint in yourself. Price’s touch curves along your hip, catching the hem of your jeans, before circling back to cup your behind. It’s gentle at first, a barely-there graze, feeling you out. You puff into the shared air.

But you can’t speak, not with the grip on your face. You resort to clenching your teeth, hoping he can feel the tick of it.

“Mm. I see,” His breath fans over you. It’s hot with malt, smoke cloyed to the tongue. The hand on your ass tightens, cleaving between flesh, forcing you upwards. Your pants press taut over your cunt. “How ‘bout this… tell me if it sounds good, eh?”

You nod. He pats your thigh in response.

“I’m goin’ to fuck you how you need to be fucked. Can’ promise it won’t be rough, but if you ever need to tap out, just say the word. Got it?”

Again, you nod, mouth parting once his clutch eases on you. The concession dangles for a moment, bobbing in the thick pause he takes. Two blinks later, still nothing. You take the opportunity to try and capture his lips, a little too eagerly.

He wrenches you back.

“I need t’hear you say it.”

Of course. A verbal affirmation. But for– what, exactly? Consent, all things considered, though he simmers with something else. Satisfaction teetering towards a precipice, a covered pot threatening to over boil. His fingers dig into you like they know your softest points, having stewed over them before. You shiver, fluttering with a familiar venom, and think to the humvee in Uzbekistan. Crouched between his legs, propelled onto his crotch. The swell that twitched under your cheek, throbbing, new blood.

Say yes to yield. To give in to the command of someone new, who’ll know deeper parts of you than what you’d ever allowed. The clutch of your cunt, the sound of your moans. Vulnerability he could exploit, should he want to.

Yet–

He’s asking, leading you along and stopping at every hitch. There’s a lifebelt tied to the end of some rope, a thrown-out line; an act worth more than you could credit to anyone before him.

I need to hear you say it.

It comes from some cavity within you – a rotten place, blackened with decades long neglect.

“I understand.”

Obedience. Just this once.

(Then, if the invite extends–)

“That’s a girl.”

Lightning shoots through you at the praise, flaying you open to his steady presence. Warmth; he’s alive in the way that trees are, thickset, unwavering, rooted to your core as you bleed and breathe and choke on your own delirium. You don’t want it to be known, how reactive you can be.

Though, you suppose, that’s printed in red ink, stapled to the front page of your file.

You nee’ to learn to control yourself, doc.

Not here, not now.

Flooded with the woes of golden pleasure, you don’t notice his subtle nudge upwards, tilting your chin. It’s only when he finally, finally, gives you what you want – the press of his mouth to yours, full force, rough like he said he’d be – that you touch back to reality.

Maduro flavoured spit, he overwhelms you with an unrelenting magnetism. Teeth clashing, his hands on your neck, your hair. It hurts, borderline bruising. Should he give you a moment’s breath, your lips would swell blue, burst capillaries a service announcement to anyone who thinks they could measure up. But Price keeps you to him, his beard rubbing you raw when he pushes his tongue into your mouth.

And it’s scorching, heavy. Folding to find the scars dotting the insides of your cheeks, bitten tissue in fits of rage. Sucking the mewls that stream from you as he meets them with his own, guttural groans. You collapse into pliability as he kisses – no, devours – you, losing that sparking centre, torrid effervescence blurring your senses. There’s no rhyme or reason, no connection to the person you’d hammered out of stone. Just drool, a dominating masculinity to melt into. Sticky like a fruit popsicle on some summer’s day.

He manoeuvres your head, tilting to the right, so he can push further onto you. An expert in all things dizzying; you can hardly keep up with the targeted onslaught. It takes all that is in you to breathe, clinging desperately to the front of his shirt – for purchase, for plea – and relinquish control.

Your back arches, front grinding onto him. He breaks away, saliva webbing between you, and tuts when you try to follow and bridge contact once more. “So eager, dove.”

Hovering near lightheaded rapture, you say the first thing that occurs to you. “Any slower and I might take charge.”

Entirely untrue. You’re porcelain in the molten pool of his desire. Harder, and he’d break you.

But his vicious snarl is enough to balance the lie. A scale tips in you, heavy stone of anticipation weighing on your gut.

“Mm. Is that how you want to play then?”

“Dunno what you mean.”

“Oh, you maddening li’l minx,” Price rasps, backing you up against the edge of his bed. He keeps you from falling onto it with a hand around the base of your neck. “I’ll show you what I mean.”

Reprimanding, he doesn’t choke you – not quite – though the grip on your throat is anything but gentle. Chafing calluses pressing into gooseflesh-prickled skin, you’re braced to his whims – locked into suspended animation as he takes you in. Your lashes, clumped with blissed tears. The constant, whistled whine, streaming from a punctured lung. Your sweat-flushed cheeks, honeyed sheen, tangy with iodine and still, sweeter than most that drips from you.

You, stuttering with frenzied pants, and searching for nirvana in his gaze alone.

His beard glistens with a concoction of both your saliva, and he smiles proudly under the varnish. You scramble on your tiptoes to meet him when he dips in again.

Price, captain. Spearhead of any team, bending rain to mould over a hefty cigar as he barks out rough commands. You’d seen it then, back on base, shivering under a debilitating monsoon. This fire, an unquestioned charge that threatened to batter you into place. One that does exactly that, right now. But you take it gladly when you're manhandled back onto a nest of cool cushions, crawling to your elbows to watch as he pulls his shirt off broad shoulders. Lift your hips for me. Putty, he peels your jeans off with one fell swoop.

“Fuck, look at you.”

Sinking deeper into oblivion, you grasp onto conventional straws – acts calculated in well-lit showrooms. A babydoll smile, a virginal blush. Your knees tap together as you attempt to shut your soaked panties from his view.

One well-placed, smarting slap thwarts the attempt. The delicate skin of your inner thigh blazes with a white-hot sting, carved to fit the shape of his palm.

“Keep ‘em open for me, now. I feast with my eyes first, dove.”

Fuck, indeed.

“C-Captain…”

The breathy murmur comes out broken, composed to the quick cadence of your heart. It slams for space, almost nauseating, squeezing your internal organs as it tries it’s best to just hang on. He’s sin, a transgression to whatever divine laws are sung in stain-glass lit halls. And maybe your body knows – maybe it’s adrenaline, the fight or flight that’s kept you safe all these years, coming back to blare it’s bad news. Red flashes, astigmatism. A cavern of fire ready to swallow you whole.

But if hell is anywhere near as glorious as the feel of his hands on you, then you’d plunge to the devil yourself.

“Bloody christ. You beautiful thing,” His words, for contrast, are whispered with a reverence so quiet you wonder if he meant for you to hear. “It’s a fucking wonder no one’s tried their way with you.” Secret tenderness spilling to the lilt of it.

(Not so secret is the lust with which he kneads your hips.)

“They have,”

Shifting, he brings your legs to either side of him. “Is that right?”

“None were worth my time.”

“Mm. And I am?”

“We’ll see.”

“Suppose we will. Update me when you’re tending to a sore cunt.”

He doesn’t give you the time to respond, hands anchoring beneath your knees to press your thighs up to your chest. You’re snapped in half, miniscule beneath his body – an anvil with weight alone. Beyond fanned lashes and a feverish glow, you see his arm crook at the elbow, slotting between your thighs.

But he only grazes over your panties, stretched thin over your drenched centre.

Your hips buck, seeking friction to sate the fattening pressure. Price only entertains your high-pitched whines with gentle hushes. And when they ebb to a varicoloured fog, found in teary eyes, he taps your bitten lips with two fingers.

You take them in, suckling vacuum around the thick digits. Lapping at his knuckles, smoothing over the tang of saltpetre and binder leaves. He takes a moment to enjoy the balmy envelope of your mouth before reaching deeper, knocking molars and pinning down your tongue until your chest twinges with throbbing hypoxia. Spittle pools behind your teeth, dribbling from the seal of your lips to coat your chin.

You have half a mind to doubt it, to curl in with the knowledge that all it took was a stern stare and some words of comfort for you to debase yourself. But Price meets your insecurity with a reinforced thrust of his pelvis, hard-on grinding into your ass. It’s enough to send you unquestioned lechery.

A loud rip and the sudden rush of cold air on your pussy is what it takes for you to realise he’s stripped you bare, pocketing your torn underwear with a sly shift. Your jaw remains unhinged when he pulls away, tasting the stench of sex that clots sticky at the back of your throat. As such, there’s nothing to dampen your needy cry when he slips the slicked digits between velveteen folds.

He touches you like his name is imprinted in bold letters across your navel, implanting blunt fingertips onto your electric centre – circling, harsh and rough and fast enough to spike fully-body tremors. It’s debilitating, overstimulating and somehow, simultaneously not enough; a defibrillator to your core, a deep dive into molasses waters. His thumb takes place on your clit when he finds you clenching around nothing, index and middle inching towards your sopping hole to plug you full.

And the stretch burns, squeezing into a space that’s only ever taken your smaller hand. It doesn’t hurt so much as it aches, your cunt rushing to accommodate the intrusion. You know, you know, it’s a fraction of what’s to come – he’s preparing you to take him, that hefty appendage that’s so big it can’t even slot in your ass, confined and all. Yet, you feel as though you should’ve been readied for this too. This scissoring – chock-full of competency, an expert hook that isolates the perfect spot off the get-go. A part of you you’d never been able to reach.

His free hand cradles your neck, steadying it as he crouches over you to shove his tongue down your maw. It’s not a kiss, far from the lip smacking of before – no. Price bleeds his groaned compliments into your lungs, battling for what orifice of yours can make the lewdest sounds. Your moans, choked on scotch-spiked spit, or the battered, airtight clinch, gushing new slick with every quirk of his fingers.

“Mm, you’re– fuck, love. So goddamn tight, you’re practically cutting off my blood flow.” He curses, voice damned with restraint. It settles in the back of your head, forced through the bromine-doused cotton that lines your skull. Nothing makes sense. Vowels form shapes that dance to an off-tune song, edges slicing you, severing synapses. Something about blood, something about love. You’d always prided yourself on deciphering the most complicated of inflections, but never were you given the handbook on empyrean pleasure.

You can only guess based on what you see. Ivory skin, smudged at the edges, no hard lines to his form. Washed with contoured muscles, a peach blush, ripe enough to sink your teeth into if you can muster the energy. A bristly beard, carving you cell-by-cell, scraping the sensitive skin between your chin and lower lip until all that’s left is a bottomless chasm to drool your words into. You don’t dare roll your eyes back, can’t bear to shut them, even as your peripheral vision fuzzes out.

“C-Ca–”

“None of that. C’mon, love. John.”

“John! Sir–”

“Say it again.”

“J-John,”

His thumb presses down with a vengeance, bearing down on a trillion little nerve endings that flare up, liquifying your guts into a viscous substance, heavy as it sloshes around in you. Your muscles tense, screwing into tight knots, your hips lifting off the mattress. Price’s nose taps yours while he peppers you with small pecks – your top lip, the corner of your mouth, your chin.

And it’s cataclysmic; both everything and nothing all at once. The bout of deathly quiet before a nuclear blast, where birds flock out of trees and you think you can hear the pitter patter of a pulse, erratic at your wrist. And when the ground rocks, trembling with an explosive magnitude, fire erupting in the distance. When you seize up in a ball of fear–

Your cunt clenches impossibly tighter, all but forcing his fingers from you. It’s terrifyingly strong; your orgasm wrecks you not in waves, but as one upturning tsunami, floodgates open to the duvet underneath you.

–and do your best to embrace a quick death.

He gives you a moment to find yourself. Boneless, you sink into the bed, teetering towards oblivion.

“Tired already?” He teases, massaging your calves with subdued vigour. The fingers once knuckle-deep in you slide into his mouth, waitressing your spoils to his eager palate.

“Mmnn…”

“Best snap out of it, precious. I’m not nearly done with you yet.” He draws away to tug down his pants, taking his briefs along with it.

You don’t really… process it, right away. Expression dazed, you stare dumbly down at his leaking cock, reddened head angry at his prolonged control. Reality finds you in increments, foam lapping at a sun-soaked shore, carrying with it seagrass and brine.

The first thought that occurs to you; he’s hairy. Not untamed – it’s clear he trims the curls at his groin – but, just like his face, Price exudes masculinity in even the smallest of aspects. You imagine swallowing the length of him, doing your best to take it all, and breathing in unadulterated musk as you’re crushed against coarse hair.

The second; he’s huge. It’s a fact that shouldn’t surprise you as much as it does, but the longer you drink it in, the more inconceivable it seems. You’d known – had face-groped it in the car, felt it poke your ass – and still. It slaps the softer flesh of his stomach, swells under his touch when he wraps his fist around the base.

Last (a final position you credit to your own humility); he’s practically throbbing. Life pulsing in the thick veins that branch up the frenulum, oozing copious amounts of prespend. You’re shaking your head before you have time to come up with an adequate response.

“That’s not gonna fit.”

Stupid. He’s got you cock dumb and he hasn’t even fucked you yet.

For a moment, he backs away, kneeling at your ankles. Dread swarms you, buzzing doubt. Of course he’d lay off at your admission, he made it clear he prioritised your consent above his own gain. You can’t help but think it fitting; a slip up is what ended up costing you ecstasy.

But then – ridiculously, blissfully – he bends over, so his face is level with your cunt.

And spits.

Squealing, you throw a leg over his neck, winding your hands in his ruffled hair. His jaw remains hidden behind your pubis, but the scrunch of his eyes tells you enough. He’s smiling.

“Hey–”

But Price doesn’t listen. He reaches up to rub his saliva over your folds, careful to especially do so over your tender entrance. As he does, his tongue – that expert, warm, wet tongue – smooths over your clit, sucking it back to a swollen floret.

You keen, bucking into his ministrations. Watered boscage, you come alive with new life, a fresh vigour under a pink spring.

(He threatens the delicacy; raging sun, eclipsed, now, by his role as captain – caregiver – but verging on a supernova. Ever the firestarter, you’ll abandon reinvigoration in a heartbeat for ruin instead.)

“We’ll make it fit.”

Something you’d never admit so long as you’re bound to this underworld, cursed by Zeus and shackled to your boulder – you already feel another climax impending, with just the effort of his mouth alone.

So you pull his hair until he’s made to detach from you, entertaining your command, crawling up your body for his lips to smash yours once more.

“Just fuck me.” You whisper against him.

“Watch your tone.” He replies.

And it’s enough of a symphonious statement to truly emphasise it when he catches the divet of your cunt, sculpting you into a paradigm figure of devotion as you catch his eye. Florentine, glinting with an ardour you mirror in your own. Hooded under a heavy brow bone, blending into a perfect nose. Wrinkles and age lines and still so in tune with your much younger self.

You bite your lip when he finally drives inside you. He cradles your head to the curve of his neck.

“Fucking hell, dove.”

“Haah–”

Exclamations groaned simultaneously, unravelling ribbons curled with the sharp blade of a knife. It’s the same, flickering sting, a pressure less than pleasurable cramping in your lower gut. But they exist as subsidiary, fleeting points to acknowledge and move on. Nothing can trump the deluge that is his cock slotting into you, bursting through a dam that shifts to fit hard ridges – sucking him deeper, deeper.

“Jesus– fuck. Nngh– you perfect… perfect little–”

When he’s more than halfway through, you figure it’s safe enough to contract what you’d been trying to relax. You nuzzle your face further into his shoulder, nosing Maduro and suede, drinking the heady fragrance of his sweat-infused cologne. You wind your arms up around him, driving nails into rigid muscle, and search for purchase as he bottoms out with the aid of your squelching uptake.

“So– Yersobig.” You slur into him, muffled.

“I know. I know, precious. Breathe through it,”

And his hand trails downwards to find your clit again, lubed under his efforts. He emphasises his reassurance with a precise rub, right over where you thrum fierce and hot, feeding the gluttonous depravity that begins crawling up your legs. It festers like a day-old wound, sticky and raw, delicate at the seams.

In between croaked moans, you voice your voracity. “Jus’ move, old man.”

Price’s chest rumbles. You flush with the thought of making him laugh.

And promptly quiet down when he draws out of you in his first stroke.

Because oh.

You don’t get used to the sensation, after all.

Every thrust, you’re able to discern a new part of him. One, and it’s the veins that slide perfectly across your walls. Two, and it’s the way he thickens the further he pushes in, stretching your sensitive skin to its limits. Three, four, five; his mushroomed head wedges against the gummy wall of your cervix, pumping you full of leaden warmth.

You’re fucked. Literally and figuratively.

Propelled into a cosmic cavity that engulfs you with familiarity. Not some galaxy, beyond the exploration of man (though, you feel you can reach out and touch the stars). More so a fort, made of the quilt your mother had gifted you once. Nostalgic timelessness, hot chocolate glazing your gullet, resting rich in your tummy. You go out of your way to lick the dampness from his skin and place a purpling bite in its stead.

He ducks to graze his lip on the shell of your ear. You shudder under the gesture’s exposing simplicity.

“You’re takin’ me so well, dove. Doin’ so good for me.” He groans, sap onto a crackling bonfire.

“Y-You– s’feels so–”

“You can do it, c’mon,” As if to challenge you, he gains speed, pistoning at a brutaller pace.

“John! Oh my god, oh my god. You can’t do that. I’m gonna…”

“Cum for me, then. Make a mess of yourself.”

And it’s the filth he utters over anything else. The string of obscene promises, sung for only you to hear, his balls slapping your ass and his prespend smearing milky white on sweltering walls. Captain – sir – who orders death in dire seconds, who depends on cigars and the quick-thinking action of his subordinates. Taking on that same pitch as he urges you to find release, a slow-creeping apocalypse waiting to happen at your core.

So perhaps he still asks for calamity; perhaps he knows you’ll lose face the moment you’re milked for all you’re worth.

You give it to him anyway, collapsing over a pressed-pedalboard longing.

Nerves snapping, limbic system miswiring. You wrap your limbs around him and black out before you feel the full effects of it.

You resurface half a minute later and find yourself in a completely different position. Axis turtled, he’d flipped you over on your hands and knees to spear you from behind.

“What was it I asked of you, eh?”

His chest fits along your back, tree-trunk arms wrapped around your waist. You barely hear him under the pool you’d been thrust into, his words splintered like the tune on an old record player. You hang there for a perennial moment – not quite floating, not drowning – blinking as the world rocks by in a blur of creme and gold.

Your elbows buckle. He has you before you fall face first into a cushion, a forearm buttressing your collar. The action hauls you upright, until you can rest your head on his shoulder. Blood rushes to your head.

Ragdoll is the first thing that occurs to you. Wool lined with cotton, pilled stitching.

“T’tell you…” You croak, parched.

“Mm?”

“F’it was too much.”

“Is it, dove?” He speaks against your cheek, placing a sloppy kiss on the upraised plane. You lean into it, nose bumping his.

“No… no. Keep goin’, please.”

Price needs nothing else.

You flop onto his full-bodied support, temple slick with moisture, itchy when it scuffs his beard. His cock plunges into new depths like this, pummeling your abdomen with a noticeable bulge, his fingers brushing affectionately over the extrusion. You’re somewhat cognizant to it – awake to what’s happening, aware of the loving nature – but say nothing.

The arm spread across your chest rises to your throat, wrapping around the lean length. It constricts enough air to bring stars to your eyes, pulsing flashes of nirvana, speckling the freckled skin that fills your vision.

“Gonna – fucking… cum inside, precious.” He screws them shut, his face scrunching, a lined portrait in sybaritism. You weakly nod along. “You’ll be bursting with it. Will feel me for days, won’t you?”

“Yhh– Hahh…” You struggle against his choking hold.

“Shhh. It’s okay, I know. I got you.”

You grab onto his wrists, winding around the hair that dusts them, bouncing with the unrelenting roll of his hips. You’re so full, it’s too much–

And when he stutters – the smallest, most imperceptible amount – you tighten your core and brace against the torrent that stuffs you.

“Fuck.”

Molten. Viscid. He wasn’t lying when he said you’d be brimming with milky-white, splattered across your insides. Your stomach overturns with the sheer volume of it; already, it oozes from you, slipping from the thick plug of him to paint your quivering thighs.

And you think of the desert sun and heat-drunk resentment. Sand, scorching, scratching absurd crevices. You think of yourself, two months ago, holding out from everyone. Part of you is angry (her, maybe, still buried underneath this murky rapture) that it took this long, that you’d forgone fulfilment for fear that your poison would seep through.

Another, newer part of you forgives the orchestration of your life thus far – Bulgaria, Tess, the general and the sick process that enabled him. If this is what it was all building up to, then you can find contentment, tucked somewhere in the scant space between you and your captain.

(Stupidly selfish, you recognise, even now. Like looking at dead soldiers and exhaling when you realise they’re not someone you know.

Perhaps it’s the tip that catches your the divet of your cunt when he pulls out, designed to fuck those experiences out of you.

Barely friends, hardly more.

But you could be.)

taglist: @guyfieriii @nqberries @kkinky @ravenhood2792 @allekat1988 @rattlemyb0nes @simonrileywife @melancholyy-hill @sexlapis @s-u-t @sweetybuzz25 @hypernovaxx @glassgulls @superbafango

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redstonedust · 4 months

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its kind of wild how people will be fans of media where the good guys are ''the rebellion'' and ''the resistance'' etc etc but when it comes to real world politics theyre like 'no!! peaceful protest is the only way... if you do any violence youre just as bad as the oppressors'' like do you think the death star was a giant mechanical orb with no people in it.

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radiofreederry · 9 months

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Happy birthday, Fidel Castro! (August 13, 1926)

The longtime leader of the revolution in Cuba, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in Birán to a well-off family. Castro was radicalized during his legal studies at the University of Havana, coming to embrace anti-imperialism and opposition to US interference in the Caribbean and Latin America. Castro traveled abroad to participate in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, before returning to Cuba and setting his sights on freeing it from right-wing rule and US domination. After an initial abortive rebellion against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista failed, Castro spent several years in prison along with his comrades, who went on to form the nucleus of the 26th of July Movement. Released on amnesty, Castro went right back to revolutionary activity, spending time in exile. While away from Cuba, he met Che Guevara, who would go on to play a pivotal role in the revolution. On December 2, 1956, Castro landed with around 80 men on the Cuban shore, using a rickety and decrepit old yacht. The revolutionaries were ambushed by Batista's forces shortly thereafter, and their numbers slashed down to only around 20. From these 20 revolutionaries, Castro built up a revolutionary movement which swept Batista from power and liberated Cuba from imperialist control for the first time in history. Declaring himself a Marxist-Leninist, Castro went about radically transforming Cuba on a socialist model, instituting extensive land reform, a highly-effective literacy program, universal healthcare, and other such policies. He led Cuba through the heady early years of the revolution, in which the US constantly plotted to overthrow his government and assassinate him personally, through the Cuban Missile Crisis in which US bullishness came close to unleashing nuclear war, and through the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Cuba's ally the USSR. Castro instituted Cuba's celebrated policy of medical diplomacy, and in the Havana Declaration he expressed Cuba's intentions to support revolutionary movements abroad. Castro continued to lead Cuba until 2008, when he stepped down in favor of his brother Raul, and he died in 2016. Reviled in the United States and the imperial core, Castro remains a beloved and celebrated figure in the Global South, a symbol of anti-imperialism, resistance to US aggression, and hope for a better world.

"A revolution is not a trail of roses…. A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past."

#birthdays #fidel castro

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randxmthxughts · 10 months

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Chosen by Eywa - New Beginnings - Chapter 5

← chapter 4 | chapter 6 →

contains: arranged marriage, mentions of war and grief, angst, one-sided enemies to lovers, slow burn

wc: 5.8k

chosen by eywa masterlist | general avatar masterlist

a/n: see? i promised two chapters within a week and i'm delivering!!! also the next chapter is going to be the finale and i'm so bummed out about it. i feel very connected to this story and planning it from the beginning had brought me lots of peace

For a while, Y/N remained frozen, watching from a distance as the Na’vi surrounded the motionless body of her former love. Neteyam, who felt sick to his stomach just from the mere sight of Kaye, anxiously observed Y/N, waiting for something to happen, though he wasn’t sure what exactly to expect. Any kind of reaction instilled a sense of dread within him; would she ever be able to move on from that?

Jake had no time to recount the entire situation over the wired comms device. As the Olo’eyktan, he had to explain everything in a hurry to Neteyam, while also soaring through the territory in case anyone else defied the curfew and needed to be protected. But Jake’s voice gave it away - the worry, the guilt he had carried as the chief for such a pointless death. Kaye, who had lost his tracking device earlier, during the surveillance, and had been instructed to just abandon it, opted for sneaking after the curfew and searching for it. Joined by a friend, they landed within the area and continued their search on foot, when a single bullet suddenly found its mark beneath Kaye’s ribcage, tearing right through his left lung. The devilish human, a vile being who had no business lurking the land this late, and who had possessed neither the size nor the strength to bring down a Na’vi, somehow managed a victory. One that he’d boast about to his comrades later. By the time Kaye was hoisted onto the back of his friend's ikran and flown back to camp, it was already too late.

The surrounding Na'vi watched in horror as he drew his final breath, and then he was gone. It shattered Y/N. Her frozen composure suddenly moved, then a loud cry, as if she was in physical pain. A cry that had been suppressed for countless years, ingrained deep within her throat since the tragic day her parents were taken from her. Like an overwhelmingly big wave, desperation, remorse and guilt threatened her with loneliness she could no longer bear.

The Na'vi pressed closer to Kaye, shielding him from her view, but she surged forward to close that distance. It was as if she believed she could somehow resurrect him, breathe life back into his still form. It was strange and peculiar — how could a woman, bound to another man, suddenly mourn so passionately for a stranger?

Sobbing, she drew nearer, but hands, one after another, pushed her away from Kaye. Encountered with resistance and hushed pleas to calm down, Y/N only grew more desperate to reach him. Neteyam trailed closely behind her, but refrained from restraining her. Y/N was giving a piece of herself that she had kept closed off for years, as she crumbled before the entire clan. But he could only wait for her to reach for him when she was ready.

Yäyä’s cry was what pierced through the atmosphere then, bringing the crowd to a stillness. Having performed the sacred bond with Kaye and falling for him, his death felt like a nightmare. A nightmare she’d likely have after Kaye’s small but reckless rebellions, fueled by the desire to resist his parents' authority sometimes. As people stepped away, some not quick enough and pushed aside by her determined shoves, Yäyä pressed forward to make her way to her mate.

Through the haze, Y/N watched the unraveling scene and then it suddenly hit her like a thunderbolt. It should have been her, not Yäyä. To be bearing the weight of the loss, to forge a connection with Kaye, then ultimately release him back into the embrace of the Great Mother. Tears blurred Y/N's vision as she watched the poor girl kneel beside her beloved's lifeless body, hunching over him as if she was shielding him from the prying gazes of others.

Neteyam gulped down nervously, his hand reaching out to gently grasp Y/N's upper arm. His touch was delicate, so light that she barely registered it. Y/N turned her gaze towards him, her brows furrowing in a pitiful expression, and in that moment he thought he could hear his heart drop at the sight.

“Neteyam,” she whispered weakly, unsure of what exactly she was asking of him, but he understood anyway.

His arms opened instinctively, inviting her into an embrace, and the force with which her body collided with his threatened to knock him off balance. Her face pressed tightly against his chest, arms wrapped around his back, pressing on all of the wounds she was treating just a few moments ago, hurting him but he paid it no mind. She sobbed against him, and with every breath she took, he cradled her head gently, drawing her closer. Y/N’s words came in a blur, and he couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell him, but before he could even ask, Kiri appeared next to them, her hands resting on Y/N's back.

“Y/N, let’s get away from here, yeah?”

Kiri and Neteyam shared a knowing look, and he nodded in agreement. Slowly, he began to step back, gently guiding Y/N with him, never releasing his hold on her. Almost instinctively, Y/N's feet followed the movements of his body, as if they were entrained to his every step.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

The remainder of the night passed by in a blur. Y/N had barely come to terms with the fact that the man she had once loved was now gone. No matter how much she regretted being with him, being his, no matter how much she hated him, nothing could have outweighed the immense pain she felt at his loss. Even though he had never truly been hers to begin with. The haunting image of Yäyä, broken and fragile, crumbling under the weight of grief, sent shivers down her spine.

Neteyam, who had brought Y/N back home with Kiri, now found himself alone with her. Kiri had promised to check on them later, as her assistance was required with the preparations for the upcoming funeral. Sitting on the ground, Y/N’s back leaned into his chest, the position that would have been awkward in any other circumstance, but now provided a sense of comfort. Y/N was no longer crying, and though Neteyam couldn’t see her face, he could guess that she had calmed down.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, turning her face to meet his gaze. He furrowed his brows in response, his eyes tracing the trails of dried tears on her cheeks.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"I must have caused a scene…" Y/N's voice hitched, her gaze shifting downward as she fidgeted in her seat, "I didn't mean to... to... I'm not his mate... I mean, I just... and right next to Yäyä... I had no right to..."

"The right to grieve?" Neteyam completed her thought, his frown deepening. "Y/N, you have every right to feel pain. You were in love with him."

"I know," she sniffled, "But I wasn't -" another sniffle interrupted her words, "I'm sorry if it causes you any trouble."

"Y/N, I don't care about any of that," he assured her, his voice gentle, soothing like cool water against weary muscles.

Y/N shook her head, still refusing to meet his gaze. Now that the situation had settled in and she reflected on her actions, she had realized that she took away from the secrecy of their relationship with Kaye. And along with it, she made a cut in Neteyam’s carefully crafted image. Made space for the clan to speculate.

"Look at me," he insisted, gently lifting her chin with a finger, "You have every right to grieve for someone you loved. Nothing else matters."

She nodded weakly, her hand wrapping around his wrist in silent gratitude. Neteyam's eyes roamed across her face, searching for something he couldn't quite articulate. He gulped.

“We are a team, remember? Whether we like it or not, you can rely on me.”

And so, Neteyam stayed by her side throughout the night. He dozed off from time to time, only to awaken and check if she was still peaceful in his embrace. Neteyam wondered if she was truly comfortable in that position. He tried shifting his weight every now and then, attempting to create more space for her, but she’d only grumble in dissatisfaction and cling tighter to his chest.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

The loss of Kaye, this time both literal and physical, was more dull rather than acute. Days seemed to stretch on endlessly, each one feeling like a month, and it was only at nights when Y/N felt just a little like herself. Neteyam became her guardian, shielding her fragile bubble from any disruptions, not tolerating even his grandmother, who sought to push Y/N back into her duties. He understood that she needed her time, and he was ready to give her as much as she required, becoming the only consonant in her routine. His heart swelled with a clinging torturous protectiveness towards her that he embraced without hesitation.

Eventually, though it still seemed too soon, Y/N returned back to her duties. The lessons she had missed were especially hard, but she only encouraged the challenge because it helped her take her mind off things. But what distracted her even more, an undeniable part of her recovery, was the man she was promised to. As if Neteyam had effortlessly woven himself into her thoughts, his scent lingered in her home, his gaze on her was so warm, it surpassed the brilliance of a thousand suns. Slowly, but surely, somethin started to bloom inside of her that felt beyond gratitude and loyalty towards him.

Now more often than out of obligation, their paths continued to intersect, with Neteyam seeking her out in between his breaks under the reasoning of checking on her. Small activities they shared nestled the dearest place in her heart, easing the scars left behind by Kaye's tragic passing. Like a balm for her wounds, Neteyam became everything that she craved.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

All that time, Neteyam feared that Kaye’s death would affect the fragile relationship he had with Y/N, thinking that she would drift further away under the weight of grief. But when she leaned on Neteyam instead, seeking comfort and finding strength in his support, he realized that maybe the roots of their bond had taken deeper than they ever saw coming. And if they survived this, then maybe they could face anything together.

But the newfound confidence quickly wavered with a single announcement. The fear of tying their lives together was mutual, seeped into both of their thoughts. They couldn’t deny the pull they felt for another but the weight of the ceremony, looming over them as an unknown abyss, was too heavy to sustain.

“You two look like ghosts, what did grandmother say?” Kiri was eager to tease her brother and Y/N, once they walked out of Mo’at’s tent.

Y/N felt a knot form in her stomach at the question, glancing up at Neteyam next to her, who seemed equally anxious, chewing on his bottom lip. Was their bond strong enough to survive such timing? Kiri, tired of waiting, raised her eyebrows to urge them to speak.

“Tsahik has set the day for the ceremony,” Neteyam took a deep sigh before passing the news to his sister, "It will take place in ten days' time, during the next full moon."

“So soon?” Kiri questioned, glancing between her brother and Y/N.

“The bond between two mates is supposed to be sacred, and Eywa has deemed it the right time for our union,” Y/N repeated Mo’at’s words.

Neither of them protested.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

“I can’t today,” Y/N forced an apologetic smile, “There's so much to prepare for the ceremony. I’m sure you’d -”

“I understand,” Neteyam nodded eagerly to convince her he really did, “I have preparations to make as well.”

Y/N let out a sigh of relief, the interaction had been repeated a few times already over the course of the past few days, ever since Mo’at had declared the date for the blessing of their union as mates. Neteyam backed out of the healing tent with a sheepish smile, but his mind was a mess. He couldn’t understand why she suddenly made him so nervous? The weight of the approaching ceremony fueled his unease every time he saw her now.

To make the matters worse, the vision from his Dream Hunt relentlessly invaded his dreams every night. There she was, the graceful and strong woman standing beside him, holding his hand, haunting his subconscious that was already stirred with the events in his life. The unusually long necklace, adorned with blue feathers and layered twice, hung from her neck, cascading down to her hips. But as his eyes tried tracing her face, it felt like the image of her slipped through his grasp like sand. No matter how hard he tried, her face remained a mystery. He would wake up in the middle of the night, the vision of this woman lingering in his mind, and he would desperately try to recapture the moments, hiding his face in between his knees and squeezing his eyes shut to go back. But his thoughts would invariably drift to his soon-to-be mate.

What was Y/N feeling? There was a whirlwind of emotions, bundled up from the loss, from the gain, from the upcoming unknown. But she wasn’t quite ready to face their depths. So she occupied herself with preparations for the ceremony earnestly, not out of her wish to become Neteyam’s, rather out of desperation to avoid him as much as she could. Seeing him made it all too real, too rushed, so instead she had declared herself to be busy for walks, for talks, for any kind of interaction that’d be long enough to give away her anxiousness.

To choose and make the ceremonial special mixes, to weave her garments, to prepare a gift for her future mate - everything seemed to be more important, than spending time with Neteyam. But deep down, she was just scared. Of facing the guilt she carried for letting go of Kaye and having her heart beat for Neteyam now.

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

The night was draped in a blanket of darkness when Neteyam found himself standing outside Y/N’s home, the faint flicker of light from the inside drawing him closer. He hesitated for a moment before nearing the entrance. He wanted to respect this distance between them that she eagerly seeked out but it’s been too difficult.

The sight of Y/N immediately took his breath away. Under the soft glow of the handmade fluorescent lamps, Y/N was hunching over a piece of unfinished jewelry, her fingers working swiftly, with far more ease than when she worked on mats. The piece resembled a traditional Omatikaya necklace but its intricacy suggested a higher rank than any of their clan members would typically wear. It was as if she had envisioned him wearing it one day, in his rightful place as the Olo'eyktan. Neteyam gulped nervously at the thought.

Y/N, sensing his presence, suddenly looked up from her work, eyes widening in surprise to find him standing there. It had been a while since they had been truly alone together, ever since the announcement of the ceremony.

“Neteyam?” her voice was quiet, “What are you doing here?”

Neteyam cleared his throat, his gaze lingering on the unfinished necklace for a moment.

"I... I couldn't stay away," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I saw the light and... I wanted to see what you were doing."

Y/N clutched the half-finished necklace, hiding it from his view with a hurry. A small pout settled on her face from his sudden curiosity.

“It’s not done, stop looking,” she ordered protectively.

“Is it for me?” Neteyam couldn’t resist the prying.

He stepped further, sitting down in front of her and craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the piece she was masterfully hiding from him. He chuckled to himself, shaking his head in amusement at the childish behavior.

“Seriously, aren’t you going to show it to me?”

“No, it has to be a surprise,” she was a little irritated with his sternness.

“Really?” he quirked an eyebrow with irony.

“Well, can I see your gift?” Y/N challenged him back.

“No, but -”

“Then I’m not showing you this. It’s not finished yet.”

He smirked, finding the whole banter just amusing and relaxing for the first time in days, but decided not to push it. Deciding to give her a little more space, he leaned back on his palms and watched with a glint in his eyes, as Y/N quickly gathered her supplies away, hiding the necklace as promptly as she could under her working table.

“Why are you even awake at this hour?”

Her question caused him to falter. It really has slipped his mind to come up with an excuse to invade her space this late at night.

“I guess… I wanted to check on you. We haven’t spoken in a while.”

“We spoke this morning.”

“No, not like that,” Neteyam shook his head, “I mean a real conversation.”

“Yeah, well… we have been busy, it’s not like…” Y/N trailed off guiltily.

“Not like you were avoiding me?”

“What? No!” she quickly withdrew from the accusation, though it was a truthful one.

“Come on, Y/N. I can see that you’re dreading to spend time with me. I know this timing for the ceremony is not ideal, but if we just push through this together, instead of doing it alone -” his words tumbled out of his mouth in a rush, but Y/N interrupted him, pressing a finger to his lips. His eyes widened, waiting for an explanation.

"I'm just nervous," she confessed softly, her hand falling back into her lap.

“You are?”

“Of course, aren’t you?”

“Are you kidding me? I haven’t slept in a week!” Neteyam chuckled with relief.

A soft smile stretched Y/N’s lips, and under the soft light, it almost seemed like Neteyam was glowing too, a bright orange warmth radiated from within his chest and spread out all the way to his cheeks.

“I didn’t know that you had the ability to get nervous,” Y/N couldn't help but tease.

He gave her a lopsided smirk, almost as if he was annoyed but at the same time excited that the feeling of being wrapped up in her comfort had finally returned.

"Even I can have flaws sometimes," he playfully retorted, earning a playful smack on his chest in response.

He caught her palm in his hand, gently placing it against his chest just above his ribcage, and both of their heartbeats picked up. Y/N looked up at him with tenderness, surprised by the intimate gesture, but it felt more profound than any moment she had ever shared with Kaye. The intensity in Neteyam's eyes mirrored her own emotions, as if he was pleading for something, anything from her. When his eyes fell to her lips, a blush warmed her cheeks, and Y/N cleared her throat. Quickly, Neteyam withdrew his hand, rising to his feet. The air in the room suddenly filled with a hint of awkwardness

"Well, I better go. I have to wake up early tomorrow," he hurriedly explained, "It's... um, a really important mission."

Y/N nodded with slight disappointment, not sure if it was aimed more at him or at herself.

“Good luck, Neteyam.”

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

“Neteyam!” Y/N shouted, her eyes fluttering open.

With a ragged breath and cheeks wet from tears, she jumped off of her mat immediately, having just woken up from a vivid nightmare. Her heart pounded at the images of Neteyam going off the mission and never returning. This rotten feeling of something bad happening gripped her stomach, urging her to rush out of her home as soon as her feet could carry her.

It was already an early morning, sun just barely rising from behind the horizon, and Y/N feared she might have been too late. Her steps were fueled by desperation, as she finally made it to Sully's home, ignoring the cold morning air sending shivers down her skin. Before she could proceed further into the pod, Jake, who went unnoticed by the young woman, caught her attention.

“Are you okay, kid?” he raised his eyebrows in response to her flinch, clearly not expecting to be seeing him.

The Olo’eyktan was sitting on the ground, his back leaning against the wall, the strange sky people's weapons were laid out in front of him, as he was in the middle of checking every single one before the day ahead. Y/N only nodded, the reality of her actions just settling in, turning her cheeks dark blue from all the embarrassment crashing in.

“Oel ngati kameie,” she quickly signed to him, bowing her head slightly, “Is Neteyam still home?”

Jake hummed with a slight confusion, still unsure of what the girl had been doing so early in the morning there, clearly distraught. But before he could voice out his response, Neteyam already walked out of the pod, with his mother right behind him. Y/N’s eyes quickly traced the similar weapons adorning both Na’vi, their war paint already on. She caught them just a moment before they were ready to leave, and drew in a small breath of relief.

“Oel ngati kameie,” she gestured quickly to Neytiri, her eyes darting between the woman and her son.

Both were surprised to see her there but the anxiousness plastered over Y/N’s face worried Neteyam. He greeted her back, silently asking for an explanation with his gaze. Just like Jake, Neytiri observed the exchange with a small frown.

“Y/N, is something wrong?” Neteyam urged her gently, his own voice haltering at the sudden fear of rejection.

He went home last night content with their mutual confessions, thinking that they had reached an understanding. But right then, as she stood before him like that, doubts started reappearing in his mind. What if she was there to tell him she wasn’t ready? That she regretted agreeing to the union?

“I have to speak with you right now,” Y/N requested with a stern voice.

“We don’t have time for that, kid,” Jake intervened, as he stood up from his seat, “Once Lo’ak is ready, we’re leaving for the mission.”

Y/N’s eyes darted pleadingly between the three Sully’s. Her hand reached out for Neteyam’s, clinging to him, as she glanced back at Jake, her voice breaking.

“It is very important, please.”

“Jake,” Neytiri finally chimed in, her tone empathetic, “Let them speak.”

The chief shook his head with slight irritation but complied with his mate’s wish anyway. His gaze softened once it landed on their intertwined hands.

“Alright, but only for a minute. I’m serious, Neteyam.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quickly, Y/N nodded in gratitude to the Olo’eyktan, as she led Neteyam slightly away from them, enough to feel safe in her confession. Her eyes were already tearing up, and she wasn’t really sure why, but Neteyam tensed up immediately, preparing himself to take whatever she was going to throw at him.

"Neteyam, you can't go on this mission. I had a dream, and... you never came back from it. You can't go now," she began to babble, her words rushed and jumbled together.

“Y/N, what are you talking about?” he frowned, barely managing to get anything out of what she said.

"I saw you in my dream! You got shot and fell from your ikran during the mission. I lost you," she choked, her eyes welling up with tears once again. "Please, you have to listen to me."

“Y/N, I can’t miss out on this mission. It is too important,” Neteyam stepped closer, his voice reassuring her with his gentle tone, “You just had a nightmare. It wasn’t real.”

“I can’t lose you too,” a tear streamed down her cheek.

As the first rays of sunrise painted the sky, Neteyam's heart swelled with a love as vast as the forests of Pandora. The sight of her, standing there with tear-filled eyes, pleading for him to stay, stirred something deep within him. He could feel the roots of their connection grow stronger, intertwining with his every fiber. With a tender touch, he wiped her cheek with his palm, then tucked the hair behind her ear.

“I will be safe, I promise.”

“I can’t let you go.”

“My child,” Neytiri's voice broke the moment, drawing their attention.

Y/N hastily wiped away her eyes, aware that Neytiri had likely overheard their conversation. In the past days, most of Y/N’s time was spent on the preparations, occupying herself with endless options for things that were not as important as just her being ready mentally. But the pressure of perfection weighed even heavier on Y/N under Neytiri's watchful presence. As a Na'vi deeply rooted in tradition and loyalty to their home, Neytiri's opinion held great significance. Y/N couldn't help but feel a nervousness, fearing that her choices would be met with disapproval. Though she didn’t know that Neytiri’s attentiveness was only fueled by the intention of seeking out signs that Y/N and her eldest son were finally growing closer. Now seeing the way Y/N teared up at the mere thought of Neteyam getting hurt had finally satisfied that curiosity.

“Do not worry about Neteyam, he is a skilled warrior, and he will be safe,” she stepped closer to Y/N, hand reaching out to softly pat her back.

“But the dream -”

“It is only a bad dream,” Neytiri interrupted the small protest, “Kiri has told me about how busy and restless you have been recently. Perhaps even nervous about the nearing of the ceremony? That must have affected your mood.”

Y/N nodded hesitantly at the inquiry. Neytiri offered her an understanding smile.

“You worry too much,” she concluded, “Stay with the girls today. They’ll help you with distractions.”

“Especially Tuk,” Neteyam chimed in with a reassuring smile, “She has been dying to spend time with you anyway.”

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

“I made you a necklace!” Tuk's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as she jumped up from the ground, eager to present her masterpiece she had been crafting for the past days under the guidance of her mother.

“Oh, Tuk, you didn’t have to!” Y/N leaned back, a gentle smile gracing her lips, as she observed the young girl.

"She's been eager to welcome you into the family, so," Kiri replied with a smirk, taking a seat next to Y/N, "She even convinced Lo'ak to find these blue feathers for her."

“Hey, don’t spoil it!”

Y/N chuckled at the distraction, but as she waited for Tuk to retreat the necklace, her thoughts drifted back to Neteyam. The Sully’s tent was already filled with darkness, it was way past the sunset and the war party still hasn’t returned from their mission. Y/N sat up straight, her posture tensing up at the thoughts, trying to steady her nervous breaths. The chaos that unfolded from Tuk’s search for the gift somehow brought that panic back into her. Kiri observed her friend with curiosity.

To Kiri, Y/N changed drastically in the past months. The way she carried herself, how she slowly grew more accustomed to the idea of being in an arranged union with Neteyam, her active involvement in the preparations. She seemed like a changed person, better, stronger. And though at first Kiri had written it off as being an aftermath of distracting herself from Kaye’s death, now seeing how anxious Y/N was turning with every minute as she glanced towards the door, it was evident that it was rather the effect of her older brother.

“They’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”

“Hm?” Y/N turned to face her, “It is so late though…”

“But the mission was kind of big and dangerous and they had to be extra careful?” Kiri quirked her eyebrow, a slight irony registering in her voice, “Trust me, they have done this a thousand times. Dad and mom won’t let anything bad happen.”

“Of course, I do not question your parents’ bravery and skill, it is just,” Y/N took a deep sigh, “This dream really messed me up.”

“You refused to believe Tsahik’s vision from Eywa about you and Neteyam but you think a silly nightmare you had is a warning?”

“No,” Y/N blushed deeply at the mention of the vision, then casted her gaze downwards, “I do believe Tsahik now.”

The very idea that Y/N had strongly opposed was now tinged with an unexpected delight. The thought of the Great Mother orchestrating the entire situation to bring her and Neteyam closer together sent such a pleasant shiver down her spine. Thankfully, before Kiri could tease her about the open admittance, Tuk interrupted, kneeling in front of them and placing a string of beads and blue feathers in Y/N's lap.

“Here! Lo’ak said it will be too long but you’re tall, right?” Tuk’s eyes twinkled with excitement.

Y/N couldn't suppress a snort of amusement, grateful for the momentary distraction. She let Tuk place the necklace around her neck in two layers, even though it was still overly long and disproportionate for an adult Na'vi. As Y/N stood up, the feathery necklace cascaded down to her hip bone. But it was surprisingly complimenting her tall frame.

"Well, Tuk, what do you think?" Y/N attempted a half-hearted twirl, earning a genuine laughter from the little girl.

“That looks nice!” a male voice chimed in, and all eyes turned towards the entrance.

It was Jake, walking in with a knowing smile, already recognizing the handiwork of his youngest. Y/N's own smile faded instantly, her heart pounding in her chest as she anxiously scanned the room for a familiar face. One after the other, Neytiri and Lo'ak entered, carrying items, retreated from the mission, but the commotion of Tuk running to her parents and their concerned inquiries to Kiri began to fade into the background. Y/N's eyes locked onto the man she had been worrying about the entire day, and her knees were ready to give out at the mere sight of him.

Neteyam, visibly exhausted and weary, entered the room carrying the remaining weapons they had retrieved. When his eyes met Y/N's, they lit up with a sudden glow. Without hesitation, she leaped towards him, and though his arms were still occupied with unfamiliar items, she wrapped her own around his neck with a sigh of relief.

“Thank Eywa, you’re okay!” Y/N tightened her grasp, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

Neteyam, taken aback by the sudden affection, took a brief moment to set aside the items he was carrying and hugged her back. A toothy joyful grin quickly made its way to his face.

"I'm more than okay," he chuckled, his heart melting from the warmth. He almost didn’t even notice the way his family watched the whole interaction with teasing smiles.

He rolled his eyes at his father, who gave him an approving nod, but couldn’t ignore the way his heart raced in sync with Y/N’s. The lines of worry and exhaustion that had been etched onto his face throughout the heavy mission began to fade away within the comfort of her arms.

“So grandmother was right,” Lo’ak mumbled with sarcasm, though the nature of Y/N’s and Neteyam’s relationship had been predicted by the whole family since a few weeks ago.

“They like each other, right, mom?” Tuk's voice echoed loudly through the room, pulling Neteyam and Y/N back to the present moment. Neytiri, her eyes sparkling with a mix of amusement and affection, nodded in response to her daughter's question.

Y/N quickly unwrapped herself from Neteyam, an awkwardness finding a way into the air. She gave him a sheepish apologetic smile but his gentle smile in return sent a pleasant warmth to her cheeks. Hastily, she averted her eyes, settling them on the family.

“Come on, let’s give them some privacy guys,” Jake pretended to be serious about it, but not even he could hide the excitement in his own tone, “We’ll go to Tsahik for a check-up and will be back soon.”

Like toddlers, one after the other, Neytiri rushed her kids out. But all of them still kept those teasing, mischievous expressions on their faces. Even Lo’ak, who had barely shown any interest in the arrangement since its beginning, dealing with his own difficulties with his parents, couldn’t help but snicker at his brother, knowing exactly what he was going to joke about later, when they were alone. On his way out, Jake gave them a final nod.

“Y/N, you’re staying with us tonight, right?”

Awkwardly, she could only nod back.

Once the tent was empty, Y/N took a moment before finally turning around to face Neteyam. He still had that soft look on his face that made it dawn upon her how much she missed him. And that maybe she loved him?

Simultaneously, Neteyam’s eyes traced her face, then the blue caught his attention and as he took in the obnoxiously long necklace around her neck adorned with big blue feathers, his breath got stuck in his throat.

“Is that yours?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh, yeah, Tuk gave it to me,” she answered a little confused.

The vision from his Dream Hunt suddenly felt complete - the tall beautiful woman standing next to him, a long necklace hanging low from her neck. It was supposed to be Y/N! The woman he had been obsessed with the idea of, that Eywa herself had chosen for him, wasn't just a mere concept of a destined mate; it was Y/N, standing right beside him.

a/n: pls ignore if this is poorly written, i didn't spend enough time on proofreading this, so?? anyway, prepare for more fluff for the finale :)

finale

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