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putellasawfc · 3 months

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exposed !

jen beattie x arsenal!reader

( a/n: omgggg this has been in the works FOREVER, before jen announced leaving arsenal which i am still not over tbh. but it’s finally here! especially dedicated to @mccabeswife since she requested it ! i hope you enjoy ! )

another media day at the arsenal training grounds meant a lot of bored footballers sat around waiting for their turn in front of the camera, the current youtube video being filmed was for three pairs only, another one of those ‘guess what the person is saying whilst you wear sound cancelling headphones’ videos that people went crazy over. the lucky girls who had been paired together for said video had been chosen at random, and you had ended up with leah with frida, manu with katie and viv with lotte which meant the rest of you were trying to entertain yourselves elsewhere.

which wasn’t really an issue when you were all shoved into a recreational room with an assortment of snacks, gossip and phones in hand. beth, the self proclaimed quidnunc of the group had been sat in between you and alessia for the last ten minutes, and had yet to stop telling you about the ongoing drama in the west ham team that she had found out about at an event over the weekend. you paid attention for as long as you could, sharing looks with alessia as you both struggled to keep up with the fast paced ramblings coming from the yorkshire woman but beth was none the wiser.

you felt a dip in the sofa to the left of you, the last bit of space being occupied by someone who threw an arm around your shoulder and when you got a whiff of the familiar perfume she sprayed on every morning, you knew exactly who it was.

you turned your head and smiled at the culprit, jen sat sporting her usual messy bun on top of her head and cheeky smile on her face. she pulled you further into her side and gently squeezed your upper arm, “she still talking your ear off?”

you huffed a laugh at that, looking to see if beth had heard but she was still too busy ranting and raving, now focusing her attention on alessia since you were now occupied elsewhere, poor girl.

“something like that.” you hummed, snuggling up to your taller girlfriend who was happy to let you lean on her. “you finished your influencer activities?” you teased, referring to the number of tiktok’s she had forced some of the girls to take part in since they all arrived.

“aye, i get a lot of love and appreciation from the fans for providing them with five star, behind the scenes content i’ll have you know.” she told you, “but yeah. letting steph take over for now, think she’s really getting into those football murder mystery filters.”

you glanced over to where she nodded towards, indeed seeing steph with her phone in her hand obviously recording herself, with kyra and vic sat either side of her laughing at the story that was unfolding on the filter.

“what happens when she steals your tiktok crown?” you asked with a sly smirk, knowing the older woman would have a meltdown if steph’s content starting getting more love than hers.

“don’t jinx it.” she shoved you lightly, “i’d have to post something outrageous to get me my title back. know i have some mugshots of you deep in my camera roll, i’m sure they’d come in handy.”

“you wouldn’t!” you gasped, sitting up slightly in your seat and the scottish woman laughed at your reaction.

you knew she had accumulated a hefty amount of embarrassing pictures of you over the year that you’d been together, ranging from you asleep with your mouth open to you pulling the ugliest faces whilst you awaited the impact of the ball to hit you during games.

“then you better hope steph gets bored quickly.” she shrugged.

you playfully rolled your eyes at that, finally relaxing back down beside her, grabbing ahold of her hand that was hanging over your shoulder, interlocking your fingers as you did.

“you’re so mean to me, sometimes i don’t know why i agreed to be your girlfriend.” you shook your head as if you were disappointed with yourself, trying your best to hold back the smile that was itching to come out.

that didn’t last long though, as only a moment later the defender jumped up from her spot on the sofa and leaned most of her body weight on you, her hands flew to grab either side of your face so she could get a good view of it as she began to lather every inch of your skin in kisses, her lips not leaving one patch of your face untouched. your squealed and thrashed wildly beneath her, your shoulder knocking into beth’s who finally halted in her gossiping at the interruption.

she kept going, stopping for a second to grin at your flushed state. “you fancied me too much to say no to being my girlfriend you goon.” and with that she continued her loving attack on you.

you wriggled around, laughing as you fought for breath and attempted to push her from you but she wasn’t budging.

“jen! stop, i can’t breathe.” you shrieked between giggles, hands gripping at her red jumper, “you’re right! you’re right, please let me go!”

finally deciding you’d had enough, jen let go of you and you caught your breath as you sagged against beth with a hand on your chest. “you could’ve killed me then, i hope you know.”

“so dramatic you are.” she tutted, pulling gently on your arm so that you were sat upright once again. “now gimme a proper one.”

you grinned, and gladly leaned in towards your girlfriend, giving her exactly what she wanted as your lips met halfway and you sunk into the display of affection almost immediately, your lips moving together in unison before you felt a harsh nudge in your side.

you yelped and pulled back, glaring at beth who only looked proud of what she’d done.

“not in front of the children please.”

the next day you arrived back at the training grounds, this time with a full day of practice ahead of you rather than a day in front of the cameras which you were very much looking forward to. media day was always fun, especially when you were partnered up with the right person and yesterday you were lucky enough to have gotten cloe as your pal for the day, so you had no complaints.

but you were excited to get back to doing what you loved, especially with an important match ahead of you. you wanted to get your head in the game and make sure you were one hundred percent ready to face the opposing team on sunday.

everything was normal for all of five minutes, you walked in and greeted some of the staff lingering near the entrance before you headed off to the changing rooms so you could change into your training kit, but before you even had chance to push the door open, a body came barrelling into yours, making you stumble on your feet and your arm fly out to steady yourself against the wall.

you looked to the person with furrowed brows, your jaw dropped in shock at the scare you’d just gotten. “christ steph, what’s up with you?”

she looked worried, as her hands gripped onto both of your arms and the aussie looked behind her where leah and lia were approaching, with much calmer demeanours. “i have to tell you something before you find out from someone else, but you have to promise you won’t be mad at me.”

you eyed her warily, your head cocking to the side before you looked over to the two other girls with narrowed eyes. “what is it?”

“no! you have to promise first.”

you rolled your eyes at that, beginning to panic a little as your mind ran wild with possibilities of what information steph could be withholding from you.

“fine, i promise. now tell me.” you told her, not really meaning it, you just needed her to spill the beans before you tired yourself out from overthinking.

“i kind of, may have, accidentally posted a tiktok that had you and jen kissing in the background of it.” she winced, waiting a beat to carry on. “but i promise it was a genuine mistake! if i had known it was in there i would’ve never, ever posted it i know you guys didn’t want your relationship to be public yet, and i am so sorry please don’t be mad at me.”

“what?”

a stupid question, most definitely but it was the only thing that you could manage to say at this moment in time. you didn’t know how to feel or what to say as you processed the information just given to you by steph who was still watching you carefully, as if she was awaiting some kind of wild outburst.

an array of different emotions passed through you simultaneously, you were annoyed at steph for outing your relationship on a platform that spread content like wildfire. no doubt screenshots and recordings of the tiktok had already been shared to the likes of twitter and instagram, posts made that couldn’t be taken back now. how could steph have let that happen? why did she not spot it before she pressed post?

you were also panicking. did jen know? would she be annoyed? would this change things between you? you’d both agreed when you first began dating, after months of mutual pining, that when you got together you would keep your relationship as private as you could, for as long as you could.

something that was unfortunately common amongst women’s football, was how invasive some fans could be in the players lives. you had seen how they could overstep boundaries and pry too deep into stuff they didn’t need to know about many times, which would then jump to them spreading their opinions without a care about who was on the other side of their sometimes vicious comments. you’d been witness to it ruining some of your friends relationships, and you didn’t want that to happen to you and jen. jen who you loved, who loved you back, jen who you could see yourself marrying one day in the future. so you had come to the smart, unanimous decision to keep it hush for as long as you could. but now, it was out there.

“does jen know?” you asked next, deciding that was the priority for you right now.

steph shook her head, “no. i was gonna tell her but she’s been talking to jonas since she got in.”

jen had set off an hour prior to you, with fans sometimes lingering outside the training grounds in hopes of getting a photo with some of you before you came in, you didn’t want to risk them seeing you and jen showing up together a few times too many and start to put two and two together, so more often than not you took separate cars and showed up at different times.

you nodded at that, and took in a deep breathe as you tried to think of what to do next. seeing as it was already out, there was no way you’d be able to backtrack or deny that you were in a relationship with jen, so the only real option you had left was to come clean to the fans about it all. you just weren’t sure how to.

“are you still my friend?” you were brought back into the present by steph’s quiet voice, her eyes were still scanning you warily and you probably would’ve laughed at how silly she sounded if you weren’t the person on the other end.

“course i’m still your mate steph.” you told her, and the blonde visibly deflated in front of you. “just wish you had the common sense to check what’s going on in your tiktok’s before you posted them.”

you were half joking, half serious. but when steph tutted and shoved you playfully, you didn’t have the heart to be upset with her anymore. it’s not as if she had posted it on purpose, and with how she reacted when she approached you, you were sure she’d been beating herself up over it since she’d realised what she’d done.

“see! told you she wouldn’t be mad, got yourself all worked up over nothing.” leah spoke up, and then you remembered her and lia were still lingering in the back.

“yeah well, i wouldn’t have blamed her if she was.” steph said, and you pulled the aussie in for a side hug.

“it’s okay steph, just gotta find jen now and spill the beans.”

it was only twenty minutes later when jen joined you all in the changing rooms, already clad in her arsenal training kit and with her water bottle in hand, she spotted you almost instantly and her face brightened when she realised you had arrived whilst she’d been busy.

“when did you get here?” she asked, pulling you into a hug which you gladly reciprocated.

“not too long ago.” you told her, rubbing your hands up and down her back. “got something i need to tell you though.”

she pulled back a little at that, looking down at you with a raised brow. “should i be worried?”

you shrugged, “i mean, it’s not anything to panic about but … i don’t know if you’re going to like it.”

you nodded your head towards the door, gesturing to the empty hallway on the other side where you could both have the conversation privately with nobody there to eavesdrop. jen nodded in agreement, retracting from your embrace and pulling on your hand to tug you in the direction you had just motioned towards.

now standing in the vacant corridor, you leaned your back against the grey wall and watched jen as she stood in front of you with her hands on her hips as she waited for you to speak, which you did after a sigh.

“steph practically ambushed me this morning, she um, did something stupid.” you began, scratching your head as you thought about how to put what happened into words. “you know all those tiktoks she was messing around with yesterday?”

you waited for jen to nod, which she did a second later so then you continued. “well she posted some of them and in one of them, it has you and i kissing in it, in the background. and it’s definitely too late for us to do anything about it.”

you stood with baited breath, similar to how steph had been when she was breaking the news to you, all of a sudden wishing you had the power to read minds as jen’s poker face came out in full force, the brunette not hinting to how she was feeling at all. at least she wasn’t tugging at her loose strands of hair, or biting at her nails, two big tell tale signs that she was stressing which you’d picked up over the months you’d spent together, which was a small win you were willing to take.

“well i guess the secrets out then.” jen shrugged, her hands remaining on her hips as you looked at her slightly puzzled.

“you’re not bothered?” you asked, half expecting a bigger reaction from the woman who was always so careful with how you interacted in public.

“i mean, it’s not great is it?” she asked, “but honestly, a part of me is kind of glad its out there now. i love our little bubble, not having to deal with people we don’t even know deciding whether we’re a good fit or not and all that stuff. but at least now, we don’t have to stress over the littlest things everytime we go out together.”

you listened to the points she made, nodding along with pursed lips in agreement with what she was saying. one of the most annoying things about have a relationship that wasn’t public, was having to be on guard everytime you both wanted to spend time with eachother out of the house, leading to the two of you just ending up having most of your date nights at home instead, not having the energy to make sure there were no prying eyes wherever you went.

“and we don’t have to watch what we post on social media. no more making sure our stories don’t give away that we’re at the same place, or triple checking that none of our stuff’s in the background.” she added on, and your lips quirked up in amusement at the amount of times you’d had to quickly delete a story or instagram post when you realised there was a beattie shirt in the background, or anything else that gave away who you were with.

“so this is kind of like a blessing in disguise?”

she grinned, “yeah something like that. but don’t tell steph i said anything, she’ll be gloating for weeks.”

you laughed at that, finally being able to relax properly for the first time since steph had practically jumped you whilst you were on your way to get changed. jen approached you, clearing the few steps that kept her away from you and pulling you into her warm embrace, pressing a kiss to your forehead as she did. “at least now we don’t have to do any big, relationship reveal post. you know how much i’ve been dreading that.”

you hummed, “think we should get steph to do a big post for us? i’m sure her drafts are stacked with videos of us.”

“we can ask. but not yet, wanna pretend i’m really mad at her for a bit so i can bribe her into pampering me for a bit.”

you scoffed at that, giving the scottish woman a faux disgusted look. “you’re evil beattie.”

“you love me.”

#jen beattie #jen beattie x reader #jen beattie one shot #jean beattie imagine #woso #woso community #woso x reader #awfc x reader #awfc one shot #awfc imagine #woso imagine #woso one shot

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onegirlatelier · 9 days

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April, 2024 | Shetland lace shawl

Hi there! It’s been a while. I’ve been kept busy by all my university work…and this shawl.

The shawl is knitted to celebrate the wedding of my friend (now friends, I should say). A wedding is really the perfect excuse for all the heritage crafts and heirloom projects that might seem too serious to gift in other occasions. I did ask the recipient beforehand if she would like it, though, and I was so, so honoured that I got an enthusiastic ‘yes’. I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many makers, whatever gift they are making.

Shetland fine openwork, a knitted lace, seems to have emerged with the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, who championed and popularised the craft. It was probably spread from the Isle of Unst to other parts of Shetland. What surprised me the most when I first read about it was that Shetland shawls and other lace pieces were largely exported as luxury items and rarely worn by islanders themselves. Women bought yarn from spinners and knitted mostly in their homes. They then took them to local merchants and exchange the finished objects for goods or (commonly after the 1880s) money to supplement the household income. The ‘supplement’ nature of this work probably means it was not compensated as much as a job outside the home would be for the same hours and skills. Besides, it was not always easy to spin an even 1-ply yarn at 1600 metres per 100 grams. For a piece of knitting with a large ‘plain’ area (i.e. only knit stitches), the unevenness was impossible to hide but could only be discovered after the area was worked. Then the maker had to either frog (unravel) the area or continue with the risk of the whole piece not being able to sell.

Whilst it is very reasonable to point out that Shetland ladies did not usually wear this type of lace (I’ve been to the Scottish Highlands once, in summer, and it was not fine lace weather), I imagine that at least for some, it wasn’t just about making money. Some sort of fulfilment must have been from the satisfaction of having a piece ‘properly done’ by continuing and adapting a traditional pattern, technique or material. I think this sort of satisfaction is also why many modern knitters are willing to spend hundreds of hours on lacework.

Intricate handknitted lace items can still be bought today (a quick search on Etsy would show many are form eastern European countries with a long and prominent craft tradition), but many are knitted for friends or family members. It always makes me so happy to see people share the gifts they have made, whether big or small, simple or complex. I joke with my online craft friends that no handmade fibre project can claim to be so unless they have a hair or two woven into it. It is the proof of existence for the maker, who tries to go against the irregular nature of handicrafts and, at the same time, accepts it. It is about wrapping up hours, weeks or months in one’s life, along with the songs they have listened to and the perfume they have worn and the memories they have made, and putting it squarely in someone else’s hands and saying: ‘All this, for you.’

A Wedding Shawl

I have not read anything about there being a standard form of ‘wedding shawl’ in the Shetland tradition. However, there is definitely a category of square shawls with similar sizes and a few construction methods. The samples I’ve seen mostly measure 1.5-2m on one side and have three parts: a central panel, four borders and a strip of edging. It is worked flat in garter lace from centre out.

Neither is there a standardised yarn weight. A widely available yarn is the Shetland Supreme Lace Weight 1-ply by Jamieson and Smith, which weighs at 400m/25g. The Queen Ring Shawl examined by Sharon Miller used a yarn at 700m/25g. From my experience, if you want the shawl to be a true ring shawl (i.e. you want to be able to pull the shawl through a ring) at the size of the Queen Ring Shawl (210cm on the side), go for 700m/25g or finer.

I chose a rectangular shawl because I had very limited time, but I did enlarge it because for me, an abundance of fabric does mean an abundance of cozy happiness.

Pattern

Shell Grid and Spider Webs Puzzle, pattern No.19 in the book Shetland Knitting Lace by Toshiyuki Shimada.

The names of the motifs are confusing. One motif (or two highly similar motifs) might just have two different names if they are produced in two different regions. Names do not mean everything, but I’ve had fun trying to match the motifs with names according to this article by Carol Christiansen at the Shetland Museum.

The double yarnovers (YO's) in the diamonds were called Cat's Eye, but perhaps the 'Spider Web' in the pattern name is referring to the three rows of double YO's in the centre panel. It has a really simple but effective edging.

Yarn

Mermaid Lace, in colourway #naturel, sold by Great British Wool in the Netherlands. This yarn is 75% merino and 25% sea algae silk. ‘Sea algae silk’ seems to be a semi-synthetic plant fibre like viscose, with algae involved as part of the raw material. (At this price point I don’t think it has anything to do with sea silk, which is fibre produced by actual shells.) The brand name for the most popular product of its type is probably Seacell.

I bought the yarn, because I had never worked with this fibre before and was curious. What I like: it was a little cheaper than a wool/silk blend and has blocked very well. The whole skein was continuous so I didn’t have to deal with a single yarn joint. What I do not like: it lacks the sheen and smoothness of real silk and doesn’t feel as strong, although it doesn’t shed. In conclusion, I’d rather use a traditional Shetland 1-ply or another natural fibre yarn.

It's also worth mentioning that whilst I prefer to support small businesses, it was disappointing to have received a 93-gram skein when I had ordered 100 grams. It was one of those days between Christmas and the New Year and I somehow did not contact the customer service, but I really should have.

Needle

2.5mm 80cm circular needles. See modification below.

Modification

This Japanese knitting book follows Japanese sizing for knitting needles. The suggested size was no. 1=2.4mm. I figured that I could use a 2.5mm since I knitted on the tighter side, and in any case it was probably okay to make the lacework a little more open by going up a needle size.

I am not going to give out the pattern, but it is probably necessary to explain the structure of this shawl. The centre is knitted first, and then an edging is knitted onto it by picking up either live stitches or the vertical edge of the centre as you go (see schematic below). The four ‘corners’ of the edging have short-row shaping to help it lay flat. I know that traditionally people can achieve this by other methods, but I haven’t tried any of those yet.

I enlarged the pattern by increasing both the width and the length. I casted on 133 stitches instead of 101 for the centre panel and knitted Part B 8.5 times instead of 5.5. The spider web pattern in Part B requires the stitch count to be (something dividable by four) plus two, so I made one central increase before the spider web to get 134 and a central decrease after it to get it back to 133. Due to the openness of the lace, the change of one stitch is not visible.

The enlargement meant I had to recalculate the edging as well, because the number of stitches available for pick-up changed. Originally, at each corner you do two repeats with four short-row shaping each. I did 1.5 repeats following the original placement of short-row shaping in order to make the total number of repeats fit the number of edge stitches on the centre panel.

The pattern says to Kitchener-stitch the last row of the edging to the provisional cast-on. It just didn’t make sense because that would be two rows too much (the Kitchener stitch row plus the provisional cast-on row). To make the number perfectly fit, I knitted only ten rows of the last repeat (there were usually twelve in each repeat). Then I Kitchener-stitched the end to the provisional cast-on, following the lace pattern. I am quite proud of this solution because it is completely invisible.

Somewhere in the pattern it said to purl (looking from the right side). It seemed strange because the rest of the lace was entirely garter. I knitted those stitches and so far I haven’t sensed a ‘mistake’.

The pattern originally calls for 45 grams of yarn. I estimated (based on the increase of stitches in the centre panel) to need about 80 grams. I ended up using 86 grams. Besides the inaccuracies in my estimation, it was probably also because I knitted much more loosely than expected as it was difficult to tension the yarn tightly at such a weight. Like I've point out in the Yarn section above, I was lucky not to have needed more than 93 grams.

The original finished size is 53*118cm. I ended up with approximately 70*170cm.

Conclusion

This shawl took about three months of my craft time i.e. one full day every week for three months and many mornings before I had to leave for university. Knitting outside my room just didn’t work because I was a) engaged in some other activities that made it difficult to steady my hands, and b) worried about putting a white shawl on any public surface.

The pattern itself is relatively straightforward. The first difficulty was, of course, to understand the instruction written in Japanese. Google translate was horrible so I had to rely on my knitting experience. Fortunately, much of the text description was also found in graphs and charts. Then I had to get my hands used to the tiny yarn. After that, it was only fiddly when I did the edging, because I had to turn about every twelve stitches, and by that time I was handling a giant cloud of stitches on my lap. It did give me a lot of time to go over my favourite documentaries and films, and the last bit of edging was surprisingly quick!

Traditionally, Shetland shawls could be sent back to the maker for maintenance. I think it only fair for me to offer that too because I don’t want a gift to become a trouble (same as how you do not use non-machine-washable yarn for baby knits).

In general, I am very pleased with this shawl. It does pass the ring test, despite not being a traditional wedding shawl size or thickness. I do have a whole lot of actual Shetland 1-ply in my stash, so I am really looking forward to taking my Queen Ring Shawl project out of hibernation in the near future.

Reference list for Introduction

Christiansen, Carol. Shetland fine lace knitting: Recreating patterns from the past. Marlborough: Crowood, 2024.

Mann, Joanna. 'Knitting the Archive: Shetland Lace and Ecologies of Skilled Practice'. Cultural Geographies 25, no. 1 (January 28, 2017): 91–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474016688911.

#knitting #knitblr #shetland lace #lace knitting #gift-knitting #stories

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multi-fxndom446 · 6 months

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Through your phone

Johnny ‘Soap’ Mactavish x Reader

Summary: johnny 100% is the type to let his s/o go through his phone whenever they wanted.

Warning: angst at the beginning, cheating not from soap or reader, hurt/comfort, fluffy ending.

Word count: 2.4K

Just something short and sweet. I’ve been really into call of duty recently and I think Soap deserves more love that’s all. Kyle too so expect stuff for him. Horrible attempt at writing for someone who has a Scottish accent

It first started slow. Practically unnoticeable.

Your boyfriend would still wake up, still give you a kiss on the head when he woke up, still eat whatever small breakfast you prepared for him and still would tell you he loves you as he rushed out the door.

But he stopped kissing you goodbye.

You didn’t think anything of it at first because he still kissed your head when he woke up and the kiss goodbye seemed so insignificant in the grand scheme of things because he loved you.

Then he stopped kissing your head in the morning and was on his phone more often.

Again you thought it was strange but not enough to have you questioning his love for you. Maybe he was just stressed out? You hoped that was the reason.

But then he started setting his phone face down anytime you got near him. He was getting distant but still had date nights with you, still cuddled with you..until he didn’t.

One night after a day of practically not saying anything to each other at all, he went to bed and turned his back to you. You watched from your side of the bed as his phone lit up a few more times before dying out yet you still couldn’t bring yourself to look through it. Even if your entire body was begging you too.

Then the days would pass where he was out the door before you even woke up or if you woke up at the same time he’d be tying his shoes already with a quick, “I’ll be working late tonight.” As the door shut behind him, leaving you feeling suddenly cold in the place you once called home.

He grew cold and distant, there always seemed to be a space between the two of you wherever you went all the while he was on his stupid phone for “work related” issues.

On those nights he was gone for hours on end you would be talking with Johnny on the phone while you cleaned the apartment that seemed darker and darker every day. Johnny had begged you on multiple occasions to leave him, that you deserved better but you dismissed him because he loved you…right?

That night when for the upteenth time of him returning home at an ungodly hour just to crash into bed, faced away from you. This time though he seemed intoxicated and he fell asleep before he could even change and that’s when you noticed the girly perfume coming from his clothes.

Your stomach churned as you sat there staring at the man you once thought you loved and after a moment you leaned over quietly and took his phone before hurrying to the bathroom and locking the door.

When you sat on the edge of the bath you noticed he changed his lock screen from a picture of the two of you to some random Lock Screen. It made you pause to take a deep breath to try and control the tears threatening to spill.

Finally, you unlocked his phone. You were surprised it was still the same. As you looked through his apps you weren’t even sure where to start when someone labeled at ‘work’ texted.

“Had fun tonight😘 same time tomorrow?”

You honestly couldn’t even say that your heart was broken. You prepared yourself for this for way too long, endured his distance for far too long. You couldn’t feel heartbroken. You just felt numb.

Even when you went through the hundreds of text messages between him and his so-called work. It wasn’t until you hit the end and saw the date of when they first started texting each other that you realized just how done you were with this relationship.

They started texting a day after your 3 year anniversary. Everything was gone, all the feelings, all the promises..gone.

You walked back into your shared bedroom to where he was still faced away from you completely oblivious to your findings but you also had a feeling he wouldn’t feel too sorry about it.

How could he sleep so peacefully knowing he was willingly destroying your relationship this entire time.

You watched him while you picked up your phone. You brought it to your ear as it rang softly. “Hello?” You felt the sudden heartbreak hit you as Johnny's Scottish voice came through. “Lass?”

“Johnny.” You whispered and you could hear rustling on his end like he was getting out of bed. “Can you pick me up?”

That whole situation was what was playing through your head as you sat on the barstool in yours and johnnys shared apartment while you watched his phone light up every few minutes next to you.

Johnny was running around the kitchen preparing a dinner he had begged you to let him make when he finally took notice of his phone blowing up. “Can you check my phone fer’ me?” Your eyes shot up towards him but his back was turned towards you.

You felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest. You didn’t want to be heartbroken again not after you got over that stupid ex boyfriend. Hell it took you almost a year later for you to give Johnny a chance, you loved him you did but the wounds were still deep.

You knew he would never cheat on you. You knew it the moment he came to get you in the middle of the night, not trying to be quiet at all as he helped you pack as much as you could and loaded it into his car. You knew he wouldn’t the moment he had brought Ghost with him to take you back to said apartment for the rest of your things the next morning and they stood by like two brooding bodyguards while your ex tried to beg for you to listen, which surprised you.

You knew he wouldn’t cheat on you when he waited patiently for you to be ready to go out with someone again.

So why was your heart in your throat?

You grabbed his phone softly, his phone lighting up again and you were greeted with your two smiling faces and an onslaught of texts from his group chat with Kyle and Simon, whom after a year and a half of dating Johnny you finally just started to call them by their real names.

“Anythin’ important?” He asked after a moment of silence. His back was still turned to you.

“It looks like it’s from Kyle and Simon.” He hummed in response before asking you to read through to see what they needed. “Apparently your captain is planning to make you all do drills when he sees you next.”

At this Johnny turned quickly, a look of disbelief on his face while he held a spoon in one hand. You almost wanted to laugh, he looked like a real housewife with the apron and all. “No bloody way. For what?!”

“Ah,” you looked back at his phone hesitating for a moment before you started scrolling further up. “Something about a prank that was pulled and now he can’t find his cigars. Simon said ‘soap fix this’”

You looked up at Johnny again to see him visibly wince. “I thought he woulda found them by now! Bloody hell, can you text back and say I’ll figure it out?”

“You want me to text them back?” He nodded like it was the simplest thing he’s asked you to do and turned back to the stove. “Are you sure?”

“Yer just replying to them before they come murder me, no pressure.” He laughed before noticing your silence and you couldn’t see the way his smile fell a little bit when he realized why you were so tense. “I’m sure.”

After a moment He heard the click of his phone shutting off and being set on the counter before he asked you to do another thing. “Can you see if there’s anythin’ else I forgot to respond to?” In all honesty he really just wanted you to look through his phone, to show you you could still trust him and that he was head over heels for you.

“Uh, another group chat with Price included sent something. Can I check?” He hummed in response and you started scrolling through to see if there was anything important. You knew any mission details are on a completely separate phone that quite literally cannot be used for anything other than talking to his task force so you never felt inclined to even ask.

“Dinners almost ready, I’ll be right back just gotta change.” He told you before running to the bedroom while you scrolled.

Anytime your name got mentioned you felt your heart clench until you read them and it was just the boys asking how you were doing. It made you feel nice. Just knowing his friends cared about you.

You’ve only known them about the year and a half you and Johnny have been dating but you’ve heard of them on multiple occasions from when you first met Johnny almost seven years ago, a year before you started dating your ex.

You couldn’t help but smile at the goofy text messages they would send back and forth until you came across a few that had you frozen to your spot.

‘Have you asked her yet?’

‘Hop to it Johnny, I’m surprised you didn’t ask her long ago.’

‘Will you tell us what she says?’ That one was price and it was followed up by a quick “of course” from Johnny before they all texted him good luck.

That was about a week ago.

Almost as if sensing your silence, Johnny came out of the room quietly. He noticed the way your mouth was agape in shock while your eyes scanned the messages over and over. And it took him a moment to realize why.

“No! Ya weren’t supposed to see that part yet!” Johnny called exasperated as he ran to you, scaring the crap out of you as you dropped his phone like it was a hot potato. “Didja read everything?” He asked after a moment of stunned silence.

He sighed when you wouldn’t even answer him and walked over to a drawer in his kitchen where he pulled out a small velvet box. “I was gonna ask ya tonight.” He mumbled softly, opening the box to reveal the most gorgeous ring you’ve ever seen.

Upon seeing the shock on your face his blood suddenly ran cold. “I didn’t just spoil it myself did I?! You did get to that conversation right?!” He was frantic but you were still frozen to your spot. It wasn’t until he brought his hands to your cheeks that you realized you were crying. “Why’re you crying Bonnie? Is it something I said? Is it too soon?”

You just shook your head as tears fell harder. “Are you serious? You want to marry me?” His eyes softened instantly and he brought you into one of his famous hugs. “Are you sure?” You whispered

“Lass, I’ve been sure I was gonna marry ya when I met ya seven years ago.” He muttered and you almost wondered if he could feel your heart skip a beat. He pulled back after a moment and picked his phone up off the floor. “Let me show ya somethin’”

You watched as he typed in a few words in the search bar of his message app and pulled up messages he still had saved between him, simon and Kyle seven years ago.

‘I swear on my mother, I’m gonna marry this girl’

‘Johnny don’t you think that’s a little soon?’ Kyle had asked him but Johnny seemed to ignore him as he sent multiple pictures of rings next.

‘Which one do ya think she’d like?’

‘Couldn’t tell you we don’t know anything about the girl.’ Ghost replied.

‘You sorry lads are gonna regret this when I force ya both to be in my wedding when I marry the love of my life’

The other two just disliked the message and that was the end.

You looked up at him in shock. “For seven years?” You whispered and he nodded softly. “Even while I was-?”

“Especially when ya were with that prick. I wasn’t gonna leave ya hangin’ to spend the rest of yer days with ‘im.” He scoffed as if thinking back to those three long years where you were in someone else’s arms.

It made you cry harder. “You waited for me?”

“Of course I did.”

“He never let me look through his phone.” You sobbed out and Johnny brought you into another hug. You felt silly, like this was such a childish thing to cry over but it just plucked all the right heartstrings for you.

“You can look through everything on my phone. I waited this long to finally be able to call ya mine. Why in the bloody hell would I screw that up?” He held on tighter. “You can even check my Snapchat, Gaz says I might have something called a snap score? Whatever the hell that means.”

He let a relieved smile come out when he heard you laugh softly before he pulled away from you and held the box back up to you. “We found each other, you just took the scenic route and that’s okay ya can make up for it by sayin’ yes.”

His eyes held so much hope in them especially when a big smile finally broke out on your face and you nodded softly, uttering a quiet ‘yes’

He felt like he could cry, “yeah?” When you nodded again he grabbed the ring and softly put it onto your ring finger, kissing your knuckles right after. “I love you.” He said pulling you into a kiss.

“I love you too.” You replied when you pulled away before a teasing smirk crossed your face. “Now let’s see what that snap score is.”

He laughed loudly as he pulled up the app, “I only really talk to Gaz and my family on there.”

“Not ghost?”

“Christ no. I’m surprised the man even has a phone.” He joked while watching you click your way through to his snapscore.

“Barely 1,000?!” You barked out laughing and he was frantic as he took the phone back. Looking between you leaned over laughing and his phone.

“What does that mean?!” He asked frantically he almost thought it was a bad thing until he noticed the way you clutched your side from laughing so hard. “Is that low?”

“So low Johnny.” You finally calmed down as you hopped off the stool. You kissed his cheek as you passed him. “God I love you. Now let’s try this dinner!”

He looked between you and his phone again before muttering, “Steamin Jesus.” To himself.

Yeah, you loved him.

#johnny soap mactavish x reader #john soap mctavish x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #call of duty x reader #call of duty imagine #soap mactavish x reader #john mactavish x reader

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siriusleee · 7 months

Text

shot through with gold

“I smashed the whole house to bits,” Johnny keeps going, turning to put the milk in the refrigerator. “Had to get Simon over here to help me put it back together. It was his idea by the way. To get the mug fixed. He said you’d be mad if it was gone when you came home.”

tags: coming back home, implied torture, capture, smut, riding, reader is afab, mentions of medical procedures, mentions of blood word count: 7.7k author's note: This was a commission by the best and brightest @gazs-blue-hat. If you'd like to commission a fic, visit my ko-fi for more information. Also, I refuse to disgrace the good country of Scotland by attempting to do the full Scottish accent. Readers call sign is Sparrow, but it's only used once.

The room is heavy with dust; small puffs cloud around Johnny’s boots as he pads across the plush carpet. The summer’s oppressive heat makes the walls sweat - you’d be worrying about the mold forming in the drywall if you could see it. But Johnny doesn’t think of the way his handprints smudge on the paint you spent weeks agonizing over or the way your perfume lingers in the still air even after all this time.

His singular mission - to grab a few shirts he needs and leave - is the only thought he allows himself to think about, hands combing through the dressers and eyes trained downward, away from all the pictures hanging on the wall. He avoids your side of the dresser, avoids the lace that still peaks out from your top drawer.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, Johnny ignores it as he pulls the shirts he came to look for out of the dresser drawer, tucking them beneath his arm. He follows his tracks in the dust back out, eyes cast down at the carpet. The whole trip takes less than 10 minutes; he doesn’t let himself look up until he’s slamming the passenger door of Simon’s truck shut behind him.

“Got everything?” Simon asks, shifting the truck into drive.

Johnny sits ramrod straight in the seat, eyes avoiding Simon’s as he buckles in.

“Yeah, got everything.”

Your fingers trace over the marks you’d carved into the soft stone wall. You’d tried to keep a tally mark of days, but time slipped by in odd increments within your cell. Some days you’d watch the sunrise from the cracks in the ceiling and after just a blink, the inky blackness of night would be seeping in. Sometimes the sun hung in the sky for months before finally falling to the full moon. No matter how hard you tried to decode the pattern, the moment you had it everything would reset.

The guards were in on it; they had to be. They’d bring your meals at odd times - sometimes you’d still be full from the moldy slop they shoved in between the cell bars, spilling it out onto the floor like you’re an animal in a cage, and sometimes you’d be so hungry that you could barely crawl to eat.

It was supposed to be someone else - you were pulled for guard duty after another soldier slogged off and broke his foot doing something stupid while training. You’d finally been pulled to work with Johnny, three days away from being a full transfer to the 141 when your C.O. had appeared at the door of your bunk, new orders in hand.

A simple guard duty: get the guy to where he was supposed to be going, hand him off, and fly home. Your transfer could wait an extra forty-eight hours. But your plane was shot down somewhere over the middle of nowhere - you had told your C.O. that flying that low was a risk, but the desert was empty and the plane was old. They’d been making the flight for weeks, ferrying men back and forth with no hiccups. Your flight should have been no different.

It should have been someone else.

You couldn’t remember what had hit your small passenger plane: but the ground was David, and you were Goliath. You’d hit the ground beside the pilot’s head, his mouth formed in a soundless scream, and after a quick flash of black, had woken up to a bucket of water being poured across your face.

Whatever language your captives screamed at you, you didn’t know it. And if they knew any of the ones you screamed back at them: Spanish, Arabic, German, they didn’t let you in on it. You couldn’t figure out what they wanted until they’d ripped the Union Flag from the breast of your vest, a quick picture on a Polaroid camera snapped above you before you realized what they wanted.

Blood dribbled down your chin when you laughed at them: the government didn’t even pay for soldiers who got captured at war. What would they pay for your half-broken body to get shipped back in a wooden box? A simple mistake that could be written off as a plane malfunction.

The anger had come first, feet and fists slamming into the men when they appeared at the cell doors. Nails ripped from their beds when you tried to claw at the seams in the walls. It had cost you a few teeth and a pound of flesh. And then, when you were tired of the endless beatings and anger that went nowhere, you begged them to kill you, to do something to end the torment. By the marks on the wall, it took months before you first asked to be killed, and only weeks later for that to end, each request met with silence and a sneer. Now you lay in the corner, waiting for the few moments when they’d let you out to see the sun glinting off of the mountain ranges, the clouds threatening to storm in the distance.

Those quick trips seemed to come with less frequency as time slipped by.

You trace the tattoo on your thigh; they’d cut through it once after you kicked one of them in the chest, his ribs caving beneath your feet, but even beneath the dried viscera and matted dirt that covered your skin, you could still see Johnny’s name there.

You wonder if he’s picked a gravestone for you yet.

The two of you had talked about it, once. It was the nature of your jobs - to be prepared for everything that could come your way. Your wills were done: 75% to Johnny, 15% to your sister’s kids, and the rest to a local charity. Johnny wrote in that you were to get 100% of everything he owned, and you had chided him about it.

“What about your mom? Your sisters?” You had asked across the steam from your cup of coffee. Johnny had shrugged, dropping the black pen onto the table with finality.

“Already taken care of, birdie.”

After that had come the talk of headstones and burial plots. Of missing bodies and cremation. You had told Johnny that whatever he thought you’d like, to pick out. You weren’t picky about it.

You wonder if the military let him put his last name on the stone.

A decidedly male voice shouts from around the corner, and you pull back into the stone wall. Seconds later, fetid food falls through the bars. The man shouts at you, pointing at the food on the ground. Lazily, you turn your head towards him, watching the way he sneers at you through the bars.

They must be getting angry then. No ransom came through after all these months.

You bare your teeth at him.

You’d rip his throat out if you had the strength to do so anymore.

Johnny’s fingers don’t shake like they used to when he buckles the strap of his helmet, the night vision goggles weighing him down. He’s tired - exhausted. The entire convey smells of cigarettes and sweat. Heavy men in heavy gear press around him; across from him Gaz’s eyes shine terribly bright in the darkness. They press in on Johnny, forcing him back into his seat heavily.

Price’s voice is loud in his comms, intermingling with the sounds of the Marines and the whir of the mechanics beneath his feet. Johnny can’t make out the details over the sound of the truck rumbling beneath him.

“Steady Soap?”

Gaz knows - Johnny doesn’t know how Gaz can do this kind of job with the way he fucking oozes empathy. Or sympathy. Johnny could never remember which one was which, he always had to ask you which one to use. Gaz had been the only one who’d asked him if he was alright; Simon had lingered at the edges of rooms Johnny was in to keep an eye on him, and Price tried to give him an extended leave. Johnny had refused.

But Gaz had been waiting until Johnny was sitting outside of some bar a group of Seals had taken them to - a celebration for a job well done months after you were gone, after Johnny's failed attempt to find you.

“You good?” Gaz had asked, fingers twirling a cigarette he would never light.

“O’course.”

It had made Johnny feel like shit to lie to Gaz, and the same feeling washes over him as Gaz’s eyes linger on Johnny.

The warm summer air washes over them; sweat is starting to coat his lower back, his fatigues keeping him too warm. The smell of the desert, of warmed sand keeps him grounded, reminds him of where he is - what he’s doing here.

In the glint of the moonlight, the mountaintops shine at him.

The first few missions had been difficult: he’d fought like hell to try to search for you, fuck the regulations. He’d resign if it meant finding you. The rest of the fucking government didn’t care: no one on the plane was as important as anyone else, not to the officials anyway. Johnny had done just that, his resignation had landed heavily on Price’s desk, only to land in the trashcan a moment later.

Gaz volunteered to follow Johnny, but Price had cut that off quickly. It was to be Johnny and Simon only. They had five days, a week at most before they had to be back home.

The farthest they got was the plane wreckage, a little burnt-out village miles away, and sheep that stared at them from the sides of the mountains. But he couldn’t find a trace of you or a singular person who even recognized the photo of you he kept tucked inside his gear. Even after Simon had disobeyed Price’s orders to return home now after weeks had passed. They didn’t find anything.

Johnny knew that’s why Price had volunteered the 141 for this mission - a small-time terrorist cell hiding out in a country they didn’t belong to, a small promise of the bodies of missing soldiers hidden somewhere.

It was something.

The guards are panicking; the dirt walls shake around you. You can’t guess what it could be: American pilots doing a blind bombing, Russians pretending to send help only to rain down hell on the perceived innocent. Maybe God’s here to level the land and flood it. Try again. Do something different this time.

He could start with your cell, you think, scraping at the dirt on your leg. Underneath the sun-starved skin is paler than it should be. If you ever leave, you think, the first thing you’re going to do is eat a fucking steak in the sunshine. The bones that refused to set correctly ache beneath your bruised flesh.

The sound of gunfire pierces the inescapable silence. Your captors yell, screams punctuating between the bursts of firepower. Good, maybe they’ll tear each other apart and leave you here to die in peace.

Maybe it was a poker game gone extremely wrong. Someone asked to strip when they should have been ponying up the cash.

Smoke pops in the hallway outside, you don’t run from the white creeping in on you, just pull the rags that were your shirt over your mouth to try and keep breathing. It overtakes your cell; you watch as the smoke creeps through the cracks in the ceiling.

The sounds of war flood the small cell - the taste of blood and gunpowder in the air around you. You can taste the iron when you breathe in. It coats your tongue. You run your teeth across the chipped and broken enamel, mixing the taste of other’s blood with your own.

Someone shouts so close this time you can almost make out the words - American accent thick and heavy in your ears - and it stirs something inside of you. You try to navigate the cell through the smoke, rolling painfully off of the pallets your captors had so kindly turned into a bed for you. Crawling across the excreta and mud you try to make a sound, but you haven’t spoken in months.

Your throat is raw, and the sounds that come from you are barely human. You’ll be surprised the men even hear you, let alone notice you there on the ground. You try to pull yourself up at the bars, but the fracture in your ankle that healed up wrong weeks ago keeps you on your knees.

“Hey-” you finally croak out loud enough for one of the men to cast his eyes down at you. “Please.”

He’s so familiar, the softness in his eyes tugging at something familiar inside of you, the sharpness of his shoulders calling to you. You pull yourself up, leaning heavily on the bars and the one ankle that doesn’t scream at you, hands slipping through the bars to try to reach towards him.

His gun drops, swinging loosely on its strap as he steps towards you. His fatigues are filthy, and his nose wrinkles beneath the cloth mask covering his face. You know you smell terrible, and you want to apologize for it, but you can’t make the words come. He looks so tired as he steps towards you, hands reaching out to grip the bars between the two of you.

“Sparrow?”

“Johnny?”

It takes days for you to make it home: IVs from field medics who barely know what they’re doing, anti-viral meds, shots, stitches. They don’t even let you take a real shower until you’ve landed at a base you barely recognize. It’s a painful process, a female nurse wiping at you gently, but still peeling away layers of skin with each pass of the washcloth, your sobs muffled by the shower.

Johnny waits for you on the fringes of all the people that press around you, poking you, prodding you painfully until finally, you find yourself slammed into a British hospital bed.

Johnny comes in the moment they let him, hands held behind his back in a mock parade rest. You barely recognize him, his mohawk almost completely grown out and bags under his eyes. You know you don’t look much better; you’d caught sight of yourself in a mirror before they’d forced you into bed. Ruined was the only word to describe what you saw. Too thin, too broken. Too torn apart to be stitched back together. At least not without all the types of therapy a military doctor listed out to you: hydro, occupational, physical, mental.

Neither of you know what to say, so you start with the last thing the doctor told you.

“They’re going to rebreak my ankle tomorrow,” your voice is still thin, full of isolation. You’d tested it out on everyone who’d been in to work on you, but it didn’t sound right at all. Johnny shuffles nervously where he stands, and then rushes forward to sit in the chair beside your bed. He’s moving wrong, you think, like a wind-up doll. Too slow and then all at once, too fast.

“Why?”

“I healed up wrong.”

Johnny’s hands play with the edge of the blanket that dangles off of the bed, eyes trained on the fabric. He’s not going to look at you. At the ruin you’ve become. You press yourself down harder into the thin mattress, hands tucked beneath your thighs to keep them still.

“Is it going to hurt?”

You can’t help but smile at his question, your toes twitching beneath the blanket that feels so out of place across you. How many months had they had you? A year? No one had told you yet.

“They said I’d be fucked up on medicine. But probably, yeah."

Johnny’s hands aren’t still against the blanket, instead reaching out towards you. The movement startles you, and you jerk to the opposite side, nearly pulling your IVs out. Johnny pulls his hands back, crossing them across his chest.

“When you -” his voice breaks, just a moment before he put it back together, eyes finally meeting yours, “when you come home I’ll bring the bedroom downstairs so that you don’t have to walk far.”

You have the nagging suspicion that he changed what he was going to say at the last moment.

"Are you going to sleep on the couch with me?" You try to tease, but your voice falls flat, unpracticed. But it still makes Johnny smile, sharp incisors digging into his chapped lips.

"I'll sleep wherever you tell me."

The two of you are surrounded by the sounds of the hospital: the beeps of the heart rate monitors, the sounds of the nurses' quiet conversation outside of your room. You trace your hands across the blanket, grasping Johnny’s whenever your fingers collide with each other.

For a moment, neither of you move, just languish in the feeling of each other’s skin; you’re too busy tracing Johnny’s palm to notice him pushing himself closer to you until he kisses you, softly but with a tight undercurrent of desperation, his hand tightening almost painfully on yours.

The feeling of someone touching you so gently after weeks of rage and anger nearly stops your heart. The monitor goes crazy; Johnny pulls back, just the hint of a smile on his lips.

It takes four weeks for Johnny to get the go ahead to bring you home. Each day you were in the hospital he would come for a quick chat before work, bringing you breakfast he picked up. Every day after, he would collapse in the chair beside your bed, smelling of sweat and gunpowder.

The smell made you recoil when he tried to kiss you, and he didn't try again after that, even after you tried to stutter out a why. But the day the doctor tells Johnny that you can go home, you awaken to Johnny outside of the hospital room, arms crossed as he speaks to the head doctor - Johnny looks more serious than you’ve ever seen him off the battlefield.

Everyone rotates around you as if you’re not there, packing the room up, pulling your IVs out, fingers prodding and poking you until a nurse aide wheels a wheelchair into the room for you.

”Ready?” She asks, locking the brakes. She looks at you from across the room, and you know what she wants. Starting the day after they rebroke your bones, they made you get up and start walking, and you push yourself off of the bed, walkable cast heavy against the tile floor.

Johnny’s in the room in a second, catching sight of you whenever he sees you stumbling over your cast across the room. The aide lets him push her out of the way, his hands gripping the wheelchair as you lower yourself down.

“I can walk out, you know.” You grumble at Johnny as he tosses a heavy folder into your lap.

“Hospital procedure, birdie.”

Simon’s truck is waiting for the two of you in the parking lot, Simon in the driver's seat. He throws a glance at you as Johnny helps you clamber into the backseat, crowded around by grocery bags.

“Hello, Luv.”

“Hello, Simon. Thank you for the ride.”

Simon opens his mouth to speak, black hospital mask sliding up, but he’s cut off by Johnny clambering into the passenger seat.

You watch Johnny from the backseat, foot propped up beside you. His hair has grown out too long, the Mohawk nearly disappeared and his beard has started to grow in. In all the years you’ve known him, you’ve never seen him anything other than clean-shaven; even in the field, he'll butcher himself with a knife before he lets it grow in.

He’s thinner than he should be, too. You wonder if he’d been eating like he was supposed to.

The drive home is disorientating, Simon taking turns too sharply, too quick for your still queasy stomach. By the time Johnny helps you climb down from the truck, dropping your hands quickly when both of your feet are on the ground.

The house is clean, too clean for Johnny to have been here alone. Like he can sense you'd skepticism, Johnny speaks from ahead of you.

“I’ve hired a cleaner,” Johnny says, holding the door open for you. “So don’t worry about anything.”

It’s odd to be back home; you trace your fingers across the knick-knacks you’d collected throughout the years, the furniture you’ve spent years picking out. You have memories of sitting here with Johnny, memories of Simon and Gaz laughing from the kitchen. But now all you feel is lost, a bottle floating in a foreign ocean.

You wander into the kitchen, fingers trailing against the wall - there are no dirty dishes in the sink, no food in the cabinets; Johnny wasn’t living here.

The only dish you recognize is sitting on the counter, you pick it up, feeling the unfamiliar weight in your hand.

“It’s called Kintsugi.”

The Japanese word rolls heavily off of Johnny’s tongue, your fingers pause tracing the golden lines that cut through the mug. It was your favorite, a gift from when you and Johnny had first met. The two of you met at a diner, out with mutual friends. You’d thought it was cute, the name of the diner printed across the front in vintage lettering. Johnny had swiped it for you, hiding it beneath his jacket until the two of you parted ways at your doorstep.

“What happened to it?”

“I broke it,” he admits, dropping the grocery bags onto the counter. Your fingernail can’t find any snag in the glaze, any sign that the mug has never had the golden lines cutting through it.

Johnny busies himself with unloading the bag, speaking without looking at you as he confesses.

“After you were taken, I spent weeks searching for you until Price forced me to come home. I was angry, and I smashed it.”

You can feel the frown sketched onto your face; you don’t look at Johnny as you set the mug down on the counter.

You lean against the counter and watch Johnny busy himself with the groceries.

“He was right,” you admit, feeling silly over the sadness that fills you over the broken cup, “but maybe that’s something Simon has a lot of experience with broken things ya’know.”

You and Johnny orbit each other for weeks: he’s there every day until you begin to question if he’s gotten himself fired to stay home with you. He drives you everywhere, and if he can’t, Simon waits for you just out past the front gate, no doubt on Johnny’s orders.

“I had a lot of time off,” he says one day, elbow-deep in the laundry that he dumped between the two of you, eyes cast on the television. “Never had a reason to take it before.”

Your hands smooth the wrinkles out of one of Johnny’s shirts, fingers picking at the loose string. Today had been talk therapy, recommended by the SAS doctors. They were strict about all the requirements you had to meet if you ever wanted to go back, and laying on a shrink’s couch for two hours a week was one of them.

The graying doctor had asked you if you had spoken to Johnny about the anger that still wells up in you, the dreams you have of tearing your captives to pieces with your hands, the internal self-flagellation you went through every night when you thought about the career you’d worked so hard for, and have now lost.

You had spent the rest of the day thinking about what he said, even when it meant not paying attention to the medical doctor’s order when they were cutting your cast off, but Johnny took in every word.

You almost say something then, tossing Johnny’s shirt onto his pile, but the wrong words come out.

“You need a haircut.”

“Yeah?” Johnny’s hands still around a pair of your shorts, you feel him watching you in his peripheral vision. “You want to cut it?”

Of course, you did; you spend more moments than not thinking about how his hair must feel like long if it’s still soft. But every time the two of you tried to touch each other, the other pulled away.

So when Johnny takes your hand, and pulls you up the stairs, you let him - hand heavy and warm in your own.

Johnny lowers himself onto the closed toilet seat; you feel unsteady as you approach him, clippers in hand, and you’re not sure if it’s from the closeness or the weight of your cast being removed.

“Are you sure you trust me to do this?” You ask again; since you’d come home your fingers had been a kind of clumsy they’d never been before.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Johnny keeps his eyes trained on you, fingers tapping against the tight denim stretched across his jeans.

“I can scalp you bald,” you admit, switching the clippers on, “and then you’d look like a Q-Ball for eight weeks.”

“I’ll be the best damn Q-Ball anyone’s ever seen,” Johnny says, beard twitching as he smirks at you. If he notices the way your fingers tremble when you take his jaw in your hand, he doesn’t say anything.

His eyes close at the feeling of the clippers cutting through his hair, no doubt the feeling of the weight being removed was comfortable for him.

“You didn’t do this while I was - while I was gone?”

Your therapist says you shouldn’t shy away from calling your kidnapping what it was, but you still can’t form the words in front of Johnny.

He hums at your words, never opening his eyes as he speaks.

“I don’t let anyone else touch my hair, birdie.”

“What about your beard?”

Johnny snorts, eyes meeting yours as you maneuver his head to the side.

“You don’t like it?”

You like the way he feels against your skin, you want to tell him. But you can’t make the words form, can’t spit them out. Johnny watches you chew on them for a moment before he lets out a sigh. His hair is scattered on the floor around the two of you, more than you’d thought he’d had.

You swap the guards to shorten his mohawk, pressing yourself in between Johnny’s knees so that you can reach the nape of his neck.

His hands wrap around your thighs, light and warm against the skin that peeks out beneath the shorts you hadn’t taken off since you’d left your cast removal this morning.

Your skin is on fire at his touch, you try to ignore it as you clean up his neck; Johnny buries his face in your shirt, breath warm against your stomach. His fingers trace light patterns on your thigh and it takes every ounce of willpower to keep the clippers from straying.

His fingers trace the scar that covers his name, and you jump back like you’ve been shocked. Your back hits the wall, knocking the decorative towels you’d spent days choosing to the floor. Johnny’s hands linger in the air between the two of you as you try to catch your breath.

“Sorry,” you pant out with a heavy swallow.

Johnny pushes himself up, eyes watching you like you’re a wild animal ready to run.

He reaches out and brushes some of his fallen hair from your shoulders, electrifying your skin again. His touch is hesitant as he traces up your shoulder, fingers cupping the back of your neck.

He’s fire as he presses himself against you, lips brushing over yours just quick enough to light something up inside of you before pulling away with an apology. He loosens the clippers from your hands and shoos you out with a promise he’ll clean the hair up himself.

A storm rages outside, threatening to cut the power at any moment. You watch it throw around tree limbs and leaves through the front window. Behind you, the television casts soft shadows on the walls.

“Still pouring out there?” Johnny asks from his spot on the couch. Your answer is the curtain falling back into place. You pad back to your spot beside Johnny; he holds the blanket up for you to slip underneath.

His bare leg rubs against yours, but his hands stay firmly in his lap. He hadn’t tried to touch you since that day in the bathroom - even when he dropped you off at therapy, you’d wait for him to stretch across and kiss you, but he’d just send you off with a wave.

You knew it was partially your fault: you couldn’t get the words out to explain how much you wanted him to touch you, how sorry you were for every jerk away. Every time you tried to tell him how much you wanted him, the words curled into your throat and refused to budge. You had even asked earlier for him to take a shower with you, to no avail.

The movie - some family flick Johnny picked because it didn’t have any violence, you know - cast shadows across Johnny’s face. His stubble is starting to come in again; you reach out and trace your finger across the five o’clock shadow creeping onto his jawline.

Johnny doesn’t take his eyes away from the television screen, but he leans his face into your touch. Your fingers trace upwards, lacing through the Mohawk you’d trimmed just two weeks ago. Johnny nearly purrs when you tug on his hair, pulling him down so that he’s lying across your lap.

You have to take it slow, you know or you and Johnny both might break apart. So you just settle beneath him, fingers tracing patterns onto his scalp, eyes trained on the television, but not really watching.

“I don’t think I’m going to go back,” you whisper, voice nearly drowned out by the storm outside. Johnny rolls, doing his best not to dig painfully into your thigh to look up at you.

“To work?”

You nod, still refusing to look at him.

“I talked about it with the therapist today; I just - I think it would be best if I just cashed in my retirement. I’ve got a lot saved up: hazard pay and all that. The corporal offered me a job as a trainer. So I could still be around."

Johnny’s hand reaches up to grab your wrist, forcing you to look at him. You can’t read the expression on his face, and you don’t like that. He’s always your open book. You try to keep your heart rate steady at the feeling of him tracing patterns on your wrist.

“I’m sorry, birdie.”

And you know he’s not just apologizing for your ruined career, for the nearly year you’d spent locked away in some disgusting cell, for the still broken teeth in your mouth, or the screws that hold most of you together now. He’s still apologizing for not being able to find you earlier, to be there months earlier.

“It’s not your fault Johnny - I should have told them no. I should have been smart enough to just tell my commanding that I couldn’t do it. I should have-“

Hot tears start to fall; Johnny pushes himself up, fingers brushing them away gently. When you don’t shy away from his touch, he pulls you into his lap, tucking your head beneath his chin, and pulling you so tight you think you might break beneath his touch. And you would let yourself shatter beneath him, if it meant he could put you back together, shot through with gold.

Johnny lets you cry on his shoulder until the fabric of his shirt is soaking wet; after a while, the smell of him, the softness of the way he caresses your back,and the feeling of his jean-clad thigh between your own stirs something else inside of you. You need something else, something more desperate, something to push away the feelings of failure. Of the fear that still lingers in you of heights, and darkness, and men who smell of sweat and gunpowder.

So when you kiss him, softly, Johnny doesn’t push you away like he can feel how much you need him to touch you. Even as he lifts you up, your legs wrapping around his waist, you don’t break the kiss. It stays superficial, and soft, neither of you breaking apart or deepening it. You expect him to carry you to the spare bed he brought downstairs for you, but instead, he cradles you up the stairs, hands gripping your thighs so tight you know there will be a thumb-shaped bruise there tomorrow.

Johnny doesn’t stumble as he carries you.

In the bedroom the two of you shared before you were lost, Johnny collapses on the bed, his smell enveloping you, hands never leaving you. He buries his nose in the soft skin of your neck, breathing in the smell of you.

“Are you here with me birdie?”

Johnny’s voice is muffled on your skin, his hands pausing at the hem of your shirt.

“I’m here Johnny.”

You rest your hands on his biceps and feel the way his heart is in your own chest. His weight presses down around you, the mattress sinking down beneath the two of you. The wind rolls in through the window, gooseflesh erupting on your skin where Johnny isn’t touching.

Johnny’s hands don’t move from the hem of your shirt until you slide your own down to his wrists, a bravery you hadn’t felt in weeks taking over you.

“Please, Johnny.”

Johnny shifts, knees spreading your own apart, but he still doesn’t touch your bare skin until you tug on his wrists, trying to slide them underneath your shirt, instead, he traces your arms - the area you know he thinks is safe.

The feeling of his calloused hands on your soft skin makes you shiver; Johnny presses a kiss to your pulse point. You know he can feel the way your heartbeat picks up quickly, and he bites down on the sensitive skin lightly. You can’t help the gasp that escapes you, the way you buck your hips upward into his.

“Birdie.” It’s a warning and a promise rolled into one, and it makes you press your knees together, trying to slow yourself down.

You let your own hands start exploring Johnny. Once, you’d had his skin memorized - every scar and freckle committed to your own memory. But there are new scars there you’ve never seen before, new wrinkles at the corner of his eyes he didn’t have before.

It’s like the first time again, both of you exploring each other slowly. Johnny pauses every time you make a noise, eyes searching your face to make sure you’re alright. You push him away just long enough to pull his shirt off of him, hands instantly reaching out to pull him back down. His own hands slide your shorts down until you can kick them across the room.

Johnny kisses you, full of the same desperation he’d had that day at the hospital. Your teeth click together as the two of you suddenly move frantically, hands grasping at each other. Johnny shakes as you run your nails down his back, pushing until he realizes what you want.

Johnny rolls, hands still wrapped around your waist until you’re on top of him. The thin material of your panties is already wet; you can feel it when you grind down on him. The rough material of his blue jeans has enough friction to send lighting bolts through you.

“Is that what you want birdie?” Johnny’s voice is low and rough in his throat; his hands rest lightly on your hips as you grind down. Your hands reach back to rest on his thighs, more leverage for you to move.

You can’t answer him, already biting down on the moans that start to build in the back of your throat. Johnny’s grip tights as you speed up; you can feel his erection pressing tightly against his zipper as you grind faster.

You feel yourself start to tremble, hands moving to brace yourself against Johnny’s chest. He wraps one hand around your wrist, the other still at your waist; you can’t look away from the hungry glint in his eye.

Outside the storm lashes, the cool air rolling in across you and Johnny.

“Let it out,” he whispers, voice ragged and panting. He’s bucking his own hips in time with your grinding; he’s holding back - you know he doesn’t want to scare you, so you loosen the knot inside of you, moaning loud enough that a blush starts to creep up your chest. At the sound, Johnny bucks up harder.

You can’t help the way you come undone, nails digging into Johnny’s chest, leaving half moons on the sensitive skin. Johnny lets you ride him until the waves of your orgasm finish rolling over you, his hands not leaving you until you finally still, thighs shaking on each side of him. You can feel your drenched underwear, feel yourself soaking into his blue jeans.

Johnny is so hard beneath you, a red flush across his chest. Outside the storm rages harder, and the lights flicker momentarily. Johnny pushes himself up onto one elbow, the hand that has refused to move up your shirt sliding up just an inch. His fingers play with the edge of your underwear, the lace snagging on his callouses.

“Why don’t you want to touch me?” You can barely hear yourself over the rain lashing against the window; Johnny’s eyebrows knit together, and he pushes himself up until he’s sitting up, your legs wrapping around his waist to keep from falling backward.

“I want to touch you,” he tries to reassure you, hands tracing patterns across the back of your shirt. But you shrug his hands off, catching his wrists in your hands before he can fully withdraw away.

“You won’t touch me beneath my shirt,” you slide his hands down to the bare skin of your thighs, moving them until the hem of your shirt falls over his fingertips. “You wouldn’t take a shower with me.”

Johnny chews on his lips, they’re too chapped, you think. The silence stretches in the sound of the storm, and the flickering lights. Before Johnny can speak lightning and thunder crash outside, and the house goes dark - the sound of the electricity powering down cutting him off. Neither of you moves in the sudden blackness.

“I’m not broken, Johnny.” You don’t want to sound so pathetic, but you do.

“I know you’re not, hen.”

“Then why am I having to beg, Johnny?”

Johnny’s hand slips up so that he’s holding your hips beneath your shirt.

“I’m not going to hurt you too.”

It’s a tough confession for him to make, you know. He’d done his best not to talk about the whole ordeal, he never asked what you went through. This was his way of keeping you away from it.

You roll your hips across his again, and his breath catches in his throat.

“Please Johnny; you’re not going to hurt me.”

You don’t know if it’s the whine in your voice or the way you trace your fingers across the hard plane of his chest, or if Johnny is just as tired of holding back as you - but he rolls you over, gentle and quick until his chest his pressed against yours, his mouth finding the sensitive skin at the base of your neck.

You’re horribly out of practice, fumbling with the buttons on his jeans, getting stuck when Johnny pulls your shirt over your head, but he doesn’t let his lips leave you; your teeth clip together as Johnny deepens the kiss he refuses to let end until your gasping for breath beneath him.

It’s electric in the best and worst ways - Johnny’s calloused fingers tracing patterns on your stomach, kneading the soft flesh of your breasts, fingers teasing the edge of your underwear, pushing them further down each time.

The current running through you makes it difficult to breathe; you can’t even warn Johnny, can’t beg him to slow down what you were just begging him to speed up. But there has never been anyone who’s known you the same way Johnny has, and when his hands slow you know he can feel that it’s too much. Just for a moment.

“Still with me?”

“Still here.”

Johnny’s hands don’t speed up, but he doesn’t slow either - pressing open-mouth kisses down your neck, between your breasts, across the planes of your stomach until he finally stops at the edge of your underwear. He darts his tongue out to lick the sensitive skin peeking out above the hem, and the feeling makes you gasp out, hips pressing harder into the mattress. His fingertips brush just over the wetness you’ve soaked through and you grind your teeth together, painfully.

“Too much?”

Yes.

Too much for you at this moment; you’re not sure if your body will hold together if Johnny even tries to eat you out, tries to stretch you with his fingers, you can hardly keep together at the feeling of him touching you anywhere after so many months of nothing but dirt, and maggots, and feverish longing for-

You didn’t notice Johnny crawling back up your body until he presses a soft kiss on your temple, fingers wiping away your hair that’s plastered with sweat there.

Johnny’s whispering in your ear: how much he missed you, how he had thought about you every day, how he’d tried to scorch the earth to look for you; he pulls you until you’re back on top of him. You can feel how hard he is, how wet you are as you grind down against the hard planes of his lower stomach, searching for him.

Johnny’s hands squeeze at your hips, shifting the both of you until you feel the tip of him catch against you; a shudder rolls through you both, but Johnny doesn’t move. Every muscle in his body is pulled taunt, pulled against fucking into you at a frenetic pace. You recognize the set of his jaw, the way his hands wrap around your forearms. He’s letting you set the pace, letting you control him.

You wait for just a heartbeat before pressing down onto him; your vision whites out from the almost uncomfortable stretch of him as you sink down slowly. You can’t remember the last time the two of you were here, the last time the two of you fucked. Johnny’s nails dig into the underside of your forearm, yours into his chest until you finally reach the hilt.

You hold there for a moment, feeling the way he fills you up - so much so that you don’t think there’s room for anything else besides Johnny - there never has been. You can’t even think between the feeling of Johnny filling you up and the feeling of not trying to cum so fast. Finally, when your heartbeat slows incrementally, you rock yourself against him, slowly, using his chest as leverage.

Beneath you Johnny is coming undone; he’s biting his lip so hard you think he might draw blood, so you trace your fingertips across his bottom lip. His lips part beneath your touch, and he takes your pointer finger into his mouth, tongue swirling around it.

The feeling makes your hips move faster, stuttering against him. Johnny moans, muffled around your finger. The sound is horribly erotic in the darkness, and it spurs something inside of you to move your hips faster, rougher against Johnny. But he doesn’t move beneath you, still holding himself back. The sound of skin on skin, of how wet you are for him drown out the storm.

Johnny’s hands are everywhere: in your hair, cupping the supple flesh of your ass, pinching and rolling your nipples between his thick fingers; one hand sneaks across the flesh of your hip, dipping between the two of you to circle your clit. The feeling makes you crumple against him; Johnny takes the opportunity to roll you over, pressing you into the mattress.

Johnny presses one of your knees up, hooking it over his elbow so that he can fuck into you, still gentle even when he’s deeper than you think he’s ever been before, his other hand still circling your clit, slowly enough to keep you from falling apart, but fast enough to bring you to the edge.

His pace grows rougher; you claw at him, drawing red welts across his skin, but Johnny doesn’t slow down. You keep your eyes closed tightly, back arched to try and get him in deeper, to get more.

“Look at me.”

Johnny’s voice is rough, a gentle command you have to follow. His eyes never leave yours, even when his pace increases, the finger on your clit still rubbing tight circles until-

Until you’re breaking apart, shattering beneath him. Your orgasm makes you arch, back nearly leaving the mattress. Johnny’s hands move to cup your face, pulling himself down until he can kiss you as you ride through your orgasm, gasping in his own mouth. Your nails draw thick red welts across his back, but Johnny doesn’t stop pounding into you, your moans drowned out by the way he kisses you.

Not long after, Johnny’s pace starts to stutter, his lips never leaving yours until he plunges in deeper than he had before, and you can feel his warm release spill out inside of you.

Even when he’s completely spent, Johnny doesn’t pull out of you, instead fucking into you once, twice, three more times until you know you can’t take anymore, hands pressing on his chest to push him away.

Johnny’s fingers smooth your twitching thighs as he pulls away. In the darkness, you can just see his outline as he shifts between your legs, but he doesn’t move from there.

He caresses you until you are finally still and your panting finally slows. His fingers trace across the cracks you can still feel, stitching you back together, shot through with gold.

“Still here?”

“Still here.”

#my fics #john soap mactavish #johnny soap mactavish #john soap mactavish x reader #soap mactavish x reader #john mactavish #cod soap x reader #cod imagines #cod smut #soap mw2 #soap mactavish #cod x reader #johnny mactavish

373 notes · View notes

mistydeyes · 11 months

Text

perfumes i think the 141 boys enjoy

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summary: Scent is one of the most powerful senses, so what kind of fragrance do the 141 boys + Alejandro like on their significant other?

pairing: 141 x Reader

warnings: none

a/n - i also work for a perfume company so I've had a couple of ideas about what scents the boys like :)

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price - loves expensive, smokey scents on anyone. imagine the scents of a fresh cigar-that's what price wants in a fragrance. notes like pepper, leather, tobacco, cedar wood, and iris will make him crumble.

masculine

oud wood - tom ford notes: oud wood, sandalwood, chinese pepper

osmanthe kodoshan - maison crivelli notes: leather, tobacco, sichuan pepper, apricot, peach

functional fragrance - the nue co. notes: cardamom, iris, palo santo, cilantro

unisex

hinoki fantôme - boy smells notes: tobacco leaves, oak moss, and smoked leather

jazz club - maison marigela notes: pink pepper, rum, tobacco

lumière d’iris - veronique gabai notes: rose, iris, cedarwood, amber

feminine

baccarat rouge 540 - maison francis kurkdjia notes: jasmine, ambergris, saffron, cedar wood

cuir béluga - guerlain notes: leather, powder, vanilla

platinum 22 - floris london notes: rose, violet leaf, blackcurrant, oat, black tea

soap - woodsy, floral scents are soap's surprising pick. it brings back memories of the scottish countryside, adventuring in the woods and smelling the fresh flowers his mam had. notice notes of herbs (sage, rosemary, mint), lavender, and violet.

masculine

sauvage - dior notes: pepper, amberwood, bergamot, powder

h24 - hermès notes: clary sage, narcissus, rosewood

new york wall street - bond no.9 notes: sea kale, cucumber, lavender, ambergris, vetiver

unisex

voodoo chile - dries van noten notes: rosemary, patchouli, hemp

libre - yves saint laurent notes: lavender, musk

dirty grass - heretic notes: black pepper, lemon, hemp, violet

feminine

melancholy thistle - jo malone london notes: thistle, english ivy, cool wood

portrait of a lady - frédéric malle notes: frankincense, black currant, raspberry, patchouli

la tulipe - byredo notes: tulips, cyclamen, fressia, rhubarb

gaz - FLORAL CITRUS will make this man fall in love with you. it reminds him of a warm summer day sitting in the grass and smelling flowers. look for summery fragrances with notes of citrus, lemon, sage, and fresh herbs.

masculine

bleu de chanel - chanel notes: citrus, labdanum, sandalwood, cedar

polo black - ralph lauren notes: iced mango, lemon, tangerine, sandalwood, sage, patchouli

l'homme - yves saint laurent notes: bergamot, ginger, cedar wood, vetiver

unisex

cactus garden - louis vuitton notes: maté, bergamot, lemongrass

velvet cypress - dolce & gabbana notes: pine, lemon zest, bergamot, clary sage

eau de campagne - sisley notes: grass, citrus, herbs, jasmine, lily of the valley

feminine

brazilian crush cheirosa 62 - sol de janeiro notes: pistachio, almond, sandalwood, heliotrope, jasmine

her blossom - burberry notes: mandarin, plum blossom, sandalwood

flora gorgeous jasmine - gucci notes: mandarin, jasmine, magnolia, sandalwood

ghost - likes a light, musky scent! he loves when a scent adds to a person's natural smell (he hates sugary, gourmand scents). ingredients like musk, ambrox, pepper, sandalwood catch his eye as he pictures fresh sheets and a rainfall in a forest.

masculine

geranium pour monsieur - frédéric malle notes: mint, aniseed, sandalwood, geranium, frankincense

atlantis - blu atlas notes: orris, oak moss, violet, musk, ambrette seed

gentleman - givenchy notes: pear, lavender, patchouli

unisex

glossier you - glossier notes: pink pepper, iris, ambrette seeds, ambrox

not a perfume - juliette has a gun notes: ambergris

santal 33 - le labo notes: violet cardamom, cedar wood, iris, ambrox

feminine

missing person - phlur notes: musk, bergamot, jasmine, neroli, sandalwood

golden nectar - nest notes: florals, orchid, amber, musk

apollonia - xerjoff notes: white floral, orris butter, white musk

extra! alejandro - if ghost likes it simple and light, then alejandro is the exact opposite. he loves when he can smell someone's fragrance across the room. focus on bold fragrances with spicy notes of nutmeg, myrrh, and rum that is mixed with the gourmand of vanilla, almond, and tonka bean.

masculine

the last day of summer - gucci notes: cedarwood, cypress, nutmeg, patchouli, vetiver

bibliothèque - byredo notes: peach, peony, violet, leather, patchouli, vanilla

london myrrh & tonka - jo malone notes: almond, vanilla, myrrh, lavender, honey

unisex

tobacco vanille - tom ford notes: tonka bean, vanilla. cacao

dark rum - malin + goetz notes: anise, plum, leather, rum, patchouli, amber

tao dao - diptyque notes: sandalwood, cedar, cypress, myrte

feminine

lost cherry - tom ford notes: black cherry, tonka bean, almond

brazil aroma - costa notes: white jungle flora, orange oil, pink pepper, bourbon, vetiver, patchouli

babylon - penhaligon's notes: saffron, nutmeg, coriander, cedar wood, vanilla, cypriol

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608 notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year

Text

Now I’m Covered In You [Chapter 8: Ante Meridiem]

Series summary: Aemond is a prince of England. You are married to his brother. The Wars of the Roses are about to begin, and you have failed to fulfill your one crucial responsibility: to give the Greens a line of legitimate heirs. Will you survive the demands of your family back in Navarre, the schemes of the Duke of Hightower, the scandals of your dissolute husband, the growing animosity of Daemon Targaryen…and your own realization of a forbidden love?

Series title is a lyric from: Ivy by Taylor Swift.

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), dubious consent, miscarriage, pregnancy, childbirth, violence, warfare, murder, alcoholism, sexism, infidelity, illness, death, only vaguely historically accurate, lots of horses!

Word count: 8.1k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @teenagecriminalmastermind @quartzs-posts @tclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @chainsawsangel @itsabby15 @padfooteyes @arcielee @travelingmypassion @what-is-originality @burningcoffeetimetravel @randomdragonfires @anditsmywholeheart @aemcndtargaryen @jvpit3rs @sarcastic-halfling-princess @flowerpotmage @ladylannisterxo @thelittleswanao3 @elsolario @tinykryptonitewerewolf @girlwith-thepearlearring @minttea07 @trifoliumviridi @deltamoon666 @mariahossain @darkenchantress @doingfondue @atherverybest @namelesslosers @skythighs @moonlightfoxx @partypoison00 @bellameshipper @coffedraven @greenowlfactif

“We should hide in my rooms,” Kunigunde says. She’s already heading there, her gown—like yellow jasper, like sunset, like firelight—swishing over the wooden floor, her face flinty but unrattled. She has an aura of invincibility around her, a halo, a cool fog like steel. It’s not difficult to imagine where she gets it from. She’s the Holy Roman Emperor’s daughter, raised in a far more formal and affluent court than yours or Nico’s. The idea of anyone putting their hands on her in violence is unthinkable; the animal instinct to lash back is missing from her pure-white, righteous bones. She’s not especially afraid of Daemon. She’s inconvenienced by him—because him being here is a reminder of how you triumphed where she (thus far) has failed, of the child you carry and your consummated marriage and, surely, the fact that your death would destabilize the Greens in more ways than one—but she does not fear him. You have the impression that she sees all of this as ‘men’s business,’ unpleasant and yet ultimately existing beyond her, gold coins at the bottom of the ocean, stars high above her earth. But Kunigunde doesn’t know Daemon. She knows who he is and what he’s done, but that’s very different from knowing him.

“Maybe he won’t be able to get inside,” Alicent says hopefully. The Duke of Hightower’s hands are on her shoulders, his brow cut with deep troughs of worry. Just outside the palace, there are clashes of metal and shouts and, you notice now, the gruff barking of dogs. Daemon’s Scottish deerhounds, you think. Trained to chase and to kill. “Maybe the guards will be able to stop him.”

“Maybe,” the Duke replies, but he doesn’t sound confident.

Kunigunde whips open the door to her rooms and pulls you inside, her hand closing around your wrist. Her sweet, feather-light edelweiss perfume blooms in the air. You look at her, stunned. She stares back stoically, without shallow jealousy like a child’s, without confliction. She will protect you because you’re a Green and now she is too. She will shield you because regardless of the sins of your past, the heir you carry is the future. She ushers you through her rooms—ensuring that Sir Criston closes and locks each door behind you—until you’re all huddled in the corner of her bedchamber: you, Kunigunde, Nico, Alicent, the Duke of Hightower, Sir Criston. The large rectangular window, luminous with the golden promises of early summer, overlooks the royal stables.

You ask Kunigunde with sudden inspiration: “You practice archery, don’t you?”

She’s confounded. “Right.”

“Do you have a bow in here?”

“What, in my rooms?! Of course not. Why?” Your only answer is the swelling noise of men killing each other outside. She understands and gasps, blanching, scandalized. “Well I couldn’t shoot a person with it!”

You exchange a glance with Nico. A wild, nervous giggle tumbles out of her; it’s the most impolite thing she could have done. You smile without realizing you’re doing it, a drawn, macabre smile.

“Yes,” Nico says, her eyes flicking down to where your hand rests on the hilt of the sword Aemond had made for you. “You might just get your chance to use that today.”

“Daemon wouldn’t dare,” Kunigunde murmurs fiercely. But now the screams are inside Westminster Palace; they echo through the corridors, off stone and wood and glass. Nico’s hands—trembling uncontrollably—grab yours.

“Where can we go, Father?” Alicent asks; but she’s looking at Sir Criston. He gazes back with large dark eyes swimming with panic. “If he finds us?”

The Duke of Hightower is trying to think. Ideas pass behind his blue irises like fish beneath water. “Westminster Abbey, perhaps. It is sacrilege to spill blood on consecrated ground, it is a tradition that is ancient, that long predates the Targaryen Conquest. Even the Northern noblemen hold it sacred. I don’t think Daemon would break the right of sanctuary.”

“He’d break it for me,” you say. You look out at the royal stables, separated from you by a twenty-foot drop from the window and a hundred yards of grassy field. There are only two horses housed there currently, yours and Nico’s. Kunigunde’s Andalucian is still in transport, probably being loaded onto a ship in some bustling port of the Continent. “I need to get to Midnight.”

Nico recoils, puzzled. “You can’t ride her. It’s dangerous for the baby.”

“So is Daemon beheading me.”

Now there’s a woman screaming downstairs, pleading, blubbering in words that it takes you a moment to match to a face. It’s Joanna Montford, the mother of Aegon’s bastard son. There is a great commotion and the crying of an infant. Then the cries abruptly cut off and Joanna wails, and wails, and wails, like she’s the one who’s been gutted. But it’s not her. It’s the helpless little white-haired boy who might have—in ten or twenty years—been put forth as the Greens’ claimant to the throne. Now he’ll never have banners or armies raised in his name. Now he’ll never grow up to be anyone.

“Oh, oh my God,” Alicent stammers. “Was that…was it really…?”

“The window,” the Duke of Hightower says frenziedly. He pushes open the twin glass panels and peers down, assessing the distance of the fall.

“We can’t,” you tell him. “Not without a rope. We’d snap our legs in half.”

Criston’s eyes dart around the room and land on Kunigunde’s bedsheets. Then he begins stripping them. “Help me,” he says, and all of you rush to collect the linens and knot them together, fashioning a crude ladder to ease your descent to the earth. As the growing cord of white cotton threads through your palms, you think of all the nights Aemond’s wife has spent tangled up in them—tasks left unaccomplished, sleep fitful with loss—and feel a curious pang of sympathy, envy, guilt, rage. There is no escaping it: when Aemond returns from war, he will have to lie with her, learn every last curve and freckle, breathe in edelweiss and grace, build up a store of secrets to share with her. He will have to produce children with her.

If he survives. If any of us do.

The sounds of Daemon and his soldiers are now very loud. They are going from room to room flipping furniture and tearing open closet doors. There are sickening, wet jabs when anyone resists them, groans and death rattles. They are just down the hall.

Sir Criston searches for something heavy enough to secure one end of the makeshift rope to. He decides on the leg of Kunigunde’s bedframe closest to the window and stoops low to tie the knot. Alicent is whispering to him, saying prayers, saying goodbye. The rest of you start stacking up furniture to block the door, chairs and trunks and nightstands.

“What if we can’t make it to the stables before Daemon catches us?” Nico asks you.

“I need to get to Midnight,” you repeat. “If Daemon has the chance, he’ll kill her. I can’t let that happen. Aemond gave her to me.” Alicent and Criston cast you an awkward glance. Kunigunde pretends she didn’t hear it; she’s helping the Duke of Hightower slide a desk against the door.

Nico’s eyes slip down to your belly. “I’m worried you can’t run that far.”

“You don’t have to come with me. Go to Westminster Abbey with Alicent and the Duke and Kunigunde, you’ll be safe there. You’re not the one Daemon wants.”

“I’m staying with you.”

“Nico—”

“I’m staying with you,” she insists stubbornly.

Men are pounding on the bedchamber door. Sir Criston tosses the rope of bedsheets out of the window; it reaches nearly all the way to the emerald grass below. The Duke—with fretful care that looks very strange on him—helps Alicent escape first, steadying her as she crawls through the window frame and shimmies down the rope. Then he follows after her. You and Nico are waiting by the open window with Criston shielding you from the imminent intruders, ready for your turn to descend.

The door crashes open and the piled furniture goes flying in every direction. Daemon stands there in his steel armor and his cloak of blood, his sword dripping beads like rubies, his hair in one long silver-red braid. Jace and Luke peek out from behind him, clutching their own weapons but with more trepidation than malice; you are struck by the impression that they have been brought along as observers more than anything else. This is their first taste of warfare; they’re cutting their teeth on women and babies instead of Aemond and Vhagar. Baela, tall and radiant beside her father, is distinctly not an observer. She is in light armor and carries a sword—small like yours, but sharp and nimble—that is coated with blood.

With a few words from Daemon in a language you can’t understand (Scottish? Old English?) two enormous Scottish deerhounds bolt across the room and pounce on you. Sir Criston spears one with his sword as it lunges for your face. The other’s jaw locks around your dominant hand and bites down, wrenches, rips. The pain is explosive, gunpowder and boiling water, needles and flames. The dog drags you down onto the floor as you fumble for your sword. Nico is screaming and beating at it with her fists; Criston kicks it hard enough with his boot that it goes sprawling and retreats with a whimper. And it’s only now that you realize Kunigunde is still standing by the bedchamber door.

She’s commanding Daemon, holding no weapons but her lineage and her pride: “No, you must not enter! You have no right to be here, you have no cause, there is no honor in this!”

“Move,” he says, low and serrated.

“No!” she roars up at Daemon with formidable conviction, and you think: She and Aemond really would have been good for each other. In another place, in another time. In a world where I didn’t exist. “This is against the rules of warfare, you must not enter!”

Daemon raises his sword to swing, but Kunigunde doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t think he’d harm her: a woman, a noncombatant, a daughter of an emperor. And that might be true of another man. But she doesn’t know Daemon.

“Not that one!” Jace cries, as if relaying something that has been imparted to him with great urgency. Daemon takes no notice at all.

“Kunigunde, get away from the door!” you shout at her. “Get away from the door—!”

Daemon’s blade cuts through the air, opens her throat, slits it to the bone. When she crumples and spills across the floor, you can see white glimpses of her spine through gushing scarlet arteries. The woman who was Aemond’s wife convulses like a crushed spider, her once-bright, knowing eyes going vacant and glassy. The puddle of blood beneath her expands into an ocean. Nico is shrieking, mindless, horrified, raking her face with her own fingernails. You practically shove her out of the open window.

“Go, Nico, go go!” you yell. She scrambles down the rope as Criston crashes into Daemon and his soldiers, his sword swinging and clanging, buying you necessary spare seconds. You maneuver as carefully as you can—thinking of the baby, three months along, that small vulnerable bump and dreams of a boy who looks so much like Aegon—through the window and down the length of knotted bedsheets, rubbing raw spots into your palms, staining the linen with rusty smudges like the one Kunigunde once contrived to protect Aemond’s honor. He’s a world away, gathering soldiers and provisions at Castle Rising in Norfolk, entirely unaware that his wife has been slain and that you are in mortal danger. When you near the ground, Nico and the Duke of Hightower catch you and put you safely on your feet. Alicent is staring up at the open window and begging for Criston to come down next, to flee to momentary safety like the rest of you have. The clanks of metal inside are shrill and innumerable.

The Duke grips her forearm. “Let’s go, Alicent, we have to go—”

“I can’t leave him!”

“Sir Criston!” Nico calls through cupped hands. “Sir Criston, hurry!”

But he can’t follow us, you realize. If he climbs down the rope Daemon will be right behind him. And then when Sir Criston glances from the open window you shout: “Cut it!” And then you mime catching something with both hands.

He understands and severs the linked bedsheets with his blade; the cord falls to the grass in an untidy spiral. Alicent sobs, thinking he has abandoned any hope of his escape. As the sword fighting continues upstairs, you begin frantically trying to untie one of the knots between sheets. It’s too tight, and your fingers are hopelessly shaky. You remember your sword and cut just before the knot on each end of the sheet.

“Unravel it,” you say, and Nico, Alicent, and the Duke of Hightower each grab a fraying corner. You stretch out the small square of linen below the window. “Sir Criston! Now!”

He pitches his sword as far as he can—so it won’t injure any of you in the drop—and then dives out into open air. The sheet doesn’t quite enfold him, but it does break the fall enough that he rolls away groaning but uninjured. You and Nico pull him upright and then sprint towards the royal stables; Criston pauses just long enough to snatch his sword off the ground as he passes it. The Duke of Hightower and Alicent veer left in the direction of Westminster Abbey and soon vanish from sight. As you, Nico, and Sir Criston reach the stables, you can hear the distant rumble of horses rounding the palace; they must have been tied up near the castle entranceway. Daemon and his soldiers are minutes from you, if not seconds.

Criston careens into the stables and rips two bridles from where they hang off nails on the wall. He gives one to Nico, who rushes to put it on her mild-mannered white mare. Then he throws open Midnight’s stall door. She rears up and paws at him with her massive black hooves, huffing and snorting, her ears flattened.

“I’d better do it,” you say, taking the bridle. Criston watches, petrified, as you glide into the stall. Midnight settles, her volcanic-glass eyes on you, one hoof pawing at the straw beneath her. You slip the bridle over her head and fasten the straps. Then you notice that Criston has knelt and cupped his hands so you can use them to step up and mount Midnight. “The saddle…?”

“No time.”

You place one foot into his interwoven hands and then swing your other leg over Midnight’s broad back as Criston lifts you like wind fills sails. Then he hurries off to help Nico onto her mare and, presumably, ride double with her. You grip the reins, trying to get your balance, to remember how to do this. You haven’t ridden a horse since you left Navarre almost two years ago, never without a saddle and certainly not while pregnant; there is an unpleasant tension that surfaces in your hips, waist, spine, thighs. But Midnight is listening to you. Her ears swivel back to capture your words. When you shift your body to the right, she does as well; when you tilt left, she mirrors you. And when she clops out of her stall, she does so slowly, gingerly, giving you precious fleeting time to acclimate to her plodding gait.

“Stay close to me,” Sir Criston orders. He is astride the white mare; Nico has her arms locked around his waist and is holding on for dear life, wide-eyed, nauseous with terror.

“I’ll try.”

“We’ll lose them in the forest.” Then Criston kicks his heels into the mare’s sides and flies out of the stable. You loosen your hold on the reins and Midnight takes off after them, your fingers ensnaring in her glossy black mane, her sinew surging seamlessly beneath a coat like spilled ink. She’s not as fast as Nico’s mare, nowhere close to the light-footed speed of Sunfyre or Syrax or Caraxes, but she is stronger, and she is yours. As Midnight plunges through the windswept June field towards the tree line, you look back over your shoulder to see Daemon and his men on horseback, rapidly closing the distance between you. Baela is there too; her own horse, Moondancer, keeps pace with Caraxes.

Midnight follows Nico’s mare into the forest, the same forest where you and Aemond spent your first afternoon together eleven months ago. Life had been horrible for you then, but in some sense easier; it is a dangerous thing to taste the possibility of better days. It is a dangerous thing to have hope. Trees whiz by like cannonballs, faster than you could count them; branches tear at you like claws. You duck your head and cling to Midnight and trust in her instincts, her prey-animal premonition that to be caught by your pursuers means something worse than death. Sir Criston steers the white mare into a sharp turn, and then soon after another. Nico lists without the benefit of a saddle—her arms constricted around Sir Criston’s waist and her eyes pinched shut—but wisely bites back her screams.

Caraxes is faster, you think. But if we can outfox him, the countryside beyond the forest is thick with farms and estates. We can take shelter and hide there until Daemon is driven out by Green loyalists. A few days at most, perhaps by sunset. We have a chance. We still have a chance.

When you glance back as Sir Criston leads his mount and Midnight into yet another erratic swerve, you realize that you can no longer see any of Daemon’s soldiers. After another moment, you can’t hear their shouts or galloping over the hammering of Midnight’s hooves. The forest rolls by like a curtain of stars cycles through the night sky and then you break out of the trees into a field of young June wheat. Midnight tramples the sprigs of green, soaring over the earth and taking you with her, her muscles like silk, her heart drumming, her lungs huge and efficient in the nest of her ribs; it’s like riding a beast from one of Aemond’s myths, a ghost, a demon, a dragon.

Sir Criston doesn’t stop at the first farm you pass through, nor the second, nor the third. He rides until Nico’s white mare is lathered with frothy sweat and rasping noisily, and only then does he rein her up at a humble stone house surrounded by pens of pigs and sheep. Grey smoke pipes from the chimney. There is a small wooden stable attached to the right side of the farmhouse. Sir Criston leaps to the ground and helps Nico off her horse as a woman opens the front door and wanders out, wiping her flour-speckled palms on her apron, curious, tentative.

“Dear sweet baby Jesus,” the woman says, shielding her eyes from the sun, now resting a few minute-hand ticks after noon. “I know you. You’re Sir Criston Cole.”

“I am in need of your assistance.”

“You have it, good sir,” she agrees instantly.

“The horses must go in the stable out of sight.”

“Yes sir.” She takes Nico’s white mare by the bridle and leads her away. Sir Criston approaches Midnight and—apprehensively, but with determination—assists you in dismounting. He stares at your belly as if he could peer through your gown and skin if he tried hard enough. His face is an ocean of worry, his cheeks and forehead lashed with thin slivers of blood from the forest’s needle-like branches. You touch your own cheek and feel heat stinging there for the first time, see your fingertips come away maroon with blood.

“Princess, are you alright?”

“I think so.” You grab Midnight’s bridle—you don’t think she’d tolerate Sir Criston doing it—and she follows you placidly into the stable. You put her in an empty stall next to Nico’s mare, and then the woman guides the three of you into her home through a creaking wooden door that adjoins the stable to her kitchen. She wets cloths with a pitcher of cold water and hands one to each of her unanticipated guests to dab at their shallow wounds with. Your hand, the one Daemon’s Scottish wolfhound mauled, is in agony; you are only relaxed enough to notice it now. It radiates heat like a fever and throbs like split bones.

“A nasty bite, that is,” the woman notes. She pours red wine into a kettle and places it in the fireplace to boil. She is perhaps only Alicent’s age, but she has aged much harder. There are deep furrows in her face, dusty grey strands in her hair. “What got you? A wolf?”

You lower yourself into one of the chairs placed around the table, flexing stiffening, swollen fingers. “Just about.”

Criston asks the woman: “May I have your name, ma’am?”

“Sabina Webb, good sir.”

“And do you live here alone?”

“I do, sir. For now. My husband and sons are fighting for the Greens in Norfolk. If God wills it, they will be home again soon. I pray for it every morning and every night. And sometimes in between, as well.”

“You have done the crown a great service,” Criston says solemnly. “Your hospitality will be amply rewarded. We will find positions for your sons at court and titles for your husband.”

The woman—Sabina—looks to your belly and then to your gold ivy leaf necklace and finally back to your face. “You’re her, aren’t you? Aegon’s wife. The princess from Navarre.”

“I am.”

“She’s the queen,” Nico corrects, pride in her voice. She’s nursing a particularly long, bloody scratch on the side of her neck.

“Of course,” Sabina says, bowing deeply. “My sincerest apologies, I meant no offense. Old Viserys was king for so long…and at my age change is increasingly difficult to get used to. Please forgive me, Your Majesty.”

You smile. “There’s nothing to forgive. It doesn’t feel real to me yet either.”

Sabina turns to Nico. “And which one are you?”

“Nico.”

She crinkles her nose in confusion. “Who?”

“Nicolosa of Milan,” you say.

“Oh yes. Daeron’s betrothed. Well, aren’t you lucky? Everyone knows he’s a fine boy. Amiable and daring. And handsome too. The most handsome of all the Targaryen men.” You have your qualms with that particular characterization, but you keep them to yourself.

Nico beams, glowing. “I’m well aware.”

Sabina wets a cloth with boiling wine, lets it cool for a moment, and then sits beside you to clean your mangled hand. Steam floats up and tangles with comets of dusk that wheel in the afternoon sunlight. When you wince, she soothes you with the sympathetic hums of an experienced mother. “You shouldn’t be riding horses when you’re with child.”

“I know.”

“I suppose it couldn’t be helped. I suppose a great danger brought you to my door.” Her voice softens as she inquires: “How many babies did you lose?”

You close your eyes and see the dates carved into the bark of the cedar tree. “Four.”

She nods. “I lost three myself. God saw fit to take my children from me. But the devil took yours.” Her eyes go steely and vengeful. “Everyone knows what he did to you. We speak of it as we work, as we barter in the marketplace, at church. Prince Daemon is a ghoul escaped from the fires stoked below our earth. My family and I would sooner burn our own fields and empty our veins than surrender to him.”

“He’s searching for us,” Criston says. “For Aegon’s wife and heir, in particular. He’s here in London. He’ll be driven out soon, but he’s here now.”

“You can stay as long as you need to. Anything I have to give is yours.”

“Daemon murdered Princess Kunigunde. He cut her down in her own bedchamber, unsuspecting and unarmed.”

“God in heaven.” Sabina crosses herself. “The emperor might kill us all.”

“We should stay until nightfall,” Criston tells you. “Then we can move somewhere safer. More defensible. Just until Daemon is forced North again.”

“Alright,” you say quietly. Your hand aches terribly, and you can’t stop seeing Kunigunde bleeding out onto the floor, and you can’t shake the guilt of knowing you deprived her of any comfort in her last weeks in the land of the living. You worry for your unborn child. You miss Aemond; you feel the absence he’s left behind like the gory void of an extracted tooth.

“I have to feed the pigs now,” Sabina says. “I’ll be right outside. And if I see anyone coming this way, I’ll hurry back to let you know.”

Nico clasps her hands together wistfully. “Oh, I’ve never fed a pig before! Could I help you?”

“We have to stay hidden, Nico,” you remind her with a tired smile.

She sinks. “Of course. Never mind. Perhaps another time.”

“You could help with the bread baking if you’d like,” Sabina offers, and Nico perks up again like gardens after rain. “Would you like me to show you?”

“Yes please!” Nico trills. “Oh, you’re so very kind…!”

As Sabina teaches Nico how to mix the bread dough and let it rest, Sir Criston bandages your hand with clean linen. His expression is a landscape of jagged anxiety, of thinly-veiled fear.

“You look terrified,” you say.

“Yes. I am.”

“Fear not. I suspect I’ll live.”

He shakes his head. “This will scar, you won’t be able to disguise it. Aemond will be furious with me.”

“I’ll assure him you saved my life several times over today.” Then your words drop low and gentle. “You love him.”

“He’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a son.”

“I can empathize. He’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a husband.”

Sir Criston looks at you, startled; not so much by the sentiment, perhaps, but by the fact that someone finally said it out loud.

When he finishes bandaging your hand, he goes to the stable to feed and water the horses. Midnight and the white mare are the only two animals there; all the rest were taken to war by Sabina’s husband and sons. Fortunately, she has two spare saddles—old and worn, but still usable—to offer Sir Criston for when the time comes for you to leave under the cover of darkness. He says you’ll have to assist him with saddling Midnight so she doesn’t murder him. In the meantime, as the three of you wait restlessly for afternoon to turn to dusk, you try to help Nico with the bread—she is oddly enthused by the opportunity to masquerade as a commoner—but you only have the full use of one hand and your mood is heavy and dark like the ocean. She swiftly realizes the futility of it and urges you to sit down at the kitchen table and rest…for your own sake, of course, but also for the baby’s.

You gaze listlessly out the window as Nico tries to distract you, chattering about her August wedding and the horses and the weather, and, eventually, what kind of king Aegon will be.

“He doesn’t want it,” you say distractedly.

She sighs with sad, pretty longing. “Yes, that’s unfortunate. Aemond would wear the crown more naturally, I’m afraid. But it can’t be helped …” She kneads the bread dough eagerly and at last says through the fog that’s thick and gloomy in your skull: “Remember back before anyone knew you were being poisoned and people were talking about shipping you off to Navarre?”

“Yes, why?”

Nico shrugs, smirking. “Well, it’s a shame we couldn’t do something like that for Aegon.”

It’s a ridiculous idea, but something about it snags in your mind and clatters there like an echo, growing louder, less ludicrous, more clear. Your jaw falls open and you blink at Nico, stunned.

“What?” Nico asks. “What did I say?”

Without answering her, you dash from your chair and go out into the stable. Sir Criston is brushing down Nico’s white mare as she guzzles water from a bucket. You clutch your ivy leaf necklace as you approach him without being aware that you’re doing it. Midnight watches from her own stall, chewing calmly on a mouthful of hay, her long wavy forelock shagging over her eyes.

“I need you to take me to Castle Rising,” you tell Sir Criston.

He glances over at you dismissively, as if it’s not even worth consideration. “I’m tasked with keeping you out of the war, not rushing headlong into it.”

“But I know how to help us. All of us. Aegon, Aemond, me, the entire realm. And I have to be there to arrange it in person.”

“No. I can’t willingly endanger your life. If something happened to you, Aemond would never forgive me.”

“What has this all been for if not a better future?” you demand, your voice fracturing and tears welling up in your eyes. Criston puts down the brush and studies you. “A better future for England, yes, but also for us. If Aegon could be happy, wouldn’t you want him to be? If Aemond could do more good for the world, wouldn’t it be a sin to prevent that from happening? And what about me, Criston? What about me and the children I’ll risk my life to give birth to so they can repeat this same fucking torment all over again? We serve and we endure and we bear the burdens as best we can, but shouldn’t we have a chance at a better future too?”

You dissolve into exhausted, heartsick sobs and go to Midnight, throwing your arms around her titanic neck and burying yourself in her warmth, her unshakeable strength. She allows this with an ancient sort of patience. Sir Criston observes you with profound yet noncommittal pity. “I’m sorry,” he says simply, offering nothing.

You rest your injured, pulsing hand on your belly and think: Please, God, let him live. Let this one live. And let me give him a future worth living for.

From inside the house, you hear the shattering of a bowl. There are voices, more than just Nico’s; there are thumps and hisses. You are closer to the door than Sir Criston, so you get there first. As you tear it open, a woman says: “Get out of the way, I’m not here for you—!”

“No, but you found me!” Nico howls as she battles the intruder, hurling her against the kitchen wall. She grabs a heavy iron pan off the table and swings it with both hands. And that’s when Baela rips her sword from its scabbard.

“Don’t!” you scream, and before you’ve crossed the room Baela has thrust the blade upwards into Nico’s abdomen, twisted it, yanked it free. Nico staggers back into the table and then collapses, knocking over several chairs.

You act without thinking. Your sword is in your bandaged hand, it is piercing through Baela’s left eye, it is making sick, wet popping noises as Baela shrieks and stabs clumsily at you, blinded by pain and blood and the inescapable truth of her impending ruin. Seething, inhuman, you drive the blade deeper until it’s in her brain. You wrestle Baela to the floor and clamp both hands over her mouth so no one will hear her screams. Kunigunde’s words about ivy—once spoken to the Duke of Hightower just before her wedding—ring in your mind like tolling bells: But it kills. It smothers everything else. It must be tamed.

She’s dead. Daemon’s daughter is dead. The one most like him, the one he was so proud of. And there is no part of you that feels sorry for it. You turn to Nico.

“I’m fine,” she says, one hand pressed to the dark stain spreading rapidly across the front of her gown. She clutches for the kitchen table and stands upright with some difficulty, takes a single confident step, and then falls to the floor moaning like a trapped animal.

“Nico!” You crawl to her on your hands and knees and drag her into your arms the same way Aemond once held you when you were the one bleeding out in agony.

“August,” she gasps. “I have to be alive then. I’m getting married in August.”

You grab wet cloths from the table and press them against the gushing hole in Nico’s flesh. Blood pours out faster than you can staunch it, far, far faster. It drenches your fingers, your knuckles, your wrists. “Do something,” you say to Sir Criston. And then you strike at his chest with one bloodstained palm. “Do something!”

He kneels there with you and smooths back Nico’s hair, comforting her, but he shakes his head. There’s nothing anyone can do.

“Listen,” she says, reaching for you. Her voice is wavering and frail, flooded, drowning.

“No, Nico—”

“Shh. It’s alright. I’m not upset. I’m not scared. I wanted to help. I helped, didn’t I?”

There’s rain on her face: tears, yours, clear and hot and leaving clean tracks through dirt and blood and flour. Blood bubbles from her lips. “Yes, Nico. You helped.”

“I have to tell you…”

“You’re going to be okay, we’re going to get you help and you’re going to be okay, just hold on until we can find—”

“Listen,” she pleads again, in a whisper this time. Her eyes stare vacantly past you, but she knows you’re still there; her fingertips ghost across your cheekbone. “Tell Aemond to watch out for him. To take care of him.”

“Who, Nico?”

She smiles. Her teeth are red with blood. “Daeron.”

And then her hand falls away, limp and empty. She was once Daeron’s betrothed and she’s not anymore. She was once your only friend here and now she’s nobody. She’s a name in a letter of condolence, she’s a gravestone, she’s a memory that’s already fading. She’ll never laugh again, or dance, or ride horses, or talk about her wedding until you wish she’d stop. You hate yourself for every second you ever spent annoyed with her. You hate yourself for not making her seek sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with Alicent and the Duke of Hightower.

“Why did I let her come with us?” you ask Sir Criston, dazed and weeping. It hasn’t really hit you yet, but it will, and you can feel the horror of it growing inside of you like a doomed pregnancy, like a stillbirth.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. It was.” You close Nico’s eyes and watch her like you’re waiting for her to wake up. It seems impossible that she won’t.

“We have to leave now,” Criston says. “If Daemon is sending out scouts, someone else might find us. And he’ll come looking for Baela when she doesn’t return to him. Whatever he had in mind for you before, it will surely be worse now.”

You’re not hearing him. You’re still holding Nico. “We need to bury her. What are the burial customs in Milan?”

“Princess,” Criston implores you, despair glistening in his umber eyes, large and kind like a doe’s. “We have to leave now. We have to keep moving.”

I can’t save her, you realize all at once. There’s nothing more I can do for her. But there are still people I can save. And she died so I could try. “I’m not a princess,” you say. “I’m the queen.” And then you stand, wiping the tears from your face with the sleeve of your gown, green like a cedar tree, like leaves of pennyroyal, like ivy. “Now take me to Castle Rising.”

Outside you find Sabina Webb face-down in a pen of pigs, a circle of crimson marking where she was stabbed between her shoulder blades. The animals have already begun to devour her. You also discover Baela’s horse Moondancer—a temperamental Arabian like Caraxes, but a pale misty color instead of blood bay—pacing with her ears pricked forward and her bulging eyes anxious. She sees you and Sir Criston, paws uneasily at the ground a few times, then canters away before you can think to lock her in the stables.

And by the time Baela’s riderless horse makes her way back to Daemon and his men, you and Sir Criston are already ten miles north of London.

Castle Rising is not an especially large or extravagant fortress, but it is close to the sea and easy to defend. There is a deep gorge dug all the way around its perimeter with a stone bridge serving as the sole entranceway. After two nights of riding and two days of sleeping in shifts under shrubs, you and Sir Criston Cole cross it on horses with slow, exhausted gaits and their heads hanging low. Your gown is ripped and stained, your body covered with dust from the road, your skin scraped in a million different places, leaves and dirt in your hair. You’ve scrubbed your hands in rivers and creeks, but there are still traces of Nico’s blood trapped beneath your fingernails; you can still smell its coppery sweetness. Your nightmares are full of it.

It’s shortly before noon, ante meridiem, just like it was when Daemon stormed Westminster Palace on the first day of June to kill you. The flocks of soldiers gathered around the castle camp under Aegon’s banner, or the flag of Milan, or the Holy Roman Empire, or Navarre, or Castile where Helaena now calls home. No one knows what has happened in London yet. You and Sir Criston are the first carriers of the news to arrive here. When you reach the end of the bridge, he appears, his face filling with ecstatic shock. You haven’t seen him in nearly two years, but he’s exactly as you remember him: curly dark hair, stocky, charismatic, fantastically loud.

“Hermana!” Alonzo booms, and you climb down from Midnight’s saddle to meet him. He embraces you, spins you around, kisses both of your cheeks without shying away from the dust or the thin stripes of dried blood left by thorns, brambles, branches. Alonzo doesn’t shy away from anything and never has. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what happened to you? Have you been neglected this severely? Perhaps I am raising my swords against the wrong people.”

“I’m well,” you assure him, but you don’t sound like you are. Sir Criston dismounts and tethers both horses to a nearby post. Midnight has at last developed a working rapport with him. “I need to speak to Prince Aemond. Do you know where he is?”

“I do.” Alonzo looks you up and down, whistles to himself, shakes his head in wonder. “Mi amada…not that I’m not thrilled to see you…but why the hell are you here?”

“I’ll explain when I see Aemond.”

“Well, let’s go then.” He leads you and Sir Criston into the castle through the main door and up a flight of stone steps. On the upper levels, there are open-air walkways around the interior of the castle; as Alonzo traverses them with dizzying speed, you peer down to see a small courtyard with a well from which the castle draws drinking and bathing water. Your eldest brother ascends a spiral staircase, crosses another open-air path like an aqueduct of Ancient Rome, and shoves open a heavy wooden door with both hands. Inside a fireplace crackles and pops and war plans are being passionately debated. Aemond is pointing to various locations on a flurry of maps that cover a vast table, arguing back and forth with an officer who wears the vivid red of Navarre. Other officers stand around them nodding and offering commentary; Aemond is winning. This doesn’t surprise you at all. Aegon is also present at the table, seated in a shadowy corner and staring morosely down into his wine cup. His face is mottled with bruises, his lower lips is split; he’s been in the fighting, and he’s been brave. He is the first one to notice you. He glances up and his eyes go wide, his mouth falls open.

“Oh my God,” Aegon says, and everything stops. The men whirl to gawk at Alonzo, Sir Criston, a pregnant woman with sticks and leaves in her hair. Aemond’s eye goes to you and stays there. He’s dressed in black leather, half of his hair pulled back from his face. Slowly, he stands up straight, lifting his hands from the maps on the table. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and steady.

“Everyone out.” And then, when Aegon bolts for the door: “Not you.”

The officers disperse, gossip flitting between them like fireflies through summer night air. When only you, Aemond, Aegon, Alonzo, and Sir Criston are left in the room, Aemond’s composure cracks like glass. He runs to you, touching your face, your arms, your throat, your belly, examining you for wounds, asking over and over again if you’re alright. The others avert their attention awkwardly; Alonzo’s thick eyebrows rise so high they disappear under his mess of curls.

“I’m fine, Aemond, I’m okay, I promise, I’m just muddy and tired, I’m so tired—”

“What happened to your hand?” He unravels the bandage, revealing flesh that is healing but irrevocably marred. Then he looks to Criston. “What the fuck happened to her hand?”

“Sir Criston saved me. More than once. It wasn’t his error.”

“Then what—?”

“A Scottish deerhound.”

The pieces shift behind Aemond’s pale blue gaze and then fit together. “Daemon?”

“He took a small group soldiers and led a raid of Westminster Palace. They murdered Joanna Montford’s bastard son. They tried to murder me. They…they…” But you can’t force the words to leave your trembling lips: Kunigunde. Nico.

“She stabbed Baela to death,” Criston says reluctantly.

“Oh God,” Aemond moans, knowing that Daemon’s wrath will now swell from a blaze to an inferno.

“Through the eye,” Criston adds, a little impressed, you think.

“Jesus!” Aegon hisses, rubbing his face and wincing.

You say to Aemond: “Alicent and the Duke of Hightower went to seek sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. As far as I know, they’re still there. And…and…”

You’re still trying to figure out how to tell him when Daeron strides blithely into the room, the sun peeking out from behind clouds, a constellation on a backdrop of abyss. “Your Majesty!” He greets you, beaming. He sweeps a dramatic bow. “Why, what a marvelous surprise! But what has brought you such a long way? Is Nico with you?”

And the room fills up with all the words you don’t say until the silence becomes a roar.

The fire has burned down to embers. Daeron doesn’t speak, doesn’t move from his chair. He gazes into the glowing coals with miles-away unseeing eyes that leak tears in a continuous, silent stream. Aemond is sitting beside you at the table, propping up his head with one hand. Aegon drinks endlessly. No servants enter or exit, so he has to pour it himself. When you break down as you describe what happened to Nico, he fills you a cup as well and slides it across the table, his mouth twisted into a grimace of disgust, dismay, dread. Criston stares down at his folded hands and adds details only when you can’t supply them without sobbing. Alonzo runs his fingers through his tangle of curls over and over again, a nervous habit of his, as you know and have known all your life. He had heard about Daemon, of course. He had heard about the poison and the scheming and the brutality that is legendary in the same way that the Plague is. But to slaughter women and babies…that is something rarely done in broad daylight.

“So you came here to tell us about the attack on the capital,” Aemond says. “About Nico. About Kunigunde.”

“No. There’s something else.”

They all consider you, even Aegon: a sideways, brooding, resentful, drunken look. Daeron peers vacuously in your general direction as if at something a great distance away, a ship on the horizon or the shadows of the moon.

“What?” Alonzo asks, opening his hands, perplexed.

“I know how to fix things. How to make everything better for both us and the realm. The answer has been right there in front of us the entire time, we just never recognized it for what it was. But now I understand. And Nico helped me to see it.”

“You’re going to throw me out a window,” Aegon guesses, raising his wine cup, then cackles morbidly.

You say instead: “Navarre.”

Aemond furrows his brow at you, indignant. “I’m not sending you away.”

“No. Not me.” You turn to Aegon. He gapes back, startled.

“Me?”

“You could start over there,” you say. “We could tell the realm that you died in battle—Aemond, Daeron, Criston, Alonzo, they would all speak to it—and you could dye your hair or cut it off and sail across the Bay of Biscay. Navarre is beautiful, Aegon. There are mountains and deserts, villages, cities, castles, lakes and forests, you could go wherever you want, become whatever sort of man you choose. And Alonzo would ensure you always had a place at court there if you wanted it. Right?”

Alonzo is astonished but amenable. He likes Aemond, you can tell that already. He trusts him. And he has no incentive to advocate for your marriage to Aegon. “Sure. Absolutely.”

“You could be some distant relation, some cousin from a minor house, someone with no maligned past or suffocating obligations. Someone who would never be expected to sacrifice for other people’s ambitions.”

Aegon blinks numbly. “But I’d be alone, wouldn’t I? Everyone I’ve ever known would be here.”

“Not alone,” you say. “You’d have Sunfyre.”

He’s thinking about it, even through the haze of the wine; the wheels are spinning, the clock ticking. Then he speaks with his rare, beautiful breed of tenderness. “Who would take care of you and the baby?”

Everyone looks at the same person, at Aemond, solemn and still. He bows his head in acceptance, in assent, trying to hide how much he hungers for it like a starving man.

“Right. Of course,” Aegon mutters, but he sounds more thoughtful than bitter.

“It makes sense,” Daeron says, almost too faintly to hear. It is the closest thing he can offer to a blessing.

“There are Bible passages that forbid a man from taking his brother’s wife,” Sir Criston warns. He’s not endorsing them, but he’s making sure everyone is aware of the reality of the consequences. “Then again, there are others that compel a man to shelter a widow and children if his brother leaves them behind. The English people will have both to build their judgements upon.”

Alonzo snorts and rolls his eyes. “In this age of flagrant homicidal-uncle-fucking, I doubt they’d have such harsh words to level against Aemond and my sister.”

“If the child is a boy”—and he lives, you think grimly, against your own will—“he will inherit the throne and Aemond will act as regent until he comes of age. If it is a girl, Aemond will be crowned king. In either case, he will rule England for at least the next two decades. I believe this is a responsibility that he is suited for and wholeheartedly desires.”

“I do,” Aemond agrees softly.

“Aegon,” you say, and you don’t continue until your husband meets your eyes. “If you decide to stay, I’ll stand by you with everything I’m made of. You’ll have me and the baby. I’ll be the best wife I can be to you, because that’s what I was sent here to do. England is my home now. The Greens are my home now. And you’re a piece of them. And…” You hadn’t planned to add this part, but you find that it’s true. “And I love you. Not in the way that a wife is supposed to love her husband, perhaps…but as family. As someone who I want to find happiness. You deserve that. You don’t know it yet—because no one has ever told you before—but you do.”

Aemond is silent, but he frowns down at the table, tracing infinitesimal grooves in the wood with his fingerprints. Aegon watches you with an expression you’ve never seen from him before: bewildered wonder, forbidden hope.

“You’ve never had a choice, Aegon. Not once in your life. But I’m giving you one now. Stay with us and fight to be the king…or die and become free.”

Aegon Targaryen—beaten-down shoulders, watery blue eyes, bruises on his face like smudges of ink—stares at you for a long time. And then, slowly, more dazzlingly and purely than you ever knew he could…he smiles.

#aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you

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raedear · 4 months

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Can I hear more about Nicky in a kilt

yes you can. i got very annoyed at people who've clearly never interacted with a real kilt in their life (no that guy in kansas who claims he's scottish and wears a tartan frock to a wedding does not count) writing fics that fetishise my national dress (come on lads there's actual meaning here stop being dicks and do some googling) so i was like hey what if i, an actual scottish person living in scotland, have a shot at fetishising my culture? and then i got distracted before i could actually write joe getting railed by Nicky in the kilt he's wearing to his uni-mate's wedding

'It's gauche to eyefuck the best man at a wedding,' Quynh says through a guileless smile as they watch a harried wedding planner attempt to corral the groom's party into some semblance of order at the altar. 'He's a groomsman,' Joe replies from the corner of his mouth, unashamedly watching the sway of groomsman number 3's kilt around his knees. 'And it's more gauche to say "eyefuck" than it is to do it.' 'Calling a spade a spade isn't gauche.' 'It's only eyefucking if he fucks me back.' An auntie in the pew in front glances over her shoulder at them. She doesn't look particularly amused, and Joe and Quynh give her matching contrite smiles in unison. They wait till she turns back before they tip their heads closer together and resume whispering. 'How do you know he's a groomsman?' Quynh hisses, so close Joe can smell her perfume. 'They're all dressed the same.' 'The best man has been trying to pin Jack's… drape? Scarf?' Joe pauses to consider the groom's outfit. He looks great, but Joe has no idea if the broad swathe of tartan over his shoulder is part of the kilt or something else entirely. 'That,' he says at last, gesturing at his own shoulder discreetly 'in place for the last five minutes. And he has a fancier knife thing in his sock. The other two are just groomsmen. Look at them. No fancy little flourishes except their boutonnieres.'

anyway they were going to fuck in a greenhouse i think

#ask me anything my dude

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pocketvenuslux · 10 months

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I've a quartet of reviews from a couple niche houses, Jorum Studio and Eris Parfums.

Eris Parfums

Eris was launched in 2016 by vintage perfume lover Barbara Herman who decided to work exclusively with Antoine Lie, whose has done a fair bit of work for Etat Libre d'Orange and Puredistance.

Ma Bete is a lovely vintage throwback, a dramatic, aldehydic floral with a growling animalic base. The opening is very reminiscent of Bogue's MAAI, all sparkling neroli up top with the suggestion of something primal below although instead of MAAI's diva rose, you have a more sultry jasmine. Like MAAI, it's not for the faint of heart but it's certainly not as filthy as some reviews make it out to be.

Belle de Jour immediately felt like a softer version of Secretions Magnifiques except the "blood" and "saliva" of Secretions here is described as "seaweed". All of these are fantasy notes of course. What you get with Belle is a soft floral with a salival/salty edge and a hit of spice. Linden flowers are not in the notes pyramid but the white florals paired with an aquatic accord does bring you there. It's not very approachable, a little strange and mysterious but not in a cliched, dark romantic way.

Jorum Studio

Jorum was founded in Scotland in 2019 led by Scottish perfumer Euan McCall.

Phloem's note pyramid might sound like it's a mediocre fruity floral reaching to be something better. In fact, I wouldn't place it in that category at all. It is a very unusual and creative floral composition that walks up to the edge of wearable. There's hints of green, of earth and dirt from the sesame mixed up with light flowers and the tang of berries. There's no cumin in the pyramid but there is a subtle cumin vibe going on. It's weird and the notes sound like they shouldn't work together but they really begin to meld together in the dry down.

Nectary is a sweet rose paired with berries and tart peaches. It's dense but not unpleasantly so. It's not as unusual as Phloem but it's still quite unique. A dark hit of oud and animalic notes begins to emerge in the dry down. If Dusita's now discontinued Oudh Infini was way too much for you, but you were kind of into it, give Nectary a try.

#eris parfums #jorum studio #barbara herman #antoine lie #euan mccall #american perfume #scottish perfume #niche perfume #niche fragrance #fragrance review #perfume review

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blossomwritesthings · 1 year

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❦― 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

❦― hello there beautiful human!

🥀 and welcome to my little comforting hollow that i call home here in this weird world of ours... i hope you enjoy your stay here.

⇾ ˚ ༘♡ latest pieces:

turn for me (mnlx fluff & smut)

the other half of it (hjs angst & smut)

best kind of distraction (mnlx angst & smut)

not-so-perfect gentleman (lf smut)

the sound of your name (hhj smut)

my rules & guidelines ⇾ ˏˋ read here ´ˎ

masterlist ⇾ ˚ ༘♡ skz ⋆｡˚

wip list ⇾ ✧ ˚ · . check out here ☄. *. ⋆

fic recs ⇾ ...[nsfw]◌ೄ skz recs m.list *ೃ༄ ...[sfw]◌ೄ skz recs m.list

my carrd :: ao3

❦― about me

《 blossom

《 proud girlie (afab)

《 monkey ♥ enfj ♥ taurus, sagittarius rising

《 bi, taken by my kitty 💐

《 may '04

《 sex-positive christian

《 i've lived all over the world (including south korea)

《 swedish + irish/scottish

《 full-time junior in uni w/a major in creative writing

《 saw superm live: 2019 ♥ saw sf9 live: 2022 ♥ saw woodz live: 2023

♫― ults

《 exo (since 2015) ♥ jongin, baekhyun

《 shinee (since 2015) ♥ kibum, taemin

《 vixx (since 2015) ♥ taekwoon, jaehwan

《 stray kids (since 2019) ♥ ot8

《 sf9 (since 2020) ♥ taeyang, zuho

《 the boyz (since 2020) ♥ sunwoo, kevin, eric

✬― casual listener ⇾ enhypen, nct (127, u, dream, wayv) day6, superm, txt, p1harmony, ateez, onlyoneof, cix, twice, snsd, red velvet, newjeans, le serrafim, viction, infinite, golden child, sunmi, woodz

ツ― other interests ⇾ baking/cooking delicious food, reading and writing filthy smut, youtube gamers (markiplier, daz, etc.), korean r&b/indie music (namely: colde, rad museum, jooyoung, hyukoh, thornapple, jukjae, oceanfromtheblue), taking pics of sunsets, the folk of the air, working out, cats & horses, atla/lok, niche perfumes, horror games/tv shows, kdramas/kmovies

❦― goodbye!

thank you for taking some time out of your day to look over my blog's navigation. i appreciate your support very much! have a wonderful day/night ahead of you~

#❀― navigation #❀― blossomwritesthings

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lady-o-ren · 1 year

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Kiss The Blood From My Hands

For easier reading here's the Ao3 link (HERE)

Paris, 1756

Claire Beauchamp finds herself the target of Les Disciples du Mal, an underground cult that her Uncle Lamb had been investigating that ended with his murder. But she finds an unlikely savior in the darkly mysterious James Fraser who marries her to keep her from harm and just maybe to redeem his own tormented soul.

"But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn. "

Job 14:22

P A R I S

1 7 5 6

My husband was a stranger to me when we married some months ago.

All I had known was his name and that he'd been born somewhere in the Scottish Highlands ten years before myself in Oxfordshire yet had the look of a man twice his age, worn from a thousand wretched sleepless nights as I would soon learn.

We did not share a marriage bed nor did we have love for one another, but there were moments where we found a quiet kinship here in this foreign land not our own. Be it in a shared glance of amusement at the absurdity of the many rules of etiquette we were subjected and expected to follow to an unexpected turn of phrase that tickled the other to a fleeting smile.

He even indulged my interest in botany by giving me the run of his courtyard to grow a garden of my own, himself admitting to having lost the spirit to foster seed to green a lifetime ago. He never told me why, leaving me to wonder what sort of man he used to be that didn't shrink from the light.

Our conversations were sparse but cordial. Sometimes strained with awkwardness and an undercurrent of something I couldn't quite explain that resulted in his inability to meet my eye, suddenly at a loss for words, and avoid my presence for long stretches of time.

It was rather a lonely experience, our marriage, but I counted myself luckier than most.

My husband was neither cruel nor violent towards me and he certainly never forced himself upon me when he so easily could. He was a good man if more than a bit rough around the edges but it was nothing I couldn't bear.

Though his nightmares troubled me greatly.

They came infrequently. Loud and sorrowful, bursting with rage, waking me from bed with my heart a pounding, painful fist against my ribs. And the only way he could break the terrible hold these terrors had on his mind was to take to the streets of Paris only to return home well into the next day.

Sometimes I'd catch him coming up the backstairs to his bedroom much to his dismay. His eyes would be bloodshot, his knuckles bruised, reeking of alcohol and perfume that darkened his face with shame.

I didn't need to ask where he'd been.

Not that he would ever bear his heart to me.

Or so I thought . . .

I laid awake in bed, staring into the dying flames of the hearthfire, with a copy of Manon Lescaut left abandoned on my lap. I hadn't been able to read more than a few pages of the doomed romance as I was far too distracted thinking about where my own Des Grieux was this awful rainy night.

But then I heard a noise from downstairs that gave my heart a jolt and sent poor Manon flying to the floor as I leapt out of bed, reaching for my robe.

I hurried down the staircase in a flurry of yellow silk, guided only by the flashes of lightning that shone through the lone window, and called out -

"Jamie! Jamie, is that you?"

But only the howling wind and rain replied, provoking a frightful thought to mind.

What if it wasn't Jamie downstairs nor even a creeping servant?

What If . . .

I shuddered, unable to finish the thought, as I recalled the night Jamie and I had first met.

The night he had saved my life.

And I was no better prepared to protect myself than I was back all those months ago.

But just as I inched my cold bare foot backwards on the step, a thin beam of light shot out into the hallway, signaling who the rain had brought home.

I breathed a sigh of relief and followed the lighted path into the parlor where I stopped myself at the doorway. Struck by the sight of Jamie.

But it wasn't his imposing figure or striking features that caught my eye - though it did give one the impression that he was made of something more than simple mortal flesh.

He was leaning against the mantelpiece with water puddling around his boots, holding his right hand against his chest, bloodied black to the cuff of his sleeve.

"Jamie," I gasped, crossing the room. "What's happened to you?"

Jamie snapped his head at me, sparking the red-gold flame of his hair like hellfire.

"Away wi' ye," he said sharply.

"But - "

"Damn ye, Claire! Do as ye're told. For once."

I flinched back as if I'd been slapped.

Jamie never spoke to me out of anger. And scarcely did he ever call me Claire. My name was reserved for formal occasions or as a token of profound gentleness that always made my heart sore right at the center where it bled most tender.

"I - I'm sorry - I -"

I saw Jamie's face twist with that familiar shade of shame and self-loathing as he bowed his head and thumped the mantle with his good fist, hard enough to disturb the hearth.

"I'm sorry, lass. I didn't mean to snarl at ye. But I've the devil's temper tonight and canna bear the company. Now, get ye to bed . . . Please."

The last was said so pitifully that I didn't spare a thought to consider Jamie's plea. Instead I reached for him and took his maimed hand in mine.

"Push me away if you must but I won't leave you like this. Let me help you for once . . . Please."

I was met with grim silence and readied myself to be thrown out the parlor but then Jamie let out a brandy laced sigh, loosening the tension in his jaw and shoulders soaked from the rain.

"What choice does a wretched beast like me have when ye've my paw in yer hands. Aye, Sassenach?"

I felt a warmth spread over my cheeks hearing Jamie's name for me that was his alone to speak, and lowered my face, hoping he didn't see. I then carefully peeled the bloodied stiff cuff away from the back of his big hand and tried not to wince.

"I see no thorn here, you poor beast. Unless you pulled it out with your teeth." I meant it in jest, glancing up at Jamie's face, but I found it set in cold hard stone.

"Who did you hit?" I asked tentatively, imagining masked men in alleyways beneath the dark menacing glow of a blood moon.

The truth instead broke my heart.

"A mirror," he answered flatly. "I didn'a like what I was seeing."

After fetching some much needed dressings for his hand I came back to the parlor and found Jamie as I had left him - By the hearthfire in his wingback chair with a throw I'd taken from the settee in the corner wrapped around him. An improvement over the soggy coat he was wearing that was left to drip over the mantle.

His eyes were closed and his long legs were stretched out in front of him and for a moment I thought that maybe he'd fallen asleep, but then he cracked one dark eye open to scowl at me.

"Ye're going to enjoy this, aren't ye, Sassenach?" His mouth twitched at the corner and I felt my own do the same. He was only teasing me.

"No, but I'll try not to laugh when I douse your hand in vinegar," I said, taking my place by his knee, and saw his eyes, circled by shadows and glossy from a night of drinking, twinkle like sapphires in the firelight.

I set myself to work washing the blood from Jamie's right hand, taking particular care around his battered knuckles where the ugly gash stretched across them. Luckily, it looked worse than it was and would only need a suture or two.

Here and there I'd glance up at him, watching me with a sort of quiet fascination as I worked, tired as he was. This time he caught my eye and murmured something drowsily, almost longingly, in gaelic.

"What are you saying up there? Something beastly?" I asked, as I finished bandaging his hand.

Jamie looked startled, maybe not realizing he had spoken aloud and quickly adjusted his features, cocking his stubbled chin down at me.

"I said that my hands afire with all yer poking and prodding and I'd like to have it back in one piece - Not that I don't appreciate yer mending," he amended, and twitched his nose at a damp forelock that hung low past his brow.

"Well I'm all done here - I just . . ." I hesitated and bit the inside of my bottom lip.

It must be now, I thought. For I didn't think I'd ever have the courage to be so forward with him again.

"I just want you to know that you can talk to me, Jamie," I said softly. "Whatever it is that's troubling you, that keeps you up at night, you needn't suffer alone."

He stiffened and his right hand would've curled into a fist if I hadn't taken a hold of it.

"I have to," he said in a tone barely above a rasping whisper, looking down where our hands were linked. "Ye'd never be able to look me in the eye again if ye kent the truth of what haunts me. I couldn'a bear it, Sassenach. "

"Try me," I dared, giving him a little shake by the arm so he'd raise his gaze to mine. " Or do I have more faith in that gallant heart of yours than you have in mine?"

His eyes narrowed with seriousness and no short amount of pain.

"You have no idea what little faith I had before I met ye, Claire. Tis why I fear losing whatever care ye have for me."

I leaned forward across his knees, my heart in my eyes. "Then trust me Jamie as I've trusted you unequivocally with my life. "

After what seemed a long silence, where I thought I could feel his pulse hammer against my palm, he spoke again.

"There were things done to me against my will that haunt me still," he began, and I saw a tremor ripple down his throat as he swallowed. "Whether I'm awake or when I dream, I feel the touch of the devil himself on my soul. My fear in hell is all that keeps me from taking a knife to my gullet and sometimes even then . . ."

"You don't mean that," I said half choked, feeling the pinprick of tears at the corner of my eyes threatening to fall as I shook my head.

A sad smile tugged on Jamie's mouth as he gently touched my cheek with the back of his good left hand.

"Aye, ye're right. It was true before but now my life is bound to yers. For as long as ye need me, I'll always be at yer side, mo bheannachd."

I grasped his hand when I felt him pull away. Held it nearly to my throbbing heart.

"Promise me then or I swear I'll drag you from the pits of hell just to strangle you."

Jamie blinked at me, wide-eyed, clearly caught off guard. Then leaned back into his chair and laughed deeply from his belly. I never heard such a sound from him before.

"Christ, Sassenach! Only you would seek vengeance on a puir man pouring out his miserable heart to ye." He laughed again, bringing out a much needed flush to his face and clasped his other hand over mine.

"Aye, I promise. I'll not leave ye. Not until ye find someone worthy of yer heart."

He meant it too. And I felt the truth of it pierce my breast.

I hadn't given much thought to our arrangement. Our marriage was in name only and would only last for as long as my safety was in jeopardy or if I asked for a divorce.

I never once considered that Jamie might ask one from me if he were ever to find an attachment elsewhere.

"What about your heart, Jamie?" I asked around a hard knot lodged in my throat.

An extraordinary look of tenderness bloomed across Jamie's face that seemed to breathe life back into his soul that beamed bright through the shimmering blue of his eyes.

"My loyalty is to you, mo ghràidh, and no one else. Not a Laird nor King. Even God would be jealous of such devotion."

I blushed not knowing what to say. I remembered the smell of perfume that sometimes clung to him whenever he'd come home from one of his ventures.

Jamie then cleared his throat where I saw a red flush arise and carefully flexed his hand in front of his face.

"Thank ye for my hand, Sassenach. Ye've earned yerself a good lie in."

" And you? " I asked when I saw him slouch back into his chair.

He gathered the throw tighter around him and shrugged. "Dinna fash. I'll stay here till the fire goes out."

I sat stubbornly back on my heels and pulled my own robe tighter around myself. "Then I'll stay here with you. Maybe it will help."

"Help what? "

"To keep your demons at bay. That's why you don't sleep. Being alone makes it worse, doesn't it?"

I immediately regretted what I had just said as I watched Jamie retreat into himself. Before I could apologize, he said with a bit of gravel to his voice -

"Do as ye wish, but not on the floor. And I'll put another log on the fire for us."

I didn't remember falling asleep but I obviously had and woke up in my own bed. Still in my robe. With the faintest impression of something lovely pressed to my cheek.

Not a kiss.

But warm breathed words, indecipherable, yet spoke to my heart. That swelled and overflowed with love.

A/N: The notes for this are long so hit up ao3 if you're curious.

#outlander fic #outlander fanfic #outlander fanfiction #jamie x claire #outlander

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wildbeautifuldamned · 5 months

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AVON Vintage Perfume Bottle Scottish Terrier Dog Figure Antique ebay yu-762728

#perfume #perfume bottle #scotty #dog #jar #terrier

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eviecranes · 3 months

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[ michelle pfeiffer, cis woman, she/her ] — whoa! evie crane just stole my cab! not cool, but maybe they needed it more. they have lived in the city for their whole life, working as the owner of cover to cover. that can’t be easy, especially at only 63. some people say they can be a little bit reserved and feisty, but I know them to be charming and passionate. whatever. I guess I’ll catch the next cab. hope they like the ride back to manhattan! — (penned by sky, 23, gmt, she/her, no triggers)

— ( pinterest )

basics:

• full name: yvette cecilia crane (née reinhardt)

• nicknames: evie (preferred name) ; eve (by her family)

• gender: cis female

• pronouns: she/her

• sexuality: bisexual (male leaning)

• aesthetics: old leather books, firewood, red wine, expensive perfume, roses, white silk, highlighted and annotated scripts, red velvet, herbal tea

• age: 63

• date of birth: 8th may 1960

• zodiac sign: taurus

• residence: a old townhouse in manhattan

• occupation: owner of cover to cover bookshop ; former actress

appearance:

• faceclaim: michelle pfeiffer

• voice claim: michelle pfeiffer

• height: 5’ 6”

• build: average ; a little skinny

• eyes: light blue

• hair: dyed red with blonde money piece highlights (is a natural blonde)

• piercings: earlobes and left helix

• tattoos: (x) (x)

• style:

personality:

• positive traits: charming, passionate, kind, compassionate, helpful, trustworthy, loyal, nurturing

• negative traits: reserved, feisty, stubborn

• likes: spending time with her family, reading, music. parties, film and television, sweet food, coffee, shopping, singing

• dislikes: spicy food, extremely hot or cold weather, prejudice, heavy metal, sports, being interrupted, arrogance

• phobias: insects (particularly snakes and spiders)

• hobbies: reading, writing, photography, watching films, singing, playing the piano, gardening

family:

• mother: anita genevieve reinhardt (née douglas)

• father: claude frederick reinhardt

• siblings: julian nathaniel reinhardt & marielle frances pennington (née reinhardt) — julian is four years older and marielle is eighteen months older

• husband: tbd (see wanted connections below)

• biological child: tbd (see wanted connections below)

• adopted children: violet hú & other tbd (see wanted connection below)

• pets: a female black cat named audrey

favourites:

• colours: red, gold, silver

• food: caramel apple strudels

• drink: red wine

• film: gentlemen prefer blondes (1953)

• song: dreams by fleetwood mac

• time of the day: evening

• weather: sunshine

• season: autumn

bio:

• evie was born to a swiss-german father and a scottish-american mother in new york city on the late morning of 8th may 1960. her father worked in the german translation section at the united nations headquarters in new york and her mother was history professor at nyu.

• her mother had called her evie from the day she was born, so grew up preferring it over her full name. her father called her eve, but had always been indifferent to it until she was a little older. he also taught her and her siblings to speak fluent german, which is something evie still retains to this day.

• she gets along well with both of her siblings, but is closer to her brother nate. he was the one that encouraged her to pursue her dreams of being an actress and helped her to steal clothes from their mother’s wardrobe to use as costumes in their own homemade plays.

• her parents were often busy with work, but they always made time for their children. they spent their vacations in italy, portugal, and mexico and was the best time for them all to relax and be a family. they also often played board games together, had movie nights, and would celebrate holidays like christmas in excess.

• despite not really enjoying school, evie had consistently good grades. she liked drama, english, history, and sociology the most and even helped put on several school shows. she was incredibly popular and it helped to boost her confidence. she also had her first boyfriend in high school and the two were together for almost three years.

• evie attended juilliard, which she enjoyed far more than high school, and landed a small part in a popular drama show straight after graduating. she also took up a part time job at a local independent bookstore after filming wrapped and loved every minute of being surrounded by books and fellow avid readers.

• it was a little over a year before evie found a decent film role: playing the daughter in a wealthy victorian family whose lives were being haunted by a demonic supernatural force. her acting was praised and she gained a lot of attention from both critics and audiences. she then went straight into filming a sequel, which shot to the top of the box office.

• after the stellar success of her first two films, evie moved out to los angeles. she shared an apartment with a fellow actress named emily and the two eventually formed a romantic relationship. they were together for eight months before things started to strain and the two realised they couldn’t live together, so evie moved out and found a smaller apartment to live alone in.

• evie had several flings with both men and woman whilst living and working in los angeles. she knew very well that the majority of them only wanted to be with her because of her fame, but it didn’t faze her, even when her relationships were subject to being exposed by the tabloids: she was proud of who she was and wasn’t afraid of publicly calling out bigots.

• for the next few years, evie was between california and new york, starring in several films, two long-running tv shows, and a small handful of plays (with one even touring the entire country) and became more popular with each production she was a part of. she met her eventual husband on one of the film sets and they instantly hit it off, but it took her a while to admit that she did, in fact, have feelings for him. in what little free time they had they went out for restaurant dates, strolls in the park, and tried out some fun new activities they’d both been scared to do on their own. it was clear to them both that they were making one another a better, more confident and more loving person.

• eventually evie became so exasperated with all the attention and the invasion of privacy and the relentless hounding of the paparazzi. the press kept trying to dig into her private life and even tried to give mr crane some unwanted time in the limelight. she came to conclusion that she needed to slow down and prioritise what she wanted in life instead: a family. up to this point evie had wanted children, but never had the opportunity because of her hectic work life and because she never had a truly stable relationship. but now she had mr crane and was madly in love with him in every possible way; she couldn’t imagine a better man to be a father. the topic of children eventually came up in conversation and it was something that solidified their relationship. spontaneously, mr crane proposed, eager to proceed to the next step of their journey together, and evie accepted.

• the two quickly packed their belongings and moved back to new york city. during that same week she and mr crane were married in a small ceremony (it was rushed, after all) and neither of them could have been happier. they spent their two week honeymoon in hawaii and one night, after a lengthy discussion, evie decided that she wanted to open her own bookshop, specialising in secondhand books.

• in the autumn of 1992, a year after the opening of cover to cover, their son/daughter was born and neither of them could have been happier and more grateful. they both took to being parents like ducks to water and evie often had her baby with her as she worked, which a lot of customers loved.

• something, however, felt incomplete about their family. evie’s child’s birth had been traumatic and painful and she didn’t think she could put herself through that again, but both her and mr crane wanted more children. the best solution was adoption. it didn’t take long for them both to find fifteen year old violet hú and her sibling and the cranes knew they were going to live those kids as if they were their own flesh and blood.

• the cranes provided a loving and supportive home for the siblings and gave them their own spaces in their home to decorate as their own. it was also a chance for them to really start to follow their dreams without hindrance or fear of being stopped. the cranes treated their adoptive children with the respect and kindness they deserved and never made them feel like they didn’t belong. moreover, when evie found out that violet was interested in acting it was an incredible opportunity for them to bond. the cranes also never misses any of violet’s performances; they’re so proud of what she has achieved and what she will go on to do.

• every now and then, evie likes to spend time at a local club performing singing and acting for cabaret nights. singing had always been a passion of hers and never truly managed to show off her voice when acting in film and tv.

• most of evie’s customers at cover to cover know of her accolades, but she’s determined to stay down to earth and involve herself in the community. she is also involved in literary charities and does little fundraisers at her shop for both literary charities and for local charities.

wanted connections:

• mr crane: the love of evie’s life. they’ve been together for almost 35 years and they’re still as much in love with each other as they were at the time they met. he, too, was in the film & television industry (doing what exactly is up to you!) and maybe he still is or maybe, like evie, has given up that life to pursue some other passion. they live together in their manhattan home and proud parents to three children (one biological and two adopted)

• the cranes’ biological child: no matter how old they are, evie’s child will always be her baby. she has made sure that they have grown up safe, comfortable, and loved, and is proud of them no matter what career path they’ve chosen to taken. the child themself is also a very proud older sibling to two adoptees: violet hu and (other tbd) and has always been around took after them and make them feel a part of the family.

• the cranes’ youngest adopted child: more info can be found here

• old friends: maybe your muse is still acting or maybe they’ve retired too, but nevertheless they have been friends with evie- going through thick and thin together- since their amateur acting days. they could have met at juilliard or on the first day of shooting a film. they always attend each other’s christmas parties and other such get-togethers as well as going for nights out in Manhattan. they’re also like an uncle or aunt to evie’s children and are practically a family member.

• regular customers: like evie, your muse might be a fellow bookworm, absolutely having to read the latest bestseller and to catch up with all the classics; maybe they’re looking for something new (or in this case, old) to try, maybe they want to make some friends in their fellow readers, and maybe they even want to hear stories of evie’s acting days.

#❝𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴❞ ╱ bio #boroughs.intro

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tricksterswagtournament · 11 months

Note

REASONS TO VOTE FOR DIMENTIO (SPOILERS):

only mario villain i can think of who is genuinely unsettlingly callous behind his facade (TRUE EVIL)

he has possibly worked and waited for ~1500 years for a single predetermined moment to occur JUST to get his way (DEDICATION)

he very plausibly shares his identity with a revered ancient sage who helped to counteract Predetermined Fate Itself. (WIZARD)

may also be a fucking father if that presumption is correct. im not elaborating but imagine (PARENTAL)

wears nonbinary flag colors. works for a guy who wears bi colors. works with a woman who wears trans colors. (and a scottish warrior. and a spiders. and italian)

dimentio himself is italian (IGNORE THE JAPANESE VERSION PLEASE)

he tries to sell you his branded perfume and you can say yes (you DIE)

he does have a really nice design

#tournament propaganda #super paper mario #dimentio

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timelessxmemories · 9 months

Text

OCs dedicated to Very Close Friends I consider family & My Beloved Partners <3

【 Please excuse my terrible OC skills. I tried to be as original & creative as I possibly could. 】

【 TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF CHILD ABDUCTION , DEATH , TRAUMA , THREATENED MURDER 】

Significant Character Mentioned: The Entity

Side Note: Started this at 10:00pm, ended at 5:57am. Managed to keep motivation throughout.

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1.) @cupid-beatricereden — Sylvia

Likes: Music (Classical & Jazz) , Reading graphic novels (Anything based around love) , Mystery & Thriller series (Books or TV shows) , The colour pink , Anything with hearts , Cheesy romance movies, DnD

Dislikes: Overly bright colours , Flashing lights (Epileptic) , Heavy Metal Music (Sorry heavy metal fans) , Dark Chocolate

Personality: Sylvia is incredibly sweet and gentle, she'd do anything to help anyone in need, she does get a little protective at times but she always means well. She's a little insecure, and needs a lot of validation, but would rather give the validation instead of receiving it. She's touch starved, someone please hug this poor girl.

Career: Violinist / Composer

Side Job(s): Volunteers at a homeless shelter on holidays such as Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, ETC. + Volunteers at a Children's Hospital for 3 hours every day. (EX; plays board games, teaching them how to play instruments, colouring with them, drawing little pictures, playing DnD with the older kids & some younger ones who want to learn how to play, playing the kids songs with her violin, ETC.)

Nationality: Dutch

Place of Living: The Netherlands

Aesthetic Attached To: Lovecore

Songs Associated With:

Can't Help Falling in Love ★ Elvis Presley

Fly Me To The Moon ★ Frank Sinatra

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Sylvia was born to two young women, one of which was a rather popular artist while the other was a popular jazz singer. For the majority of her life she grew up in a loving home until the day she tirned 6 and went to the park and never saw her parents ever again. A man led her away and ultimately ended up abducting her. This led to being touch starved and always helping others out. She doesn't want the same thing to happen to anyone else as it did with her. Oh, yes, she did eventually end up being found when she was 17 (about a year ago) and was safely returned to her moms who were overjoyed that their little girl was finally home after 11 years of being missing.

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@gmilfwhore — Dizzy

Likes: Upbeat music (Hyperpop & such) , Neon Colours , Clubbing , Horror Movies , Graphic Novels , Gaming , Sanrio , Jazz Music

Dislikes: Dull Colours , Classical music , White Chocolate , Overly strong perfumes & Colognes

Personality: Dizzy is very upbeat and insanely happy (They give heavy golden retriever vibes), Dizzy also tends to be rather optimistic and super positive despite their usual panic attacks. They wouldn't leave a person in need, they tend to have a bad habit of caring more for others rather than themself.

Career: A Cafe Barista

Side Job(s): Does being a college student count?

Nationality: Scottish

Place Of Living: Dublin, Ireland

Aesthetic Attached To: Hyperpop

Songs Associated With:

Roll With Me ★ Charli XCX

iLike ★ hidingthehurt

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Dizzy was born to a young woman who unfortunately died during labour, resulting in Dizzy being raised by their father who was now a single father. Their father never remarried. Their father was incredibly supportive of Dozzy and their decisions. When Dizzy cane out to their dad, their dad did everything he could to learn more. To this day their father is still very supportive.

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@dontopentheinside — Gabriel

Likes: Dark Colours , Horror novels , Gardening , Baking , Drowning in his own self pity/J , Heavy Metal Music , Hunting

Dislikes: His job (He's only doing it for the money) , Overly strong scents , chocolate , overly sweet things

Personality: Gabriel is a very manipulative and cold young man who takes his job VERY seriously. He won't hesitate to get into fights in order to protect a colleague or a friend, he also has incredibly low self-esteem and tends to have major panic attacks due to all the blood that's on his hands. Poor guy just needs a kiss on the forehead and a long hug :").

Career: Hitman

Side Job(s): N/A

Nationality: British

Place Of Living: London, England

Aesthetic Attached To: Grunge

Songs Associated With:

GOSSIP ★ Måneskin

The Other Side Of Paradise ★ Glass Animals

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Gabriel was in foster care throughout his whole life, constantly being placed back and forth one after another. He never truly had a home, which ended up in him running away at 17 years of age. He met a group of people who ended up offering him a jib as a hitman, when Gabriel tried to refuse they threatened his life, resulting in Gabriel accepting the job.

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@ghostlyplacetobe — Naomi

Note: She is Bisexual Aromantic. Meaning she can feel attraction to people, yes, but it's incredibly rare for her, it's only happened a few times.

Likes: Soft colours , Insects of all kinds , Reading , History , Jazz Music , Romance Novels + Movies , Building Lego , Collecting Ribbons , Tea , Cats

Dislikes: Yelling + Loud Noises , Horror Movies + Novels , Coffee , Anything to do with flames (Extreme pyrophobia)

Personality: Naomi is very timid and incredibly kind, she's also super oblivious when it comes to seeing the obvious right in front of them. He's strong willed and loves debating with people over particular topics as long as it isn't politics.

Career: Librarian

Side Job(s): Volunteers at the local animal shelter.

Nationality: French Canadian

Place Of Living: Quebec, Canada

Aesthetic Attached To: Dark Academia

Songs Associated With:

I'm Still Standing ★ Elton John

Yellow Brick Road ★ Elton John

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Naomi was born in Quebec, Canada to a set of parents who were pretty young at the time so she was raised mostly by their grandmother who cared deeply for her. Around the age of 6 there was a huge fire which resulted in his home burning down with her grandmother still inside. His grandmother died that day. This resulted in Naomi gaining an extreme fear of fire.

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@unidentifiable-body — Zeus

Likes: Making fancy drinks , Listening to music , 80s Music , Any kinds of chocolate , Gardening , Drawing , Rock Music , Heavy Metal Music

Dislikes: Soft Music (puts him to sleep) , Spiders (genuinely terrified of them) , Hunting , Romance Novels + Movies , Gaming (He doesn't understand them lmfao)

Personality: Zeus is very cold and distant due to his past trauma, he tends to have major trust issues and is suspicious of literally everyone he meets. However, if you do ever manage to Crack that shell of his, you'll find out that Zeus is actually a really sweet and soft guy!

Career: Bartender

Side Job(s): Secretly volunteers at a nearby Orphanage, but you didn't hear that from me.

Nationality: Greek

Place Of Living: California

Aesthetic Attached To: Punk-Rock

Songs Associated With:

Dead But Pretty ★ IC3PEAK

We Don't Have To Dance ★ Andy Black

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Zeus was born into a very wealthy family, however, his parents were never around much, neglecting him and what not, he was never properly taught to socialize as most of his life he was isolated. At some point his parents were killed in a robbery, leading into Zeus being sent into foster care, from there he gained severe trust issues.

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@otherworldlyoddities — Galaeth

Likes: Rock Music , Violin , Walking amongst the stars , Rebelling , Baking , Studying Humans , Studying Body Language

Dislikes: Soft Music , Large animals (They think they're scary) , Chocolate (Doesn't understand it) , Fans. Why. , Cieling Lights. Again. Why.

Personality: Galaeth is very easily confused by anything human as well as very unsure of anything human. It's new to her, give her a break, she's trying. She's also extremely cautious around humans and doesn't tend to trust them easlly. She also tends to rebel against her orders due to her not wanting to become a Guardian.

Career: Guardian in Training (Guardians are a type of star which is assigned a particular human and ordered to protect them.)

Side Job(s): N/A

Nationality: Xeo (A type of a higher being in the star universe)

Place Of Living: Star of The Sea

Aesthetic Attached To: Cosmic core

Songs Associated With:

Sorry About Your Parents ★ Icon For Hire

Circles ★ KIRA, GUMI

SMALL BIO SUMMARY:

Galaeth wasn't exactly born, they were more or less made from moondust by The Entity (yes, he's making a come-back, you're welcome), The Entity being the creator of sorts cared for them just like how a father was supposed to. However, due to Galaeth being a Xeo, they are destined to become a Guardian rather than staying as a regular Moonlit (A regular being made from Stardust). Galaeth however wishes not to become a Guardian, so they gained a habi of constantly Rebelling and doing the complete opposite of what The Entity told them to do. This doesn't frustrate The Entity, he actually gets a chuckle out of it as it reminds him of when he was a young Xeo.

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@the-arcade-doctor — Juniper

Likes: Ruling over her subjects , Practicing with her dark magic , Being alone , Using her skills of manipulation to her advantage

Dislikes: Anyone who disobeys her , The Lord of the Over Realm , Xeos + The Entity , Macha Tea , Avacados , Talks of Destiny , Her past being mentioned.

Personality: Juniper is very cynical and irritable. She really only cares for herself and only thinks about her own needs instead of her subjects. (Huh, reminds of something.) She tends to get angry quick and fast, and when she does it usually ends up in a burning of whomever drove her over the edge. She doesn't have a soft spot in her bones whatsoever.

Career: Lord of The Under Realm.

Side Job(s): N/A

Nationality: Demona (A type of demon in the Under Realm.)

Place Of Living: Under Realm

Aesthetic Attached To: Cryptidcore

Songs Associated With:

Rät ★ Penelope Scott

iNSaNiTY ★ CircusP

SHORT BIO SUMMARY:

Juniper was created by The Entity in the Star Realm, however, after realizing that The Entity created a different being of a different kind, he became fascinated and favored Juniper, until Jbniper turned her back on him one day and went on her own dark path. She ended up coming across The Under Realm who was being controlled by a different ruler at the time, Juniper gained everyone's trust eventually and once the ruler passed, she became the ruler.

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#{ cryptid ; ocs }#{ cryptid ; oc inf. }#{ cryptid ; dedicated ocs }#{ cryptid ; ooc }

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