˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ PRINCESS TREATMENT — price + gaz x reader
01 — THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
featuring. kyle 'gaz' garrick + john 'bravo six' price
warnings. fem!reader, fmm, friends to lovers, slow burn, polyamory, ghostsoap, alerudy, heavy angst, requited unrequited love, graphic violence, frequent mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, discussions of mental health
series masterlist. read on ao3. fanfic playlist.
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If you had to say when, exactly, everything changed, you’d put it down to a single monarch butterfly.
Walking down the tight alleyways of Las Almas, the sky a four o’clock black, a lone street light casts a gentle yellow over your frame. The air is stagnant, the warmth of late spring mixed with the type of humidity that only comes before a storm, your boots clicking against the stone beneath your feet.
With a leather jacket wrapped tight around you, you fall into the rhythm of it all. It’s just before five in the morning, and you know that you should be heading home any minute, but you find yourself rejecting the idea.
Everytime you leave for the night, just to breathe, to live for no one but yourself, it gets harder and harder to make your way back through your bedroom window. You know the guards are getting antsy, too, your payoffs for their silence on the issue becoming less and less worth it. Not when it’s becoming an ultimatum between some quick cash and a slow death.
You wish you were given that choice. Mightn’t even care which option you happened to receive.
It’s quiet, in these parts. No sign of the city that had been ruined by mercs, no sign of the destruction that had once lay beneath one man’s boots.
Instead, this city now sits in the firm grip of El Sin Nombre – the way it had once been, and if your family has it how they want it, the way it shall forever be.
Underneath your breath, you hum, a tune you’d picked up from the local radio. Every morning, you listen to the daily news reports, the weather, the latest celebrity gossip. Without fail, El Sin Nombre is never mentioned. Neither are the missing persons, the families torn apart by the woman you call boss.
The end of the alleyway is coming up, the main street ahead barren of people, except the odd homeless person or fitness nut getting their morning fix.
Just as you’re about to turn around and manually move your feet back to your home, the smallest of movements catches your eye, right by a potted plant sitting at the street corner. You’re not sure how, or why, it catches your attention – but it snags it, hook line and sinker.
Quickly looking both ways, you take a cautious step towards what appears to be a small aloe vera plant, stopping in your tracks when you realise what’s perched upon the tallest of the stems, its burnt orange wings fluttering with the small breeze.
A butterfly.
It hasn’t spooked – not yet, not with your careful movements – and it seems so insignificant. So small, with the family homes lining the streets, the independent stores setting up for the day.
With you, your massive life, your massive boots to fill.
And it just sits.
Flaps its wings.
A shot sounds.
Jumping back, your eyes catch the butterfly taking off into the sky, its sun-kissed wings taking it as far away from the horror as possible. Exactly as you should be doing.
Screams echo around you, another bullet sounding, and then another, and another –
Hand resting at the gun sitting in your thigh hollister, you whip your head towards the sound, the yelling, the rushed Spanish leaving people’s mouths. Gringos. El Sin Nombre. Death. Stay down.
Taking a sharp right turn onto the main street’s footpath, another shot fires, this time much closer. Much more real, tangible. Hand fully fisting around the handle of your pistol, you take the corner to the sidestreet – the source of it all – with quiet ease.
Multiple cartel members – expendable pendejos, Valeria would say – have guns not unlike your own, aimed at two separate men hidden behind a parked car. They’re crouched behind it, peaking and launching their own retaliating shots, hitting either shoulders or necks.
They fire off quick, dirty shots, one bursting through the car’s windows, shattering the glass, before lodging in one of the mens’ head. He falls, blood and brain matter splattering on the brick wall behind him. None of the others even spare him a look.
“Get ‘im!” A deep, rough voice calls – British, assertive, mature – the one furthest from you. He’s adorning a boonie hat, pulled down to cover the tops of his ears, facial hair decorating his jawline and upper lip.
They both seem to be exerting themselves, clearly having done a lot of activity and planning before the current scene. Nearly all of the civilians are out of the area, the two foreigners taking care to not harm any of the innocents.
Certainly a step up from the cartel.
There’s four left, all taking shots at the car, some bullets ricocheting off of the flat metal. Back to the opposite wall, you take out your pistol, switching off the safety with a single brush of your thumb. Keeping it extended in front of you, both hands holding it, you make your way silently closer to the confrontation, keeping behind them all.
The second foreigner – tall, all slim muscle, radiating warmth and self-assurance – takes a sweeping step away from the car, delivering final head shots to all but one.
Clawing against the ground, trying to gain his footing, pistol flung metres away from him, he lets out groans of agony. He’s been shot in the knee, it seems like – yeah, definitely been shot in the knee, by the way he screams when he tries to rise on it.
Doing quick head checks, the younger foreigner keeps his gun raised at a safe level, before walking over to the wounded member.
The lone soldier grunts when the lithe man smacks the butt of his gun against his temple, his head twisting with the force of it. You can tell he’s being kept alive.
“Fuck, Cap,” the younger man hisses, hooking his thumb in his vest, throwing his head back slightly. In the streetlight, from your close distance, you can see a droplet trail down his Adam’s apple. Collect at the hollow of his throat, glisten in the dim light.
The other, ‘Cap’, presses his hands against his knees, using the momentum to stand, wiping the back of his glove against his mouth. Quickly scanning his surroundings, you dart behind a small, abandoned street stall, crouching as you do so.
No shots are fired – you consider it a win.
“C’mon, we gotta get ‘im to exfil,” he grunts, and when you move back to watch them in full view, you see him jog over to stand next to his partner. Leaning down, he pulls his arm around the unconscious man, lifting him up with the younger’s help. They swing his arms around the necks of them both, their hands keeping him upright between the two.
“Ale and Rudy are gonna have our asses for the stray shots,” the black-haired one groans, but there’s a relieved smile stretching over his face. “Hopefully this guy has the intel they want.”
“If he doesn’t,” ‘Cap’ returns, a humoured look written all over his face, “We’ll have their asses.”
Intel. They want… intel. On the cartel, on El Sin Nombre. Something you have in spades. In fact, you were probably the closest thing to a gold mine when it came to information of the Las Almas cartel. Wouldn’t even need torture to get you to speak.
You’d heard of Alejandro and Rodolfo. They were considered legends by the townspeople, the men who nearly took down the cartel. The true face of the Mexican Military – not the paid off army.
It was a shame, really, how much of their story wasn’t told.
Being shot if either name left anyone’s mouth made it a difficult one to retell. Especially to you – the Cartel’s Princess – a woman hated for nothing more than her last name.
Your step-father and ‘boss’ refused to speak of them, either. Your limited knowledge pertained to the fact that they were direct enemies of El Sin Nombre, and shared a complicated past with Valeria. You’d asked, once, what happened.
You’d never asked again.
The sun is rising, the hints of morning brushing over the deserted side street. They seem… ethereal, in this light, exhausted from work but cheerful from a job well done. At ease with each other, even with blood decorating their skin, boots covered in red.
You remember when you’d first tried to run away, fourteen and too naive to plan it beforehand, before you knew to slide cash into the guards’ belt. It had been seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds before a bullet had grazed your thigh, and you were brought back to your house. You still have the scar – both physically, and mentally.
Having to learn that running away was never a truly feasible option was a hard reality at such a young age. Sheltered, too – you didn’t understand the true way of the world. What life was like without a bounty on your head and blood money decorating your neck in the form of a pearl necklace. Hands chained with bracelets of pure gold.
The cool metal grows clammy with your own distraught, your index finger hooking around the trigger.
When you were younger, you wanted to become a journalist. You dreamt of the ability to make things known – uncover the dark secrets your family loved to hide. A servant to the public – in the most damning of ways, a true way of protecting without the need for blood on your hands. The only black metal in your hands would be that of a pen; considerably more deadly than a weapon could ever be.
You aim your pistol.
Oh, to be free. To not have to wake up every day, dreading, hating yourself for the sins of your family. Your livelihood. Freedom in not having to choose between being a bystander, or meeting the death of a traitor.
That butterfly, gods, that butterfly. It took itself wherever it wanted – got to experience the world at its own pace. Live for the sake of it, gifting the Earth for the pleasure of it all.
Grateful for just a week of substance. A week of survival.
What you’d do for just a week.
A shot fires, and you don’t move an inch from the drawback. You just stand, watching, as a body falls, and two guns are instantly aimed at you in turn.
Just a week.
Letting the gun slide from your hand and hit the floor, you raise your hands, palms facing the two. They don’t shoot – that’s all you could’ve hoped for. Being reckless was part of being in the cartel, and your very blood ran because of it.
“You want intel?” You ask, loud enough to carry to them, taking a bold step forward. With the sun not having risen, a chill settles into your bones, the tight, silk nightdress you adorn during sleep the only thing protecting you as the breeze brushes open your jacket. “I have it.”
The youngest moves to lower his gun, but a side eye from ‘Cap’ has him raising it again. The way they stare you down has your chest rising and falling in dramatic movements, and for the first time this night, you second guess yourself.
It’s the only chance you’ve ever gotten – you think, reminding yourself – and you will accept it with open arms. Just a week.
Taking careful, precise steps closer, you keep your palms facing them and face a stubborn neutral. You’d been trained in a lot of areas, sparsely, but there was no doubt in your mind that you wouldn’t be able to take either of them in a real fight. Diego had spoiled you with riches and luxury, not sparring and gunslinging.
“Wait –” the younger stretches out his hand, looking to the other with an expression. Like he’d seen a ghost. “She’s…”
“I know,” the other breathes out, his tense stance easing slightly.
As you stand, just a metre or two away from them, you look between them both. Calculating, watching, you slide off your leather jacket and drop it to the ground – showing that you have no other weapons, no bombs strapped to you.
Just a silk, blood red nightdress, an empty hollister, and black leather boots.
“You guys were pretty loud when you said you needed intel,” you narrow your eyes, flitting between them both. They shroud you in their shadows; tall, muscular – military. But not… regiment. Different, more sinister, maybe, more important. “And I saw you kill my auntie’s men.”
They both lower their weapons. Partly stupid, partly an insult. “You’re the Cartel Princess, aye?” The younger raises his brows, looking over you with studious brown.
“I left my tiara at home,” you snark. The younger smirks, approving of your response. Maybe you wouldn’t have to be stepped all over, to be taken in by them.
Jerking his head to the dead body laying between the both of them, the older levels an unimpressed gaze your way. “Was that necessary?” He asks, folding his arms over his chest and righting his posture, looking down at you.
“He was a dick anyways,” you roll your eyes, finally lowering your own hands to rest at your hips. “He tried to offer up his daughter ‘cause he was in debt.”
Both of their jaws go slack.
You shrug.
“Where are you guys going anyways?” You ask, bouncing on the heels of your feet, hands held together behind your back. Looking around, your mouth pulls into a small frown at the shattered store windows. You’d try and leave some money for them when you got back.
The smaller one lets out an almost shocked chuckle. “This isn’t – you’re not hitchhiking.”
Rubbing at the roof of his nose, the one with the boonie hat looses a thick sigh, before giving you an exhausted look. “You’re lucky Alejandro has been after your arse for years. Gaz, get ‘er gun.”
“Yes, Sir,” he jokes, roughly saluting the man before grabbing your weapon. Sliding it into his own holster, he loops his elbow through yours, and starts dragging you down the street, the other walking a bit ahead of you both.
“This went way easier than I thought,” you mutter, realising just how… simple it had been to get them to take you. No cuffs, surprisingly, and no sedatives.
Gaz, as the other referred to him as, looks down to you with a friendly smile. “Most of us know your face. Alejandro and Rodolfo have been looking for you – something about you being ‘one of the good ones’.”
“I’ve never met them,” you admit, a small crease forming between your brows. “I’ve heard of them, but… why do they care about me?”
“Apparently,” the one up ahead darts his blue eyes back to you, “You do, in fact, have ‘intel’. And…” He trails off, before shaking his head. “You’ll see when we get back to base. I think he’ll be quite happy.”
Gaz groans with a laugh. “Hate when he’s giddy. They’re so loud.”
Falling back a little, ‘Cap’ hits his subordinate lightly up the back of his head. “You’re gross. Exfil’s just off to the right.”
“Reminds me of Amsterdam,” Gaz says wistfully, his elbow still linked around yours. This might just be the oddest way to be taken in by a supposed ‘enemy’ ever. Definitely up there.
Turning, you see a black SUV parked off to the side, the windows tinted to the nth degree. You can’t see anything within them except your own reflections, the winding streets behind you three. Looking to Gaz, you ask, “Where’s my carriage?”
He gives an incredulous look. “You’re serious?”
You and his partner answer at the exact same time, the same tone, “No.”
Opening the door to the back, Cap urges the two of you in, before getting into the passenger seat. The cushions are black, too, and comfortable as you situate yourself by the window, Gaz taking the middle seat. So much for space.
“John –”
“Kate, they’ve been after her for years. We owe ‘em.”
A woman, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, looks at you through her rearview mirror. She seems… displeased about your presence.
“You’re making us a bigger target,” she hisses, shooting him an annoyed look. “If they aren’t already trying to gun us down, they’re about to go nuclear!”
“Auntie and daddy don’t like missiles. Said it’s cheap,” you chip in, folding your knee so your ankle rests on your opposite knee, folding your hands in your lap. Damn, you think, You chipped your nail polish. Only lasted a day.
Silence fills the vehicle.
You hum that radio’s tune once more, and Kate exhales a deep, calming breath. Like she’s one step away from whipping out her own gun and shooting you all dead. And then herself.
“Can you turn on the heater? It’s kinda cold,” you ask, hands rubbing at your bare arms. Should’ve put your leather jacket back on before they took you.
“John,” Kate grits out, “I am two seconds away from –”
A shot fires, then two, then three. In one movement, you grab a hold of your pistol from Gaz’s hollister, switching off the safety once more and holding it to your chest. Kate instantly switches on the ignition, accelerating hard enough to have your head hitting the back of your chair with a squeak.
Gaz unwinds the window to his left, furthest away from you, and starts firing at where a dozen or so members stand at the main street, firing off shots at the car. Bracing yourself against the back of the driver’s seat, you take aim.
True as the way the sun is set to rise, you land multiple shots through vital organs, some lucky ones blasting right through their heads. Your wrist aches from the strength of your hold around your weapon, a break from childhood coming back to haunt you. You don’t stop, however, not when you’re nowhere near your breaking point.
Within seconds, Kate drives the car out of their view, dodging potholes like a professional.
It’s five minutes later, when you’re out of the main business streets of Las Almas, that your back hits your seat once more, eyes fluttering shut as you flick the safety back on.
Gaz does the same, his shoulder bumping yours with the width and sheer height of him. You feel small, between him and the door, but not unsafe. Quite the opposite, actually, with the way he sliced through those men with buttery gunmanship.
The silence, this time, is electric. A buzzing in the air, an excitement flowing through your veins.
And then, it hits you.
“Oh, shit,” you whine, dragging your hands over your face and sloping in your seat, lips forming a disgruntled pout.
“What – what happened? You good?” Gaz asks, leaning forward, placing his hand on the back of Kate’s headrest to look over you. His arm is corded with muscle, the sleeves of his shirt pulled up to his elbows, allowing a decent view of his military-grade skin.
You sit your head against the window.
“I left my favourite nail polish at home. And my favourite earrings,” you mumble, upset.
Gaz coughs, then sits back in his seat awkwardly. “...Right. Can’t you just. …Get more? If you’re cooperative, Ale–”
You punch him in his throat, and he wheezes, tears sprouting in his eyes as he coughs. “You don’t get it,” you glare at him, before patting his back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to hit so hard.”
It’s only then that you realise John and Kate are speaking quietly up the front, low enough to not be heard by the two of you.
“Who do you guys work for, anyway?” You ask, when Gaz stops coughing, instead swallowing mouthfuls of water from the skin in his pack. He stops to stare at you.
“You ask this… now?” He questions, looking at you like you’ve lost your mind.
You shrug. “Even if you guys were mercs or something, I probably would’ve asked to be taken. Wait –” You pause, eyes going wide, mouth going slack, “You aren’t mercs, are you? Please say you aren’t.”
“We’re Special Ops. Dunno how much the old man wants me to say, so, there you go,” Gaz shrugs, pulling on his gloves. His gaze remains on yours as he does so – pulling them off by the tips of his fingers, revealing slender hands. They look oddly graceful, for a seasoned operator, and you can see the tendons pull when he takes off the other.
The sun is high enough to paint the sky in streaks of yellow and orange, swirling with the night’s dark blue. Clouds decorate the canvas like swipes of cotton, the beginnings of what looks to be a perfect Spring day. As you look out the window, watching as you pass the streets of your city, you feel an odd seed of doubt.
Not for what you’re doing – but for what you’re leaving. All of the bodies lining the streets under cartel cloths, never getting to do the very thing you’re experiencing. So many families torn apart without the option of freedom.
The glass is cool against your cheek as you drum your fingers over your lap, the tap tap tap of that song in your head looped.
“You don’t look like your pictures,” Gaz says, then, and when you turn, it’s to find him watching you studiously. He appears so relax, seated beside you, tall enough to have his head nearly hitting the roof of the car.
You raise a brow. “Didn’t realise this was a Tinder date.”
He laughs, the sound melting down your spine like the cocoa body butter you favourite. Maybe he was right about the cooperation thing – you could play nice if it meant you got to have your routine.
“I just mean,” he starts, before rolling over the words in his mouth, looking out the window before making eye contact once more. His eyes are so brown. “You’re a lot less… snobby-looking.”
You bite out a sharp laugh in shock. “Excuse me?”
He raises his hands, now, a direct copy of how you’d appeared when you first made eye contact. His smile is devastating as he says, “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Just meant you have a lot more personality than expected.”
“Thought I was the type to be docile and pretty?” You quip, pulling your hair to rest over your shoulder. “How typically… male of you.”
Placing a hand over his heart, he pretends like he’s been wounded, expression twisting into one of pain. “Ouch, Princess. Way to hit a man where it hurts.”
“I know of many other places that’ll hurt,” you mutter, side-eying him. “Don’t test me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Your Majesty,” he returns.
The car starts increasing in speed, then, at a harshly quick rate – enough to have both you and Gaz sitting up straighter, checking out your windows and tightening your grips on your guns.
Price turns, twisting where he sits in the passenger seat, looking out the back window. He curses under his breath, before looking between the both of you.
“We have company.”
author's note. please leave a comment or quote reblog if you enjoyed!! i hope you all enjoy this journey with me :) xx
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APACHE TEARS┊❝Happy Birthday.❞ Chapter 01
─ Sam Carpenter x OC
Synopsis: Alexis forgets her birthday, but she didn't forget to visit her childhood best friend.
Content warnings: bad writing, slow burn, mention of being chased by a dog, original characters, not proofread, other than that there's nothing too serious.
Word count: 3.4k
Before Alexis left Woodsboro, she lived her childhood in the town that was known for its murders in the 90s. Something like that—you don’t expect to live an ordinary life, would you?
A very slim chance you would have a life with no mishaps in a town like that. Even though it has been eleven years since the last murders happened, some crimes occur every now and then. People doing drugs, accidents, assaults, attempted murder, and more. Despite these occurrences, Alexis had gone on with her life, trying to avoid anything that might make her life miserable, and she did. She was smart enough to avoid anything suspicious, including not answering calls from strangers, not going out late at night, having protection, and knowing when someone is planning to mug you.
It was common sense; even a half-brain would know this!
But Alexis wasn’t lucky. Her efforts were all in vain, because not even intuition could stop any misfortune sent to her. Not only did she never felt safe, but she never had any expectations for her own solace.
One day, she caught a blue butterfly around the playground when she was a young girl. The insect had beautiful blue wings—not something you’d see every day—along with its rapid wings that Alexis almost failed to keep up with. The young girl stared at the insect with interest and fascination, wanting to take it home. She didn't, since she knew keeping a butterfly would not last, so she released the creature.
It wasn’t long until a stray and horrifying dog plunged its canine teeth onto the butterfly, ripping its small wings in an instant. The wrecked beauty was nowhere to be seen, already evaporated and chewed by the rabid animal.
Alexis only stared in shock before she took off, frantically fleeing from the dog chasing the poor girl.
Before she knew it, the memories of her first sight of horror were nothing but a faint memory that left her story of how she has cynophobia. Thinking about it now, she thought about how easily a dog can rip a small creature to shreds, thus scaring another one. It was the same thing with humans.
You can easily take someone’s life; for what cause? For your own survival? Pleasure? Revenge? A relief for your buried anger erupting within yourself?
No matter the reasons, the act of killing someone was immoral and will always be something that’s kept with you until the day you breathe your last breath. Even after death.
Years went by in the blink of an eye. Alexis was no longer a little girl but a drowsy looking freshman in college in Modesto, California. She felt like going back to her dorm to sleep, feeling regret seeping in after she accepted the offer from a friend to hang out.
“Aw you already cut your hair? Lame, I already miss your long hair." The charming-looking boy gives Alexis a teasing grin. “You told me to do something new for myself, didn’t you?” Alexis replies with a sigh to Jesse.
Jesse was the first person she met when she moved to Modesto for her college, he was smiley and handsome-looking, and he knew how to dress neatly even for casual hangouts. Coincidentally, the boy was assigned as her roommate. If you met him, he’d be someone with a bit of an obnoxious exterior, but he’s not a bad guy. He’s pretty considerate, Alexis honestly had thoughts of him liking her because of how abnormally nice he is, the other part is him possibly being an asshole underneath that grin. Not the case; however, he's just... slow sometimes.
“Yeah but I didn’t know you were gonna cut your hair!” He exclaimed, “Dude, everybody was literally telling you how long and pretty your hair looked, they’re gonna be devastated if they see you now.” Alexis glances at Jesse “I’m sure it’s not that serious. It’s a matter of time anyway. I don’t know why I kept my hair that long, I feel so much light now.”
“Really? Did having long hair feel heavy?” Jesse asks with genuine curiosity.
“Of course it does,” Alexis said, her face contorted with irritation. “Could you leave the questions later? Where are we even going?” Jesse lets out a sheepish chuckle at the girl’s response.
“Okay, alright! C’mon grumps” He held Alexis’ sleeve and led her to wherever their destination was.
She didn’t pay attention to where Jesse led her; in an instant, they were at a small shop. The sign was detailed in black, and the exterior was full white. They both stepped in and met with the sight of accessories and items. All of them are for school, studying, or just for looking nice via keychains, pins, desk lamps, and more.
“Woah, i didn’t know they had something like this here,” Alexis says with surprise. She looks back up to Jesse “Is this some kind of thing you’re doing to get a date with me?” Jesse snorts. “No way! I know you’re not into me.”
“Then what’s the occasion?”
"C'mon, Al, it’s your birthday!” Alexis blinks at him.
“....It is?” The younger girl thinks, and finally realization hits her. "Shit, I forgot...”
Jesse lets out a small laugh and nudges her arm “That’s kinda funny, how’d you forget your own birthday? Did you not celebrate a lot?” Before Alexis could answer him, Jesse drags her to a shelf and picks out a keychain of a cute looking brown bear. “Cute, right?”
She stares at the pin, rubbing the surface a bit as she inspects it. "Yeah," she mumbles, a wave of nostalgia washing over her. “Weird…I remember getting something like this on my birthday.” The taller boy hums. “A pin?” Alexis shakes her head lightly. "No, the bear.” Jesse stared at her with a perplexed look before he spoke, and his words made Alexis laugh. “You got a bear for your birthday?”
“No, it was a..." Her voice trails before she hums as she tries to recall what it was that reminded her of years ago.
"Actually, I’m not so sure.”
“Happy birthday!” A young girl exclaims with a small gift box in her hands. Ten-year-old Alexis accepts the gift by taking it in her hands. She lifts her head to look at her friend. “You remembered my birthday?” The girl nods and smiles.
Tara was Alexis’ friend, her first and best friend, and she still is as she grows older. She met Tara at the playground when they were about six or seven. Alexis was a year older than Tara, but that didn’t change their close relationship with one another. Tara was the only friend who wanted to talk to her and hang out with her almost every day.
“How could I forget?” She giggles; she holds Alexis’ hand while walking her back into the house. “You got me a bracelet a few months ago when it was my birthday; I wanted the both of us to match!” She beams with happiness when she sees Alexis’ small smile. “But that bracelet was pretty expensive; how’d you manage to buy the same one?” This causes the shorter girl to stammer a bit. "Well….I kinda begged Sam to buy it."
“Tara!”
“What?” Alexis sighs at her. This girl…
“Why’d you have to bother your sister?” She puts the bracelet on her wrist. The bracelet had small fake pearls on it, along with the green-colored string. Honestly, Alexis would consider it a scam since it was too expensive for its looks; it looked pretty, but it didn’t match the price. She only realized that after buying the thing. “It’s fine! Sam didn’t mind, i think... besides she likes you; she even bought you your favorite soy milk on the way home.” Tara says this and hands her friend a soy milk box.
Alexis looks at the box and feels a small burst of joy in her heart. She rarely gets to see Sam, her best friend’s older sister, but she always made her feel comfortable when they were together. She found the older girl cool and sweet; she was a little quiet and scary at times, but it felt nice knowing Sam didn’t mind her. Things have been different for the last year for some reason. She was more distant, but that wasn’t weird for Alexis; she knew people change and get busy sometimes.
Alexis sends Tara an appreciative look before speaking “Could you tell her thanks?”
Tara frowns at the girl. “Hey! You didn’t say ‘thank you’ to me!” She huffs.
“Thank you, you brat.” Alexis rolls her eyes and receives a pinch from Tara for her response. “Ouch stop!” She hisses and pinches Tara back, earning a squeal from the shorter girl. “Ow! I got you a gift and this is what you repay me?!” Alexis dodged Tara’s hand when she tried to pinch her again.
The two ran back to Alexis’ house while giggling and squealing; it wasn’t rare when Tara visited her house. She seems to like being there more than her own home, especially nowadays. Alexis always got her to watch movies or play together.
Alexis snaps out of her daydream and finds herself resting her head on the desk. Memories of her childhood lives fresh in her mind; the ones she could remember vividly were with her best friend. The only memories she wished she could have visited again, being a kid again at least. Everything used to feel so much lighter. Only now, Alexis didn’t wake up and rode her bike around the neighborhood without any worries. Everything was so different; she feels like it was yesterday when she was spending most of her time watching horror movies and hanging out with her best friend. Crazy huh? You never thought time would pass so fast.
The next thing you were a happy kid, not knowing much about the world, until you grew up feeling bitter about things. Sometimes you wish you were a dumb kid who doesn’t know any better again.
Tara sent you a message.
Tara ♥️: Happy birthday lexi
Tara ♥️: I wish I got you something :( I know you’re busy and stuff. You gonna come to visit?
Alexis smiles at the text.
Lex: Yeah I will dw
Lex: Now stop being sad, be ready tmr Im gonna visit my dad first before you
Tara ♥️: Im not first? Wowww i thought im your first in everything. Finally over your best friend huh
Lex: Cmon you know I love you, I just love my dad more
Tara ♥️: You’re an asshole come quick before i hate you forever
Lex: You won’t
On the other side of the screen, Tara's lips curled into a bright smile. After a few months, she finally got to see her best friend again. It hasn’t been long, but it felt like a while for Tara, and it made her anxious. Alexis knew Tara wouldn’t like this distance between them, especially after…
No, let’s not.
But Alexis didn’t have a choice nonetheless; her dad didn’t want her in that town, and deep inside, she agreed with him. She could have brought Tara with her, but she doesn’t really have the requirements currently. So they both settled, visiting Tara once or twice every few months until she could kidnap her and put her in her pocket to live with her in Modesto. Doing it in a friendly way, of course.
Before leaving, Alexis decides to take a trip to the convenience store to buy some things for her ride. Driving came to mind, but she brushed it off, thinking it was too much of a hassle, and decided to take the bus instead.
Upon arriving at the store and stepping in, her mind wonders as she browses through the shelves, picking up a drink and a small snack. She thinks about how Tara’s been doing without her for the past few months. Alexis had the tendency to worry about the younger girl, even if she had others with her back at Woodsboro. Her thought was cut short when another person came to mind.
“hm…I wonder where Sam is and how she’s doing now.” She mumbles to herself; eventually, she purchases her drink and snack before exiting the store to wait for the bus.
How long has it been since Alexis saw Sam? She doesn’t know; she forgot when the older girl disappeared so suddenly. How did she even feel? She doesn’t remember.
With each passing day, Alexis would sometimes wonder what Sam was doing. Probably living her life peacefully without any disquietude. Or not.
The sound of a text message makes her stop halfway to the bus station. Alexis pulls out her phone to see Jesse’s message pop up.
Hey sorry but I left something somewhere and I’m a bit busy right now to get it.
I know you’re going to visit your family today but could you get my headphones and hold on to them for a while until you get back? Its at the bowling alley, you know, the one next to the gas station. Thanks 😀
This little…
Whatever, only 15 minutes remain until the bus arrives. This wouldn’t be so bad; make it really quick.
Alexis jogs to the bowling alley and enters through the door while receiving a greeting from a tall girl at the desk. “Welcome to Cardinal Lanes; how may I help you?” As Alexis approaches the desk, she takes in the tall girl’s appearance for a moment.
She was tall and had her black hair with brown highlights tied into a bun. Her eyes were dark brown, and she had tan skin, along with a rather expressionless face when Alexis entered, but a small smile formed on her face to be appealing and polite.
"Hi, sorry, a friend of mine left something here. Headphones with light-green and grayish colors?” Alexis rushed, not wanting to miss the bus; her voice was breathless from running.
The tall girl nods. “Oh yeah sure, I think I know what you’re talking about. Wait for a moment, miss.” She disappears into the back room for a moment before coming back with Jesse’s headphones.
“Here–” Alexis cuts her off, “Thanks so much—sorry I’m in a rush." She takes the headphones from her and pauses to look up at the woman.
Alexis can’t help but feel sympathy for the stranger; she looked tired as if she’s been working all day every day. Yet she tried to put on an expression to look winsome for the place’s policy and pleasing customer service—something like that.
A rush of thoughts swirled in Alexis’ mind. Funny how she was in a rush, but for some reason she wanted to make this stranger’s day a bit better. This always happens; at the most critical moments, most times, Alexis has this thing of wanting to cheer a stranger up when she sees them down. She knew she needed to mind her own business about whatever miserable thing was going on with somebody unknown to her in their lives. But would you cheer up this tall, pretty, and downhearted-looking girl even if you’re in a rush?
Shit what the hell do I do? What am I doing? I don’t have any time for this. But she looks kinda sad. What the hell…okay stop staring at her like a weirdo.
The tall girl furrows her brows in confusion at Alexis, feeling a bit anxious and flustered at this random Asian girl staring in silence.
“Is there something wrong, Miss?” She asks while her dark brown eyes linger on Alexis.
Alexis blinks and averts her gaze for a split second. “Um yeah, sorry uh…” She stammers before swiftly pulling out a bear pin that she bought that morning and placing it firmly in the stranger’s hands. “Sorry uhm, here’s something of my gratitude for your service—thanks again, bye!” Before she could reply anything back, Alexis had already bolted out of the bowling alley.
The bowling alley attendant frowns at what just happened. She looks at the pin in her hands, her expression puzzled. Weird girl…. she thought. Unknown to Alexis, she probably made someone’s day a little better with her small act of kindness.
Upon arriving at Woodsboro, Alexis feels a sense of familiarity with the town. As much as she doesn’t like it, she misses some of the aspects of the place.
Throughout the ride, Alexis felt the need to jump out of the bus and into a ditch because of her awkwardness earlier. Being back at the place where she grew up took her mind off that for a while.
“Hey dad,” Alexis says to the phone with a bright smile, feeling excited to see her father again after months.
“Lexi? Honey, hey, how are you?” Dewey’s voice was heard through the phone, his soft tone making Alexis smile wider.
“I’m doing fine; I’m visiting you today.” Silence fell momentarily; this made Alexis a little nervous before Dewey spoke again.
“Honey…I told you not to come here.” He sighs through the phone, making Alexis feel a little guilty. “I know but I just wanted to see you." She responded as she walked along the sidewalk; it still brightened out as the sunlight hit Alexis’ face, causing her to squint. “I’m only visiting for a few days; I’m planning to stay at Tara’s house.”
“Oh Alexis… you know I don’t like that.”
“What’s wrong? I thought you like Tara?” Her response causes him to exhale deeply. "You have to understand that even though I like her and she’s nice for you, I find it difficult to get a good night's sleep knowing that you are here at someone else's house." Alexis lets out a small sigh as she listens to her father’s words.
“I’m not staying at ‘somone’s’ house,” “I know, I know." "Dad, c’mon...”
Dewey goes silent for a bit, waiting for what his daughter has to say. “Dad… I know a lot has happened here, and a lot has happened with you and me as well, but things aren’t like that anymore. It’s been ten years, and nothing strange has happened—no ghostfaces, no killers. I’m not blaming you for being paranoid, but I want to spend time with you without the thought of another murder happening.”
“I just wanted to see you. Don't you miss me, dad?” Alexis’ words hit Dewey like tree logs crushing a brittle shed. He lets out a sigh before chuckling a bit.
“You didn’t have to say that to your old man; of course I missed you.” He smiles on the other side of the phone before continuing, “Alright, I’ll let you stay, but you’ll leave first thing in the morning on your last day, and make sure to see me.”
Alexis hums. “I will. I’m going to go see you right now, later, Dad.”
“Stay safe, sweetheart.” With that, Alexis hung up and was about to continue walking until she was met with familiar black hair in her sight.
The girl stood in front of her with a grin—Alexis could recognise that smile everywhere. She didn’t expect her to be the first face she'd see once she stepped into this morbid town.
“Well, look who’s back in town.” She laughs, grinning wider, and steps closer to Alexis. “Haven’t seen you in a while; it’s nice seeing you again.” She said in a low tone, her voice sounded sweet.
Alexis gave Amber an acknowledging and surprised expression. She feels a tingly feeling in her stomach—not a good one. It’s a feeling similar to when someone you aren’t that fond of meets you on your way to your destination. Or when a teacher calls your name to ask a question about the lesson you learned but didn’t bother to remember, feeling like your heart stopped for a second. She feels dread for some unknown reason; she always has bad energy whenever she’s with Amber. It’s not because she’s sort of got this bad girl's agenda or that she has a violent way of expressing anger.
Amber is awfully nice to Alexis, and she doesn’t like that.
If somebody is nice to you, you wouldn’t be feeling a sense of dread. So, why?
It’s always been like this with them; Alexis always felt something was wrong with that girl, and it’s a little messed up to think that.
“What’s with that face?” Amber tilts her head, her eyes lingering on Alexis.
Alexis needed to make this quick before she vomits from anxiety.
— Note: thank you if you managed to read this whole ridiculous thing 🥹 You're probably wonder about Amber and Alexis, they have a complicated relationship which will be revealed more into the story. I'll have to make a new character biography for Alexis soon lol.
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tattoos together (2) ✿ g.s.
pairing: georgia stanway x reader
summary: georgia goes on her first date with you, even if it doesn't go according to her plan.
warning: reader being an idiot, a bit angsty but with a fluffy ending, i promise!
word count: 3.3k
a/n: this is part two of tattoos together, i hope you like it :)
“Fuck, I’m gonna be late,” grumbled Georgia as she hastily stormed through her house, trying to gather everything she needed, while simultaneously thinking of what to wear.
Stumbling into her walk-in closet, the blonde rummaged through the compartments, throwing everything she didn’t deem impeccable behind her in what looked like the Gordian knot.
After changing her outfit five more times, she finally settled for some oversized blue jeans with a white top and practically ran out of her front door, double-checking that she had everything.
She decided to walk to the spot they had agreed to meet at, hoping that it would clear her mind and settle her nerves at least a tiny bit.
When Georgia spotted a blue sign, adorned with wooden swirls, that said ‘Beachwood Café’ a few metres ahead of her, she took out her phone.
13:56.
Letting out a huge sigh of relief, she opened the door with shaky hands, not being able to stop the butterflies in her stomach. She sat down at a table next to one of the big windows and couldn’t stop her leg from bouncing up and down nor her hands from spinning the rings on her fingers.
‘Okay, you need to calm down, girl. She wouldn’t want to sit in front of a stuttering, sweating and shaking idiot.’ she told herself as she put both her feet firmly on the ground, trying to slow down her rapid heartbeat.
Georgia let her gaze travel outside of the café, watching as various people travelled down the street.
Hearing footsteps approaching her, she looked up only to be met with the face of a waiter clutching a notepad in his hands, “What can I get for you?”
“Oh, I’m still waiting for someone.”
“All right then, I’ll be back later,” he announced with a friendly smile before walking away.
She looked down at her phone again.
14:01.
‘Wow,’ she didn’t know how time had passed this quickly as she expectantly looked to the entrance, wishing for the bell to chime, announcing that you had arrived.
Her smile dimmed a little when the sound of the bell did ring through the room and it wasn’t you but some old man walking into the café.
Thinking that you were probably just stuck in traffic, she decided to scroll through Instagram, hoping to pass some time and maybe even take her mind off of the fact that her leg was still bouncing, almost making the table rattle.
14:18.
Getting so lost in her phone, she didn’t notice the time and quickly shot her head up from her phone. She looked around, praying that you were sitting at another table and just didn’t notice her.
When she glanced at every other person and still hadn’t found you, a frown made its way to her face, feeling an uncomfortable sensation fill her stomach as her head hung low.
She decided that she would wait a few more minutes, hoping that you were just held up somewhere and weren’t standing her up.
14:39.
Georgia could feel tears welling up in her eyes, her frustration growing by the minute. She couldn’t believe that she had been this excited for someone who didn’t even have the guts to tell her that she wasn’t coming.
The blonde wanted to text you. Ask why you didn’t show up, ask if she had completely misread your intentions, but her pride wouldn’t let her.
She wasn’t about to text you when she had just wasted almost an hour of her life waiting eagerly for you to walk in. Her stomach flipped, not in the way that it usually did when she thought of you, but in a way that made her feel nauseous.
Seeing the pitying glance the waiter sent her way, she could almost feel the tears falling down her cheeks, just barely peeking over the rim of her eyelid, causing her to stand up hastily and hurry out of the entrance.
Unlocking her front door, she threw her keys into a bowl and flopped down on her couch grumpily. She just wanted to forget this ever happened, but when her eyes caught the smiley face resting on her left wrist, she knew she couldn’t.
Couldn’t forget the way your smile made her feel all mushy inside. Couldn’t forget the way your voice calmed her. Couldn’t forget the way your gentle touch made her heart race again. But what bothered her the most, was that she couldn’t forget the feeling that overcame her when you didn’t show up.
She felt like a bride deserted at the altar. Even if she knew that you had only seen each other a handful of times and that this seemed a bit dramatic, this is what she imagined being left at the altar felt like.
Her standing there, excited, eager for you to walk down the aisle. Slowly losing hope that you would even show up. Devastation flowing through her whole body. Her downcast and tearful expression for all to see, pitying looks from everyone in the room.
The couch dipping beside her, made her look up, seeing Alessia, who had stayed the night, with a smile on her face, “How was your date?”
Georgia’s corners of her mouth dropped even further, if possible, and she grumbled quietly, “I don’t wanna talk about it,” before leaning over to her friend, hiding her head in the crook of her neck, hoping to disappear from the face of the earth.
Two days later, the blonde had just come home from a tremendously tiring training session, when she heard her phone bing.
She picked it up, not thinking anything of it. But when she read who the message was from, the sip of water she was gulping down came back up, making her cough a few times, hitting her chest to get the liquid out.
y/n :)
hii!
i was wondering if you were just running a bit late, or if something came up and we have to do a rain check on our date? <3
georgia
??
are you being serious?
The incredulous look on her face would’ve been funny, if it wasn’t under these circumstances. Mouth gaping, eyes wide and eyebrows furrowed, she looked at her phone as if someone told her her tickets for the Eras Tour were a scam.
y/n :)
uhh, did i miss something?
georgia
so is that just something you do?
stand up your date and then pretend like it didn’t happen?
She knew she was being petty but she couldn’t help it. Disappointment mixed with embarrassment still flowed through her veins, making her see red.
y/n :)
what are you talking about?
i didn’t do that
This time Georgia let out an audible groan, not believing how someone could be this cruel and then lie about it.
georgia
what do you call not showing up to an agreed-on date then?
y/n :)
i still don’t get why you’re accusing me of standing you up, i’m at the café right now
Your message confused her to no end, making the wheels in her head turn.
georgia
well good for you! i hope you’re having a better time than i did
y/n :)
oh yeah, i’m having the time of my life! my date is accusing me of standing her up when she herself isn’t even here, it’s going splendidly, really!!
georgia
why would i be there right now if i spent an hour waiting for you on the day of our date??
Georgia couldn’t believe this woman.
y/n :)
yeah, our date at the beachwood café at 2pm. i don’t know if you’re living in a different time zone, but for me, it’s 14:05 right now
georgia
you mean our date that was on tuesday? like two days ago?
Slowly, the blonde realised what had gone wrong, making her a tiny bit less mad, thinking that you somehow got the wrong day. On the other hand, you felt your stomach dropping, afraid that your non-existent coordination/time management skills had ruined your chances with the girl that made your heart flutter.
y/n :)
wait, didn’t you say thursday?!!
georgia
no…
y/n :)
omg, i’m so sorry!!
fuck
i thought you said thursday
ugh, i’m such an idiot
is there any way i can make it up to you? i really am sorry for wasting your time like that, i promise it wasn’t intentional!!
Georgia didn’t know what to say. Sure, she was hurt when you didn’t show up, but from the few times that you two talked, she got the impression that you wouldn’t do something like that. At least not on purpose. And when she thought back to how easily conversation flowed between the pair of you and the way you made her feel, she realised that she wouldn’t let a small misunderstanding take away her chance at something great.
georgia
well, you could take me out on a date
maybe with you actually present this time ;)
y/n :)
of course, i’ll make it worth your while and i promise i’ll be there this time!!
when are you free?
Finally feeling the pressure that’s been weighing her down these past two days lift, the blonde let a small smile take over her face at the fact that you weren’t the person your actions made you out to be.
georgia
friday is my day off if you have time then?
y/n :)
friday it is! :)
6pm sound good?
georgia
yeah!
so just to make sure, we’re meeting on friday the 11th of august at 6pm?
y/n :)
exactly, there’s no way for me to mess this up now!
georgia
maybe don't count your chickens before they hatch
y/n :)
yeah, i deserved that but i really am sorry, georgia
i hope you can forgive me
When you texted her a few hours later, asking if meeting at a park near her house would be okay with her and also stating that she was very welcome to bring her dog, Marlo, it was as if she was transported back to Tuesday, the same jittery feeling making itself known. The fact that you remembered her dog when she had just told you about him in passing made that familiar warmth in her chest appear.
The next day at around half past five, the blonde began her journey to the park. Just like the first time she made her way to your date, she was extremely jittery. Marlo walking next to her calmed her down enough so her fingers weren’t glued to her rings again. The dog seemingly being her only lifeline right now as the only thing she could hear was her heart doubling its normal speed.
After a twenty-minute walk, Georgia finally reached the green area, filled with meadows of dozens of flowers and sunbeams breaking through the leaves of trees, giving a heavenly glow.
Wandering a bit further into the park, she instantly spotted you, sitting down on a comfy blanket, a basket resting next to you. Though she recognised you, it was an unusual sight to see.
You looked so small with your shoulders slumped and your arms wrapped around your legs, your head resting on your knees. The nervousness practically oozed from you.
“Hey,” you hastily stood up and turned towards the blonde’s voice when she approached you.
After you couldn’t stop your eyes from raking over the girl in front of you, you tried to form words, only to let out breathlessly, “Hi.”
Being reminded of the day you two met and how your greeting was similarly wonderstruck, Georgia felt a smile creep up her cheeks, “Hi.”
She could see that you were looking for the right words to say, opening your mouth before closing it again and letting out a small sigh. Studying your shoes for a moment, you hesitantly raised your head back up, looking into the pools of honey that had you captivated since day one.
“I uhm,” you cleared your throat when your voice came out scratchy and way too quiet, “I’m sorry, I - god this is so stupid,” running your hands through your hair, frustrated with yourself, “I should’ve paid more attention to what you were saying and I’m sorry that I wasted your time, I completely understand if you’re still mad at me.”
Sending her a hopeful look, you continued, “I just hope that you can forgive me.”
When you were met with a beaming grin from Georgia, you felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off your shoulders, not being able to not reciprocate the gesture.
“Don’t worry, everybody makes mistakes.”
You couldn’t stop yourself and started singing, “Everybody has those days!”
“What was that?” chuckled the blonde with a confused expression after your small outburst. The way your mouth hung open and a quiet gasp fell from your lips after her question only intensified her confusion.
“You don’t know the song? From Hannah Montana?”
Shaking her head, Georgia replied, “Nope, never watched that.”
This time, your gasp was much louder as you put a hand on your chest, “That’s a felony, young lady!”
The sound of your mixed laughter filled the warm summer air, the wind carrying it through the rustling trees, meeting the songs the birds were singing along the way.
“No, but seriously, we have to watch that sometime.”
‘We’ was the word Georgia was caught up on. The possibility of you wanting to see her again made her feel all giddy inside like a kid rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning.
You looked at her before starting again, “So I take it you’re not mad at me anymore?”
She shook her head as you two sat down next to each other, facing the small pond that rested in the middle of the meadow, a few ducks swimming on the water, that sparkled with the sunlight.
When you got comfortable you felt something sniffing at your hand, making you turn towards it. Realising that you hadn’t really acknowledged the fluffy ball of brown curls Georgia had brought with her, you let him sniff your hand before gently scratching his head, smiling when Marlo wagged his tail excitedly.
“He’s adorable,” you whispered with a smile that had your eyes crinkling and your cheeks aching.
‘Just like you.’ is what Georgia would’ve said if the didn’t chicken out at the last second, your smile mesmerizing her and making the usual blush, that always seemed to be present whenever you were near, appear.
“Anyway, I thought we could just have a picnic and talk if that’s okay with you?” you asked her in a gentle tone, one hand still scratching Marlo as the other opened the basket and pulled out a few of the things you brought.
The blonde could only nod, too busy watching you to try to get her brain to work in the presence of the girl that made her feel like a ten-year-old with her first crush.
When you pulled out a small cake and she realised what kind it was, her brows furrowed, “How did you know that I’m literally obsessed with lemon crumble cake?”
“Oh, you mentioned it that time you got the game of noughts and crosses tattooed,” you send her a timid smile, hoping you didn’t overstep her boundaries.
Your answer made her stomach flip, the butterflies in there multiplying by the second.
She didn’t know why, but the fact that you had remembered her favourite cake, caused her whole body to heat up with a kind of warmth she hadn’t felt before.
Her eyes, full of emotion, met yours, “Thank you, that’s really thoughtful.”
You waved her off and pulled out the rest of the things. The both of you got comfortable on the blanket, enjoyed your food (sometimes you sneakily gave small bites to Marlo who was resting his head on your legs, thinking Georgia didn’t notice - she did she was just too whipped to say anything) and watched as the sun disappeared behind the trees, turning the sky into a mix of the prettiest orange, violet and blue they had ever seen.
Even after a few hours, conversation still flowed easily as you played around with Marlo. When it began to grow cold though and neither of you had much to cover yourselves with, you offered to walk Georgia home, your hands timidly brushing against each other, as you two trekked side by side.
Reaching her apartment building, you put down the basket at the bottom of the stairs and looked at her, your shimmering eyes entrancing her, “I had a really good time today, I hope we can do this again.”
Ever the poet, Georgia retorted with a smile so bright it could put the sun to shame, “Me too.”
You took a step closer, heart beating rapidly at the close proximity and put your arms on her shoulders, gently pulling her in. Even though you were both afraid the other would be able to hear or even feel the other's heart slamming against their ribcage, you both instantly relaxed into the embrace.
Wanting to feel you even closer, Georgia wound her arms around your waist, pulled you into her and squeezed tightly, your warmth being enough to put her at ease, in spite of her rapid pulse.
“Good night, Georgia,” you whispered in her ear, feeling her shiver after your breath tickled over her skin and slowly pulled away.
When you saw her trying to bridge the gap between your faces, you put a hand on her chest, holding her where she was, “I don’t kiss on the first date,” you told her teasingly.
The blonde groaned and pouted her lips, looking at you with a face even more adorable than Marlo’s, “Can’t you make an exception? I mean if you showed up on Tuesday, this would've been our second date,” she poked your shoulder as her pout turned into a mischievous smirk.
You pulled up your sleeve to see what time your watch would show.
00:02.
Knowing that she didn’t need to convince you but still wanting to leave her hanging a bit, you turned towards her again, “Well, technically it’s a new day and if you were to ask me out, this would be our second date, wouldn’t it?”
You’ve never seen anyone nod as energetically as the blonde in your arms, “Y/N Y/L/N would you do me the honour of going on a date with me on this fine summer day?”
“You’re such an idiot,” you laughed as your hand came to rest on her neck, pulling her in until you were a breath apart.
Looking into your favourite eyes one more time, you closed yours, feeling her breath fan over your lips, you leaned even closer.
When she took the last step and brushed her lips over yours, sparks were sent flying through both of your bodies, making you feel electrified.
You could get lost in her soft pink lips forever and you would’ve, if there wasn’t this vital thing called oxygen in the way.
Reluctantly pulling away, not wanting this moment to end, you rested your forehead on hers, a bright grin taking up your face, as you left your eyes closed for one more second, trying to savour the tingly sensation of her lips against yours.
Before you could say anything, she captured your lips once more, both of you feeling warm all over.
Pushing you further into her with her arms around your waist, you tangled your hands into her hair, Georgia’s heart palpitating at the combined feeling of your nails scratching her head and your lips eagerly exploring hers.
Unconsciously, both of you hoped to have this tattooed on your brain as your last first kiss.
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[01:40]
tags: jaehyun x reader x yuta, smut, threesome, pegging, hand jobs, squirting, mommy kink, fluff (if you squint)
word count: 2,712
"What do you want, baby?"
You get close to his ear, the tip hot and red against your lips was you leave butterfly kisses along the shell, "Can I fuck you baby?"
His dick twitch under your ass where you're sit on his lap, "Can I fuck you with my strap, Jae?" You ask again, already knowing he could never say no to your soft whispers.
"Fuck, yes, you can, y/n." Jaehyun answers, feeling you smile against his neck and slowly slide off his lap, getting a whine from him, such a baby, your baby.
"Take off your clothes and wait for me, baby." Your smile was like as if we are getting ready to go to your favorite restaurant, eat your favorite meal, and you are happy as if, you aren't going to eat your favorite meal, but a thing way better.
When you come back from the bathroom on your favorite black lingerie, lace bra and lace panties along with your favorite strap on.
You come close to the bed where Jaehyun is sitting, you can see his dick still hard from the early make out through his black boxers. your hands go to his shoulder and push him until he is holding himself on his elbows, an easy smile on his face, you place your knee between his open legs and come closer until you dick touch his and the easy smile fades away a little to be replaced by a satisfied one.
Jaehyun throw his head back and bit his lips, feeling you drag your dick on his bulge.
"Ready?" You ask, eyeing the bedside table where you keep the lube, condom and other toys were used to use.
"Just do it." He says under his breath.
Your hand goes to his face, your fingers grab his chin and make him look at you, "Oh, baby, you're not getting my dick if you keep like this, please ask nicely to your mommy, ok."
"Ok."
"Ok?"
"Yeah, please, mommy." He's voice was so low, you should make him say it louder but you know he would get later.
"Good boy."
Prep Jaehyun is your favorite hobby. You slip off his underwear and he lays down on the bed, legs and mouth open delighted from the first finger, then comes a second, a third and he is moaning and clenching around your fingers finally nicely asking for your dick.
Of course you give it to him.
Jaehyun gets on fours and wiggles his little ass to you, making you laugh as you lube your dick.
You drag the tip against his hole, and when it is finally in it is so, so tight, you know you need to go slow, "You're ok, baby?"
"Yeah, keep going." Jaehyun is such a good boy.
You went slowly, finally diving the whole size inside him, and you didn't even start to move but Jaehyun was already a mess.
"You're doing well, my love, so good for me, so good." You say, as you leave kisses along his spine, feeling his skin shiver and relax under your lips.
"You- you can move." So you move, fucking hard into him. Fingers grasping at his hips, nails scratching the skin there which you know will leave marks, what makes you smile knowing he will remember it when he looks in the mirror tomorrow.
"I want- I want to come, please." Jaehyun begs, you smile.
"Of course you can, my baby," You kiss his nape, "Just turn around so I can see your pretty face while you come on my dick, please." You whisper against his ear and leave a slap on his ass, he yells, so cutely.
Jaehyun turns around, and lays down on his back, his legs wrap around your waist and brings you close again, this time when you sinks into him is easy and fast by the amount of lube that drips from his hole and to his milk thighs.
In this position is easy find a pace. You thrust into him while he snuggles his nose on your hair, moaning softly while you bring him to the edge just by hit repeated his prostate. Each time he gets closer his moans get louder and husky against your ear.
"Come to me, baby." You whispers. You're hands wrap around his dick and it was only what he need to start to whimpers and panting, saying he is close. Two thrusts of your fist against his cock and he is coming on his belly and your fingers. You milk him through his orgasm until it gets overstimulated and you stops because you know he doesn't like it that much — he always preferred start a new round than keep that one.
You places a kiss on his forehead and slips off of him, he smiles satisfied, eyes heavy but watching with attention was you slide your strap off and places it careful on the chair close to the windows.
"Let me help you baby." He says when you lay down at his side his hands hovering over your body and sliding your panties down your legs.
"Sit on my face." And of course you do, Jaehyun's smile was so lazy, licking his lips and making grab hands toward you as you get on your knees to sit on his face.
You place your knees on each side of his head, and when you're about to get closer to his lips he is fast, grasping on your thighs and bringing your pussy to his lips. He eats you like he is starving.
His tongue makes you moan load and his plump lips red and glistening from your juices suck at your clit repeatedly until you're closing your legs hard around his head and your fingers are pulling his hair to — not actually — make him stop, of course he stops just when you came on his mouth and left his chin and nose wet from your juices.
Jaehyun is smiling happy when you get out of his face, but whines when you get a tissue to cleans his face, so just to make him happy, you lick your own juices off his face and kiss until your taste is stick in both of your mouth, then you finally clean his face, just because you feels really tired, because nothing is better to make you sleepy than a good orgasm.
Just a second orgasm.
"Why do you have fun without me?" You and Jaehyun listen to a whiny voice coming from the door. You turn your head and are received by a Yuta already kicking his pants and throwing his shirt on the floor.
"You're late." You tease him, even though you know who you're teasing and how worse than you he could become.
"I'm late, Jae?" He asks.
Jaehyun shakes his head, smiling, full dimples on display to Yuta, this brat, just to please him.
"See? That's a good boy." Yuta praises, holding Jaehyun's chin and pulling him for a kiss.
Yuta licks on his mouth and sucks on his bottom lip all too fast, too eager for this time of night, too eager to a Jaehyun who already came on your cock but he's too good, and ready to praise his boyfriend. He licks and nibbles at Yuta's lips as eager as him and you watches, feeling the between your thighs grow hotter and hotter, just by watching your boyfriends kissing, just by listen the sound that drip their lips, the little whines and moans, that you know make you so wet you could come just by touching yourself and listen to them.
You're hand slide between your thighs right where you need the most, where you still naked since Jaehyun just slipped his shirt over your head and brought you to a hug to sleep before Yuta comes home and change all your plans, you three still have to work tomorrow-
"Baby-" You feel fingers hold your wrist and remove your hands from between your thighs.
"Come here, Dear-" And you're brought between the two men, who manhandle you so easily, bringing you to lay down with your back close to Jaehyun's chest and facing Yuta.
You feel Jaehyun's lips on your neck as soon as you set the position, you should say to not leave marks but soon Yuta's lips are on yours and who cares, you melt under their lips, under they touch, until you're whining.
"Want something, baby?" Yuta asks. A hand traveling to your breasts.
"Want to cum."
"Again?" Is Jaehyun's turn to tease.
"Again," You whisper, fingers running through Yuta's dark hair as his fingers pinches your nipples. "Please, Yuyu make me cum by your fingers." You plead.
Jaehyun chuckles, his hand also traveling to your breasts, pinching and squeezing one while Yuta does with the other. And God you're never that sensitive when it comes to your tits but you're sure Jaehyun and Yuta could make you come just by playing with them.
"Since you asked so well, kitty." Kitty. You feel more of your juices dripping down your pussy, you just want a touch, just one finger, ok, two, because Yuta's filled you so well, it was a waste if he didn't use at least two.
"You're spoiling her too much." You listen to Jaehyun's voice against your ear, you want to punch him but that would make him stop playing with your tits and you don't want that.
You're sure you could come just by they playing with your tits by now if they continue with this delicious torture. Until you feel wet, and a tongue against you and god, yeah that was not even a hypothesis anymore you're going to cum just by Yuta's tongue, licking and sucking at your breasts.
"I'm going to cum if you don't stop," You warn but they don't care. Jaehyun is smiling against your nape and his half hard dick is poking your ass, if he just put it inside, "Please, give me fingers, give me something, please."
So you receive. One, Yuta's. Two. Then three, Jaehyun decides to participate, and you already feel so full as they start to scissor their fingers to something bigger, you thing if is enough but-
"Want more, pretty girl?" Jaehyun asks, one finger teasing on your other hole.
You nods.
"Greedy, too greedy, do you think you can handle both?" Yuta asks.
And you nod, because of course you can, you already have both, right?
"Maybe another day, kitty, you already look too lost just by our fingers, I don't think you can handle two dicks today."
Ah.
You whines. Of course it was their cocks. Of course you wanted it today, buy maybe Yuta is right, you can get it another day, you will remember it, or do you think so.
You whine again, when Jaehyun slip off his finger, but soon is shut down with the said finger slipping through your lips.
"Ah-" You hum around his finger, welcoming it with your tongue rolling around it and tasting your own juices.
"Is it that delicious?" Yuta asks, bringing his other hand close to your pussy just to slide his finger across your lips and bring it to his mouth, sucking at it just like you did. You smile by the sight.
"Let me try too." Jaehyun asks, as if he didn't eat you out minutes ago. Yuta repeats his moves, but this time slipping his finger just slightly inside you to get more juices and takes it to Jaehyun's lips who licks and hollows his cheeks sucking at Yuta's finger.
The finger slips from his lips with a wet pop, and go backs to your pussy, where the cold split just make it way too pleasurable, making a moan drips down your mouth.
"You wish it was our dick right, baby? So we would fuck you soo good you could not even walk tomorrow, how would you explain it, uh? Would you say your boyfriends fucked you so good you're sore and can't even walk property?"
Fuck you, Jeong Jaehyun.
You feel him slipping one finger close to Yuta's, and starting to thrust inside you, following Yuta's movements, mouthing at your neck and never once stopping from squeezing your tits.
"She would be sore, but still so tight, right, Jaehyun-ah? Like she not even felt apart and still asking for more, do we have to fuck you raw more how many times to you to get loose? Let's try, baby?"
Fuck you, Nakamoto Yuta.
You want to wipe the smirk from their faces but how could you, when you're really falling apart on their fingers. When their fingers don't stop from thrust inside you and the wet squelching sounds just get louder. When Jaehyun holds you so close to his chest that your head falls against his shoulder and your mouth hangs open as you can't inhibir any of your moans anymore and they just get loader and loader.
"Do you want to come, kitty?" Yuta asks, you know he is smirking even though your eyes are closed, just by the way it drips from his sexy voice.
"Please-" You moan against Jaehyun's ear which is close to your lips, and you hear him moaning too, big hands holding you waist so hard it will leave marks.
"Come for me, baby." It's all he says, before his thumb start to circle around your clit repeatedly while Jaehyun's fingers still thrusting inside you, until your thighs are shaking, your toes curling and you're coming hot against Yuta's and Jaehyun's hands, your loud moans don't make them stop, they keep going. Yuta flicks at your clit too many times to it to be not a torture, and even you're clenching hard around Jaehyun he didn't slip off his fingers, not until you're screaming again.
"Oh my, no, no, no." Drips from your lips before Jaehyun removes his wet fingers and you're squirting, wetting the bed, the sheets, wetting Yuta, and his only clothing left, his boxers, which turns the fabric transparent making you see his dick twitching under the white fabric, ah, you wished you just have that cock between your-
Before you could start to think some coherent thought, you watch as Jaehyun sneaks a hand over you and starts to palm Yuta through his boxers.
"Ah- Fuck." He moans as Jaehyun keeps teasing him with light fingers touching along his cock. So you join him, teasing Yuta with your thumb hovering over the head, dragging the precum all over it until his moans increase, getting loader and hoarse.
"Just touch me, ah-"
He didn't need to ask. Jaehyun pulls down Yuta's boxer just so you can take his dick on your hand, holding the base while Jaehyun teases at the head, inverting the roles this time, all to please Yuta, all to make him moan and curses under his breath, bad bad words leaving his mouth as Jaehyun splits on his hand and jerk off him, fast and raw like Yuta loves.
"Come for mommy, Yu." You whispers, nibbling at his ear and it's all he needed to spill all over your belly and Jaehyun's hands.
You smiles watching Yuta's closes eyes from his orgasm and Jaehyun's dimples popping as he cleans the cum off his hands with his tongue.
"Satisfied?" Jaehyun asks, watching you still smiling dumbly at them.
"I do, baby." You pouts and feel Jaehyun leaves a little kiss on your lips, a smile stick on his lips as well. You turn your head and pout bigger at Yuta, silence asking for a little kiss too, of course he does, you just happens to have the most best wonderful two boyfriends.
"'m tired, want to sleep." You snuggles against Yuta and closes you eyes, you feel dirty, but the tiredness that take over you is too much to keep you awake.
"Kitten, let's clean you first." You listen to Yuta saying but you just shrug and come back to your place against his chest.
Yuta chuckles and you just feel hands hovering you, warm tower over your thighs and belly, and Jaehyun's arms around you as they change the sheets and place you back on the mattress between them, where you humbly thinks you belong to.
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holiday party
a/n" first tumblr fanfic! i'm originally from wattpad so bare with meeeee---also not really edited so yeah
details" au, no apocalypse, fluff, kissing, ... . .
pairing" customer!ellie x fem!reader
synopsis" after moving to colorado at the beginning of winter, you start a new job to pay all the new expenses. even though you were a newly hire, you settled quick at your job at the local coffee shop. turns out pretty women also came with the job.
¸.·✩·.¸¸.·¯⍣✩ let's begin ✩⍣¯·.¸¸.·✩·.¸
your sleep was rudely interrupted by your buzzing alarm as you blinked sleep away. your eyelids weighed down, tempting you to just... rest...
you jutted awake as a message buzzed through your phone. groaning mentally, you turned over, unlocking your phone. it was from your friend.
sarah ❤
good morning, work bestie! 6:32 am
girl get up your new job is on the line 6:35 am
you smiled as you slowly typed a response
(y/n)
im up 6:37 am
thanks <333 6:37 am
the winter air bit at your exposed skin as you mustered the strength to slip out of your bed. you walked into the kitchen, pouring some cereal for yourself. continuing your routine, you got a message from your manager, abby.
abby (work)
if no one informed you, you're opening the store. dina is opening with you. she has the keys. i'll be there around noon. 7:01 am
you frowned slightly. you were hoping for... well, you didn't exactly know what you were hoping for. maybe a manager a bit less dry?
(y/n)
thanks, abby. 7:05 am
you finished up your mascara and grabbed your keys. you locked your door, walked down the hallway, took the stairs, and got into your car in the apartment parking garage. the whole way you were shivering. by now the sun was up as you pulled into the back lot of the cafe.
the snow stuck to your boots the whole way, getting it in your car. you didn't care much, just rolled your eyes. you took the keys out of the car and took a deep breath, touching up your lip gloss. you pulled the handle and stepped out of your car, shutting the door, and locking it. dina was in her car next to yours, and you stepping towards her passenger side, tapping on her window gently. you smiled.
dina smiled, rolling down the window.
"hey! sorry, i'm in a bit of a hassle, do you mind opening the store?" she asked.
"yeah, no problem." you responded, taking the store keys from her outstretched hand.
your breath puffed like a cloud of smoke in front of you. you walked around the side of the shop, and made it to the employee side door. you unlocked it, turned off the alarm, shut the door behind you, and began setting up the small shop. frost edged the windows from the outside, adding a cool effect. you turned the hanging sign on the door to "open" and unlocked it.
dina stepped in the side door, walking to the employee's room. appearing a few minutes later in full shoppe attire. she smiled and you smiled back.
"okay, today is a slow day. good luck, y/n." she joked, preparing the machines.
"thanks, you'll need some too." i sighed contently as i wiped down the tables.
.·✩·.
"hey, welcome in." you say without looking up from the register. when you did, you were met with beautiful layered green eyes. damn, she's hot as fuck! you thought. you blinked nervously and looked down slightly.
"what can i getcha'?" speaking quietly, you slowly look back up at her eyes. she was looking at the menu. freckles littered her face. a scar on her right eyebrow was badass.
"i'll take a caramel latte." she spoke. her voice was raspy yet smooth, somehow. she looked back at your eyes and your heart skipped a beat. you clicked in the buttons on the machine.
"size?" you asked.
"small, please."
again, you clicked in the button and rang her up.
"$2.48 is your total today." you patiently watched her grab a card out of her wallet.
your fingers brushed as you pinched the debit card from her hand. ignoring the butterflies, you inserted it. the buzzing of the receipt printing filled the quiet cafe. you wrapped the receipt around her debit card and handed it back to her. you grabbed a size small cup and retrieved a sharpie from your apron.
"what's a good name for you?" you smiled.
"ellie." she responded.
your fingers felt warm as you wrote her name in your best handwriting, daring to put a little heart by it. shit, why did i do that?
"okay, i'll call your name when the drink is ready."
ellie nodded and went to go sit down and scroll on her phone.
i think i like her.
her eyes...
that half bun is sooo hot.
is she even into girls?
many thoughts swarmed your head as you finished her drink with whipped cream and some grid-patterned caramel topping. capping the drink, you placed it gently on the granite counter slightly higher than your working counter.
"ellie!" you called, hoping your voice wasn't weird or unattractive.
"thank you." she grabbed her drink, acknowledged the heart and smiled, glancing at you. when you made eye contact, she winked. the bell jingled as she left the shoppe.
she winked. oh my god!
before you could get too happy, your manager walked in. dina walked behind you and whispered in your ear.
"boss's here." she continued walking into the back.
turning around timidly, you were met with your manager, abby. she was taller than you and way, way stronger. looking up into the blonde's eyes, you quickly glanced away and turned back around to face the future customers.
"good morning, abby." you said nervously.
what you missed was a sly smirk from your manager.
"good morning. how has your first week been?" she walked closer.
you didn't dare to look back.
"it's been... eventful. i've settled well, though." you sputtered out. obviously, you didn't bring up ellie.
"good...good." abby spoke slowly. she walked behind and past you to the employee's room, brushing you slightly. you got the butterflies from the slight touch.
.·✩·.
days blurred into the next... they all seemed to be the same. wake up, go to work, pray that ellie would come back, avoid abby, finish the day, go home, relax. repeat. repeat. repeat.
today was different, however. tonight, starting at 5:30 pm, was the small town's holiday celebration. they place a tree in the middle, light it, sell hot chocolate, and there's an ice skating rink.
basically, the perfect winter date.
to backtrack, ellie came in twice over the past couple weeks of working. thanksgiving ended and it's around the 1st of december. over those two precious days, you managed to talk to her. and she talked to you. and you couldn't stop; nor her. seeing how she watched and listened to you... the way she talked, got slightly embarrassed about small little things... she's so cute.
on the second day she visited, she said something that would repeat in your head every night.
"y/n, do you want to go with me to the holiday kick off? it's our community's tradition. and, it's okay if you don't want to, it won't hurt my feelings, i-"
you smiled seeing her get all blushy and embarrassed.
"yeah, i'll go. with you." as these words left your mouth, she started smiling.
"then we'll call it a date." she smirked.
now it was your turn to get all red.
...
fast forward to you closing the coffee shop early for the celebration, ellie would pick you up. she wanted to drive around early to look at rich people's christmas lights and decorations.
just as you were going to pick up your phone, a car pulled up. you saw ellie smiling gently and waving you in. placing your little work bag by your feet, you got in the passenger seat.
"hi, ellie. again, thank you for doing this. it's sweet of you."
you were a little nervous getting into her car after only talking deeply once, but you felt safe with her.
"hey, you look great. festive." she pointed to your dangly earrings.
"awe, thanks. I got them back in my old home." you sighed contently. she glanced over at you as she pulled away.
"okay, so," she began speaking at a red light, "i'm taking you to the richest neighborhood here. you're going to love it." she had a soft smile. the sun had set already since it's winter, so darkness was spreading quickly.
"you look pretty today." she spoke softly, looking ahead at the road. you blushed immediately.
"thank you ellie. by the way, i only let hot girls take me out, so..." you were suddenly interested in your nails. she blushed.
.·✩·.
"here we are." she slowed down as she pulled on the street. houses glowed magically. many had the moving lights that projected snowflakes and santa hats.
"it gorgeous." you whispered. she drove slowly, letting you look around.
"how can they afford all this?"
"no clue." she sighed.
as the pulled out of the neighborhood, she drove towards the square.
"have you ice skated before?" you look at her. she glances at you, then stares back on the road.
"i have. you?"
"damn, i haven't. maybe we can just... skip that event.." you smiled nervously.
"i'll make sure you're okay. okay?" she looked over at you full on, placing her hand on your thigh gently. you internally freaked out, heat pooling at the bottom of your torso.
"k." you said breathlessly. she smirked, turning to the road, knowing she made you slip up. to push you even farther, she started rubbing gently and slowly up and down your thigh. your cheeks blushed and tingles were left where she touched.
.·✩·.
"come on! we're going to be late for the tree lighting!" she hurried you along as she opened the passenger door for you.
"thanks, gentleman." you smirked, stepping out of the car.
"anytime, pretty woman." she smirked back, winking.
you let ellie drag you to the town square where the large tree was being lit. many other people were already. your nose and cheeks were red and your breath came out as smoke in the frosty air. ellie mirrored your cold looks.
"let me buy you some hot cocoa, yeah?" she brushed a piece of your cold hair behind your reddening ear. you blushed, but the frost camouflaged you.
"yeah, that'd be nice." you giggled quietly. christmas music sang from the multiple speakers around the gathering. she snuck her hand around your waist as you walked together. you were flustered, to say the least.
"hey, what can i getcha?" the employee asked you two as you arrived the stand.
"two hot cocoas, please." ellie smiled, her hand placement on you signaling you were hers tonight. and ellie hopes she can make you hers forever on.
ellie payed and soon the burning hot cocoa was in your hands. you bathed in the warmth. sipping it, you sighed.
"that's good. thank you so much, ellie. for everything." you thanked her.
"it's no problem, really. i was lucky enough to even get you free tonight. i wouldn't be surprised if you had girls in your dms, pretty lady." she smirked, looking straight on at you. you reddened, looking away while sipping your cocoa.
"no, i actually don't have any girls in my dms, much to your disappointment. i haven't gone on a date in a little bit, actually." you said quietly. her eyebrows rose in surprise.
"really? you're lying."
"no, i'm not lying." i responded.
"oooookay then..." she said in a jokingly distrusting voice.
"ho, ho, ho! look at these lovely girls over here! merry christmas!" a jolly person dressed in a santa costume boomed. he was old, but was a cute little guy. you giggled, smiling.
"so festive here." you look back over to ellie, and she's watching you.
"goddamn, you're so cute." she kissed your cheek, leaving you blushy and giggley.
"ladies and gentlemen, if you have children who would like to meet santa, his booth is open! these nice elves over here will show you through the process. thank you." a person on the speakers spoke happily.
"what next?" you yawned, covering your mouth. ellie brushed a piece of your hair behind your ear.
"don't get too tired, cutie. come over here, i wanna show you something..."
.·✩·.
"thank you ellie. this has been the best night since i moved here." you stood with ellie at the entrance to the event. she looked deeply into your eyes.
"of course. thanks for giving me a chance. now let's get in my car, i'm cold." she smirked. you nodded, shivering.
"yes, please."
the heat took a few minutes to warm up, but when it did, both you and ellie sighed in relief.
"want me to take you home?" she looked at you, glancing at your lips.
"i mean, yeah..." you say reluctantly.
"you look so..." she trailed off.
you looked up at her, confused.
"i look...?" you started getting a little self-conscious.
"kissable. can i?" she was practically burning holes into your lips.
you nodded slowly.
"please."
ellie leaned in, capturing your lips perfectly. she laid her hands on the sides of your head, guiding you gently. you both got in sync, letting your bodies take the lead. she licked your bottom lip, asking silently for access. you open your mouth a crack desperately. she tangled her tongue with yours, eventually taking dominance. she pushed into you slightly, exploring your mouth.
after a while of kissing and quiet noises, ellie broke away, smirking.
"you taste delicious." she licked your lipgloss from her own lips. you were trying not to take ellie's comment in a dirty way.
"cat got your tongue?" she held eye contact with you.
"uh, no." you blinked finally, a blush coming across your face as you touched your lips.
"that was.. really nice." you avoided eye contact with ellie. she just had a cocky smirk on her face.
"yeah, i know. now let's get you home, baby."
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episode 07: away from home and back again
CONTENTS: 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. m.list!
TW/CW: none!
A/N: annnd welcome to the final chapter, dear readers! thank you for following this storyline to the very end :''))) I'm happy you all enjoyed thoma and mc's shenanigans, and i hope that you keep the message of this story close to your hearts <;33
Your legs flew faster than light, carrying you across the field in a flash. People stopped and stared as you rushed past, but what were they gonna do, stop you?
You ran, and ran, and ran, and ran.
(Meanwhile, you were only one millimetre away from having a complete meltdown over… whatever had just happened. Listen, it wasn’t your fault that you had zero knowledge about how to deal with this!)
The only time you slowed down was to briefly scratch Taroumarou behind the ears, for he had been waiting outside of the gate. Hey, you still had your priorities, even when you were supposed to be running away from all of your problems.
But no matter how fast you ran, your racing thoughts swiftly caught up to you— you could no longer tell if your heart was pounding because of the complete overload of cardio or if it was thanks to Thoma and his way of words. Perhaps it was both.
‘As more than friends, in fact.’
Gritting your teeth, you ran even faster, no longer caring about where you were headed. Anywhere would do just as long as you could ignore how your heart threatened to burst out of your chest to take flight, or those ridiculously impractical butterflies that swarmed in your chest cavity like a swarm of hopeful pests. Really, just what were you they hoping for?
You slowed to a stop, the dead leaves crunching under your feet.
There you went again, running away from Thoma. Why did you always run from him? Why were you so afraid of him, of allowing him to treat you gently and cherish you so?
Overhead the branches rustled, sending scattered shafts of sunlight and falling leaves tumbling down from above— in contrast to your muddled state of mind, the world around you was serenely peaceful. And to top it all off, your legs had brought you to the crosswalk where you and Thoma had apparently first met. Talk about the irony.
“Unfair.” Crouching down next to a nearby lampost, you buried your burning face into your knees. “…So unfair.”
When you had promised yourself to support Thoma’s decision no matter what, you had not anticipated this. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong— your armour of rationality was long-lost, leaving you to face your raw emotions alone and defenseless. The only sliver of comfort you could find was in the fact that there would be no cars using this road today, because the last thing you wanted was for the whole world to see you curled up like a disgruntled millipede beside the road.
The butterflies swarmed in your chest again, fluttering with the promise of hope; somehow you’d achieved the impossible and actually won the fifty-fifty percent chance of having your feelings returned. For some inexplicable reason, you… actually had a shot. At something.
“It was so much easier to think rationally when I wasn’t the one going through it,” you complained to the sky. “Can I take back all of my previous complaints, please?”
The sky remained helpfully quiet— well, you supposed that that was what you got for asking for change without even considering whether or not you were prepared for it. However, it did not make the situation any less frustrating.
“I never even expected to get this far! Now what am I supposed to do?!”
Woof!
“Taroumarou, wait for me!”
Your head snapped to the direction where that all-too-familiar voice came from— oh, you just couldn’t catch a break, could you?
Briefly you contemplated your options; the first one was to continue running away. And the second was to actually face your problems like an adult.
(Just kidding! You only technically had one option, because if you ran any more you were pretty sure you would keel over and die from overexercising. Shame on you for not giving your all in P.E. class.)
“Taroumarou…” The footsteps slowed to a stop, that voice of honey-sunshine trailing off into silence. You didn’t need to see him to know what was going on.
Taking a shaky breath, you silently accepted your fate; just like that, Thoma had found you once again.
You whirled around to meet a masterpiece straight out of the Romantic period– a work of art with golden hair gently tousled by the wind, his emerald eyes brimming with surprise. Faintly-flushed lips that had just barely managed to form your name before trailing off into reverent silence, and a school uniform in colours that matched your own.
(Somehow, the picture before you gave you a sense of deja vu.)
“I, uh– hi.”
“Hey.”
You both stood there awkwardly for a minute or two; the silence was so thick that you could’ve heard a pin drop.
(Well, except for the faint sound of whining that could be heard from behind Thoma– most likely the sound of judgement from the Boss Dog. Sorry, Taroumarou!)
“If it’s about what you overheard me say earlier, I…” He swallowed thickly, averting his eyes. “Well, it’s uh- that’s definitely not how I wanted to tell you. But if you’re uncomfortable with it—”
“No!” Your voice comes out louder than you anticipated. “I mean– no. It just…”
Oh, nothing. Just that you found out that all your unrequited pining wasn’t so unrequited after all. You, the former matchmaker who knew how to counsel any sort of relationship except your own and now had absolutely zero knowledge of how anything worked anymore because according to your predictions for yourself, something like this was statistically impossible to happen and now all of your calculations were now aflame and burning to ashes thanks to one singular puppy-boy—
Something cold and wet rolled down your face, the salty taste lingering on your tongue; with horror, you realised that you were crying.
“Wh–” You swiped at your face hastily, trying to catch the falling tears before you embarrassed yourself any more than you already did. “Please don't misunderstand! I’m not mad at you or anything!”
“Then what’s going on with you?” Thoma pleaded. “Just tell me what’s wrong, please.”
“I…” Your voice cracked, the tears not stopping even when you willed them out of existence. Stupid tear ducts.
The look in his eyes was so simple, so honest that it made you want to crumble right into his hands, and you hated it. Every cell in your body yearned to finally yield to what you'd been keeping under lock and key for so long— speak up, you coward! Running away will only hurt him!
“Since when?”
He swallowed hard. “I’m not really sure, but I think… since the beginning.”
“What?” You nearly choked on the air mid-sniffle, which was not an ideal situation to find out exactly when your long-time crush had been reciprocating your feelings. “Like, when we bumped into each other in front of the classroom?”
“No, here.” Thoma chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Since… ever since we met here. I didn’t realise it back then, but…”
He trailed off in silence, the rosy flush of his face speaking for him.
If you were going to be completely honest, you gaped at him like an idiot. This guy had had a crush on you ever since he first met you – an event that you barely remembered – and he… he…
You needed to clear your head and be sincere, or else you’d really lose your mind.
“...If I'm gonna be honest, Thoma…” You say softly, every ounce of honesty pouring into your words. “I'm terrified.”
No words could describe how afraid you were; you, who no longer had any more armour or defenses to put up. Like a reckless, well-meaning dog in a china shop, all of those had been destroyed by the gentle heart of the young man before you, leaving you in complete surrender. And no words would ever capture the absolute joy running through your veins when he chose to be with you over anyone else, when he chose to care for you even when he didn't have to.
…Which was really frustrating, considering that now you actually wanted to verbalise your feelings. Just where did your gift of speech go when you needed it most?
“I’m… really not the best with words. Or feelings. Or—”
“Hey.” Thoma interrupts you mid-sentence, raising his eyebrows in his signature ‘don't you dare start self-deprecating’ expression.
“Right. Sorry.” You cleared your throat. “I don't— I'm just…”
“... It's okay, you know.”
His eyes softened, that bittersweet smile spreading across his face like sickness. “Like I said, I didn't want you to find out that way because I didn't want you to be pressured. You don't have to be considerate of me.”
Eh…?
Your eyes widened— what was he saying?
“Once again, I'm sorry for tangling you up in all this,” His words sounded distant and murky, reverberating through the thick fog of your clouded mind. “Please forget about anything I said—”
Horror and panic flooded your entire mind as you realised what he was saying; no, no, no, no, wait that wasn't what you were supposed to tell him wait wait wait—!
“I don't want to!” You practically shouted at the top of your lungs and buried your face in your hands miserably, crouching down once more in dead millipede position as you cursed your terrible communication skills– why, why, why did you have to be so bad at this?! “I like you too, for crying out loud!”
Absolute silence.
“...Thoma?”
He didn’t reply.
Several minutes passed, and still no response; you mustered your courage to peep through your fingers and nearly choked on your spit. You really, really didn’t want to laugh in this scenario, but… Thoma looked like he had just gotten hit with a shovel.
Taroumarou silently padded towards Thoma and gently tugged on his pant leg, but the puppy-boy remained unmoving. No amount of tugging or nipping would budge the golden statue no matter how hard the Boss Dog tried– but from the way he seemed too familiar with the procedure, you got a feeling that this wasn’t the first time that Taroumarou had to deal with this.
Finally, Taroumarou gave a resigned whimper and raised one of his hind legs– your eyes widened in horror as you realised what he was about to do.
“Taroumarou, don’t!”
Thoma nearly jumped a foot in the air at the sound of your voice, snapping out of his daze at a most admirable speed; the Boss Dog retreated hastily, giving a reproachful sneeze as he skittered back to a safe distance. The miserable expression on his face had you silently apologising to Taroumarou for what must’ve been the hundredth time that day.
“Um.” Thoma blinked owlishly, a confused (and hopelessly adorable) expression on his face. “I- I didn’t mishear you, right? You said that…”
“...Yeah. I did.”
“Oh.” His eyes somehow widened even further. “Oh.”
“I- look.” You began, ruffling your hair in frustration. “I can’t word it properly, so I’ll be borrowing some of your words here. Do you remember the last time we were here and I asked you what it meant to be in- in…”
‘Thoma, what does falling in love feel like?’
Your spit caught itself in your throat again, nearly choking you to death from the power of sheer embarrassment. What had you been thinking?!
“In…” Thoma’s voice trailed off, a rosy flush gracing his cheeks– why was he the one blushing like a young maiden here?! “Ah. I remember.”
“Right! Anyways!” Your hands flailed around nervously till they found their place on the lamp-post, your nails digging into the metal. “I- I kinda get what you were talking about now! The whole flying-but-falling, afraid but not thing…” Your voice trailed off as you accidentally made eye contact with Taroumarou, who had slowly walked up to hover behind Thoma’s ankles.
Kill me now, said the Boss Dog’s expression. Please. Death would be more merciful than having to sit through this.
That death stare alone was enough to make you rethink every word that was about to come out of your mouth; no, you didn't want to admit that you were doing this thanks to a dog, but… he had a point.
You were hiding again, hiding behind words that Thoma had already used like the wretched coward you were, all because you were too afraid of taking the leap. But it was time for you to grow up— if he could manage being blatantly honest about his feelings (the horror!), then so could you.
Yes, you decided, squaring your shoulders and looking Thoma directly in the eye. The time had come for you to suck it up and say what you really meant.
“...Do you remember the day we became seat-mates?” You asked quietly.
“Of course,” He replied almost immediately. “How could I possibly forget?”
In spite of yourself, a soft chuckle makes its way out of you; it only felt like yesterday in your memories, but so much time had passed between then and now.
“I still remember how confused I was to see you there,” You continued, a wry smile working its way up your lips. “Back then, I didn’t care who or what would sit beside me in class. I just wanted peace and quiet.”
You thought of how lonely and grey the world had felt when you had attained your desired empty seat, completely lacking in the warm hues that you had become accustomed to. Fiery yet gentle red, a warm sunset orange, and yellow that shone like sunlight– for someone who had experienced such vibrant hues, returning to black and grey was a torturous existence. How could you ever return to a normal life when you had already experienced it in colour?
“...Yeah, I definitely didn't get any peace and quiet after that.”
Thoma winced visibly. “Sorry.”
“Hey, don't be sorry. It was a good thing because…” You hesitated for a moment. “...I was happy.”
You could admit as much, though that sentence alone would never be able to capture how elated you were, the dizzying joy that rushed through your entire being when you realised that someone genuinely went out of their way to spend time with you. That somebody saw you standing in the shadows and went to stand with you, slowly walking with you till you stood side-by-side in the light.
To you, the forgotten extra, the afterthought who was only remembered when needed— there were no words that could describe how precious that feeling was.
(Man. You had fallen even harder than you originally expected. )
“Even if I’m bad at showing it, I was really happy. The times we ate lunch on the rooftop, or when we'd walk home and laugh about what happened during the day…”
Your fingers twisted in the hem of your shirt as you chuckled, shaking your head in resignation. “And that's why I didn't want to say anything about it. Because I was so happy I was afraid I'd mess it all up.”
That didn't even capture one-fourth of how terrified and confused you felt; the concept of someone finding genuine interest in you as a person was so alien to you that you tried to push it away, running as fast as you can till your legs gave out. But all the same your heart yearned and bled for the opportunity to be cherished, for something to change in your closed-off, wretched mindset, for someone to see through your armour and understand.
“I’m scared, Thoma. It feels like I’ve been reborn, and it all started when I met you.” Your eyes prickled dangerously, warning you of the tears that threatened to spill any moment now. “Everything is so new to me, and it scares me so, so much— I’m terrified of change.”
Good job, whispered a part of your brain— and in spite of being on the verge of tears, the uncomfortable feeling in your chest slightly loosened, leaving you with your raw emotions. Your mind flowed freely, recalling so many precious memories and feelings that you had accumulated over all your time with Thoma; all were so dear to your heart that you wished you could hoard them away forever. In complacency you had hoped to preserve them in a state of eternal tranquility, but…
“...Me too, actually.”
“Hah?” You blinked owlishly, your eyes coming back into focus just in time to see Thoma flush pink.
“I mean– uh, well, I get you there!” He sputtered furiously, rubbing the back of his neck with the same charmingly awkward air that he always had. “I really, really cherish all the time we spent together, but I didn’t know if it was the same for you, and I was– I was…”
I was afraid, just the same as you.
For a moment you're struck with the sheer irony of it all— this all could have been very easily avoided if you had actually just communicated with each other and weren't actual boneheads when it came to subtle cues.
Was it still too late to launch yourself directly into the sun?
“...Looks like we were in the same boat all this time, huh.”
“Yeah,” Thoma replied. “I guess so.”
That's it?! You wanted to scream at yourself. You had wasted so much time dawdling because of your fears, and now you didn't even have the energy to say anything anymore.
Thoma didn't deserve this, no– this was why you had thought he deserved better. He shouldn't have had to carry the burden of a coward like you who couldn't even say anything when it mattered most—
“I… You should go.” You sniffed most unbecomingly, dabbing at your eyes with the stiff fabric of your uniform. “Sorry– sorry for just bursting out like this all of a sudden. It’s not like me.”
But he didn’t turn away; instead, Thoma stepped forward to the edge of the curb. The dead leaves rustled around his ankles restlessly, parting themselves to make a path for his feet.
What on earth was he doing?
“Thoma, didn’t you hear me?”
“I know.” His emerald eyes fixed themselves solely onto you, soft yet steady— the intensity of his gaze sent heat flushing to your ears and your face in a most unwelcome manner. And then Thoma stepped even closer, blocking you from view with his body. "Sorry, I’m- I just…”
Your grip tightened on the lamp-post, instinctively trying to steady yourself for whatever he was about to say.
“I…��� Thoma cleared his throat, the faintest trace of pink colouring his cheeks. “I just want to be a bit selfish, even for just a little while. I want to keep this moment for myself."
His voice is barely above a whisper, one softer than the dreams of a sleeping child, yet those words rang louder in your ears than a thousand school-bells. If — and only if — your intuition was correct, then this moment was a secret meant to be shared with only two people, one as well-kept as a hidden gem of a bakery.
(The sudden recalling of a certain memory made you flush even hotter— was that what he had meant to imply that day?)
“Do you know how happy you’ve made me?” He asked, a gentle smile gracing his lips like no other.
“No, not really,” You managed to force out, your voice wavering from all the tears you choked down. “I have no idea what I’m doing. Please send help.”
Behind Thoma, Taroumarou put a paw over his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to watch (well in his defense, you wouldn’t have wanted to watch this either.) But Thoma did not cringe, no— he threw back his head and laughed.
His was a light, airy laugh that sang of freedom, of joy, and of release; this was the laughter of a boy who’d been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders but was finally released from everything that had been holding him back. It was the joy of a young man who now knew that there was no need for him to hide any longer, that the truth of his heart was one reciprocated.
And then when he finished laughing, he gave you a smile that said, 'Don't worry. I'll help you, no matter how many times it'll take.'
Your hands trembled, your nails digging into your palms as you struggled to process what he just said.
You were… messy. Inconvenient. A violent delinquent who couldn’t control your temper, someone who pushed away affection at every opportunity and ran away when confronted with your emotions. So why did he keep reaching for you? What about you made Thoma want to keep coming back?
“I’m not perfect either, you know.” Thoma smiled ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck. “I get stressed out when I can’t live up to everyone’s expectations of me, and I can’t tell when I’m allowed to say no and be myself. But I’ve learned a lot, all thanks to you.”
Why are you the one saying that to me? You’ve taken the words out of my mouth, you wanted to cry out. Unfair, unfair, unfair.
“It always feels like home when I’m with you. Studying with you, eating with you— even if it’s just walking with you, I feel like I’ve finally come home.” He continued, fiddling with the hem of his shirt nervously. “Even if I feel nervous and unsure of myself, at the same time I’ve never felt safer. And it sounds rather selfish, but… I want to be able to give you that same sanctuary.”
The leaves fell to the ground silently, all the world quiet as if holding its breath to hear your response; Thoma shifted nervously, clearly more flustered than you’d ever seen him before.
His flush deepened. “If- if you’d let me, of course. Is it okay if I keep doing that, even when we’re old and grey?”
The tight, uncomfortable feeling in your chest suddenly released without warning, and your weary heart cried out in relief. You didn’t have to run away anymore.
You… didn’t have to run away anymore.
There was no reason for you to swallow your feelings down till they bloomed in your lungs like poisonous flowers; no, there had never been any reason for you to suffer in silence at all. You had worried for nothing when apparently he had always, always been looking at you– all this time you had been someone special to him, someone more than a funny sidekick or someone to set him up for his next character arc.
Tears ran down your face undisturbed, the warmth reminding you that this— all of this, was real. Thoma was real.
(And there was also that obnoxious little part of your brain screaming “VICTORYYYYYYYY!!!!” at the top of its lungs, so yes, this was definitely real. You would never have daydreamt that annoying shriek up, whether deliberately or not.)
Your legs ached to run away once more— but not away from Thoma, for the first time in this entire time period of knowing him and liking him. You wanted to run towards him and be caught up in his arms – or catch him up in yours – and cry. Or laugh. Or anything would do, just as long as it was with him and him alone. You wanted to make up for all the times you ran away from his sincerity out of fear, mistaken his kindness for some ulterior motive thanks to your never-ending paranoia.
Let’s go home, whispered your prodigal heart.
"Wait, stay there." Your voice trembled. "You're always the one who comes to find me. This time- this time…”
I want to be the one who goes to you.
His eyes widened slightly in confusion, but the puppy-boy nodded in acknowledgement.
Taking a shaky breath, you eyed the wide stretch of asphalt that stood between you and Thoma— a divide that you had put there in the first place, but who was to say that you couldn’t remove it?
Your foot trembled as you took one faltering step forward, planting your shoe in the center of one white stripe of the crosswalk. Courage, that was all you needed.
I’m not good enough for him, said a nasty, hateful inner voice. Three steps and not a single reply, for such folly was beneath your attention.
This won’t work out, said another. You ignored it and took another two steps forward.
I don’t deserve to be loved like this. Ouch, that one hurt— four steps forward, because you were feeling petty.
He waited patiently, just as he always did; the fading sunlight danced in his eyes of emerald, dazzling your world with the light of a thousand unshed tears. For a moment you remembered an old film based on a true story, one that told of a loyal dog who also sat and waited for someone special in his life.
You’re almost home now, said the look in Thoma’s eyes. Don’t give up yet, please, please, please.
A small part of you sighed and wondered what you had become— someone who was practically wrapped around the finger (the paw?) of an insolent puppy-boy, a reserved individual whose heart melted and now yearned for someone who shone like the sun. Realistically, you could have just run away once more and avoided dealing with this.
But the reason why it was called falling in love was because it meant that the other person would catch you, knowing that you would do exactly the same for them. And you wanted to become someone who could do exactly that for Thoma.
You prayed for strength, for bravery to see this through to the end; if you wanted to be that person for Thoma, then you would need courage. No matter how many times your legs trembled on this road, no matter how many people tried to tell you this and that, you could not run away. You didn’t want to run away this time.
One step, two steps— just a little further, you told yourself. You just needed a little more courage to brave your journey to its end.
One last step forward, and you held your breath, hardly daring to breathe as you allowed him to envelop you in warmth. A part of you still wondered if it was a dream, but that faint, familiar scent of laundry soap, the unprecedented warmth that bubbled up in your throat… you could never have dreamt that up in a thousand lifetimes.
“…I’m here, Thoma.” Your voice trembles ever so slightly.
He smiles and buries his face into the crown of your head, stroking your hair with a tenderness that you now knew was reserved only for you. “Welcome home.”
From a distance, Taroumarou watched as his subordinates embraced in a mess of tears, a satisfied almost-smile on his fluffy face. This entire ordeal had been ridiculously drawn out and could’ve been avoided if they had just communicated properly, but… the Boss Dog supposed that all was well if it ended well. You could only be a pup once, and as long as his subordinates were happy, then he was satisfied too.
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𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏 𝐘𝐎𝐔
# .01 — multi fandoms : aot [eren, armin.] genshin impact [kaeya, thoma.] jjk [sukuna.] x fem!reader
# .02 — cw : smut, v. penetration. praise, oral [f. receiving + m. receiving.] [monsterfucking due to double cocked up sukuna, skip if you don’t like it.]
# .03 — it’s been a while 😮💨 kinda also how passionate they are <3
minors do not interact + RBS ARE APPRECIATED !
𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍
— uses his hands a lot, drifts then down your sides to lightly tickle them, pressing his lips all over you.
he would be so full of praise when he’s on his knees for you. ‘will never get over how much you drive me crazy.’ he loves to give you tons of kisses. he loves when you’re beneath him, cock buried nearly to the hilt, seeing the gleam in your eyes as he delivers slow, deep, punctuated thrusts. how his eyes love to drape down your body, watching your chest rise and fall with quick and short pants, how your cunt squeezes him so tight every time you let out a soft moan. he especially loves it when he can make you finish form literally the bare minimum.
𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍
— loves to caress your cheek, eye contact is major with him, he loves to just look at you.
he’d brush the hair off your forehead, cup his hands around your cheeks while you’re riding him. his hot breath as he pulls you down onto him, holding your thighs close to his hips as he sits up on his heals, pumping his cock into you with soft force, his tummy bubbling and swarming with butterflies when he hears you mumble his name. ‘a-armin pleasse.. your cock feels .. so good, hhnnngff.’ how he would fucking love to keep going at the speed you want. the one that he makes him feel you gush around him. the one that has him pulling out n watching your cunt drip that sweet cum back onto his cock. how he has that bubbling urge to bury himself back inside, feel that slick mess have that cool feeling as he slides back in slowly, making you mewl out his name in a little fit to make him go faster. he just loves to see your face scrunch up when he pumps his warm seed into you :(
𝐊𝐀𝐄𝐘𝐀
— has his hands on you twenty-four seven. he loves feeling you up <3
you’d be at the tavern for a late night drink with him n you’d feel his hands start to wonder. ‘what? i dont think i’m doing anything wrong.’ but would a hundred percent nearly shove his hand into your pants because in his head, you’re the prettiest when you’re super flattered. when you look at him with a shocked look and nearly swatting his hand away. he really thinks there’s nothing more attractive than you being flustered. he knew this one thing about you though, that look you’re give him when you wanted to go back home and be in private. and every time you were out somewhere together and he sees this look he knows he’s fucked.
𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐀
— cannot get his eyes off of you, the level of love he feels for you makes him almost wanna go aggressive with it.
adores when you’re fucking missionary. he’s so sweet n loves to coat you in beautiful praise as well as his cum [im not sorry]. he really REALLY likes when you let it be known that he’s making you feel so good. fucking loves when you get super loud, when you can’t stop your body from thrashing around beneath him. also loves to eat you out. you look like such a goddess under him like this :( he can’t get over how much he loves when he looks up while sucking lightly on your clit to see your chest raising into the air, watching as your head gets thrown back and mouth falls open from the impending orgasm he’s about to feed to you. something about it,, he can’t believe he’s the only one that can make you cum as hard as you do.
𝐒𝐔𝐊𝐔𝐍𝐀
— shockingly praises the fuck out of you. puts you above everyone but at what cost?
as bad as he is, it’s obvious that he fucking loves to make you scream and cry. to him, he loves when he has you on your knees, wearing the finest of silk, squeezing your body just right and when you look up at him with one of his cocks being drenched in your saliva, dribbling pre down your chest and neck while the other fitted snugly down your throat. he thinks you look so pretty honestly, but that won’t stop him from absolute abusing that throat. he would leave you coughing up cum for hours on end, chuckle about it but brush the tears from your cheeks ;(
MYARLERT©️2022
tagging @okhotel @paradisdementor @soaringmirror @raegalliard @rowsn @strawberryerwin @chaotic-nick @sftbunnyy @atsumeii
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Friends Can Have Sleepovers
Adrian Chase x gn!reader
@peacemakernet event 01: fic exchange , for my lovely recipient @likedovesinthewnd 💖
Summary: You pose as a couple with Adrian on a reconnaissance mission, Harcourt books a room for you with only one bed.
Ever since the butterflies had been taken down, the 11th Street Kids jobs had gotten a little easier. You had started taking down criminals instead of searching out aliens. It was more of what Chris and Adrian had done prior to the group, but without the murder. Well, without as much murder. Adrian still had a habit of taking the law into his own hands, and Harcourt could only keep him on a leash for so long.
She did however notice that you were pretty good at handling Adrian. He seemed different around you. More calm perhaps? Less likely to kill people? No, that wasn’t it. He seemed like he was content with you. Around others he was always moving a mile a minute, but with you he slowed down. Of course he still talked your ear off, but you always sat there patiently, waiting for him to finish before you spoke up. And when you were speaking to him? The man was all ears.
Adrian had a habit of drifting off when others were talking. While he was completely professional on missions, he had trouble focusing before them. But when you were talking to him, he just stared at you, occasionally nodding, and giving some input to what you were saying.
The others were shocked. Never had they seen Adrian so quiet, and attentive. He was still a massive goofball around you, obviously, but it was like being around you made him slow down a bit.
Adebayo had even given you the title “Professional Vigilante Handler” after she saw you stop Adrian from going on a murderous rampage when someone shot Chris in the leg.
It only made sense that Harcourt decided to send the two of you on a reconnaissance mission. Everyone worked well together, finding a good rhythm quickly after stopping an alien invasion, but it was clear that you and Adrian had a special kind of bond. You worked together nearly flawlessly, and everyone on the team noticed this, except the two of you.
So now you were sat in the passenger seat of Adrian’s Sebring, on the way to your hotel, where you were meant to pose as a couple, and collect information about your newest target.
“How much longer until we’re there?” Adrian groaned. It was understandable that he was tired, he’d been driving for almost seven hours without stopping.
“Only like another hour.” You told him.
Adrian sunk further into his seat, slouching over the steering wheel.
“Do you wanna switch? You can get some rest.” You suggested.
Adrian shook his head, and quickly sat back up. “No, no, I’m all good here.”
While Adrian claimed that he didn’t have emotions like normal people did, you knew, almost from the moment you’d met him, that it was a lie. Adrian cared deeply about the people he was close with, and for some reason, he constantly felt the need to seem useful to them. He went out of his way to please others when he didn’t need to.
“Adrian, seriously, pull over so we can switch, and you can take a nap.”
Adrian looked over to you, sighed, then pulled the car over. You both got out, and walked to the other sides. When passing him, you noticed a frown on his face, like he was disappointed you made him switch with you.
Once back in the car, you now in the driver’s seat and Adrian in the passenger seat, you turned to him. He was still pouting, looking straight ahead, out the front window. You grabbed his hand from his lap.
“Rest, okay? Please? I promise I will wake you up if I see any aliens or anyone breaking the law on the way there.” You told him.
“Pinkie swear?” He asked.
“I pinkie swear.” You linked your pinkie with his, then let go of his hand.
Adrian leaned against the window, and closed his eyes, slowly drifting off to sleep as you drove the rest of the way to the hotel.
You drove for the last hour, occasionally sneaking glances at Adrian. He looked soft when he slept. Sure, he had taught himself to use any weapon he could get his hands on, and was skilled when it came to killing people, but now? His hair was mussed up, the black curls splayed in different directions, creating almost a halo above his head. His glasses were on the tip of his nose, definitely ready to fall off if he leaned his head forward anymore. His mouth hung open a little, letting out soft snores every minute or so. He had his arms wrapped around himself, the red sweater he was wearing being used as a blanket. Yeah, he looked soft, peaceful.
You felt bad about waking him up when you arrived at the hotel. You softly pushed on his arm, trying to coax him out of sleep.
“Hey Adrian, we’re here.” You said.
Adrian nodded, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then yawned. When he got out of the car he stretched, rolling out the muscles in his back.
You texted Harcourt that you had gotten to the hotel okay, and she responded telling you what name the reservation was under, and that you were going to share a room in order to further play into the whole “you’re a couple” ploy.
You got your bags out of the trunk, your suitcase, and Adrian’s. He quickly grabbed them both from you, and started towards the door to the lobby.
You checked the two of you in, took the key from the woman at the front desk, then took the elevator to your room. You walked down the long off-white hallway, and stopped at door 431. You used the key to open the door and made your way inside, Adrian following behind you.
You stopped as soon as you were past the doorway, causing Adrian to stumble into you. He apologized to you, but you didn’t respond. You were staring ahead. Adrian looked over your shoulder to see what you were looking at. The bed. The one bed in the hotel room.
“Oh, shit.” He mumbled to himself. “Harcourt must’ve forgotten to ask for two beds.”
No, you knew that Harcourt didn’t forget, she wanted to make sure the two of you played your parts, and didn’t tell you.
You sighed, now stepping further into the room. “It’s fine. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Adrian’s eyes grew wide. His brows were furrowed. He looked like he’d just heard you say the craziest thing in the world. “Absolutely not. You’re not sleeping on the floor, I’ll sleep on the floor.” He was already pulling a pillow off the bed, and threw it down on the floor.
“No, you need the rest more than I do.” You took the pillow off the ground, and threw it back on the bed.
“We could just… share the bed.” He said, his voice quiet.
You looked up to see a soft pink flush on his cheeks. His eyes were locked on the bed, trailing from one side of the bed to the other.
“Yeah, we’re adults.” You tell him, your voice matching his in volume.
“I mean, we’re friends. Friends can have sleepovers.” He shrugs.
You didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to tell him that yeah, friends can have sleepovers, but they usually didn’t have sleepovers with the person they were head over heels for, whilst sharing a bed.
Adrian placed his bag on the bed, digging through it, most likely looking for pajamas. You walked over to the window, and opened the curtains.
The sky was a soft pink color, the sun was hidden behind buildings, casting an orange glow on the horizon.
“I’m gonna change.” Adrian said from behind you.
“Okay.” You didn’t turn back again until you heard the bathroom door close.
You looked back at the bed. It was going to be hard to be in such close proximity with Adrian for so long without revealing how you felt. You glanced over at the pillows at the head of the bed, and thought for a moment.
You groaned, and shook your head. Were you really asking yourself if it would be possible to build a wall of pillows between the two of you? Grow up. You thought to yourself.
Adrian came back out after a few moments. You could feel your breath hitch when you looked at him. If you thought he looked soft in the car, you had another thing coming. Adrian was now wearing a light blue t-shirt, and boxers. The t-shirt showed off the muscles in his arms that he constantly hid beneath sweaters, and his boxers showed off his bow legs. You’d never seen so much of Adrian at once before.
“Bathroom’s all yours.” He said, putting the clothes he had been wearing earlier back in his suitcase.
“Mhm” You hummed. You grabbed your pajamas from your suitcase, then walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind you.
You paced back and forth between the door and the bathtub. You stopped in front of the mirror, took a deep breath, and tried to shake the nerves from your body.
You changed your clothes, then walked back out into the main part of the room. Adrian was already sprawled out on the bed. He was resting against the pillows, an arm behind his head, and his ankles were crossed at the foot of the bed.
The pink light coming in from the window cast a soft glow on him. It looked like he was practically inviting you to get in bed with him, and just wrap yourself around him, falling asleep with your head on his chest.
“I think I’m gonna turn in early, so I have energy tomorrow.” You told him as you got in bed. You tried to stay as close to the edge as possible, putting some space between the two of you.
“Dude, you’re gonna fall off the bed if you stay over there. You can scoot closer.” Adrian tells you.
You shuffle closer to him, further from the edge of the bed. You roll on your side, facing away from him. Maybe if you couldn’t see him, it would be like he wasn’t there.
Fate seemed to have other ideas though, because when you woke up, your were pressed right up against Adrian. He had his arms wrapped around you, your head was resting on his chest. Your arms were wrapped around his torso, and your legs were tangled together.
You tried to carefully pull yourself from his strong grip, but he woke up as soon as you started moving.
He moved his arms off of you so you could get up, then sat up and stretched. He reached his hand out to the little table on his side of the bed, his hand moving around, blindly searching for his glasses. He found them, unfolded them, and pushed them over his nose. He blinked a couple of times to get used to them, then turned to you and grinned.
“Morning sunshine.” He said.
“Good morning Adrian.” You sighed out. You quickly got up, feeling the need to get as far from him as possible. You fished around in your bag for some clothes, then went to the bathroom to change.
When you came back out Adrian was already dressed. It seemed like the cuddling didn’t affect him as much as it seemed to affect you. The two of you moved about the room, around each other to finish getting ready.
“Hey, do you ever get weird dreams?” He asked as he was tying his shoes.
You glanced over at him from where you were standing in front of the mirror.
“I don’t know, why?” You shrugged.
“Like, do you ever have a dream where you do something that maybe you shouldn’t do, but you kind of wanna do? And it makes you think about what would happen if you actually did it?” He asks, his words kind of stumbling together.
You walk back over to where he’s sitting on the bed, and sit next to him.
“What’d you dream about Adrian?” You ask him softly. You want him to know that he can trust you, that you won’t judge him no matter what he says.
He sighs, and mumbles something under his breath.
“I’m sorry, what?” You ask, nudging his arm with yours.
“I said…. Idreamtthatwekissedanditwasreallyniceandtotallynotweird.” The words flew out of his mouth.
Your mouth fell open. You couldn’t help but stare at him. He started laughing, but he sounded nervous. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
“Yeah, okay, so what if i dreamt about kissing you? Don’t we all think about doing that to our best friends?”
You silently shake your head. Your mouth opens and closes as you try to find words to say in your head.
“No? What do you mean no? Fuck!” He gets up, and starts pacing back and forth.
“Fuck. Now I’ve ruined everything. You’re probably freaked out because I can’t keep my mouth shut. Maybe Chris was right, I really need to learn to shut the fuck up.” He rambles. He’s talking to himself now though, like he’s almost forgotten you’re still in the room.
Adrian dreamt about kissing you? And he’d thought about it before? Of course you’d thought about kissing him, you weren’t sure how anyone who knew him didn’t fall for him immediately.
“I would totally understand if you never wanted to see me again, or if you wanted to get relocated or something. I’m sure you could work something out with Harcourt where you worked remotely and-” He felt his words get cut off by the feeling of your lips against his.
Amidst his word-vomit, he’d failed to notice you stood up, and planted yourself in front of him. Your hands cupped his cheeks, holding him in place. Adrian reached his hands up, and placed them over yours, leaning into you.
When you pulled away Adrian had a dazed look in his eyes. A soft pink was dusted across his cheeks. You brushed your the tip of your nose against his, and gave him another quick peck.
“You overthink things sometimes.” You tell him.
He smiles. “Yeah.”
“So, how did the real thing compare to that dream of yours?” You tease him.
“Definitely better.” He chuckled.
You pulled away from him, but kept his hand in yours. You laced your fingers together, and walked to the door with him.
“What do you think the team will say when we go back as a real couple?” Adrian asks, swinging your hand back and forth.
“Probably that we did our jobs too well.” You grinned, and pulled him out of the room.
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Binaural Space-Revolutions Per Millenium 00:00
Frequency Control Centre-Meramorphic Plane 00:54
Vic Mars-The Fair Arrives 05:15
Jake Mehew-The Black Nation 09:34
Hawksmoor-A Neural Interval 15:41
Maston-Jet Lag 16:40
Gemini Horror-All of the Proud 18:54
Lookout-arcadia 21:46
Work Money Death-Freedom as a Heartfelt Song 26:28
Louis Cole-Let it Happen (old version) 37:01
Slow Haste-Forest Instance 39:25
Hiro Ama-Warp 41:52
Shuggie Otis-Island Letter 44:27
The Beatles-Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds 48:59
Anchorsong-Ceremony 52:18
Bibio-Clay Dots 56:18
PBS'73-Butterfly Inside 59:14
Tornado Wallace-Trance Encounters 1:03:23
Domenique Dumont-Le Soleil Dans Le Monde 1:08:33
Vulfpeck-Earworm 1:12:25
Emerson Kitamura, MMM-Rock Your Baby 1:14:48
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Uncle Fido-They Make a Decision 1:33:11
HOME-35 1:34:45
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E Ruscha V-Sliding Around 1:39:36
Khotin-Computer Break (Late Mix) 1:42:55
Albin-Tacksam 38 1:47:20
The Hardy Tree-Stagdale in the Snow 1:52:56
10.32-Cornelius Drive 1:56:56
Dean Honer-De Da Dumplings 2:01:01
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TDWC 08: Secrets of the Forgotten
Pairing: House Leaders x gn! Reader
Warnings: canon divergence, slow burn
Summary: “Please, don’t mind me at all,” Claude beams, his grin as wide as the Cheshire cat’s.
Dimitri’s scowl deepens more. His eyes turn into the blue of an icy-cold glacier dominating the coastline of Faerghus in the North. “I do, actually. I wish to speak with the Herald in private.”
“Then get in line for an appointment. Our Herald is very popular with folks, as you know.” And with that, he closes the door in Dimitri’s face.
Notes: [01] | 07 | 09
Words: 9.7k
A/N: huge thanks to @raindrops-on-the-roof for joining me on this ride and being my beta-reader!!
i lived, bitch. it's been so long but after a year, i'm back with the next chapter and it was ton of fun working on it becase we're finally introduced to a new figure and get some original content. also claude's a menace and that's what we all want. enjoy!
08: Secrets of the Forgotten
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Haunted Palace”
The underground canals running through Abyss, like veins moving blood through the body, are dirty and smell of human waste and decay, but Balthus plays a hand much dirtier and everyone huddling around the small, crooked table in Wilting Rose Inn groans in unison. Except for Byleth. She shows her own cards, a Royal Flush, and earns a round of earnest applause. You try catching her eye to find out whether she has turned time back in her favour but her ever-steady gaze doesn’t betray anything.
“Okay, lesson learnt.” Balthus gets up and stretches, putting his taut muscles on full display. “I never imagined there could be someone worse than Yuri out there. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“Is Yuri really that bad?” you ask, throwing your Flush on the table.
Balthus gives you a seldom serious look. “You have no idea.”
It’s certainly not that hard to imagine. He sometimes has this intense, piercing gaze in his eyes when he talks about knights patrolling too close to Abyss’ entrances for his liking, even though his whole body is a picture of relaxed serenity. He’s an amazing actor, you can give him that.
“Another round?” Byleth asks, already shuffling the cards expertly with her slender fingers. Apparently, part of being a mercenary also entails having an amazing poker face and constantly winning at card games.
“Oh, no, no, I think I’m on guard duty,” Marco, the Rogue, says and flees.
“I forgot I promised to check if there’s enough candle wax to … remake candles,” Ethan, the Marksman, says and bolts.
“These are the men supposed to protect us,” Barbara, the Smith, sighs. “Yet they fear their pride won’t stand after losing a game to a woman.” She gives Byleth a scrutinising look that is also approving at the same time and follows her comrades. The rest of the crowd scatters like butterflies fluttering away after being disturbed from their peaceful slumber.
“That Barbara.” Balthus shakes his head. “Can’t say I know anyone more capable of making grown men feel like little boys.”
“I like her,” you admit. “She doesn’t call me the Archbishop’s Lapdog.” Like most Abyssians.
“Just give everyone some time.” Balthus’ grin is part amusement, part pity as he gives your shoulder two hard claps to bid you good night. “They’ll see in no time you’re no church stuck-up.”
You aren’t so sure about that. You have been down here for a couple of days only, engaging in fights, defending the place against the mercenaries and bandits that wander into Abyss—on accident or on order still remains a question. It was obvious that fighting a few battles for them would not change their mind so quickly—a few good deeds did not undo the year-long abuse and persecution most of the Abyss dwellers had to suffer. You doubt you alone can heal those wounds, yet still there is a fierce fire burning inside you, a light blazing to banish all the shadows clinging to their pained hearts.
Not for the church’s sake, you’ve realised quickly, but for the Herald’s, for the first one loved Fódlan’s people; loves Fódlan’s people still. Every night you lie in your dark quarters, a single, tiny room with nothing but slatted frames and a thin blanket for a bed, nothing feels surer and more honest than this feeling Seiros’ Champion allows you to glimpse as if what it means to be the Herald is that simple.
And simple it is, for if you cannot remember your identity, your wishes and dreams and ambitions, you can take his on until you have figured it out for yourself; surround yourself with them just like you donned his ceremonial robes at the very beginning.
If Byleth questions your new-found vigour for battle, for tactics and schemes on the battlefield, she hasn’t voiced it yet. Or, maybe she is simply too occupied trying to understand the cards Fate has dealt her.
The Wilting Rose Inn clears out as the candles burn down until only a few loyal patrons remain in their respective, quiet corners. It becomes easier to talk to Byleth, since you cannot be sure who might be listening in, ready to forward information to Yuri and give him whatever reason to put your head on a stake. Not that he would actually do something like that. At least, you hope he would not do something like that.
You also realise how much you missed just being in her presence, and they become the only short moments during the day when you allow yourself to relax and droop your shoulders whenever exhaustion weighs you down.
Today, Byleth has made it her personal mission to teach you wood-carving. It goes as expected: you’ve cut yourself three times and have nothing to show for but a misshapen try at a cat that bears more resemblance to a stone you might find in one of Abyss’ gutters.
“I am,” you say as the sharp edge nicks your thumb once more, “a danger to myself and everyone around me.”
“Good thing I’m the only one here then.” Byleth gently takes the knife from you as if you are a toddler and only to be trusted with tools that are highly unlikely to chop your limbs off. Like a spoon. You’ll remind her of that next time she pushes a sword into your hands and demands you to participate in another sparring session. “I’m not as practised in magic and Tome wielding as Linhardt or Lysithea, but I am sure you still need all your fingers to conjure spells.”
“I could try it with my toes.” You wiggle your bloodied fingers at her like the boogie man. “Become the first Warlock that casts Dark magic with their feet.”
The smile that tugs at the corners of Byleth’s mouth is a greater victory than having chased off the bandits yesterday. It is followed by a frown though, one so light, the softest shift in her brows that you wouldn’t have noticed it were it not for the long hours during tea-time you spent studying the planes and features of her face like an artist might while studying their muse.
She leans back in her creaking chair and pockets her knife inside the hidden sheath strapped around her upper thigh. “We are making slow progress uncovering who is after Yuri and his friends,” Byleth says. “I know we’ve been through this already, but any guesses?”
“You’d think with how often we got rid of them by now, they would realise trying to drive the underground residents away is a waste of time. Whoever pays them must hold a serious grudge, why else would they spend so much money on sending mercs in here?”
A shadow passes Byleth’s eyes. “Unless these kids know more and are hiding the true reason someone would be after them.”
You understand her concern. You two have agreed to help, but your official duties and first responsibilities lie in taking care of the academy’s students and seeing that no harm comes to them. Which is no easy task as they so readily throw themselves into defending the Abyssians.
“I … I don’t think that is the case.”
Byleth simply lifts an eyebrow, urging you to go on.
“I can’t explain it very well. I just don’t think they have anything bad in mind. I don’t think there is a reason to doubt them.”
It doesn’t make sense, and yet you know Byleth is the last one to argue against a point like that. This quiet, strange connection that exists between you two is undeniable—just like the sun’s travel over the skies and that it lies to rest in the West and rises again in the East, day by day. Everything is connected, you just have to find out who is spinning the thread of your Fates together.
“I really thought they were trouble at first,” Byleth says and gestures to the barman to bring another round. “Especially Yuri. He is cunning and sharp, a dangerous combination for a leader.”
“I’d like to think he is hiding a warm, pleasant core beneath all that scheming and calculating,” you say, taking the drink the moment the bartender leaves it at your table. “Hiding it somewhere very, very deep.”
A corner of Byleth’s mouth twitches. She’s holding her own glass, lazily swirling the amber liquid in circles. “He is young, but I would not put it past him to hold ulterior motives. Promise me to be careful around him.”
“He and his lot helped me before they knew I was the Herald,” you concede, thinking back to Constance’s reaction after you woke up. “They simply saw someone in need of help, that’s all.” Since then, it has not occurred to you even once that they might be criminals hiding away under the church’s nose. You still think of Alfons and Briana’s small faces, their round button-noses and large eyes as they look up at Yuri in adoration. They deserve so much more than hiding away in some dark, rotting cellars.
You swallow your shot in one go, and instantly begin to cough and pound your chest as it goes down burning. Byleth knocks her glass back without any problem and swallows the burning liquid as if it were water. You still blink against the tears stinging in your eyes.
“You sound like you trust them already,” Byleth says and waves for another round. You try to share a mildly concerned look with the bartender, but he ignores you and slides two more shot glasses in front of your noses.
“Trust is maybe a little much,” you mumble, thinking of Yuri’s sharp smile, the way Hapi struggles and fails not to roll her eyes whenever you offer some insight with your Crest. “But I don’t think they’re bad. Or evil.”
Byleth nods, either because she has come to the same conclusion or because she puts trust in your decision not to doubt them. She downs another shot, looks at you expectantly. You scramble for another topic, anything that will save your throat from burning up a second time with this goddess-forsaken liquor.
Inevitably, your eyes fall on the sword strapped to her waist, only to call it a sword puts any blacksmith who has mastered the art of steel and iron to shame, and you have no desire to meet the one responsible for this craft, the one that bends bone and magic to their will. Byleth follows your gaze. Her hand rests on the hilt, hesitantly at first. You don’t think you have ever seen her hesitate before.
“The Sword of the Creator,” you mumble. “What does that even mean?” Has the Progenitor God truly wielded such a thing? What kind of goddess was she to come up with such a hideous weapon, to forge the Heroes’ Relics in such a portrayal and present them as gifts to humanity? It is like receiving an apple and only finding the core rotten and inhabited with worms after you have taken a bite. You wonder if this repulsive fascination is you or Seiros’ Champion, yet he remains silent.
Byleth stares into her glass as if the answers for all her questions lie hidden at the bottom and by drinking fast enough, she can unravel them. You are pretty sure that is how people become drunkards.
“Holding the sword … wielding it.” Byleth searches your gaze. “It felt raw. Unlike anything I have ever felt, and yet...” Her nimble fingers dance across the hilt once more, halt at the round socket where it seems that something spherical is missing. When she locks eyes with you, something tells you this is something she has not even told her students. Maybe she can’t tell them. Maybe, just like you feel with her, she feels that honesty comes easier when only you are around. You take a sip from your glass, welcoming for once the biting heat that forces you to shut your eyes and turn your head away.
Why can’t you tell her about the first Herald? Why do you want to keep his existence within you a secret? You listen for his voice, his opinion on the matter, but Seiros’ Champion is still silent, and you hope it doesn’t stay that way in matters of life or death. What is the use of an ancient dwelling inside your heart when he does not share in his unending knowledge and experience?
“And yet, it felt right,” Byleth finishes, cutting off your thoughts, and somehow you can easily imagine what she had felt—for the very same could be said about meeting the Herald. Right, natural. Like returning home. “I wonder … if there is any truth to the people’s claims that only a descendant of the King of Liberation would be able to use its power the way I did.”
You’ve read the historic texts on Nemesis, the King of Liberation. How the goddess gifted him the sword to use its power to save Fódlan from wicked gods over a thousand years ago. He liberated the people from their thralldom and thus was named King and Beloved of the people until the sword’s heavenly power, too terrifying and mighty for any mortal to bear, corrupted him and he turned to the darkness, waging war across the land and thus forcing Seiros to destroy him. It strengthens your belief that whatever benevolence the Goddess gifts her patrons, the price to pay in the end seems too high.
“I hope,” Byleth continues, “Professor Hanneman will have answers to that when we return. I still do not quite understand why Rhea has allowed me to keep it.”
“Is there any explanation as to why it was her sword inside the tomb and not the remains of Saint Seiros?” you ask. It would also beg the question where they are instead. But Byleth shakes her head.
“There wasn’t much time to go into details,” she says. Her fingers linger just a moment longer on the sword, before she withdraws them—a little reluctantly. “When you disappeared, we moved heaven and hell to find you. It was by mere luck Claude spotted one of the Abyssians disappear inside a passageway under the Abbey.”
“I hate how no one told us,” you say. “You would think a whole bunch of people living under the monastery is worth mentioning at some point after appointing us to our positions.”
“I’d like to think there was a reason for keeping silent about it,” Byleth says though even she doesn’t sound sure, and it strikes you as odd. Not Byleth doubting Rhea, but her not being sure about something. “A reason I can’t wait to hear once we’re back on the surface.” She reaches across the table, presenting her open palm to your hand holding your glass. You surrender and give it to her, watching a little too intently when her throat bobs as she swallows another round.
“Yuri expects another attack on the Abyss soon,” Byleth continues and rises to her feet. She stretches like a cat in the sun. “We should head to bed and rest up. I wouldn’t want a repeat of the last battle.”
“Oh, come on, it was not that bad.”
“You almost fell asleep from exhaustion when those two Grapplers advanced,” Byleth says, using her Professor voice on you.
You can’t help but grin. “And just like I predicted, you came and saved me.” Byleth’s mouth twitches into a flat line, but you can see that she is pleased. “Pulling an all-nighter to study the maps and outline of Abyss and the secrets it has to offer was a good idea. There are some interesting chambers holding traps and pitfalls. Whoever built this place really wanted to keep people away.”
“Makes you think what could be hiding deeper down in Abyss,” Byleth thinks aloud. “And maybe one of the next bandits will be kind enough to tell us.”
You nod. It was Claude’s idea to take someone captive and get answers from them, and hopefully shed some light on what it is exactly that their employer wants from Abyss.
Byleth escorts you to your chamber, your quiet voices bouncing off the damp walls in the dark corridor that stretch away into unprepossessing shadows. Unlike up in the monastery, the walls here are bare of tapestries and sometimes even of torches which makes traversing the tunnels difficult. You’ve let Linhardt show you simple fire spells to have a source of light on you.
“But it would be far easier if you learnt Light Magic,” he had commented as you two bent over scrolls and books, fighting a yawn. “Also much safer and highly unlikely to set yourself on fire.”
You had closed the tome he’d slid across the table to you, smiling stiffly. “Duly noted.”
The flame dancing across your palm now flickers but doesn’t waver, illuminating the corridor and painting Byleth’s face with a sheen of soft, amber light, giving her pale complexion a little colour. She is watching you conjuring the spell; how your fingers close around the flame as if it were a small beating heart, easily snuffed out whenever a breeze swipes through the corridors.
“I see your Magic Prowess is growing,” Byleth notes. “As is your ability to hold your own ground on the battlefield. You’ve grown used to fighting.”
That isn’t a compliment you had ever thought someone would tell you, but coming from Byleth, you know it is true. You have noticed it yourself—how with every battle it gets easier to see the enemy’s movements and abilities, their weapons and gear. Calling upon the power of the Herald’s Crest, usually a taxing and draining endeavour that left you resting up in your chambers, has become much easier since you have met Seiros’ Champion. Whenever he makes his presence known with quiet whispers of where to lead your students next, soft pushes as if he is placing his small child’s hand upon your shoulder to guide you to victory, his support is like wind in your sails, propelling you forward and lifting your courage.
“You are not as scared as you were in the beginning,” she continues. “You have never much wavered in your tactics, but you seem even more sure now.”
All that praise from her makes your ears scald with heat. Though praise it seems, you know that Byleth only speaks truth. “I have finally started to trust in my abilities. If people see me doubt, how can they follow where I lead them in battle?” you say, even though that is not entirely the truth, of course. Which is why you hastily add, “And I trust you. As long as you are by my side, we are invincible.”
“So it is,” Byleth says, turning her head so that her moss-green eyes dig into you like hooks. “And yet I wonder. This courage, is it just because you wish to defend Abyss? To prove yourself before Yuri and his companions. Or is there something else? Something that you want to share with me?”
You both pause in front of the door leading to your quarters, the silence smothering you like a heavy blanket of freshly fallen snow that puts everything into a deep slumber. No matter how much you dig through that snow though, you can’t find the resolve to tell her about Seiros’ Champion. Where would you even begin to explain?
It might seem that I have turned mad but believe me when I tell you the soul of the first Herald resides within me and sometimes, he whispers to me what I should do, and he likes to gossip from time to time as well. He seems fond of Edelgard in particular, and notices whenever she looks at you, but you choose not to see it.
You stare at her, not entirely sure what you are waiting for. Maybe that Byleth learns how to read your thoughts so you wouldn’t have to speak these outlandish things aloud. Instead, you say, “No. There is nothing.”
Byleth considers you for a moment. You make it a point not to shy away from her scrutinising gaze, as one would do with nothing to hide, you assume. In the end, she relents first, but not because she grants you an easy victory. You’re certain she knows when it is wise to return to a battle at a later time. “I see,” she says mildly. “Rest up, then. I will see you tomorrow.”
You watch her disappear down the hallway, the blade at her side peeking out from under her black robes like a sly wink; like a promise waiting for the right time to jump out of the shadows and strike you in the back. It occurs to you then, for the first time, that maybe the timely meeting with Seiros’ Champion and Byleth activating the power of the Sword of the Creator might be connected.
The Chalice of Beginnings. The way it all ties back to the Rite of Rising, the very same festivities used as a distraction to try and steal Seiros’ remains—unless the Western Church somehow knew what they would find inside the tomb would be something entirely different—and ultimately the reason you are all down here … calling it simply coincidence is like cooing at a fox shortly before it snaps with sharp fangs at you. It is hard to tell what play you are conducting on the stage unknown forces have set you upon. All you can hope for is that it doesn’t end up being a tragedy.
With the scrolls, papers and books Aelfric was kind enough to lend you spread over the make-shift workplace you’ve put together using crates, you’re spending the evening reading up on the Rite of Passing and the Four Apostles. Even though some of the texts are so badly damaged you can barely make out their content, it all matches with what Aelfric has already told you: the ritual is believed to have the power to resurrect a life that was lost using the chalice which only the Four Apostles had access to. After the ritual failed, they bound the chalice so that it would never fall into mortal hands. Capable of something that grand, it is no wonder whoever is after it throws ambush after ambush at the Abyssians in hopes to find crumbs leading to where this treasure of immeasurable worth might be.
But if that chalice really exists, where is it? To search for the Chasm of Bound below Abyss feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack. There is no telling how much time you have left before either Rhea demands everyone’s presence back or you are unable to protect the Abyssians any longer from the mob of greedy thugs.
“Knock knock,” a voice says from the entrance to your room.
You startle, too lost in thought to notice anyone approaching. Claude is leaning against the doorframe, having come up behind you as silent as a cat. He has changed out of his gear, wearing loose dark trousers tied at the waist, and a simple white shirt that stands in contrast against his tanned skin. The first buttons of his collar are open, showing the elegant curves of his collarbones. His dark hair is damp, curling against his temples and the nape of his neck.
“Did something happen?” you ask, moving in alarm to rise from your seat, though surely, he wouldn’t lean so leisurely and relaxed against the door if there was another attack. He confirms as much with a lazy wave of his hand, unhitching himself from the frame. “Nope, nothing to worry about. I just thought I’d drop by and say hi. Do you know how difficult it is to pin you down? You’ve gotten really busy since we’ve come down here.”
“You know, no rest for the wicked.” You try to restore order on your desk by organising the books and scrolls in one corner. You’ve completely lost track of time, and as it turns out, magical fire is incapable of burning candles to their wick, so there is really no telling how long you’ve been holed up in your room, studying the ancient texts. “Do you need something?”
“Just thought we’d have a nice, pleasant chat.” The smile flirting with Claude’s lips is dangerous for it tries to appear innocent, yet the way his green eyes glint with mischief, like the edge of a knife flashing as it is drawn from a hidden sheath, promises nothing good. “Been a while since we’ve had one of those.”
You can’t remember if you have ever had one with Claude. Maybe all those moons ago after you had awoken with your new power, which now feels like a lifetime ago. You lean back in your chair, allowing your eyes a break after all those hours of reading. Maybe this distraction might help.
“Okay, I’m all yours.” You stand up, waving at the chair to offer Claude a place to sit, and absolutely missing the way he shoots you an amused glance at your choice of words. Instead of taking up your offer though, he steps backward. Suspicion crawls up your back, feathery light like a spider making its way to new prey caught in its web.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Claude says and with a swift kick, shuts the door behind him. You stare at him, tongue-tied. Can students just do that with faculty members? Yuri’s voice creeps up from a dark corner in your memory: “You’d do well to keep in mind that the monastery rules don’t apply down here, Herald.”
“I just have a few questions, is all,” he continues, still smiling but anything pleasant in his voice has made room for an urgency that you can’t remember ever having heard coming from him. Claude crosses the room in quick strides, and leans his hips sideways against the table. His eyes flick over the remaining texts on your table, his head slightly cocking to one side to get a better angle to read them. When you clear your throat, he startles, and looks back up at you.
“Right, sorry.” He knows that you know that he, in fact, is not sorry. “The library here has some pretty interesting things, I gotta say. Books and scrolls you’d never find in the monastery’s library. There are some things that are hard to believe, though. There’s this funny book hidden inside a false cover that talks about a Distance Viewer and Flammable Black Water and a Metal-Hold Printing Machine. Imagine the technological advancement one of the nations would achieve if they could actually build and utilise devices like that.”
“Is that why you’re here?” you ask. “To talk about the Abyss’ book collection?”
“What? No. No, I—,” he begins, tapping his slender fingers impatiently against the wood. You don’t think you have ever seen this restlessness about him. Claude has always appeared as steady as his bow-hand, sure that wherever he aims the shot will land true. “I was just wondering if something happened after your fall down here. Something you can’t tell us.”
You feel as if ice water has been dumped down the back of your neck, shocking you to full alertness. Claude must see that he has caught you off guard; a look of hesitancy flashes across your face before you can speak. “And what would that something be, exactly?”
He lowers his voice. “I thought you might tell me.”
You stare at him, throat tight, the cold sweat sensation of anxiety spreading slowly through your limbs. “Nothing happened. Whatever gave you the idea that I’m hiding something from you guys?”
There is a moment of silence as you two trade a look that feels like a dare. There is something forbidding about the intensity of Claude’s gaze, the tension of his stillness. His fingers stop their rhythmic tap tap against the table, and now clutch onto its edge, his knuckles turning white. “I’ve always figured your reservation towards using your Crest came from the novelty of it. The foreignness of a power that isn’t yours. But in our recent battles, there’s nothing of that anymore.
“I thought maybe it’s because you met the Ashen Wolves and the people from Abyss, and you feel sympathy towards them and that’s giving you a little more oomph to try making use of the Crest. But that’s not it, is it? You’ve changed from despising the powers to fully embracing them. Wielding them as if you’ve never done anything else in your life.”
You swallow, your mouth suddenly dry. Your tongue darts out to lick your lips, and you don’t miss Claude’s eyes quickly jumping down to your mouth for a second. Or maybe it was just your imagination, the flickering shadow of the small candle’s light across his face. “Maybe I’ve just grown used to it,” you reply quietly.
“Herald, you grow used to balding or riding a new steed.” He looks at you sharply, his head tilted to the side. Something in his voice changes in that moment. “You don’t get used to something that changes your life from being a nobody to suddenly standing in the centre of the world. Not really.” His voice has a veneer of calm, but beneath you could hear the vibration of some very different emotion.
What changed for you, then? you want to ask. It doesn’t feel like the answer would be so simple as the appointment to the heir of the Leicester Alliance.
You shift, folding your arms in front of you for lack of a response. As much as you like to discount Claude’s tendency for plots and schemes, there is something disconcertingly earnest about him right now. The similarity is striking you all of a sudden, the shadow passing his eyes one you have already seen in Sylvain’s when he had tried talking about his Crest and its troubles.
“All I’m saying is,” Claude continues, and he takes a step towards you. Instinctively, you take one back. He takes another one. This goes on until it ends with your back against the wall. “All I’m saying is that maybe Teach finding her new shiny weapon triggered something in you,” he says now, propping himself up against the wall, his hand splayed beside your head. “Maybe a memory? Something like that?”
You hold his gaze, not shying away from his scrutinising eyes or the close proximity. So, you are not the only one thinking that the Sword of the Creator and the Crest of the Herald are connected in a way the other Crests are not. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Claude, of all people, is the first to have noticed it. You had simply failed—or underestimated him, rather—to anticipate that he would also act on that theory and corner you like a mouse to get answers. Literally.
“Nothing like that happened, Claude,” you say now, feeling like you’re walking on a lightrope, and a single misplaced word could send you plunging. And then, he is there, his presence like the light brush of soft flower petals against the back of your mind. Do not tell him yet. Do not tell anyone yet, I ask of you. I do not wish the world to know I still exist. Silly Champion of Seiros. You’ve already understood his feelings perfectly without him having to tell you.
“Somehow, I was given this power. I tried fighting it for so long, but there’s no way I can run from this. I realised that, so now I’m just trying to make the best out of it.” It is only half the truth, but that is something Claude doesn’t need to know. It is also something he didn’t want to hearyou realise as you watch his expression turn into something close to disappointment.
“I’m sure Lady Rhea would enjoy hearing this,” Claude says, his voice deep and thin like a knife’s edge—and just as sharp.
“You’re not very subtle, Claude.” You try to move past him, but he doesn’t budge. “What’s your problem?”
“Problem? There is no problem.” The mask of bored indifference slips back on his face, turning his eyes distant, and cold even. An easy smile stretches over his features, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe I just enjoy teasing you.”
“And maybe I’ll enjoy sticking a dagger in your side.”
Claude laughs. “That’s not very Heraldy of you.���
You try to see if that laugh means you’re good, but his eyes are closed doors. Your face must be a question mark, because he says, “Herald,” and touches your cheek gently, grazing your skin with the rough pads of his fingers. You inhale sharply, gaze snapping up to his. Claude’s eyes widen, realising what he’s doing only then, and his warm, calloused fingers freeze against your cheek.
Just as he opens his mouth, knocks come from your front door. He lifts an eyebrow at you, asking if you are expecting visitors at this time. You just shrug. You certainly didn’t expect him, and yet here he is.
Claude pushes himself off the wall, allowing you to cross the room and open the door a crack wide. Through the narrow opening you see Dimitri standing in the hallway. When he spies you glancing at him, he gives you a shy smile that quickly turns into a scowl when Claude comes up behind you. He presses his chest against your back and leans an arm against the door frame above your head. “Oh, Dimitri?” Claude drawls.
Dimitri pales as he sees, and certainly misunderstands the sudden intimate proximity Claude is displaying. He presses his mouth into a thin line. “Pardon the intrusion, Herald. I thought maybe this would be a good moment to review the last battle reports. But I see…,” and here his eyes dart over to Claude and sweep over him as if he were a particularly unpleasant surprise he found under his bed, “… you are preoccupied.”
“Please, don’t mind me at all,” Claude beams, his grin as wide as the Cheshire cat’s.
Dimitri’s scowl deepens more. His eyes turn into the blue of an icy-cold glacier dominating the coastline of Faerghus in the North. “I do, actually. I wish to speak with the Herald in private.”
“Then get in line for an appointment. Our Herald is very popular with folks, as you know.” And with that, he closes the door in Dimitri’s face.
You’re pretty sure Dimitri on the other side is wearing the same expression of dumbfounded surprise that is on your face. “What is going on with you, Claude?” you ask and turn to him, forgetting how close he is. When you almost bump into his chest, you take a hurried step to the side. “The way you are acting is unbecoming of someone with your station.”
Claude shrugs. “Don’t worry, Dimitri won’t take it to heart. It’s just that things have started to happen that don’t make sense, and I am all about making sense of the senseless.” He looks over at you, smiling. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
You’re spared the eye roll for an answer when distant bell ringing heralds another ambush on Abyss. Claude heaves a long, weary sigh. “No rest for the wicked, huh…” He turns to open the door, but except a little rattle, nothing happens, no matter how hard he shakes at the handle.
“Come on,” you say, unable to contain the urgency in your voice. “Open the door.”
“Well.” He turns around. “It appears that it is stuck.”
Your eyes go wide. “Then unstuck it.”
Claude throws himself against the door. It doesn’t budge. He curses. “My shoulder will never be the same. I expect you to nurse me back to health when this is over.”
“This is your fault,” you press out between gritted teeth. “Just break the door down, we can’t waste more time.”
“That’s what I’m—,” Claude throws himself once more against the hard wood, “—trying.”
There’s a loud crack and the door opens to the other side; not by swinging but by being lifted out of its hinges. Behind it, Dimitri is peeking around the frame, eyebrows raised to his hairline. “I thought you two might be in need of some assistance.”
“Yeah, I was … I was about to do the same,” Claude says.
You push him aside, hurrying down the corridor and waving them after you. “Lucky for us, Dimitri was faster.”
“No, really!” Claude calls after you. “I was just about to do the same!”
The fight lasted throughout the whole night. When you return to your chamber, drenched in grime and blood, you can’t even be bothered with your missing door and fall face first into your bed, remembering too late that it’s as hard as the ground.
After an hour or two of resting, you quickly clean yourself up and meet the others for a short breakfast of dry rye bread and mushy oats, letting them believe the red bump on your forehead is from the battle. There is a little spare time before the meeting to discuss your next course of action, so you head back to your room for some more shut-eye.
“Herald.”
A raspy whisper stops you, drawing your attention to a chamber you walked past on your way to the classroom many times. Not once has it been occupied since your arrival in Abyss. But now it is decorated with heavy velvet curtains and tapestries. Violet lights hang from lanterns on the ceiling, illuminating the heavy furniture and curtains in soft, misty light. You remember Constance mentioning something about a Wayseer’s room, usually empty, but now inhabited by an elderly woman sitting in an armchair too big for her behind a round, mahogany table. You can only see a pair of narrow, dark eyes staring up at you. Her nose and mouth are hidden behind a white veil.
“Please, do come in, Herald,” the woman croons and gestures to an empty, cushioned chair standing before the table. Her eyes twinkle with mischief. “There is so much we have to discuss.”
Something in your chest gives a sudden, sharp tug. Seiros’ Champion? No, this feels different. Somehow … It feels wrong. You shouldn’t be here. You hover within the doorframe, looking down the corridor left and right. It is like everyone except you two has left Abyss.
Curiosity taking you in its reins, you step into the room, your eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. “Who are you?” you ask, cautiously making your way across the room towards the chair.
The woman chuckles.
“They call me Wayseer, Herald. For I see the paths people have walked and how far they still have to march until they arrive at their destination.”
You pause, hand resting on the chair’s backrest. The wood feels impossibly cold against your skin. “You can see … the future?”
The woman chuckles again. It is the sound of dry leaves scattered by the cold autumn wind. “You mean do I have the same ability as you? Making Time bow to me? Oh no. Nothing of the like. I simply glimpse where I am allowed. No one else has what you wield.”
“Of course.” You sit, quickly swallowing your disappointment.
“Oh, but why frown like that, Herald.” The Wayseer places her hands to both sides of a translucent orb placed before her on a dark socket. You could have sworn it was not there a second ago. They were small hands with lithe fingers like spider legs. On each finger she wore heavy rings. “So many would kill for what you seem not to appreciate. Power. Glory. The chance to sit upon the throne of the world.”
“I would appreciate people not telling me how to feel about it,” you snap, irritation lashing out like a cornered beast. Taken aback, you lean away from her, your back pressed right against the cold chair. It feels as if you are pressing yourself against a solid block of ice. Where did this come from? This fury?
The Wayseer’s lip curls. If she’s taken offence at your irritation, she doesn’t show. She shifts in her seat like a child impatient to finally be allowed to play with a new toy.
“What can you tell me about my paths then?” you ask. There is little you hope for, really. If she tells you she sees you living in a nice house by the sea in twenty years or so, that is all you can ask for. A peaceful life. You would simply be happy hearing you will survive the next few years. And, if she can see where exactly you have come from, then maybe luck really is on your side this time and you can finally find some answers.
“Very well.” The Wayseer’s chuckle is drier than crisp autumn leaves. She holds out her wiry hand and says, “Close your eyes, Herald, and give me your hand.”
You aren’t too keen on skinship with a stranger, but just to humour both of you, you comply, and placing your hand into hers, palm up, you close your eyes. You feel her gnarly fingers dance over your wrist, brushing over your open palm as light as a spider’s touch. You fight a shudder.
The pain is so sudden and jarring like a lightning bolt. Before you can pull your hand back, the Wayseer grabs your wrist hard like a vice—surprisingly strong for someone this old. Her head darts forward and she sucks your bleeding finger into her greedy mouth as if it were water and she is dying of thirst.
“What are you doing?” you demand, fighting to free your hand. Finally, the Wayseer releases your finger with a wet pop from her lips, and for a second you believe to see razor sharp teeth before the veil obscures her mouth again.
The Wayseer smacks her lips and scratches her nails against the smooth surface of her orb. Maybe this is all a joke. If Claude and Hilda jump out from under the table any second and laugh about the silly face you’re making, you wouldn’t even be angry. But no one emerges, and you stay alone with this mad woman. She’s moving her hands in strange motions over the orb, and in response colourful clouds swirl inside the ball. First red, then blue, and golden until, like a storm rolling in, all of a sudden it becomes black.
The Wayseer recoils.
She tries to suck in air as if she is drowning, her eyes bulging like a dead fish’s. She spits on the ground and a shudder wrecks through her, one that has her falling from her armchair onto the ground, her body convulsing. She begins to cough, a horrible, rattling sound, as if there is something stuck deep inside her that she can’t get out. Clawing at her throat, digging her nails deep enough into the skin to tear, she kicks and wails as if set in invisible flames. As if something is burning her up from the inside. Like poison.
You jump to your feet, rounding the table to help her but she screeches and scrambles away from you, eyes ripped wide open. “Who … no, what are you?” she croaks.
“I … I don’t know.” Your voice is so quiet you don’t know if she can even hear you. “I hoped you could tell me.”
The Wayseer turns to the side and spits some more. It is so dark that it almost looks black, whatever that is—blood or maybe something far gruesome?
Did I do that? you think, horrified as you watch her climb to her feet, still shaking and shuddering. You are about to apologise, reaching forward to steady her by her elbow, but the Wayseer shakes your effort away impatiently as if you are nothing but an annoying fly.
“Oh, my dear, you seem forsaken to me,” she says, and you can’t hold back your surprise how easily she bears no mind or grudge to whatever has happened. Whatever you might have caused. “Just like—” She stops. Her eyes are fixed on her orb that is now swirling in undistinguishable shapes. She leans over it, her gaze pining you like a dead animal on a corkboard. “It seems to me that the answers you seek lie in the Shadow Library, Herald,” the Wayseer says now, her voice suddenly smooth like clear water. Or the satin concealing a sharp knife. But what makes your stomach churn is the way she purred “Herald.” Almost mockingly, and you realise the spiking fear in your stomach doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the first Herald.
“Why can’t you tell me?” you ask.
“Because it is not my place to tell you.” The Wayseer casts down her eyes now. Her whole behaviour doesn’t make sense. Making light of the Herald’s name first, now acting obedient. You listen inside for the voice of Seiros’ Champion and find one emotion burning like a beacon in the dark. Get out. She is the enemy.
You jump to your feet, almost knocking the table over. “I have to go.”
“Of course.” The Wayseer bows her head slightly, and from the way her eyes become slits, you can see she is smiling underneath the veil. “But don’t forget, the Shadow Library holds answers. Do not let anyone stop you from chasing the truth.”
You give an awkward nod, not trusting your voice.
When you quickly leave the room and throw a last glance back, you think you see the unfamiliar face of a man staring back at you from inside the Wayseer’s orbs, his eyes eerily white.
The Shadow Library is a dark, damp room tucked away at the end of a narrow hall that is seldom frequented by the Abyssians. When you take a look inside, relief fills you that only Linhardt is currently occupying a seat close to a wall, an uneven stack of books his only companion.
The Wayseer didn’t say specifically where to look, but you would start with records on the first Herald and see what you could turn up about him.
But first, you have to deal with Linhardt who’s napping away in his seat, cheek squished against the edge of an open book.
“Linhardt.” You shake him. “Linhardt!”
He jerks up. “I’m awake,” he lies, blinking sleepily against the dim candle’s light. He looks up at you, squints and seems to recognise who caught him. “Oh, it’s just you, Herald. Come to a late study session as well? Or early morning? It’s certainly hard to tell down here with no sun.”
“How long have you been awake?”
Linhardt thinks about that for a moment, his eyes losing focus, then refocusing again. “Forty-two hours, maybe?”
“Bed. Now.”
He leans back, considering the idea. “We can’t say for how long we’ll have access to this hidden knowledge. Did you know it was only with the founding of the Adrestian Empire that we have the calendar as we know it today. They used to call our moons ‘months,’ if you can believe something this extraordinary! You can’t find data like that up in the monastery’s library.”
“Linhardt,” you repeat. “Go to bed. Or do you want me to get Byleth?”
Linhardt doesn’t need to consider this. He raises to his feet, sways a little from exhaustion, and tugs his uniform in order. “Good night, Herald.”
He turns and moves to the exit, but you call him back. “Linhardt!”
He stops. You point at the table. His mouth twitches into an unpleasant line, the only sight of his disapproval, but he returns, drops the books and scrolls he’s hidden in the folds of his robes, and leaves for good.
Quiet settles, and you give it a minute or two to calm your beating heart. “I know you don’t like this,” you say out loud, hoping Seiros’ Champion might finally stop being so anxious inside you. “I don’t trust that Wayseer either, but if I find answers here, I’ll take anything I can get.” He doesn’t know what it is like not knowing anything. Are you even a real person if you don’t have a past; if you don’t have anything or anyone remembering you? “I have a right to know who I am.”
Unfathomable sadness spills at those words—his mixing with yours and you can’t say who started it. But he quickly recedes, leaving you alone. Somehow you feel even worse now. Lonely. You wonder where he left to where you can’t follow him.
You make your way along the walls of books, allowing your fingers to gently journey over the spines. There are so many stories in here that so few people get to read. This library’s collection appears larger than the monastery’s as well, solely for the fact that they don’t have enough space for all the knowledge cramped into every nook and cranny. Wherever there is even some small additional space, someone has made it their calling to fill that blank spot with a book—even when it doesn’t fit.
Without any idea to start, you continue down the aisle and pick whatever sounds interesting. Letters from heirs to noble houses, an antiquated note on what meat to use for a special dish prepared for the new emperor at ceremonies, a novel set in the Adrestian Empire with a date of removal and Seteth’s signature. So this is where the books end up that Seteth doesn’t allow up in the monastery.
You’d hoped to find more about the Herald down here maybe, but there are no records, no memoirs, not even discourse. Why did no one care to keep your records alive? you wonder, but wherever the boy has retreated to, he can’t hear you, or perhaps, chooses not to hear you.
Nothing sticks out as something truly worthy of Seteth’s scorn at first glance. That is until you find the burnt remnants of a report stating some details on a handful of noble houses, another scroll that talks about a False God and the children of men fleeing to the depths of the earth. One paper strikes you as particularly important, but the page is so old and worn that most of the text is illegible. The Truth of Heroes’ Relics. You wonder what it might be, what truth lies within the relics and their Crests that the writer of this paper finished with the words “I daresay the Goddess would not wish for me to learn more than I already have.”
You finally hit a breakthrough when a stack of papers falls to your feet, bundled together with a crumbling piece of wool. When you begin to read, you realise these are the fragments of a forgotten memoir of someone who had fought in the War of Heroes. With clammy hands, you begin to read.
__/15 - Ailell Forest
It has been several moons since King Nemesis was defeated, and the tides of war have turned from bad to worse. I have received news that my friend Daphnel has fallen as well. Those zealots are after our heads, and those of our leaders. All that is left for us is to disappear into the muddy waters Seiros has created. My long life may soon come to an end …
__/2 - Itha Plains
I somehow escaped with my life, but I fear the end is near. They tell stories of the Shadowlord’s execution and with him gone, what point is there for us, those who have survived? Those who remain and carry a broken legacy. People are worried, for their Herald has locked himself in his rooms, unwilling to speak to his followers or Saint Seiros. They do not understand how he could be so distraught over the Shadowlord’s death. They do not know the truth. Once more, Seiros has chosen to keep secrets, to play with her charges’ obedience and fear.
But I know.
The world will know the truth at some point and then Seiros will reap the rotten harvest of what she has sown.
I misspoke and was driven away to the Fhirid River. They hunt us like animals. I considered leaving Crusher behind, hiding my trails. Maybe it is too late for that. I wish I could see my wife and son again … just one last time.
You read the content of the worn pages once more, trying to make a sense of it. Daphnel was one of the Ten Heroes, as was the author of this letter—if you remember correctly, the Heroes’ Relic Crusher was wielded by Dominic. It must be from after the corruption if King Nemesis was defeated, but from the way those words are framed, the author doesn’t strike you as someone mad for more power or revenge. It is strange but you feel pity for this person.
There is another name that stands out, of course, one that you have not heard in all your moons since joining the church.
The Shadowlord.
The name is like a brush of icy cold fingers against your mind, as gently as a snake grazing your ankle before it springs forward and sinks its venomous fangs deep into your flesh. A shiver passes your body, only it is settled so deep within your bones that you know this is not your fear rekindled.
But as you focus on chasing after Seiros’ Champion before he can disappear back into the murky depths of your mind, a cough comes from the library’s entrance. Your gaze snaps up to see Yuri standing in the doorway. The look of annoyance on his face is something that deserves its own painting to commemorate it.
“I hope you plan on putting that back exactly where you found it,” he says, strolling over as if he doesn’t have any care in the world but the tense set of his shoulders betrays him. “Wouldn’t want any of that to find its way into the hands of someone from the surface.”
“Don’t you get bored?” you ask, folding the papers back together and pushing them back between two books.
Yuri stops, quickly eyeing what you’ve put away to undoubtedly have a look himself once you leave. “Bored of what?”
“Pretending I’m still the villain and here to sell out your people?”
To your surprise, a look of unabashed amusement lights up his face for a moment. It settles back to a somewhat neutral expression, but the glee still remains in the soft dip of the dimple on his left cheek.
“Better safe than sorry,” Yuri replies, shrugging casually. His nimble fingers dance across book spines. “Though yes, even I must admit that your deeds for the people of Abyss are not what I have expected.” His fingers pause. Yuri leans forward, lilac eyes gleaming. His face is predatory, but his voice is gentle. “You are not what I have expected.”
His words feel like the warm flick of a candle’s light. You didn’t realise until now how much you cared for Yuri’s approval. To think he’s warming up to you slowly might still be an exaggeration, but maybe he’ll grant you the generosity of a looser tongue now that he doesn’t see you as the enemy.
Your eyes skim back to where you’ve returned the letters, fingers itching to take them with you until you know every word by heart. “I’ve … I’ve read about this person. Shadowlord. Any idea who that was?”
Yuri raises a slim eyebrow. “The Shadowlord?” He looks a little puzzled, his eyes roaming over the books. “It’s just a story. A boogie man living in the shadows that steals you away if you don’t finish eating all your vegetables. Grandparents used to tell their grandchildren that story so they wouldn’t be naughty.”
“So just the bad guy in a fairy tale?”
“Is what I’ve heard.” He gives a single shrug. “Who knows. All fairy tales have a spark of truth to them though. Maybe he truly existed.”
You’re sure that is what people thought about the Herald as well until the story became reality. You just hope this particular story remains one.
“Also, I would appreciate it if you don’t go around the monastery telling everyone what you’re reading down here,” Yuri says, waving towards the library’s entrance to signal your late-night reading has come to an end.
You hesitate only a moment before you follow him down the corridor, leaving the books and tomes behind. “Okay, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Great.” He winks at you. “Saves me the trouble of sneaking into your room and slitting your throat.”
“Charming as always.”
Maybe one day you’ll be capable of holding a pleasant conversation with him without any death threats. Though it already feels as if a little of Yuri’s animosity has disappeared in favour of giving you a chance to prove yourself.
He drops you off at the door to your quarters, already flaunting down the corridor to whatever nightly escapade fancies his tastes without so much as a wave at you over his shoulder.
“That Wayseer,” you say before he can disappear into the shadows. “What’s her deal?”
Yuri stops. He turns slowly, his eyes flitting from the dark corners of the flickering lights on the walls to you. There’s a question in his eyes you don’t know the answer to. “What Wayseer?” he asks, and you can feel your blood run cold. “I know everyone going in and out of Abyss, and I haven’t heard about someone like that hanging around.”
“But that room next to the scrap chamber…”
“Hasn’t been occupied in years.” When Yuri answers this time, he turns around and looks at you a little sceptical but also impatient as if he doesn’t have time for whatever pipe dreams you’ve come up with. “I guess someone played a joke on you. Don’t let it get to you.”
You nod, but your mind still lingers in that room, with that person. It would be easy to brush it off as a joke. But this sense of wrongness spikes again, a kernel of goddess-awful flavour that the more you think about it has you gagging. You had felt an awareness. No. More than awareness, more sentient than that. It was recognition.
A/N: someone over at ao3 made fanart of the first herald and i'm absolutely in love!! check it out here!
if you're interested to join the taglist, please let me know! i want to resume uploads every month, so the next chapter should be up on September 15th. thanks for reading and take care!
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Sunbeam of the Soul
Written for Amorra Week 2023 @amorraweek2023 for Day 2: Wrestling.
Rating: G.
Tags: Post-Season/Series 01, Training, Bonding, First Kiss, Fluff.
Summary: Korra. The person who looks at him like, someday, things could be better.
Notes: The fanfic is under the cut if you're more comfortable reading on Tumblr!
~~~
He doesn’t recall the last time people looked at him – really looked at him – in public. No one got close enough to see beyond the mask, the identity he was forging for himself to delete, banish the one a pathetic and vengeful man tried to engrave into him through abuse and fear. During everyday life, he was invisible and undistinguishable amongst a crowd, no one paid a second thought to a man not unlike many from his place of birth. He has been a ghost, since he started his movement.
Now, there’s no movement anymore. No equalists, none at least he can get in contact with while under custody on this island. And no mask. He lost it in the water and he’s not used to people seeing this old skin of his. He doesn’t know to whom it belongs anymore. Tarrlok had called him brother, and he had called him a brother as well. But he’s not that brother Tarrlok was referring to – he tried so hard to cancel that person, cursed since birth and almost molded into a monster. Perhaps, that had been why Tarrlok made his decision. He’s no longer a sibling, just a person loathed by all just like him, because of their bending and their accursed father.
Thinking about Tarrlok now, when his brother is still unconscious in bed, casts a shadow over his heart and soul. He has yet to wake up, the damage his body sustained far too great for him to recover in a short time. He is still recovering, his wounds albeit in process of closing hurt terribly at night and disturb his sleep. The fractured bones will never heal completely, and Tarrlok’s face will always bear unfading scars. Yet they’re alive, still in this world. They’ll meet each other someday, and they’ll talk. He asked for this as soon as he knew of his brother’s survival. He was promised this – and he’s trying to go on each day, just to see that moment in which they’ll ask each other: What now?. Even death rejected them, so what is left for individuals hated by the living and repudiated from the otherworld? It’s an answer he can’t find on his own.
A monk employed in the temple happens to cross paths with him. He’s a limping man, who gets tired too easily to be considered a threat. Yet this monk lowers his gaze and hurries past him and his designed guard, the Avatar. Korra.
“Seems like you have yet to lose your charm,” she comments, directing a small smile at him. She’s by his side, ready to steady him if he happens to lose his footing at any time. He’s not that prideful – not much anymore – to feel vexation for her acts of care, since he’s in need of them.
“Seems I quite lost it, I notice,” he replies, resuming his slow walk down the wooden hallway leading to one of the courtyards. He’s referring to the monk, obviously.
Korra snickers.
“People used to run away from you and still do. You still got it,” she says, making fun of him in good faith. As he came to learn, the Avatar is an outstandingly outgoing individual and a social butterfly like not many others. After all, she was able to find in her the courage – or the recklessness – to bond with him of all people.
He hums at her joke, not having the strength in him to argue back. He’s tired of spiels and his old logic that no one wants to follow anymore. He’s just tired of battling. He’s been living without an identity for a few weeks now, not Amon, but neither that young boy from a remote Northern Tribe village. He’s a mere nameless shadow, that others can refer to however they like. He won’t complain. He doesn’t care to.
They reach the courtyard the girl uses as a training ground a couple of minutes later. The spacious clay patio is basked in the morning sun, the salt-scented air blowing from the sea is warmed by its rays. Weather this mild doesn’t happen often in the winter season of Republic City.
He lowers himself down on the creaking stairs of the porch, where sunlight falls gently on his face. He inhales through his nose, taking in his surroundings with his other senses. The smell of the sea and the bare bark of the trees fill his nostrils. The heat warms his eyelids. He hears the faraway sounds of the waves and the Avatar’s confident steps down the porch and onto the training ground.
She’s stretching her muscly arms towards the sky above when he opens his eyes. She has shed her parka and left it beside him, her flesh twitching from the muscles flexing underneath it.
The girl falls then into position for her warm-up routine. She’ll bend the elements soon, and the element she usually starts with is the one most reflective of her personality: fire. She bends fire like a natural, like a native-born. Her punches are powerful, her kicks are wide, yet she’s not careless with the surrounding environment comprised of flammable wood and vegetation. Next is water, the flexibility of which allows her to get creative with the range and the type of assaults she dishes out. Earth is the third element, which aids her in both attack and a rare show of defense for such a straightforward personality. Last is air, where her inexperience and young age finally filter through; she bends air as if she’s bending fire or earth, ignorant of the similarities water and air share in terms of adaptability. He had studied for years each style of bending to gain knowledge on how to best counterattack each one. It’s instinctive for his mind to latch onto an analytical approach when his body can’t respond to the stimuli.
He can’t explain what came to him when he found out the Avatar, somehow, regained the use of her elements. The mix of shock, confusion, rage, and ultimately futileness overwhelming him had been too much to process at once. So he didn’t react at all at the start. The next days, every single one of those emotions came out in various ways – him losing sleep thinking of the way she recovered her lost bending, him demanding explanations, him closing in on himself to try and reign over the sheer fury pervading him and the suffocating, ruinous realization of his failure. It took a lot from him to deal with his distressing emotions, on top of the emotional luggage he already carried. He had let apathy win in the end, because he was tired, and couldn’t take any more blows from fate.
Watching the Avatar bend causes nothing to react, to recoil in him. He’s just a passive observer that doesn’t allow himself to act, apart from silently admiring her body at work, no matter if she’s bending or not. The only thing he remotely yearns for is to get back into training too when he’ll recover enough of his old strength. He can’t tolerate any longer staying in bed all day every day.
“Whew, nice show I put up for you, don’t you think?”
Her speaking interrupts his private mulling. Her forehead and arms are shiny from the sweat, her crooked smile cheers up her entire face. When she smiles, she does it with her mouth, eyes, cheeks, eyebrows. It’s a smile that takes over her whole being.
He hums, almost undetectably.
“Your execution is rather sloppy in some parts,” he says, honest. “You waste too much energy you could store back to amp up your stamina.”
“You’d be a pain in the ass as a teacher,” she says, huffing slightly. Then her smile turns challenging. “Why don’t you show me some moves, Mr. know-it-all?”
He merely lifts his eyebrows a bit at the teasing tone of the girl. He doesn’t know how, or why she’s this carefree with him, treating him like someone she has known far longer, far deeper. Someone she can trust to show the whole magnitude of her personality. It didn’t happen overnight and he doubts she hasn’t some reserves towards him, but it’s baffling they reached this point at all. Perhaps it’s because his mission failed and he has nothing to strive for, or someone to feel enmity for anymore. Perhaps it’s the Avatar’s lack of intention of doing the same, and her way of headbutting into people’s lives – for the better, or for the worse – just like she seems to do with everything in her path. She had to have bonded with his brother to discover his heritage. Somehow, she ended up forming some kind of relationship with him too.
The lack of an answer from him spurs Korra to approach him, hands on her hips.
“Come on. I know it can do you good. No use sitting there pouting, you need to get back into shape,” she says, her challenging tone mitigating, a gentle smirk playing on her lips. “What do you say?”
He looks up at the girl’s juvenile face, kissed by the sun. Does she really want him to get back into shape and possibly overcome her for good?
“You are… either a bold one, or a naive one, Avatar,” he says. He has been thinking this way for some time. “What part of me getting back into shape does favor you?”
“The part where you can see how sloppy I truly am. Also, training while someone is in a terrible mood puts me down,” she explains, sarcastically. She offers him a hand.
He wanders with his gaze over her palm and extended arm, maybe for a little too long because Korra flexes her fingers to urge him.
“Come on, or do you want me to call you lazybones?”
“That would be undignified,” he comments, to which Korra snorts.
“Then stop sulking and let’s busy ourselves with something else, okay? Just for a few minutes,” she furtherly tries to convince him, her eyebrows forming a soft curve over her blue eyes. She’s a mix of encouraging and understanding that feels different, fresh. Like a spring newly formed into the earth.
He ponders over it, finding in the end no real cons aside from the fact that the respected identity he built for the sake of the equalists would end up buried a few more inches deeper into the ground. But he’s not that man anymore. He lost the right to be Amon.
He stands up on his feet by holding on to the handrail. The Avatar’s hand only helps steady him to take the first step into the yard. The rest are his own to take.
“Good, now we’re just missing one more friend,” she says, her fingers near her mouth.
Before he can form any guess about said friend, Korra produces a long, piercing whistle.
“Naga!” she calls, whistling again. “Naga! Come girl!”
She’s calling an animal. He knows which animal it is, so it’s no surprise to him when he spots an enormous polar bear dog rushing out of the bare bushes and dead trees. The animal runs a circle around Korra before snuggling her massive head against her stomach, leaving a lot of her white fur on the young Avatar’s training clothes.
“Naga, darling,” Korra coos, petting the polar bear dog under her muzzle and in between her ears. “You’re so lively today, girl. Such a good, good girl!”
The dog grunts and pushes against Korra’s waist, mindful of the reduced size of her human friend. It’s only when Korra lowers herself near her muzzle and directs the animal’s attention to him that ‘Naga’ seems to take notice of his presence. She should have taken notice before, or at least shown some kind of acknowledgment. Perhaps, she doesn’t see him as a threat as long as Korra isn’t wary of him. Animals are intelligent like that after all.
“Naga, he’ll be our training partner for today,” she explains to the dog’s black, attentive eyes. “He’s in a bit of a bad shape though, so you’ll be helping him stay on his feet. Got it?”
Naga looks at Korra for a moment, then goes straight to him.
He isn’t afraid of the big animal – he can sense she’s a docile spirit, despite the ferociousness for which her wild counterparts are feared. He hovers with his hand near the muzzle of the polar bear dog, for her to sniff his palm. She dampens it a little with her wet nose in doing so.
“I am capable to stand on my feet,” he says meanwhile. He’s weak and gets easily fatigued, yes, but not that much.
Korra caresses the head of the polar bear dog, murmuring yet more praises to her animal companion.
“It doesn’t hurt telling Naga to aid you, just in case,” she objects, with a sympathetic smile. “Shall we begin, huh?”
At his nod of confirmation, Korra pats the side of Naga’s neck. The pet scurries outside the training area with her tail wagging in – he guesses – a display of playfulness.
He tries to not get distracted by the presence of the dog and… Korra. He’s used to training alone, but he can make an exception this time. It’s been too long since he made any use of his muscles to pass up this opportunity.
He begins with his breathing exercises, coupled with slow movements of his arms, shoulders and back, all of which synched with his breaths. He resorted to these breathing exercises many times while confined in bed. They help him center himself, get in the right mindset for training and hush his fervent mind. This last effect is the most beneficial to him. There was never a time in his life when his mind had been mercifully quiet, it’s solely with training that he can silence it for a while.
He completes a few rounds, then he widens his stance to take up the first form of one of his training exercises.
A movement in his peripheral vision prompts him to turn his head. The Avatar is in a stance too, which is reminiscent enough of his form. Is she imitating him?
Korra turns her head too.
“What?” she asks. “What’s the next form?” His furrowed eyebrows cause Korra’s eyebrows to furrow in tandem. “Can’t I copy you?”
“You’re welcomed to try,” he says, conceding.
He performs the second form of the series, stepping forward while his right hand curve in the air with a fluid, water-like movement, his left hand near his torso.
Korra steps forward too, still with her head turned and a lopsided smile.
“I’d happily try,” She says. They perform the third form, him first, Korra soon after. Naga is ever vigilant in her observation of their training. It really seems like she’s looking out for him, yet he quickly brushes that thought away. “Learning fighting techniques is my raison d'être. Did you develop these forms on your own?”
“They are derivative of waterbending forms, as you can see,” he replies, rather drily. When he notices that Korra is still listening, he feels like adding something else. “There are also certain forms I integrated from chi-blocking and the Kyoshi Warriors’ fighting style. It primarily fixes on dodging and counterattacking the opponent.”
“I could learn a thing or two from familiarizing myself with chi-blocking and the Kyoshi Warriors,” Korra admits, making small conversation with him. It appears to come naturally to her.
They continue to perform together until he expends all his usual series of exercises. He’s regrettably a bit out of breath and he must rely back on some breathing techniques to regain his composure. But training did good to him and that’s what matters. His muscles feel awake, reinvigorated, like they haven’t been in weeks. The comfort of knowing he could soon rely back on his body far surpasses the annoying itching of his burns rubbing against the bandages.
“Should we spar a little?” Korra suggests, still full of energy compared to him. He pushes back the awkward sensation of feeling like an old, decrepit man compared to her. This is just temporary, he reminds himself. He’ll regain back his physical prowess, if he’ll be allowed to do so. This is not the norm for him.
“It promises to be a duel of the ages, when taking into account one of the opponents is currently incapacitated,” he says.
Korra snorts at him behind her knuckles. That’s when he realizes the excessive dose of sarcasm he had put into his answer. He wasn’t a stranger to it when used sparingly with his most trusted equalists. None of them laughed at his sarcasm anyway, because when he resorted to it he was especially displeased.
The girl, noticing his stare, waves a hand in a pacifying manner.
“If you put it like that, my very innocent proposal seems rather mean-spirited.” She circles around him with her hands resting on her belt. “I just thought, we are warmed up now, so why not use all this energy in sparring? Without going overboard, of course.”
He hums at the girl currently looking at him with her chin raised, the sun making her round blue eyes sparkle.
“Very well.”
Korra grins. She doesn’t waste time in assuming a proud, confident fighting stance at the opposite side of the courtyard.
He stands in front of her, discreetly testing the flexibility of his knee and ankle joints, the areas where the stress of sudden movements will fall on harder.
In the meantime, the polar bear dog got up on her four paws and is rounding up the courtyard, her tail swishing a little. He pays little mind to her.
“When you’re ready,” he says.
“Hey, first you complain I propose a sparring session to you, then you want me, the uninjured one, to come at you?” she rebuts, her lamenting tone every bit friendly nonetheless. “No no, you come at me.”
“As you wish.”
He doesn’t mind one bit, especially for how refreshing it is when such a strong-headed personality challenges him this much.
He takes his time to approach the Avatar. He’s in no rush to attempt an attack, since he intends to preserve energy for what is surely about to come, with him still not making any move to engage in combat and the girl being an impatient person. Her muscles are twitching in preparation, in tension. Her bottom lip is ever so gradually inching out.
Any time.
Any time soon.
His arm shoots forward to redirect Korra’s punch. Her knuckles collide against one of his bandaged burns underneath the tunic, and he steadies his jaw to suppress the pain.
“Sorry,” Korra says sheepishly, withdrawing her first. “You were taking too long.”
“That is no excuse to initiate a fight,” he says.
“Yeah, so—”
He aims for the center of her chest and hits her solar plexus with the thenar of his hand.
Korra gasps from the pain rapidly invading her lungs. She loses her footing and plummets on her rear, sputtering.
“Oh- oh spirits…” She’s grasping at her sternum, eyes wide and incredulous. “You’re… you cheated.”
“I was taking too long,” he reminds her, standing tall over her. He didn’t hit her with the intention to hurt, it must be an exaggerated bewilderment that’s keeping her on the ground.
He steps back to avoid her low swipe.
With a thrust of her back, Korra stands up again and lunges at him with a self-assured smirk.
The fight ensues, but it doesn’t take him long to notice she’s not giving her all in her blows. He’s blocking every single one of them at the best of his current abilities, although they’re not aggressive in the slightest. The fist she aims at his face is easy for him to capture in his own fist. So is the next one simple to dodge by stepping aside. The jab she deals to his briefly uncovered side gets redirected down as if it packed barely any force. And it didn’t.
“For all the honor you pride yourself on,” Korra says. A faint smile is playing on her lips. Her nose is brushing against his chin. She’s… close to him. Really close. He can feel her light exhales on his neck, the natural smell of her youthful, brown skin. “You surely have no honor, to have taken advantage of me like that for a cheap blow.”
“Every blow,” He lowers his head. “Is a crucial blow, in a fight. Avatar.”
“Really?” she grins up at him. Mischievously. “Then, by that logic—”
She goes for a kick aimed at his middle. He parries it with his forearm and he’s about to push away her leg with his remaining hand. Something – a paw – swipes at his ankles. He stumbles a bit and ends up with his back flushed against a large, furry surface.
Startled, he lifts his head up to the polar bear dog’s panting muzzle, whose black beady eyes have assumed a cheery shape.
He stares at Korra, hard.
“What? I said we could spar, and Naga is part of 'we',” she says, with a wide grin. “And you said—"
“Yes. I got your point, Avatar,” he interrupts, trying to push himself off the dog, but he does so too late. Naga plops on her stomach with a grunt and he ends up on the ground as well, propped up against the animal’s stomach. He feels ridiculous for what just happened, but Korra doesn’t laugh or make fun of him. She just proceeds to sit too, stretching her arms on the fluffy fur behind her, her joints popping.
He… he guesses they’ll rest now. Which isn’t a bad thing in hindsight. He needs the rest.
“Why don’t you just call me Korra for once?” she asks, so suddenly the question takes him aback.
“Should I?”
He hears the girl make a troubled sound with her tongue.
“Well, why not? It’s my name.”
She seems a little offended judging by her huff. She ignores how complicated are names as a topic for him at this time.
Why not, indeed? The reason is simple: it would imply too much familiarity between them. Too much of a thing he’s not used to having anymore. And it intimidates him, even more if he is to receive it from a person he sought to destroy for so long. He never had anything against Korra on a personal level, they were enemies because she’s the Avatar. If she had not been, they would have stayed out of each other’s way. That man however, enemy and adversary to her… sometimes, he feels like he drowned in the sea the moment he lost the mask. He stays silent however about these reasons.
“I will call you such if I see fit to do so,” he says, with a soothed tone. Perhaps even gentle, if one looks deep enough into it.
“Then I just have to give you a reason?” she asks, sounding pensive.
He arches an eyebrow at her. Why does this matter interest her so?
Korra cackles nervously, her index twisting Naga’s neck fur.
“How about…” she murmurs, soulful blue eyes twinkling at him. “How about this?”
She leans on him, hands in her lap. The soft contact of her lips doesn’t register on his cheek at first – he doesn’t register it.
When Korra moves away and the lingering sensation of her lips still tickles his skin, he turns his head towards her. He’s speechless, and it happens so rarely he doesn’t remember the last time it occurred.
Seconds pass and he gives up on trying to find words he doesn’t have for the expression she’s regarding him with, so open, full of life. Kind.
He reaches up to follow with his thumb the curve of her cheek, the outline of her round face.
Korra’s eyes are transfixed on him, dreamy. It’s as if she’s looking at someone that’s not him, that can’t possibly be him.
She kisses him then, she silences his mind with lips that taste like the warm sun they’re bathed by, like the murmuring sea all around them, like the soft sweetness of a peach. It’s a kiss brief like youth, but it leaves such a lasting impact on him that when Korra parts from him, gleefully giggling, her aura of life is still filling up his swollen chest. He feels… whole. Alive.
“So, what’s my name, Noatak?” she asks, beaming.
Her name rests on his tongue for a bit. Names are a complicated topic for him at this time... in some cases though, they don't have to be. He doesn't wish for her name to be a part of this issue.
So he utters it with a slow exhale.
“Korra.”
It surprises him how easily it rolls off his tongue. It shouldn't though. She's been 'Korra' in his mind for some time now.
The girl tilts her head to rest it on his shoulder.
“See, Naga?” she says to the polar bear dog, who grunts in response. “I told you this would work.”
Korra’s jowls are flushed, her eyes squinted from happiness. As if just him saying her name could make her entire day. He understands though now, why it was so important to her.
He says it one more time in his thoughts.
Korra. The person who looks at him like, someday, things could be better.
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Happy St. Patrick's Day 2024 #653
Happy St Patrick’s Day with two hours of the great Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #653. Subscribe now!
Tradify, Sorcha, Jigjam, The Fire, Hayley Griffiths, Keltricity, Marc Gunn, Tarren, Celtic Wood and Wires, Altan, Michael Darcy & The Atlantic Tramps, Louise Bichan, Toby Bresnahan, The Walker Roaders, Lúnasa, Stout Pounders, Brother Sea, Clare Cunningham, River Driver, Philippe Barnes and Tom Phelan, Jimmy & Scots Folk Band, Clay Babies, CaliCeltic, Ironwood, Derek Warfield & The Young Wolfe Tones
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VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 FOR 2024
This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. You can vote for as many songs and tunes that inspire you in each episode. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2024 episode. You have just three weeks to vote this year. Vote Now!
You can follow our playlist on Spotify to listen to those top voted tracks as they are added every 2 - 3 weeks. It also makes it easier for you to add these artists to your own playlists. You can also check out our Irish & Celtic Music Videos.
THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC
0:07 - Tradify "The Roaring Barmaid, Star of Munster Jig, Star of Munster & Fred Finn’s" from Take Flight
4:29 - WELCOME
6:43 - Sorcha "Stomp the Floor / Slide from Grace / The Mouse in the Kitchen" from Stomp the Floor
10:42 - Jigjam "Tullamore to Boston" from Phoenix
14:21 - The Fire "Captain Carswell" from Radiance
18:41 - Hayley Griffiths "Star of the County Down" from Far from Here
21:19 - Keltricity "The Butterfly - Behind the Bush in the Garden - Swallowtail Jig" from Live at Terra Firma Radio
25:22 - FEEDBACK
30:11 - Marc Gunn "Myra’s Lament for Lamlash Bay" from Come Adventure With Me
Listen to Mad Jenny on Lamlash Bay #85
33:54 - Tarren "Hardwood" from Revel
36:48 - Celtic Wood and Wires "I'll Tell Me Ma" from Close the Back Door
40:53 - Altan "The Yellow Tinker (Slow Reel)" from Donegal
43:49 - Michael Darcy & The Atlantic Tramps "The Rambler from Clare" from Down to the Roots
47:12 - Louise Bichan "Qouyburray" from Out of My Own Light
50:27 - Toby Bresnahan "Farewell To Auld Ireland" from All In Good time
55:13 - CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS
57:23 - The Walker Roaders "Old Tar Road to Sligo" from The Walker Roaders
1:01:15 - Lúnasa "The Bull's March" from Live in Kyoto
1:06:25 - Stout Pounders "Raggle Taggle Gypsy (Live)" from Liver Let Live
1:09:16 - Brother Sea "All as One" from Brother Sea Ep
1:13:42 - Clare Cunningham "Home Again" from Home Again
1:17:57 - THANKS
1:19:44 - River Driver "John O'Reilly" from Flanagan's Shenanigans! Live at The Celt
1:24:11 - Philippe Barnes and Tom Phelan "New Kings Road/Órlaith's/New Found Out" from The Clearwater Sessions
1:30:22 - Jimmy & Scots Folk Band "COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS" from The Viking Irishman
1:33:16 - Clay Babies "OutOnTheOcean / FlowersOfEdinburgh / Mason'sApron" from Speechless Vol. 1: Sloppy Session in the Sticks
1:37:13 - CaliCeltic "Frosty Pint" from Whiskey Mustache
1:40:38 - Ironwood "She Likes the Guinness" from Gretna Green
1:44:31 - CLOSING
1:46:31 - Derek Warfield & The Young Wolfe Tones "Spanish Lady" from Let the Free Birds Fly
1:50:09 - CREDITS
The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather and our Patrons on Patreon. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. Visit our website to follow the show. You’ll find links to all of the artists played in this episode.
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* Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. I am Marc Gunn.
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Looking for some more things to listen and watch for St Patrick's Day!
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TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS
Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/
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Ben Doran messaged on Facebook: “When I received the "music only version" of the "The Gaelic Blessing" podcast, I was immediately reminded of one of the most moving arrangements of The Irish Blessing that I have heard - - by Bill O'Connor and Larry Theiss on their – "Traditional And Original" recording.
I am getting ready to have a day off tomorrow and will get to chores and baking for the "Wild Hog in the Woods" usual Friday night concert that we host at a neighborhood center here in Madison. While I am mixing and baking, I'll surely/certainly listen to that "Gaelic Blessing" program in its entirety. Thanks!”
Ryan S. emailed some photos: "Hi Marc. I love the Celtic Women episodes!!
I am currently building trails outside of austin while I listen to the cast.the spring flowers are already out!"
Shel O'Toole emailed a photo: "Hi Marc, As I'm listening today I'm promoting the International Women's Day event I organised for the Ballarat and District Irish Association. The all women trio I play with, Skedaddle is performing on the day. I'm also looking at ways to promote my newly released poetry book Wildsong. I'll be officially launching it at the IWD lunch.
I'm loving the Celtic Women special. There's so many fabulous Irish women singers and musicians. Noirin Ni Rian, the sean - ós singer and chanter, Sandra Joyce singer and bodhran player are two amazing teachers I met at the Irish World Music Summer School - Blas, many years ago. Niamh Parsons & Delores Keane are firm favourites & I love discovering new female artists.
I'll probably go to a session on St Patrick's day and there's a band playing at one of the Irish pubs in the evening I want to see. Sliánte"
Check out this episode!
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Best New Hype Dance Electro Pop: September
- Artists: Beatport
DATE CREATED: 2023-09-01
GENRES: Dance / Electro Pop
Tracklist :
1. Jess Bays, Harlee - Slow Motion(Extended Mix)
2. OVSKY - Feelings(Extended Mix)
3. Akashic, Jaime Vox - Save Me(Original Mix)
4. DJ Louis - September(Extended Mix)
5. Freischwimmer - Survivor(Original Mix)
6. Da Clubbmaster, Luca Debonaire - Fantasy Girl(Luca Debonaire x Da Clubbmaster NUDISCO MIX)
7. Tatana, 88Birds - Black Mirror feat. 88Birds(CJ Stone Extended Remix)
8. Ventura, Ruddek, Summ Musik - Together(Extended Mix)
9. Mqhele Cele - Like Butterflies(Original Mix)
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Best New Hype Dance Electro Pop: September
- Artists: Beatport
DATE CREATED: 2023-09-01
GENRES: Dance / Electro Pop
Tracklist :
1. Jess Bays, Harlee - Slow Motion(Extended Mix)
2. OVSKY - Feelings(Extended Mix)
3. Akashic, Jaime Vox - Save Me(Original Mix)
4. DJ Louis - September(Extended Mix)
5. Freischwimmer - Survivor(Original Mix)
6. Da Clubbmaster, Luca Debonaire - Fantasy Girl(Luca Debonaire x Da Clubbmaster NUDISCO MIX)
7. Tatana, 88Birds - Black Mirror feat. 88Birds(CJ Stone Extended Remix)
8. Ventura, Ruddek, Summ Musik - Together(Extended Mix)
9. Mqhele Cele - Like Butterflies(Original Mix)
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The samurai: the love across time and space
The samurai: the love across time and space
https://archiveofourown.org/works/49792114
by Allison2355
Hannya (a butterfly monster) was brought to life by Haggar. Keith's mother and the blade of Marmora has defeated the monster's father, years ago. Keith will need Shiro's feelings to win if Shiro over come his issues.
Words: 2596, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Series: Part 5 of The Universal Saga
Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: Multi
Characters: Keith (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Lance (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Romelle (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Original Characters, Adam (Voltron), Sendak (Voltron), Haggar (Voltron)
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Allura/Keith (Voltron)
Additional Tags: Inspired by Tumblr, References to InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, Demon Slayer: Kitmetsu no Yaiba Manga References, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Slow Burn, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy
via AO3 works tagged 'Keith/Shiro (Voltron)' https://archiveofourown.org
September 01, 2023 at 04:44PM
0 notes
Heart Strings
Heart Strings
https://ift.tt/OnpeFi6
by Pikushiatlas200715
Killua and Gon were childhood friends who had a falling out over something small and ever since then Killua has since felt the need to push Gon away and hasn't treated him the same since. Gon has a scar from playing in the woods with Killua when they were 12. Killua helped patch him up and whenever he sees the scar he gets butterflies and hurt in his heart telling him something.
Words: 1505, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English
Fandoms: Hunter X Hunter
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: M/M
Characters: Killua Zoldyck, Gon Freecs, Leorio Paladiknight, Kurapika (Hunter X Hunter)
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Additional Tags: Romantic Fluff, Fluff, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Friends, Friends to Enemies, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Trauma, Child Neglect, Neglect, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Gay Gon Freecs, Oblivious Gon Freecs, Pining Keith (Voltron), Castiel/Dean Winchester Mutual Pining, Protective Gon Freecs, Aged-Up Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck, Embarrassed Killua Zoldyck, Gay Killua Zoldyck, Protective Killua Zoldyck, Bullying, Pining, Mutual Pining, Height Differences, Boys Kissing, Kissing, Alternate Universe - High School, High School, School, Walks In The Woods, Family, Family Fluff, Homosexuality, Male Homosexuality, Love, Falling In Love, Love Confessions, Eyes, gon you are light, black cat and golden retriever, makeingout, foundFamily, i'mactuallygayforyougon, Everyone Is Gay, Jealousy, jealouskillua
via AO3 works tagged 'Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight' https://ift.tt/9Hm8Aac
August 02, 2023 at 01:12PM
0 notes