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apocalypseornaw · 1 month

Text

It's Real

Dean Winchester x Reader

Dean's back from Michael, everything should be ok but he's staying locked up in his room so you make it a point to find out why.

Smut with feelings

Dean was back. Michael was gone and Dean was back but it felt as if he was still gone. The moment he'd staggered in that door it'd taken everything in you to not rush straight to him. Once you were sure it was him you'd nearly dove into his arms. He'd hugged you tight, whispering in your ear “It's ok sweetheart, I'm ok”

Everything seemed ok on the ride back to the bunker, yeah Dean was a little on the quiet side but considering you could understand. When you parked and got out the impala he was even teasing Sam about his beard as the three of you walked into the bunker from the garage. The moment he walked into the war room and Sam was greeted with “Chief” and you with “Cap” you could see the wall slam into place but you weren't sure why.

In the last week you'd seen Dean a handful of times and that was when you happened to be in the hallway when he headed for a shower or the one to make a run into town and he wanted the snacks he'd added to the list.

Every time you tried to talk to him he shut you down and it was driving you insane. Yeah he'd been through a lot and yeah it was his default setting to not talk about his feelings but not with you. Any other time he let you in but not this time.

—-------------

You were sparring with a few hunters from the apocalypse world and had somehow managed to draw a crowd. Ryker and Tyler towered over you in height and Vivian was fast as hell but you were holding your own against the three of them.

You took Tyler out at the knees then ducked under Rykers arm, catching it and using his own momentum to flip him on his back then nodded to Vivian.

You went blow for blow with her but she happened to misstep one time and that was all you needed to pin her. When you offered her a hand up she took it with a grin “Damn Cap who taught you to fight?” You shrugged “I've taken self defense classes mixed with sparring with Sam and Dean along with on the job learning”

She nodded “Think Dean will join us? I'd love to see you two spar” you didn't want to tell her he was avoiding you at all cost so you just smiled “I'll ask” you turned to grab your water bottle then headed to your room so you could grab a shower.

Dean knew he needed to integrate himself with the hunters inhabiting the bunker but he didn't know how many more times he could see you and Sam working shoulder to shoulder, sharing inside jokes with a look and leading an entire squadron of hunters together.

He'd heard a few of the hunters talking about how “Cap” and “Chief” were always together, always worked every lead together, stayed up researching together and “Most of the time end up falling asleep together” one of the younger refugees from the apocalypse world had deemed you two a power couple and that was the straw Dean had to hear to know he needed to resign himself to his room for a while.

He'd lost you. Fifteen years of friendship, ten years of wanting you, eight years of loving you. If he'd just said something sooner, hadn't been afraid of losing you as his friend but now he'd lost you to his little brother and he couldn't even be angry, no matter the jealousy eating at him.

You stepped into the hall and saw Sam had just come out of Dean's room. When he shut the door behind himself he spotted you so you raised your eyebrows “How is he?” He shrugged “He's watching horror movies and has pizza and beer”

You glanced at Dean's door then asked “Why won't he come out the room? He barely talks to me or anyone for that matter when he does” Sam's eyes softened at your words “Maybe it's time you do that thing you always do with us”

You waved a hand, asking for an explanation and he laughed “You never let us wallow for long. He won't react to me, Cas, hell even mom. He needs you whether he admits it or not” you laughed “You mean he needs someone as stubborn as he is to out stubborn him?” He nodded “Exactly”

You looked from him to Dean's door then nodded “Wish me luck” he patted your shoulder “Good luck” then headed down the hall.

—---------------

Dean heard a knock at his door and figured it was Sam again “Sammy, I said I'm good” the door creaked open and your face popped around it “Good to know. Can I come in?”

He tried to ignore the way his chest clenched at your smile. “Of course sweetheart. C'mon” he watched you shut the door then walk further into the room, kicking your boots off before walking over to the bed.

You grabbed a slice of pizza from the table near the bed then climbed in the bed, laying sideways with your head on his back so you could see the TV considering he was laying on his stomach “Comfy?” He asked with a laugh once you'd taken his beer out of his hand and took a swig before turning back to the pizza “Very much so. You're a wonderful pillow”

You shouldn't be in his bed, shouldn't be laying against him. If you and Sam were…well he didn't want to think too hard about it but he wasn't the type of man to take another man's woman, especially his little brother's. He told himself it was innocent enough. The two of you had done this dozens of times over the years even if this time his mind was running a lot faster than normal.

—-------------

You lay like that through the entirety of Halloween two and halfway through Freddy versus Jason before your mouth had a mind of its own “I miss you Dean. For weeks we had no idea where you were then by some turn Michael let you go and now you're home but I still miss you. You're pulling away from me, from everyone and I don't want to lose you again. You mean too much to me”

He looked over his shoulder at you and grabbed one of your hands, giving it a light squeeze “I'm here sweetheart. I just don't want to take up too much of your time. You got a lot going on Cap” you rolled your eyes at the nickname you'd been dubbed with “I've always got enough time for you. Talk to me”

He let go of your hand then pushed himself back so he could turn to face you as he sat up.“I miss you too but this, coming home to this is a lot” “What do you mean? The hunters?”

He nodded “The hunters, you and Sam. You two are a unit, you run this whole operation like clockwork. You've built something and I don't know where I fit now” you smiled slightly “You fit with us Dean. You and Sam are the most important people to me”

He sighed “But you and him are more or it feels that way” you knew the confusion was clear across your face because he just shook his head “Never mind. Can we just go back to the movie?” You nodded “Yeah, sure”

—-------‐—----------

He laid back down on his stomach and this time you laid down next to him instead of on his back. You had no clue what he meant about you and Sam being more? Had someone said something to make him feel that way? You’d been running on damn near empty for weeks, Mary had taken to hiding your car keys to force you into eating and sleeping and when that didn't work she'd bring in the big guns and threaten to call Jody.

Sam hadn't fared much better. The two of you had been doing everything you could to keep each other's heads above water. Dean was the person who raised Sam, he'd always been the most important person to him. As for yourself, you loved the man laying next to you. He'd claimed your heart years ago whether he knew it or not. Your chest had felt hollow knowing the man you loved was being used by some dickheaded angel.

You reached for his hand closest to you, running your fingertips over the back of his hand. He smiled slightly then it was like his mood changed and he pulled his hand away.

“Sorry” you murmured and moved to sit up but he was already grabbing your wrist to keep you on the bed “Wait sweetheart. Fuck” you sat down in front of him and he turned to face you “Just talk to me Dean. Whatever is going on, we can fix it”

—---------------------

He shook his head, hand dropping your wrist. “I know you and Sam have gotten even closer since I've been gone”

You smiled slightly “Well yeah, leading a bunch of wayward hunters and hunting down some douchey archangel to get you back will do that to ya. Still doesn't explain the change between me and you. Dean you're my best friend, you've always talked to me and now you're shutting me out. I'm not used to it and I don't like it”

He hated seeing the pain in your eyes and knowing he was the cause of it. He sighed “I know you're with Sam” your head tilted to the side and you stared at him for a moment before you began to laugh. After a moment you covered your mouth with your hand then took a few deep breaths. He was confused as hell but figured you'd give an explanation “Oh Dean, honey you are so smart at times but so damn dumb at others”

“What?” You shook your head “Me and Sam have gotten closer yeah but not like that. Someone else has my heart and it ain't Sammy” his eyes flew to your face “Then who?” You shook your head again “Doesn't matter just know it's not your little brother”

He reached forward, cupping your chin with his hand “No way are you gonna tell me some lucky bastard has your heart then not tell me who” you wouldn't meet his eyes so he used his grip on you to turn your face where you had no choice. “You honestly have no idea do you?” You sounded almost sad when you asked and he felt his heart skip.

Did you mean him? “You have no idea how hard it's been with you not being here Dean. How many times I cried myself to sleep laying against Sam's chest because I knew he was the only person who could come close to knowing the pain I felt. You're his brother, you've been his parent and protector his whole life and I knew he was only person here who loved you anywhere as much as I do”

“You love me?” He damn near whispered and you nodded “How could I not?”

—-------------------

One moment you were spilling your heart out and the next Dean was claiming your lips in a hungry kiss. You were stunned for a moment then returned the kiss fully, when you felt his tongue slip into your mouth you gasped lightly and he used that to roll his tongue against yours. The heat roaring to life against every inch of your body from just a kiss seemed damn near impossible but this was Dean.

Holy hell this was Dean. You just confessed your feelings and instead of bolting he was kissing you in a way that had the wetness between your legs growing by the moment.

When you were finally forced apart for air he leaned his forehead against yours, both of your chests heaving. “Not what I was expecting” you teased breathlessly and he chuckled “Sweetheart, I've been locked up in this room because the thought of you with Sam…I couldn't take it. You're supposed to be mine. The jealousy has been eating me alive, imagining you with him”

You pulled back from him and grinned “You were jealous?” He nodded “Damn right I was. I've loved you for years and the thought that out of all people my little brother would be the one to take you from me? I hated it” you laughed “In that case, come here”

“No, you come here” he grabbed you by the hips pulling you towards him and turned putting your back down on the bed. He held his weight on his forearms as he hovered over you, catching your lips in another kiss. “Dean” you spoke and he pulled back to look you in the eyes and saw the love and desire there “I want you, please” he smiled “Never beg for me baby. Just tell me what you want” “I want you. All of you”

—----------------

Dean let out a low groan at your words. Fuck, the power you held over him. “You've got me” He promised, catching your lips again. He felt your hands slip under his shirt, silently asking for more access to him. He broke away from your lips long enough to pull the henley he wore off and toss it across the room.

The way you looked at him was like nothing he'd ever experienced. You let your hands trail across his chest, nails scratching lightly “I've always loved your chest, your arms” your praise of his body unlocked something in him. Fuck he loved it. You leaned up to place a kiss at the hollow of his throat and his eyes fluttered shut at the intimacy of the moment.

When he opened them your eyes were on him, a small smile on your face “No more running from me?” He smiled “No more running” he reached for your shirt so you arched your back off the bed to help him remove it. He tossed it behind him and looked down at you “You're so damn gorgeous”

He crashed his lips against yours and felt your hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him closer to you. He rolled his hips into yours and the moan you let out was better than anything he'd ever heard.

—-------------

You broke away from Dean's lips your need for air winning in the moment. He kissed down your jaw and to your neck. He pushed your hair back and attacked your neck, kissing and biting the skin there. Your grip on his shoulders tightened “Fuck Dean”

He moved down your neck, kissing across your clothed chest before looking up at you through those long lashes. He held your eyes as he rolled one breast into his mouth, grazing the sensitive bud with his teeth and enjoying when your breath caught in your throat. His hands slipped under you and you felt the bra give way before he was pulling it off of you and tossing it, giving him full access to your chest.

“Look at you” he whispered, tongue flicking out to tease at one of your nipples while his fingers of his other hand teased the other. Your fingers slid into his hair, eyes fluttering shut at the pleasure coursing through you.

He bit down on your nipple and when your eyes flew open he smirked “Cmon baby I'm just starting. I want your eyes on me” “So damn bossy” you teased and he winked at you “You must like me being bossy” “I love it�� you admitted watching him kiss down your stomach.

When he got to your jeans he looked up at you “Are you sure about this? About us?” You rolled your eyes and lifted your hips off the bed as you unzipped your jeans and started to shimmy them down your hips. He laughed lightly before you felt his hands cover yours as he helped you rid your legs of your jeans then slid your panties off as well.

—-----------

“Look at my girl” he whispered in awe. “All yours Dean. What are you gonna do with me now that you've got me?” The look he gave you was enough to make your entire body feel like you were on fire. The promises there, the desire, the love. “Devour you” his voice was somehow deeper than usual, lust driving it down.

He started at one ankle, kissing up your leg then your thighs stopping just shy of where you wanted him. When you let out a rather pathetic sounding whine he just laughed darkly “I've waited long enough to have you like this, let me enjoy it”

He moved to the other leg, repeating the process. This time when he got where you wanted him he glanced up at your face before lowering his mouth to you. The first lick was tentative, teasing but when your hips bucked and a moan of his name fell from your lips it was like a switch flipped. He dove in, a perfect mixture of teeth and tongue working you closer and closer to that edge.

He slipped first one finger then added a second,easily finding that spot inside of you that made your legs begin to shake. When his lips locked around your clit at the same time his fingers found that spot your eyes rolled back and your vision went white. The pleasure was like nothing you'd ever experienced, waves after waves of it washing over you as Dean pulled two orgasms back to back from you.

—-------------

When you weakly shoved at his shoulders he pulled back,leaving feather light kisses on your inner thighs “What's wrong sweetheart? Too much?” You wanted to glare at him but knew it wouldn't be very believable. “How the fuck did you do that?” He grinned “Guess no other man has ever made you come back to back before?” You shook your head and he laughed “Good”

You shook your head and reached for his shoulders “C'mere” he kissed his way back up to your body and when he got to your lips you could taste yourself on him. “Your jeans are still on!” You nearly whined and he laughed “Let me fix that”

—--------------

He stood up and when he moved to unzip his jeans and push them off his hips you stopped him from climbing back onto the bed. You sat up and reached for him. He moved closer and when your hand slipped under the material of his boxers to wrap around his hard cock he swore under his breath. You slid the boxers down his legs and he stepped out of them.

You'd always figured Dean was well endowed but seeing it, feeling it in your hand was different. You lowered your mouth to the tip, licking around the head to collect the precum then pulling more of him into your mouth. Your hand worked what of him you couldn't fit as you swirled your tongue over the vein running up his shaft. His head fell back with a groan, his fingers went to your hair, pushing it back from your face, holding it back.

You could feel the tension in his hips so you tapped his hips letting him know it was ok. He gave a tentative thrust of his hips and when you hollow out your cheeks to allow more of him down your throat he moaned “Fuck you're perfect” he gave a few hard thrusts into your mouth and you took it, swallowing around him and feeling him tense.

“Fuck baby” he pulled out of your mouth with a wet pop, using his thumb to swipe the spit from your chin “That was amazing but I don't plan to come anywhere expect inside of you tonight”

—-------------

You scooted back up the bed and he climbed between your legs settling himself there. You could feel his cock nudging at your inner thigh, he hesitated “You're sure?” You nearly growled “Dean Winchester. I fucking love you, I want this I want you! Now for the love of everything fuck me already”

He laughed lightly and in one roll of his hips buried himself inside of you. You gasped at the fullness you felt, the stretch from how long it'd been since you were with someone else and just how big he was. He left a trail of open mouthed kisses across your jaw.

After a moment the stretch gave way so you let your legs fall apart further before hooking them around his waist. He took that as the go ahead and gave a deep roll of his hips, when the answer was your nails biting into his shoulders he placed a searing kiss against your lips before moving to press his forehead against yours.

There was something so damn intimate about looking into his eyes while he was so damn deep inside of you. “This is real, isn't it?” He asked and you moved one hand from his shoulder to cup his jaw, understanding the underlying question “It's real Dean. You're here with me”

He turned his head to kiss the palm of your hand “I love you” you moved your hand back to his shoulder and he kiss you, this one wasn't as hungry as others but it made down to your toes tingle and he gave a hard thrust hitting that spot inside of you with the head of his cock.

—--------------

When your back arched up, pressing your breasts into his chest his thrusts started to get harder and deeper. “Please don't stop” you begged, the pleasure building in your stomach threatening to steal your vision yet again. “Wasn't planning on it” he said, pulling your legs up to his shoulders and nearly folding you in half.

The new angle had you practically screaming his name. The knowledge that he was strong enough to manhandle you like you were nothing drove you crazy. His cock was so damn big and the angle meant he was hitting that spot with every damn thrust. The pleasure was so intense it was borderline pain but better than anything you'd ever experienced.

His hips snapped into yours and you could feel how close you were. His fingers found your clit, rubbing tight circles “Let me feel you baby. I'm so damn close but I need to feel you”

You felt that pleasure burst as your vision went soft around the edges and a hoarse scream of his name fell from your lips. You could feel his thrusts begin to falter so you gripped his shoulders tightly “Fuck Dean, i want to feel you. Please baby” his face was buried in the bend of your neck and when he buried himself inside of you with one final thrusts the feeling of him coming made a smaller orgasm wash over you, causing your walls to clench down around his cock causing a curse of your name to fall from his lips as well.

—-----------------

He gently eased your legs down, rubbing them gently before pulling out of you. You gasped and he smiled almost shyly “Sorry” you grinned at him sleepily “That was everything Dean”

His smile deepened before he placed a tender kiss on your lips “Let me clean you up a bit” he found his shirt and cleaned you up as best as he could before tossing it at the hamper in the corner.

—-----------

When he climbed back in bed next to you he asked “Do you need anything? Water? Bodypart massaged?” You shook your head and moved over to be laying halfway on his chest “Just need you to hold me” He wrapped his arms around you and kissed your forehead. You were almost asleep before a thought occurred to you and you started laughing.

You looked up to see he was staring at you like you'd grown a second head “Baby are you ok?” You nodded “There's like thirty hunters here that probably heard that”

He grinned “Well at least they clearly know you're mine and I'm yours” you grinned “damn right. Now kiss your girl so we can both get some sleep” “Yes ma'am” he replied pulling you into a kiss.

Tagging those who told me to write it lol @deans-baby-momma @lyarr24 @deans-spinster-witch @daughterofapollo-7 @littlemadamred

#dean winchester smut #dean winchester x female!reader #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfiction #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester fanfiction

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underdark-dreams · 7 months

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ok, I'm too cowardly to actually reply to your post about Rolan/ Dammon headcannons/ prompts but here are a few:

Rolan:

-He finally gets to be hero, he saves Tav from some scenario and when Tav is thanking him he has no idea what to do with himself.

-Cal and Lia being siblings and absolutely embarrassing him anytime Tav is around. (Sharing embarrassing but endearing stories from when they were younger, hinting at his feelings for Tav, making kissy faces from behind Tav when he's trying to have a conversation.)

-Also, I just have a feeling that he's a jealous green monster whenever someone who isn't any one the companions try and talk to Tav.. especially if its another wizard.

Dammon:

-Him trying to muster up the courage to ask Tav out when he has his shop in Baulders Gate.

-Dammon would 100% be the type who wants to court someone the 'proper' way, but could be convinced otherwise.

-He seems like he would act like a love sick puppy when he's in love.

Thank you for this delicious bouquet of ideas!! 🖤 Twirling my hair over these!! I do want to save a few for fics, but I couldn’t look at this in my inbox any longer without writing out some headcanons:

Rolan

[Cal & Lia embarrassing him around Tav]

The three of them have a super close bond underneath all the bickering. So the absolute second Rolan catches feelings, Cal & Lia smell blood in the water

Honestly they probably catch it before Rolan admits him to himself

When Lia starts to drop hints or Cal asks if he’s gotten up the nerve to kiss them yet, Rolan is like "what? stop being stupid"

But then he turns away & checks in with himself for a second & he's like "oh fuck"

Rolan makes an effort to only interact with Tav far away from his home, his workplace, the general vicinity of his neighborhood in Baldur’s Gate—basically avoiding anywhere they might run into his sister or brother. They already make him nervous enough

But once they start getting closer he also really wants to bring them home, so at some point, he’ll suck it up and face this potential trainwreck head-on

His siblings make light conversation over dinner about what Tav’s been doing or working on lately. Lia’s like “oh yeah Rolan mentioned that, you know he talks about you a lot, like all the time”

Tav’s hand silently taking his under the table is the only thing that could distract Rolan from snapping back

Somehow, Rolan is even more embarrassed when his siblings start genuinely reminiscing and telling Tav stories about the three of them growing up in Elturel

He’ll chime in if Tav asks him a question, but otherwise he’s pretty quiet. Rolan doesn’t want them to think about him as a refugee or an orphan

In his mind, he still thinks he needs to be powerful and significant in order to truly deserve Tav’s affection

If Rolan paid any attention, he’d realize that Cal and Lia talking up what a stubborn, protective big brother he’s always been is putting stars in Tav’s eyes

[Jealousy]

He’s so fucking jealous and it drives him crazy

Rolan likes controlling the narrative, keeping any vulnerability under control & well hidden from others, etc.

Falling in love with Tav creates a big complication in the way he usually operates

Once he’s master of Ramazith’s Tower, he has a certain amount of social obligations—hosting members of the wizarding community, professional gatherings, etc

And Tav is an integral part of his life now, so they'll always be involved to some extent

Midway through the evening, Rolan glances across the room and sees one of his colleagues talking much closer than he'd like to his beloved. As he watches, their hand actually reaches out to touch Tav’s elbow

Whatever he's doing or whoever he's conversing with is abandoned without ceremony

Rolan does that thing where he casually walks up to join the conversation and places a hand on the small of Tav's back, just resting there with a slight smile as he pretends to listen. But he’s staking his claim

In his head the gesture means step the fuck back, this person is with me. It’s honestly about as subtle as a sledgehammer

After they're finally alone again he'll probably want to fuck Tav on his desk or against one of the bookstacks in the Tower

Capturing them for himself and hearing them moan his name and making sure they know they’re his

Dammon

[Working up the courage to ask Tav out]

He’s been really glad their paths have converged here and there along the way, but nothing could make him prouder than when Tav comes to visit the Forge of Nine Hells in the city

Dammon is completely in his element in Baldur’s Gate

He’s pretty modest and down-to-earth, but he feels a swell of pride when Tav finally sees him running a proper forge. It’s how he always hoped they’d see him

And is it just his imagination, or does he see them…often? Almost every day they’re dropping by for one reason or the other, and they seem to linger to chat and watch him work

The hints that they’re interested are all Dammon needs to start working up his courage to make a move

He's alone and tied to his work most of the day, which gives his mind ample time to run through different options

Getting the timing right drives him a little crazy. So often Tav is in a hurry, or with their companions, or he's got a rush commission that he has to get finished

When he finally finds the moment, he’ll probably come right out with it & ask them out for a drink. He wants something simple where they can talk, plus smithing is thirsty work

When Tav agrees with a smile, Dammon drops everything, his leather apron snagging as he pulls it over his horns in his haste to get going

Gathers his courage and puts an arm around their shoulders as they walk

With anyone else Dammon would be self-conscious about how he smells like iron and smoke and sweat all the time. But if anyone can look past it it’s Tav, with everything they’ve been through

A feeling that's confirmed when they lean further into him with a laugh

[Being totally lovesick over Tav]

The definition of devoted

He would 100% be that type of boyfriend who likes to be always touching Tav when they’re close

Prefers to rest his hand on their hip while they’re side by side, maybe on the curve of their ass if he can get away with it. The contrast against the doting look in his eye is classic Dammon—sweet and hot

It's not a possessiveness thing, and he'd tone it down if Tav asked, he's just super into them & touching them feels natural

Just in general, he loves telling Tav yes and has a very hard time telling them no

At the end of the day, Dammon likes to pull Tav down to sit on his lap and talk about their days. He might stroke their hair or rub their back while he listens, just helping his love relax at the end of a long day

Dammon’s used to being a single bachelor and taking care of himself, but he discovers that he adores when Tav does little things to dote on him or pamper him

One night he comes home with the usual soot stains on his skin and ache in his shoulders to find that Tav has drawn him a warm, pleasant-smelling bath. Ignoring any mild protests, Tav insists on helping him peel off his sweaty layers and sink in, then loosens his knot of hair to gently lather and wash his locks. The feel of Tav’s fingers and nails massaging his scalp is the most loving, tender thing. Dammon feels like he could fall asleep right right there in the water under their hands

He calls Tav all kinds of pet names: darling, love, dearest, gorgeous, sometimes angel if he's feeling especially whipped

Dammon is one to say "I love you' freely and often, but hearing Tav say it back never fails to make him sigh with happiness

#mildly spicy #dammon x tav #rolan x tav #bg3 dammon #bg3 rolan #rolan bg3 #dammon bg3 #bg3 headcanons #bg3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 spoilers

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cloverthebarbearian · 3 months

Text

Alone Together

Rolan x GN!Tav 6.1k+ words (Explicit, AFAB descriptions used for Tav) (P.1: The Party)

Finally finished Chapter 2 of the first fic I ever started, hope y'all enjoy! It's, uh. :) Yeah :)

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling back on impulse. His voice was trembling, his mouth aching to return to Tav's embrace, "Is this okay? I… I should have asked first, or -" They kissed him again, savoring him as if he were the wine they meant to share tonight. "Yes, Rolan," Tav smiled against him, kissing him softly between their words, "This is more than okay." "We're both drunk," Rolan continued between Tav's peppering onslaught of kisses, "I don't want us to… I don't want you to… come to regret anything…" Tav leaned into him, catching his lips in a kiss more tender and intimate than any of the starved, frantic ones they had already shared. When Tav finally pulled back, they held Rolan's gaze. The spark of infernal fire in his eyes twinkling back at him in the reflection of their own. "Don't talk like that, Rolan. I came here because I wanted to… I want to be with you. There'd be nothing to regret," they wrapped their arms around his neck, holding the back of his head in their hands, kissing him again. And he held onto the moment for dear life. Tav released to take a breath, their lips tracing his own. "Whatever you want tonight. Whatever you need, I'm yours."

The night air grew cool and quiet as the two walked further away from the party grounds. The silence, the wine swimming in Rolan's head, the feeling of Tav's arm still tightly linked into his own. And Gods, the smell of them - sweat and earth, smoke and… sage? Patchouli, maybe. He couldn't quite place it. Lost in thought, Rolan nearly jumped when Tav spoke.

"Where are you camped at?" they questioned. Their party was camped by the river, near the ruins they had met Wither's in a few nights prior. They knew the refugees were leaving the grove come morning, but they never stopped to consider if that's where they'd be spending the night again, "When Zevlor said you'd all be visiting our camp tonight, I wondered if that meant we'd all be sleeping together."

Rolan's face felt warm at the thought of Tav's phrasing. They didn't correct themselves. Perhaps they didn't notice the possible intimacy behind the words. Perhaps Rolan was overthinking again. He stammered a moment before replying.

"I, um - ah, yes. Well. I suppose some of the other refugees are set up closer to your camp. Those who I think were intent to drink themselves silly tonight. But many of us set up our bedrolls by the gates," he fell quiet a moment, before a slight bitterness overtook his words, "The druids seemed keen on us marching out at first light. I suppose Zevlor thought it wise to make it easy for us to leave at their earliest convenience."

Tav looked up, but his gaze held straight ahead. They weren't sure what to say, if anything, that could help. More often than not, Rolan always had some rebuttal prepared in wait of Tav's attempted encouragements.

So, they didn't say anything. They just squeezed his arm a little tighter as they walked together. And though Tav had stopped looking up to read his expression, they felt his body relax around their arm. Rolan took in a heavy breath, an attempt to clear his mind of the hostility he carried.

"Not that I mind, I suppose," he spoke up again, "High time we left this blasted place. Oh, but, um," he cleared his throat before continuing, "I'm camped atop the hill, east of the gate. I was surprised no one else seemed bothered by the thought of sleeping packed together at the gate like animals. And I, um," he hesitated around his words, "I… appreciate the privacy, when its afforded."

Tav smiled, "I'm sure when traveling with family, it doesn't happen often."

"Ha! No, it does not," Rolan replied with a laugh, "I do look forward to a night free of Cal's snoring for a change."

They soon arrived at Rolan's aforementioned campsite. It was much more humble than Tav was expecting. Though, I guess he isn't traveling with much, they soon thought. Inside the tent, they could catch glimpses of his bed roll, quite a number of pillows, and an even larger number of tomes neatly organized in a box tilted on its side. A make-shift book shelf, with some parchment and ink left on top of the 'shelving', in lieu of a proper desk.

"Ah, just one moment," Rolan gave a quick bow before turning to dig through the rucksacks left in a tidy pile beside his tent. Tav stepped away, taking in the view from atop the hill. They could see their party's camp grounds down by the riverbank. Still going strong, it seemed. Drunk as Alfira was, her voice and musical accompaniment still carried faintly up to the grove.

Tav closed their eyes and took a deep breath in, outstretching their arms and allowing the crisp evening air to embrace them. They knew the peace wouldn't last. But they had now. They were allowed to enjoy this moment.

"Am I… interrupting something?" Rolan's voice carried from over Tav's shoulder. They turned their head around and glanced up at the tiefling man behind them. "I did think we had plans this evening," he joked, holding up an unopened bottle of wine and two surprisingly elegant glasses, "But if you'd rather… um. What exactly are you doing?"

Tav laughed, walking back to the tent and sitting on the thin rugs laid out in front of the entrance.

"Honestly? I don't know. Just… enjoying the calm, I suppose, " they said with a sigh. Rolan sat down next to them, uncorking the fresh bottle and pouring them both a glass. He handed one to Tav as he started taking a sip from his own, an eyebrow raising.

"The calm? Sounds to me like they've got a good hours of dance left in them," Rolan joked, nodding at the party down the cliff side. Tav chuckled, their fingers rimming the lip of the wine glass.

"I just mean I haven't had a moment like… This -" they shrugged, vaguely, gesturing to the air around them, "- In a while," They looked down into their cup. The wine a deep, clean red, "Usually, the nights before rest just leave me thinking of the battles to come tomorrow. It's nice to know I can just… I don't know. Appreciate this," they said with a forlorn lilt, "Whatever this is."

Their voice held that appreciation. But with it was a heaviness. A burden weighing the air so thick Rolan felt as if, for a moment, it were his own. Tav let go of another breath and took a sip of their wine.

"Oh, wow," their eyes grew wide, "Y'know, I'll be honest Rolan. I kind of just thought you were full of it with the whole 'vintage bottle back at my camp' thing. But, this is way better than what they're serving back there!"

Rolan eyes went wide and his jaw went slack in disbelief, "What do you mean you thought I was 'full of it'?! That I'd - That I'd lie just to get you up here? That I'd have some sort of… Some ulterior motive to -" Tav reached their hand out and placed it on his leg.

"Rolan. I'm only teasing. I'm sorry," they squeezed his leg in an attempt to comfort him. They were smiling, but genuine concern was apparent on their face, "Do you not like that? When I… Joke around? Or tease you? I can stop, if it bothers you."

Rolan felt his breath catch a moment. Then he let out an exasperated sigh, "No, no… I'm sorry. Maybe it's just, a mixture of the constant teasing I already receive from Lia and Cal, and… all the stress we've dealt with in the grove. I can tell, I've been… quick to lose myself. I swear, under better circumstances I am significantly more collected. I've just… all this! Has just been… so… augh!" his hands clenched and released at nothing in the air, "Gods, I have just been so anxious to get to my apprenticeship in Baldur's Gate! I feel like every second we spend here is a second wasted. This is all time that could be spent as Master Lorroakan's apprentice! At times I feel as if nobody else cares enough to -" Tav heard it immediately, his voice starting to crack. He caught himself, breathing deep. Then, taking his entire glass of wine down in two large gulps, he tosses the cup aside and lays on the ground, a heavy THUMP accompanying the action. His palms pressing against his eyes, his fingers rubbing his temple. He let out a heavy groan, "This was not at all how I intended the night to go."

Tav gave a soft smile, drinking the rest of their wine and placing the glass down beside them. They laid on their side next to Rolan, their head propped up by one arm, while their other reached over to carefully remove one of his hands from his face. He opened one eye to glance up at them.

"I hope you're aware I'm having a fine time tonight," they said with a smile. Rolan huffed.

"Reveling in my misery?" he said, his tone dry.

"No," Tav replied, pulling his other hand away from his face, "I mean, I will admit. Its nice to see that the Great Wizard Rolan doesn't really have it all together," Rolan's eyes caught theirs. Not angry, but clearly anticipating some sort of following statement. Tav smirked at him before looking away, biting their lip as a shy smile found its way across their face.

"I like seeing you vulnerable, Rolan," Tav said softly, "I like knowing there's someone with… feelings in there. Like, I get thay you're... stressed. This is all very stressful. But… I don't know. When you talk about how much you love your siblings, how much you hate loving your siblings… This all just tells me, you do have a heart. Deep, deep down, somewhere… Even if you try really, really, really hard to convince everyone you're this selfish, arrogant, pretentious, egotistical -" Tav's words were cut short as Rolan's lips planted themselves firmly against theirs, his hand reaching up to cup their chin in his palm.

The sensations experienced in but a half second were overwhelming. His lips were warm, and soft, the taste of fine wine still fresh on his breath. His hand was strong, dexterous. Like a musician, there was delicate experience beneath his touch. Mixed with the now buzzing sensation of fresh wine hitting their bloodstream. Tav felt dizzy, in the best possible way.

Their eyes fluttered shut as they realized what was happening. They felt Rolan begin to pull away, worried he may have overstepped, only for Tav to immediately follow him. Pushing him back onto the ground and pulling themselves above him, falling further into his kiss. The sudden, enthusiastic reciprocation left Rolan purring low into every kiss that followed. One hand still holding Tav's face to his, the other exploring the curves of their body. When Rolan's nails accidentally slipped under Tav's shirt, grazing their bare skin, they let out a shuddering gasp against his lips.

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling back on impulse. His voice was trembling, his mouth aching to return to Tav's embrace, "Is this okay? I… I should have asked first, or -"

They kissed him again, savoring him as if he were the wine they meant to share tonight.

"Yes, Rolan," Tav smiled against him, kissing him softly between their words, "This is more than okay."

"We're both drunk," Rolan continued between Tav's peppering onslaught of kisses, "I don't want us to… I don't want you to… come to regret anything…" Tav leaned into him, catching his lips in a kiss more tender and intimate than any of the starved, frantic ones they had already shared. When Tav finally pulled back, they held Rolan's gaze. The spark of infernal fire in his eyes twinkling back at him in the reflection of their own.

"Don't talk like that, Rolan. I came here because I wanted to… I want to be with you. There'd be nothing to regret," they wrapped their arms around his neck, holding the back of his head in their hands, kissing him again. And he held onto the moment for dear life. Tav released to take a breath, their lips tracing his own.

"Whatever you want tonight. Whatever you need, I'm yours."

I'm yours, he thought.

The words flooded him, a hunger pulsing through his blood, building in his throat. Static leaping across every nerve, every muscle. He took a deep breath in, kissing Tav again before pulling away, focusing himself well enough to whisper, "It's more comfortable inside."

Tav's eyes gleamed in the moonlight as they smiled up at him. Twisting in each others arms, practically crawling across the ground, the two made their way into Rolan's tent. The wizard tried to lay Tav onto his bedroll, but it seemed they had other plans. His little hero may have been smaller than him, but they were certainly much stronger. Tav quickly flipped him onto his back, straddling his legs, their hands tracing down from his neck, across his chest, resting down just below his navel. And they could feel Rolan shifting - and growing - beneath them.

And while they tried their best to hide it, Tav was suddenly struck with a sobering awareness of the position they were in. They bit their lip, their face running hot, unsure just how to proceed. Rolan ghosted his hands across their hips and thighs before settling on a spot to secure them. Sensing their shared trepidation, he gripped them slightly tighter, adjusting himself enough to allow his hips to roll into theirs. Tav let out a breathless moan, their hand reaching up to their face and brushing up against their lips. Rolan immediately reached up to grab their wrist, pulling their hand away from their face and towards his own. Tav froze, catching his gaze, as Rolan brought their hand to his mouth.

He kissed and bit their wrist tenderly, careful not to break skin with his incisors, allowing his teeth and tongue to trace the shape of them. Tav's body shuddered, their free hand twisting into the fabric of Rolan's robes. They rocked their hips into him, finding the pressure of the growing arousal beneath them, shifting to line him up with their own aching entrance.

As soon as Tav found their mutual sweet spot, Rolan let out a hissing whine. He gripped at Tav's legs to still them. They immediately stopped, even trying to lift themselves off of him slightly.

"I'm sorry, is that -"

"Its fine Tav, its - Hells, its incredible -" Rolan's words came out between heaving breaths. Tav gently settled back down onto his lap, and his head fell into his pile of pillows. Lifting a hand to run through his hair, he laughed to himself. Without looking up, he spoke, "Its been a while, to be blunt. A good, long while. Well before Elturel, even, since I've…" He took a deep breath, lifting himself slightly and looking over Tav's body. His hands run up and down their thighs, tracing his thumbs inside their legs, meeting their hips. Tav inhaled sharply, pushing themselves against him again in response.

"Gods," Rolan closed his eyes, laying his head back down, still gripping into their hips, "I worry I won't last long with you…" Tav smiled before leaning back into him to catch his lips again.

"I wouldn't hold it against you," they teased, biting his lip. Tav's mouth opened, licking between his lips, seeking entry. He immediately gasped and caught their tongue with his, breathing into them, drinking them in.

Tav's need for him was building as they ground themselves deeper. His hips bucking up and Tav moaning his name into his desperate mouth. He rolled into them again, gripping their hips and thighs tighter as he pressed their bodies together. This time, Tav's moan came out with a giggle, kisses now tracing across his jaw, his neck, below his ear.

"Fuck me," Rolan groaned.

"Are you asking?" Tav whispered.

They felt his cock under his robes twitch against them in response. His hands had moved from their thighs; now gripped tightly around their ass as he pushed himself against them. He was moaning - whimpering, really - from their words, from their touch, his legs practically shaking beneath them.

"Rolan," they sighed into his ear, "You need to tell me what you want…" Their hand sliding between them, under his robes, down to his crotch, stroking his fully erect member still tucked away by his pants.

"Ah!" Gods, he felt pathetic. Having already come undone by the slightest touch, his thoughts flooded with everything he wanted to do, everything he wanted them to do. It was so overwhelming he could barely think, let alone speak. Tav whispered into his ear again.

"Rolan, please," their chest pressed against his. He could feel their nipples puckering beneath their shirt. Tav was unrelenting, kissing and licking his ear, his neck, stroking his cock while pleasuring themself against his thigh.

"I - Ngh! - Tav, I - y-your mouth, please -" was all Rolan could squeak out between his heaving breaths. Tav smiled, biting his earlobe playfully, as if to thank him. Their hand left the length of him to instead unclasp the belt around his waist. He quickly followed their lead and removed the mantle adorning his chest, practically throwing it to the foot of his tent. Preparing to disrobe further, Tav stilled his hands.

"Let me," they whispered, leaning in to kiss him again. Between the kisses, the hums and moans of approval, Tav's hands slipped beneath Rolan's robes. Not fully undressing him, but rather pushing the layers of fabric away from him, revealing the lower length of his infernal chest. The hills and peaks of cartilage that ran across his tiefling bones now exposed, and Tav's kisses left his lips to find the skin at the base of his ribs. His fists clenched at either side of him as he inhaled sharply, their eyes glancing upwards as their tongue traced a line further down.

Slowly - Gods, so achingly slow - their fingers began to slip beneath the waistband of his trousers, his pants pitching shamefully high between his legs. His tail was now thumping to the side of him, causing Tav to release a muffled laugh against his pelvis. They ran their cheek along his thigh as they pulled his pants down with them. His cock dragged down, caught in the taught waistband, before the tip came free, bouncing upright, and dripping with his own anticipation.

Tav's eyes lit up. He was long. And his infernal features seemed to spread across more aspects of his body than they were expecting. The length of him adorned with ridges and divots they had never seen on any other being they'd had the pleasure of bedding. Eyes still wide, a grin creeping across their face, they glanced back up at Rolan.

His eyes were shut tight. Eyes, jaw, fists - all clenched. The only tell about him suggesting any excitement at all was the thick and throbbing member mere inches from their face, and the tail still lashing about the ground.

Before Tav touched Rolan's wanting length, their hand traced up to his, running across his wrist and up his arm, coaxing him to relax. He inhaled deeply, releasing a shaky breath as his hands came loose from their fists.

Eyes still closed, Tav kissed along the inside of his thigh and whispered, "Look at me?"

Rolan gasped quietly as his cock twitched, a pearl of pre release dripping down his length. His hand reached out, searching for Tav's head. He cupped their cheek as he allowed his eyes to lull open.

Tav held his free hand while the other ran up his thigh before allowing their thumb to tease and trace the skin at the base of him. His hips rolled slightly as more pre cum dripped from his head in want. Tav wrapped their hand around him, and made certain his eyes were trained on theirs as they licked their lips and left soft kisses at the base of his cock.

"Hells below," Rolan moaned, hips rocking with hesitation. Tav's mouth opened as their kisses grew sloppy, their tongue laving the side of him, their lips gently sucking at his skin. His hand had left their cheek and ran through their hair. He didn't dare grab them. He just watched, his cock twitching and throbbing, in pure disbelief.

They grazed their nose down his shaft before sticking out their tongue - wide, wet, flat - and dragging it up the entire length of him, catching all the droplets of his arousal that coated him. And upon reaching his head, Tav looked Rolan in the eyes, as they let the pre cum and saliva in their mouth drip from their tongue down his dick.

They rolled their eyes shut, wrapping their lips around the head of him, and began taking him into their mouth. Their tongue lax around his shaft, guiding the whole of his cock further into them, until they could feel his tip tease the back of their throat..

"Gods, Tav -" was all Rolan could manage, before the hand in their hair clenched into a fist, his hips rocking upwards, pushing himself further into their mouth. His hips moved in short, stuttering thrusts as a powerful release struck him. Pulsing ropes of cum shot down Tav's throat as they held him with confidence, swallowing every drop. Their tongue flexing against his shaft as they drank down his spend. Rolan whimpered infernal phrases Tav couldn't understand, his voice breaking between whatever psalms they thought he may be reciting, before it was replaced with mumbles in common, "Sorry… 'm sorry…"

A moment passed before Rolan's body finally stilled, his hand releasing gently from the tangled mess he made of Tav's hair. Shaky hands reaching to try to smooth out the wild strands as they raised themselves off of his softening member, peppering it with gentle kisses and tucking him back into his clothes before reaching their fingers up to wipe around their lips. They looked up at Rolan, their cheeks flush. A panting, open mouthed smile adorning their face. The tiefling looked upon them. His chest heaving and his mind blank, left speechless and sincerely unsure if he weren't in some wine-drunk fever dream, given the radiance of the creature knelt between his legs.

Tav crawled their way on top of him, leaning back in and kissing him deeply. Still dazed in the aftermath of his own release, he nearly didn't register the hero's touch. But his hands soon enough regained their feeling, and wrapped their way around Tav's waist, pulling them in to lay with him side-by-side. They kissed sweetly, like teenage lovers in a school yard - soft and surprisingly innocent - before Tav pulled back smiling, burying their face in the crook of Rolan's neck.

He held his partner for a moment, blissed out and reeling, before coming well enough to his senses to realize…

"Well, hold now. Don't get too comfortable," Tav's head raised to look at him, eyes dreamy and confused. Rolan scoffed with a smile, "What kind of man would I be not to return this favor?"

Tav laughed softly and pushed their head back into his neck, "You don't have to 'return' anything, Rolan. I enjoyed myself just fine."

They felt Rolan's hand smooth over their hair, falling down behind their ear and urging them to look up at him. They let his hand guide them back to face him, searching his eyes until he leaned in to kiss them again.

And again.

Tracing his tongue across their lips, breathing in the taste of him that still lingered on their skin. Kissing them until he felt their body rock against him. Running their hands up his chest, over his shoulders, down his back. Pulling him close at the waist. He could hear, and feel, the way they moaned into his mouth. He let his hand travel from the small of their back to the front of their leathers, trying his best to keep himself steady as he untied the laces.

Rolan felt Tav's hands grip him tighter at his waist while he worked to loosen their garments, until he felt there'd be room enough for his hand to slide beneath the fabric. He kissed them slow, praying they couldn't feel the way his hand trembled as he ran his fingers against their skin. Dipping below the hem of their trousers, tracing the back of his hand across the soft flesh where their stomach met their thighs. Their lips broke from his as they took in a sharp breath, eyes closing slightly at the gentle touch.

Rolan turned his hand around, his palm against their stomach, as he ran his fingers down. Further below their open leathers, teasing the lace of their underclothes with the tips of his fingers. They felt the pad of his fingertips pressing against the sensitive skin that lay hidden beneath their most intimate fabric. They lulled their eyes open to look back into the eyes of the man laying before them.

Warm and twinkling golden rings were watching them diligently, the iris a thin halo around his wide blown pupils. He ran gentle, hesitant circles over the dampening fabric between their legs, swallowing deep as they looked into his eyes. Their mouth hung open as quiet, gasping breaths escaped them. He had never seen anything more beautiful.

He pressed his fingers further between their folds, teasing their hole beneath their underclothes. Tav bit their lip, wincing slightly, and Rolan paused. Pulling his fingers back an inch, Tav immediately reached for his wrist, panting heavily. Rolan searched their face again, a wordless inquiry of concern.

"I, um," Tav started, suddenly nervous, "Your, um… your claws…" Rolan's cheeks flushed as he tried to pull his hand away from them, but Tav held his wrist tighter.

"Don't stop!" they choked out, perhaps a bit too hastily.

"Well, I…" Rolan swallowed, "I don't want to hurt you…" he carefully freed himself from Tav's grasp. For a moment, they feared he'd become too embarrassed to continue.

Rolan brought his hand to his lips, hesitating before biting off the ends of the claws on his two middle fingers, and turning his head to spit them out by the entrance of his tent. Tav's eyes went wide as they tried to hide their smile, their hands ghosting up Rolan's sides. He looked back at them, beginning to reach his palm back down towards their apex.

Before he got far, they stopped his wrist and brought his hand up to their mouth. Watching him closely, they laved his fingers with their tongue. Sucking gently, tracing between the two fingers, eyelids flitting to meet his gaze. They smiled as they felt his body shiver in excitement.

A thin trail of Tav's saliva stuck to his fingers as they pulled him from their mouth. They helped guide his hand back down between them, letting go when he found their stomach. Tav brought their hands down to their clothes, shifting to remove their pants and underclothes from their legs completely. Rolan took a sharp inhale, watching their bare bottom half as they got comfortable, trying - and failing - not to ogle at them, before willing his racing heart to steady itself. He traced his fingers lower, trailing over the slightly trimmed patch of hair between their thighs. Tav's hands found his neck and brought his face to their own. Closing the distance, close enough now to feel his breath on their skin, to hear when he tried to stifle his cries. Every moan and whisper to be shared in the space between them.

With no fabric to separate his touch, Rolan easily found his way between Tav's folds again. And now, he could feel just how shamefully wet they were for him. Their moans fell from their lips directly onto his, wordlessly begging him to continue. Sliding himself further, he used his outer fingers to spread them open, tracing his trimmed fingers across their entrance.

Tav pulled at his neck, rocking their hips against his hand and trying to coax his fingers into slipping inside. They lifted their leg to hook around Rolan's back. His eyes darted across their face, watching the way their eyes glazed over, the way their lips trembled in silent cries. His own breath shaking, he let his fingers sink into them.

The moan that rose from Tav's throat made his core tighten, he could feel his half hard length twitch in his trousers as Tav squeezed the back of his neck. They used their leg to pull his waist against them, urging him to keep going. Rolan froze for a moment, basking in - what he could only describe as - the celestial being laid beside him. All this, just from his hand. His chest burned, proud of how good he was making them feel. How good he needed them to feel from him - for him.

He moved his free hand to cup the side of their head, stroking his thumb across their cheek. Tav leaned into him, kissing his thumb before licking the tip of it into their mouth. Rolan groaned at the sight before even registering the warmth of their mouth around his digit.

"Tav," he whispered, his voice trembling. They let out a small laugh beneath their moans. They sucked his thumb, rolling it over their tongue, while they ran their hand down to his wrist between their thighs. They traced their fingers around the back of his hand, pushing him deeper into them. All the while, he could feel his cock growing firm all over again, as Tav sunk deeper into their own arousal.

"Keep going," they whispered around his thumb, as they rolled their hips against him. Their eyes locking with his, begging for him in the way they stared. Rolan pulled his hand away from their lips and dipped forward to kiss them, curling the fingers inside of them against their clenching walls. Tav whimpered his name against his mouth, holding his wrist tighter and locking their hands between their pressed bodies.

Rolan let his fingers follow the rhythm Tav set with their hips, pushing into them when they rocked closer and gauging what felt best for them by the way they sang into his mouth. He curled his fingers again, then spread them apart inside of them, making Tav clench him harder.

They took his free hand in theirs and brought it under their shirt, letting his fingers glide across their breasts. Rolan stilled at the prospect of touching them further as Tav released him, smiling against his mouth in wait. Rolan slowly let his hand cup the soft skin of their chest, at first, before tracing their stiff nipple under his thumb, and pinching it between his fingers.

"Gods, yes, Rolan," Tav urged him on, freeing both their hands from him and gripping his neck once more. Kissing him and encouraging him to continue, "Keep touching me, please."

Their begging seemed to be just what Rolan needed. The fingers inside of them started thrusting at a steady pace, his thumb making swiping motions across their swollen clit as he fucked them with his hand. The hand on their breast squeezing and massaging their skin, kissing them and sucking on their tongue before dipping his head down further and catching the nipple not occupied with his hands between his lips. Tav ran their fingers through his hair, one hand wrapping around the back of one horn as they muffled their moans into the top of his head. They could feel his cock twitching against their thigh as they fucked themselves on his fingers.

"Please don't stop, please don't - Fuck," Tav's breath hitched in their throat as Rolan's tongue swirled over their stiff bud, teasing it between his teeth and pressing his thumb harder against their clit. He could hear their heartbeat quicken in their chest, the frantic way their hips continued to rock against him, "Rolan! Rolan, I - Fuck!" They grabbed the side of his head and pulled him back up to face them, kissing him hard before pulling back and holding his gaze, "Make me cum, please. Please. Look at me and - and make me cum," tears pooled in the corner of their eyes as Rolan's fingers thrust into them, refusing to break eye contact with the divine being laying with him.

"Yes," he whispered, his voice low, heavy with lust, "Cum for me."

Tav's leg clenched against the small of his back, holding him against them as their hips rocked in short and steady bursts before finally going still. They held his gaze, their jaw locked in a gasp as they came against his hand.

Rolan could feel the way their inner walls gripped him, fluttering, as their labia pulsed in his palm pressed firmly against them. He could feel their shaking body against his own erect length tucked away. Try as he may to still himself from crying out when he felt himself cum against their thigh, a rather pathetic, squeaking cry still fell from his trembling lips. The climax itself sending shivers rocketing up his spine, and down his tail.

They moaned against each others mouths, Tav still whispering Rolan's name, and Rolan trying hard not to cry in full from the ecstasy of his own unexpected orgasm in the process. He could feel the way his ejaculate pooled uncomfortably in his pants. Yet, he hardly cared, as Tav's body trembled in the aftershocks of their own satisfaction. Their hands tangled in his hair, tracing their fingers along his neck and ears, panting into his mouth as they tried to steady themselves.

They pressed shaky kisses against his chest, right in the center of his collarbone, until their body finally relaxed. Rolan kissed the top of their head as he continued to hold them. And for a while, they lay just like this. Hot, sweaty, sticky, and spent, until Rolan could feel Tav stir in his embrace. He loosened himself from them as they sat upright, wondering if they needed to excuse themselves, head back to camp, now that they had…

"Um," Tav gripped their knees to their chest, "Do you have any clean rags?"

Rolan felt himself blush, shy, as if they weren't already sat half naked before him. He laughed to himself, "I do," he replied, "You're welcome to one, but. Um… I-If I may…?"

Tav looked at him, their own face flushed and tinged with confusion. Rolan's laid outstretched, offering them a spot back in his arms. They nodded softly, leaning back into his warmth. He let them lay across his arm, as he brought his free hand up to their chest. Resting his palm between the curves of their breasts, he kissed Tav's shoulder and traced his hand down their torso, resting between their legs.

Tav watched his hand anxiously, biting their bottom lip as their heartbeat picked back up. They heard Rolan whisper an incantation, and watched his hand glow a bright golden yellow, growing comfortably warm between their legs. The wizard let his fingers kiss their skin so very delicately, and Tav could feel the fluid from their release wash away. The discomfort of it having become cool and tacky against their skin, replaced with the feeling of a warm bath towel lovingly stroked across them.

They closed their eyes as soft sighs and moaning whispers fell from their tired lips, turning their head to kiss the tiefling beside them as he brought his spell to an end. His still warm hand resting under their thighs, pulled up and over his legs as he held them in their kiss.

When Tav finally rested their head into the warm crook of his shoulder, he reached beside his pillows for a light blanket to lay across their exposed legs. His tail slid out to close their tent flaps completely - Thank the Gods he chose such a solitary campsite this evening, he thought, as he realized just how exposed they've been this entire time.

When it seemed as if Tav may have drifted off, Rolan quickly cast the same prestidigitation upon himself to clean up his own mess, with significantly less flair for the dramatics this time. Finally ready to settle down and perhaps sleep for the evening with…

Rolan blinked as his eyes fell to the adventurer resting in his arms. Stray hairs framed the soft skin of their face, eyes closed and lips parted. Their hands were resting on his chest, one hand having two fingers loosely hooked into the ties of his robes. He let his eyes trail further down to the silhouette of their body beneath the thin lavender sheet he had placed across them. It flowed beautifully over their form, but still hugged the curves of their hips and thighs.

They had felt so soft, so… malleable. Rolan had been so use to his own infernal features. Hells, even before his reluctant spell of abstinence, he'd only ever been with other tieflings. So use to hard edges; the bones and spikes and horns and tails. He had never felt someone so… Soft. Fragile. He traced his his hand along the shape of them, and they gripped into his robe tighter. He froze, growing warm, realizing they were still awake.

They tilted their head up, eyes half open, and pulled him down into one final, sleepy kiss. His lips were warm as they smiled against him. Touching their noses to each other's, before Tav kissed his chin.

"Thank you," They mumbled, burying their face back into his chest. Rolan chuckled softly.

"For what?" He asked, but he never got an answer. Gentle snores came from the brave hero of the grove, who for some odd reason was still here, in his arms, seemingly asleep, with no intention of leaving until morning. Rolan smiled, kissing their temple softly, and settling in beside them.

"Of course, Tav," he whispered, For you? I'd do anything.

#rolan #bg3 rolan #rolan bg3 #rolan x tav #tav x rolan #im going to BED

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ghostboneswrites2 · 2 months

Text

A Mess || Reader Walsh X Daryl || Part 1

New account! @ghostbones was banned! Transferring everything here, beginning with this series since it was the most popular!

Summary: You grow tired of sneaking suspicions of Lori and your husband sneaking off together. When you finally catch them in the act, a grumpy redneck happens to be the one to help you through it in his own, unconventional way.

18+ MDNI || WARNINGS: profanity, nongraphic depictions of sex, TWD typical violence

You were so sick of him. The way he stood with his hands on his hip, squinting in the Georgia sun as he watched over the camp -- or, more specifically -- watched over Lori.

You respected it at first, when Rick didn't wake up and he told you, "We gotta go get Lori and Carol, (Y/N). We just got to. I gotta do right by him."

You didn't say anything when you were all stopped on the highway, watching the planes drop bombs on the city that was supposed to welcome you into safe refugee centers, and his first instinct was to hold Lori instead of you. You thought she had to be terrified, to lose her man and have to keep their son safe in such trying, unpredictable times. She probably needed that hug more than you, his own wife.

You were young when you married Shane. A drunken night led to one thing, one thing led to a baby, a baby led to another thing; a ring. But, you had a miscarriage after the wedding, and as we all know that doesn't nullify a marriage. Regardless, it wasn't a bad marriage. The relationship was mostly solid. You had suspicions, like when he'd come home from a night out with the other guys on the force with what you could have sworn were faded lipstick stains that he couldn't wipe off well enough, or smelling faintly of perfume and cigarettes. Still, he took good care of you, and you had a fair bit of freedom. He financed your art supplies, bought you records, helped you get back into school.

Your parents never had a good marriage so in comparison, you were doing well for yourself. Better than your mom, who lived on wine and Xanax, or your dad, who worked his fingers to the bone in that office, hunched over a computer, addicted to porn and cigars.

You often wondered if they had survived the initial outbreak, or if they were stumbling around King County somewhere with no heartbeat.

You shook the thought away, eyeing Shane from atop the RV where you were supposed to be watching for walkers. His skin was shiny with sweat. You wondered how long it'd be before he disappeared into the wood again. Funny how Lori always seemed to disappear at the same time, no doubt leaving Dale or Carol to keep an eye on Carl. Funny how since you'd all set up camp there by the quarry, Lori hadn't been able to make eye contact with you. Funny how he had been short with you, yet somehow managed to remain controlling as ever. You weren't allowed out of his sight unless he was already out of yours. You couldn't talk to men like Ed or Merle and his brother. You couldn't touch the guns, not until he showed you how to use one properly. You couldn't go wash up in the quarry unless he was there to escort you at night, which he conveniently never was. You couldn't--

"You alright up here?" Dale asked.

"Oh. Yeah." You shook your head clean of the whirlwind of suspicion.

"Don't seem too focused." He observed.

"Yeah, you're right. Sorry." You said, holding the binoculars to your eyes and turning your attention to the trees.

"Why don't you go on and take a break. I'll keep an eye out for now." He offered.

"Actually, you know what? That would be really great. Thanks Dale." You smiled and passed his binoculars to him. You wanted to protest. Watch duty was your favorite, and just about the only thing you could do to make yourself useful aside from washing other people's dirty underwear.

You climbed down from the roof, expecting to walk over to your husband, but he wasn't where he stood just moments prior.

You turned to Amy, who was sitting on the steps of the RV, fanning herself. It was a particularly hot day.

"Hey. Did you see where Shane went? I just saw him over there." You asked, her pointing to where he once stood.

"I think he went to check the perimeter." She said, holding her hand over her eyes to look up at you without being blinded. It was probably just about noon now with the sun high in the sky.

"Right." You nodded. You scanned the campers around you. "What about Lori?"

She shook her head.

"No, haven't seen her in a while. Carl's over there with Carol. She might know."

You sighed, thanking Amy as you made your way to Carol.

"Hey. Seen Lori?"

"Yeah. She asked me to watch Carl for a bit. Not sure where she went, though."

You felt a heat in your chest. Exactly as you suspected.

You jogged back to Amy. "Hey, which way did Shane go?"

She pointed over to the tree line on your left.

"Thanks, again." You smiled in a thin line as you marched to the woods. You were determined to put an end to this shit, one way or another.

You knew they couldn't have gone far. You had just seen him not five minutes ago. You were sure you could catch up. If the Dixons were around, you'd be half tempted to approach one and ask them to track for you. Probably the younger one. That Merle would probably ask you what you were willing to give in return, and you had a feeling he wouldn't be looking for payment in the material sense. You heard quiet rustling and heavy breaths. You ducked down and made slow, quiet steps, glancing down at the ground periodically to avoid any snapping twigs or overly crunchy leaves. You came to some thicker bushes and brush, crooning you neck to peer over the leaves and thorns.

Your stomach dropped. There it was. His sweat stained white tee, panting over her navy blue tank top that fit rather loosely with all the weight loss. Her jeans and underwear in a little pile off to the side, his gun set right on top. You clenched your jaw. You wanted to storm over and yell obscenities, to kick them both into the dirt. You were stuck, though. You couldn't move. You were so angry that you were cemented in place. Most of all, you were hurt. You were younger than Shane, and younger than Rick and Lori, but somehow, some way you thought Lori was a friend to you. You watched Carl when she and Rick took date nights from time to time, you two grabbed coffee together, went back to school shopping for Carl just to get you out of the house.

It would have been one thing had she not known you, had she been a complete stranger, but she was supposed to be a friend, and Shane, he was your husband. Tears stung at your eyes as your pulse became noticeable under your skin.

That's when you saw something else, a human shape walking up behind them. Could it be? A walker coming to exact your revenge for you? No, you could never be so lucky. It was the Dixon, the young one. His boots were heavy against the forest floor, drawing the attention of Shane and Lori. They both scrambled, Shane standing and buttoning his pants back up as Lori sat and pulled her jeans over her lap to cover herself.

"Hey, man -- I -- We can explain --" Shane stuttered, Lori looking mortified.

"Ain't me ya gotta explain to." Daryl shrugged, glancing over Shane's shoulder at you as you slowly stood to your feet from behind the bushes.

"Look, man. You say anything --" Shane hissed, no doubt gearing up for some halfhearted threat, but Daryl cut him off again.

"Won't have to." He told Shane, throwing another look at you, this time prolonging eye contact.

Shane and Lori followed his gaze and landed on you.

"(Y/N)" Lori breathed.

You tore your eyes from the huntsman, shooting visual daggers at your unfaithful husband and his backstabbing mistress.

Shane took a deep breath, rubbing his hand over his face. You said nothing. There was nothing to say. You just looked at Daryl one more time before you turned around.

"(Y/N), come on!" Shane called after you. "Let's talk about this."

You didn't want to. You just stomped your way back to camp, ignoring the curious eyes as you pulled all your things from your shared tent with Shane. You really only had your backpack and a blanket. The two of you shared the sleeping bag and a single pillow, but you didn't want that. It would smell of Shane, and at that moment the thought of him made you nauseous. You took your bag and your blanket, and made your way down to the quarry. Surely that would be the most peaceful place to sleep, by the water, under the stars, away from everyone else.

"(Y/N.)" Shane said from behind you after he likely followed you back. "What the hell are you doin'?" He asked, referring to your backpack and blanket in arms.

"Fuck you." You grumbled.

"C'mon, what are you doin'?" He asked again. You spun on your heel, seething.

"No, Shane. What the hell are you doing?!" You shouted, drawing eyes from all around. You didn't care. In fact, you saw it as an opportunity. "Sneaking off?! Getting your dick wet?!"

"Don't do this here." He said quietly, glancing over his shoulder to where Carol sat with Carl and Sophia. They were all staring in shock, the whole camp. He reached his hands out to grab your shoulders but you stepped back, chest heaving with rage.

"Oh, why? So your girlfriend's kid doesn't know she's getting down and dirty with you in the leaves out there?" You spat back, only loud enough for him to hear. "You haven't touched me in weeks. Not since the night we left home, but you can't keep it in your pants around your dead best friend's wife?"

You shoved his chest with both hands, dropping the blanket to the ground in the process. His eyes grew dark, that pleading expression turning cold.

"I don't give a fuck how sorry you are or aren't. I don't give a good god damn how guilty she feels. I hate you, and I hate her." You added, just to drive the knife in deeper. If they could stab you in the back, you'd stab them in the chest.

"Don't be stupid." He growled.

"Stupid is having unprotected sex in the middle of the woods when your wife is sitting on top of an RV with binoculars. Stupid is fucking your best friend's wife. Stupid is--"

He grabbed your arm with force, dragging you far away from the others. He lened in close to your face, eyes wide with fury.

"You need to stop." He warned.

"I am stopping. I'm stopping all of it. Congratulations, Shane. You don't have to hide your affair anymore. Because you no longer have a wife to cheat on. Oh, and by the way, you suck at hiding it. You both do. The whole fucking camp can see you two disappearing at the same time, every single day. We all see how you look at her, how you play house with her and Carl like your wife isn't sitting ten feet away. Is that what it is? You like making me look like a fool?"

"I'm only gonna tell you once." He hissed, scowling down at you like you were the one who betrayed him. "Keep your mouth shut."

"No problem." You sneered. "I'll keep my mouth shut, and you'll keep your distance."

----

It was dark out. Despite the blazing heat in the daytime, the nights could get pretty chilly, especially down by the water. You didn't mind. You set against the cliff, back rested against your bag, blanket wrapped over you nice and snug. You enjoyed all the stars above. They were hard to see back home, but now, without all the light pollution, they were beautiful.

"Shouldn't be out here alone." A husky voice rasped. You looked down past your feet to see the shadow of an archer, the very one who happened to catch Shane and Lori when you did.

"Nah. If any of those freaks stumble through here, they'll be drawn to the fire and the lanterns. I'm safer than ever over here in the dark."

"Mm." He hummed. "Y'alright? After--"

"After I caught my husband fucking another woman? Yeah. All things considered, I'm better than ever." You scoffed.

"Bein' mad don't mean ya gotta be stupid. Can't stay out here." He insisted.

"Well, my tent is Shane's tent, and the RV is full." You sighed.

"Jus' take mine." He offered.

"Yours." You repeated. "And you're gonna sleep where?"

"Outside. Prefer it that way anyway." He shrugged.

"Yeah, no. I'm not kicking you out of your own tent."

"Ain't kickin' me out if I offer."

"Well, thanks, but I'll be declining that offer."

"Suit yourself." He said as he walked back to camp. Daryl wasn't the type to go out of his way for someone else. In fact, it was rather annoying that you couldn't accept his kindness when he felt obliged to offer it. He saw how you looked when you caught them, the sickening blend of grief and rage. You hadn't done anything to deserve that, at least to his knowledge, yet you were the one with nowhere to sleep. It didn't sit right with him.

He remembered something, though. A bottle of whiskey he had stashed away in his tent. If he couldn't convince you to sleep somewhere warmer and safer than on the bed of red clay by the water, maybe you'd accept something to take your mind off it all.

He ducked into his tent and grabbed his bottle, paying no mind to his fellow survivors all huddled around the fire making small talk. Lori and Shane sat near each other, Carl in between them talking to Shane about his favorite heroes, Shane telling him stories about his dad.

Shane's eye caught Daryl as he made his way down the quarry with a bottle of liquor, no doubt on his way to you. He felt a heat in his chest, the same kind you felt when you found him rolling in the dirt with Lori. She noticed his sudden tension and followed his gaze. She looked back to Shane with worry, attempting to calm him with her eyes.

Daryl found you laying on your side, backpack under your cheek like a pillow.

"Ya sleep?" He asked.

"No." You said, monotone and irritable.

"Ya like whiskey?"

You sat up. Of course you liked whiskey, this is the south.

"You have some?" You inquired. He held the bottle out to you and you took it, twisting off the cap and taking a large swig. "Thanks."

"Ain't a gift." He clarified. "But ya look like you could use a drink."

He sat down a foot away from you, facing the water. You passed the bottle back to him.

"Well, thanks for sharing."

"Mhm."

"What would you do?" You asked him.

"Huh?"

"I mean if you had a wife out here and you caught her fucking someone else."

"Kick her outta my tent." He said.

"And if it was her tent?"

"Too bad. Shouldn't've been sleepin' around." He shrugged, swigging the bottle and passing it to you.

"Uhuh." You nodded, sipping. "What else?"

"You askin' me for advice or somethin'?"

"Something like that." You guessed.

"Well I'd probably kick his ass for fuckin' my wife knowin' I was right there."

"Mm. I'd love to but I can't exactly whoop someone who still has to look out for a kid."

"Guess ya just gotta ignore 'em." He suggested, taking the bottle as you handed it over.

"How? I live with them."

"Want me to kill 'em?" He joked. You chuckled.

"Kinda." You admitted.

"Mm. Too easy. I'd tie 'em up outside the city and leave 'em to the walkers."

"Oh, you've put thought into this?" You asked. He tipped the bottle bac and took a gulp.

"Nah. If I did I'd have somethin' more creative."

"The hell's this?" Shane asked, suddenly looming over the two of you.

Daryl stood up. "Just havin' a drink." He said, eyeing Shane.

"With my wife?" Shane stepped forward, so Daryl did too.

"Looks single to me." Daryl shrugged. He didn't come over with the intentions of making a move on you. Really he hadn't noticed you around at all. He, however, also wasn't one to back down from a fight, and he already had a distaste for the ex-fed, self proclaimed leader.

"What?" Shane asked through gritted teeth, swaying as he grew more antsy to take a swing.

"You're a real piece of work, you know that Shane?" You sighed, standing up. You weren't phased by his sudden intrusion, you knew him too well to be surprised.

"Yeah, why don't ya go back to sleepin' with the widow?" Daryl added. That was enough for Shane. He threw the first punch, but Daryl recovered quickly, getting a good knock to the ribs in before you inserted yourself between them, one hand to each man's chest.

"Can we chill with the dick-measuring contest? He brought me a drink because he felt bad for me. Nothing else, because unlike you," you said to Shane, "some men are capable of keeping their willies tucked away."

"Yeah, right, like he wasn't just waitin' for you to get drunk and start feelin' vengeful." Shane spat.

"I don't fuck drunk girls, asshole." Daryl spoke up. "That's for cops and losers."

"Man, you think you can take me? You want a piece of this?" Shane started to raise his voice now.

"Yeah, c'mon then, prick." Daryl said, throwing his arms up. The two men stepped in circles around you as you tried to keep a barrier between them.

"Yeah, come on then, pussy!" Shane shouted.

"Pussy? Nah, man. You're the coward, slidin' your dick in some vulnerable window when ya had a tight piece o' ass right here waitin' for ya every night!" Daryl yelled back.

"What is goin' on here?" Lori came in, eyes blazing between the three of you.

"Wha'd'ya waitin' for, man? There's your side piece, go on and get her!" Daryl said.

Shane lunged forward and you gripped around his torso tight, banking on the hope that he wouldn't hurt you to get past you, at least nit in front of her.

"Don't fuckin' talk about here like that!" Shane seethed.

"Yeah well ya sure didn't care 'bout me callin' your wife a tight piece of ass! I see where your priorities lie!"

You couldn't afford to get distracted with the details as you put all your focus and strength into holding on to Shane to prevent anyone from getting hurt. However, the Dixon made some valid points.

"Stop it, you two!" Lori begged.

"Hate to say it," you strained against Shane's strength, digging your feet into the dirt as his strong frame fought against you. "But I'm with Lori."

"Y'all need to calm down before--"

"Is everything okay?" Dale's voice sounded from behind Lori, cutting her off. Amy, Andrea, and Morales stood with him. Lori sighed and put her hand over her forehead.

Shane finally relented and you gratefully let go of him, turning to face the crowd of onlookers.

"What happened here?" Dale inquired.

"He was makin' a move on my wife." Shane panted, still coming down from the surge of adrenaline and rage.

You scoffed, gawking at his audacity. You glared at Lori for a moment, running your tongue over your teeth before you shook your head and chuckled.

"No, he brought me a drink because he felt bad for me, sleeping out here alone." You corrected.

"Why are you sleeping all the way out here?" Andrea asked, shaking her head with confusion.

"Yeah, it's really not safe. You should be up there with us." Amy added.

"Yeah, Shane, Lori." You cocked your head to the side, crossing your arms as you looked between the two of them. "Why am I sleeping all the way out here? Hm?"

Lori looked at you with wide, anxious eyes as Shane just shot daggers at you and Daryl. Lori looked back to everyone else, who seemed to be confused, except for Dale who had a knack for picking up on things.

"Maybe we should head back to camp. It's getting late." Dale suggested.

"I'm good." You rolled your eyes. "Thanks for ruining yet another peaceful moment." You said to Shane.

"I'm confused." Andrea spoke up.

"Oh, allow me to clarify." You smiled, sickeningly sweet. Lori shook her head at you, but you ignored her. "Shane, my husband, and Lori, have been keeping a secret from us. Care to share with the class?"

"(Y/N), man, come on. Why you gotta start problems?" Shane let out an exasperated sigh.

"No? Okay, allow me to speak on your behalf, then. My husband has been fucking Lori, who, if you guys weren't aware, is married to Shane's best friend, who he claims is dead." You said.

God, did that feel good.

Everyone looked stunned, save for Lori who just looked humiliated and mortified, and Shane, who was more pissed than anything else.

"Some leader, huh? A real honest guy." You added, just to add insult to injury. Salt in the open wound, if you will.

"Oh...kay... Why don't we just.." Dale was at a loss for words.

"Maybe (Y/N) can stay in the RV with us." Amy suggested.

"Yeah, I think that'd be just fine." Dale agreed.

"No need." You looked to Shane, smirking. "Daryl here has offered his tent."

Daryl shot you a look. He had no intentions of being your pawn in some twisted revenge scheme.

"You did?" Andrea asked.

Daryl nodded. "Yeah, told her she could have it 'til she figures somethin' else out."

"And you're gonna sleep... Where?" She wondered.

"Outside." He shrugged.

Shane scoffed and shook his head, hands rested on his hips in that police stance you had grown to hate. Your nostrils flared at him in disgust.

----

"Why'd ya do that?" Daryl asked. You were all back at camp now. He was grabbing some essentials from his tent to make room for you. "Make it like it was somethin' it ain't?"

"What do you mean? I told the truth. You offered your tent."

"Nah, you wanted to get under his skin." He shook his head at you as you stood with your bag over your shoulder and your dusty blanket balled up in your arms.

"I mean, yeah, but--"

"But nothin'. I ain't gon' be part of your revenge and I damn sure ain't gonna be no rebound dick to ride 'til ya feel better." He cut you off before he stormed away.

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max-levchin · 9 months

Text

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.”

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work.

It doesn’t.

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth.

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing.

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans.

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh.

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time.

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time.

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia.

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party.

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home.

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing.

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch.

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful.

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K.

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each.

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto.

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest.

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result.

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted.

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair.

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers.

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0) through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct:

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files.

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases.

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key.

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly.

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination.

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident.

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service.

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt.

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly.

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless.

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed.

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion.

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file.

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago.

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see.

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris.

Except it wasn’t completely clean.

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened.

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.”

RTFM indeed.

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed.

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event.

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now.

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email!

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mystery-salad · 2 months

Text

The world is safe now.

You tell yourself that as Zhaitan clings to a tower of decay, crumbling beneath its claws as the canons aim true. The shots hit, cheers raise as the dragon topples down. Falling from view through the miasma it created below. No one can hear it hit the ground over the relieved shouts of victory ringing across the airships. But everyone feels it in a resounding rumble that shouldn't have carried through the air like that. The celebrating falters, confusion rising but not fast enough to prepare for what follows. The shockwave hits like nothing you've ever felt. Everything goes dark as the screams begin.

The world is safe now, Orr is not.

You wake up in the rubble as survivors try to make sense of what happened. The dragon is dead, but no one accounted for where all the consumed magic had to go. No one planned for this despite generations of preparation. Perhaps there's a reason for the dragons, you hear murmurs through the tents. But you didn't come this far to call it quits, and one land riddled with a decaying radiation can't stop the mission. The contamination in your blood won't stop you.

The world is safe now. Orr is gone.

Mordremoth stares you down from within his mind. You're like a weed that won't die, small and foreign but resilient and ready to take everything. The odds are against you with the team sent away, you can't face the gaze of the dead like last time. They're safe at a distance, you have to hope they got far enough as you defy the odds and strike another dragon down.

The world is safe, but there's a catch.

Trahearne shudders as your mind returns to your body, as you look around in wonder that there isn't a shockwave like last time. He's so calm as he explains the truth of it, defying how terrified he is of dying, of asking a friend to do this and stand at ground zero once again. But you stand just as calm, picking up the blade and telling him to close his eyes. You hope he'll rest well, wherever his life takes him next. As the blade cuts through, you know it's real as the shockwave begins just like last time. You brace for impact as much as you can.

The world is safe now. The desert is gone.

It's almost tempting to let Balthazar handle the rest, let the god walk a path of destruction to each dragon, sparing yourself further damage. But his path leaves so much unnecessary devastation...so here you are alone with another dragon. Well, not completely alone now. You have Aurene, though you're still not sure if that's truly a blessing any more. The two of you corner Kralkatorrik, the perfect trap laid deep underground in old sunspear ruins.

The world is safe now, until the dragon takes a last stand.

Waking up in wreckage is becoming normal to you. When did that happen, when did the panic vanish? No time to think on it as new plans have to be laid out. You chase him down, you and your dragon, to kill her grandfather and save the world again. Setbacks are numerous. It's harder to work alone on this one, so many soldiers are ready to see it to the end with you. You tell them they don't know what they're asking for and send them away again. Aurene, still a child, fights the dragon's minions nearly overwhelmed as you get to his heart and strike. You've never seen the explosion from inside before. It's so bright.

The world is safe now. The island is gone.

Is it worth it all? It has to be, you tell yourself, as people celebrate your victories in a shrinking world. Refugees who have fled the fallout zones don't seem to agree, but at least they're alive right? And you know you're almost done. Jormag and Primordus, opposites and twins, rise together and somehow feel like childsplay after the last one. Perhaps it's because aurene is an equal to them now. You don't dare to think of the devastation that would be left if she were to die now. Thankfully you don't have to as the siblings tear each other apart.

The world is safe now. The mountains are gone.

No one has seen the final dragon in ages, hidden away deep underwater until you stumble into the truth while chasing a lesser threat. Soo Won was so gentle once, but the void ravages all. It feasts on the magic you released so willingly into the world, your devastations have paved the way for this chaos.

The world is safe now, for the void to reform.

You've survived so much despite the odds, held together by the very magic degrading your bones and poisoning your blood. The void pulls at those strings as it taunts you through the voice of the dragon who started it all. It's the hardest fight you've ever faced. As Aurene pumps you full of power to survive, you wonder if your death would bring destruction too in this moment. But it's left a mystery as Soo Won falls and the void fades. There's a moment of peacefulness you've never felt before, the grandmother hanging on long enough to comfort her granddaughter. But she can't prevent the state of her death. The jade sea shatters beneath your feet as she dies.

The world is safe now. But how much of it is left?

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 fan submission #quaille #hiiiiii this is specifically about quaille's au #where each dragon's death leaves a monumental magic explosion and essentially #a radiation zone that reflects their element #orr kills and revives and degrades everything in it like a recording played too many times over #maguuma strangles itself with too much growth choking out its own light #the desert crackles with an electricity that consumes anything that holds life #the mountains rage against themselves with deadly storms that tear apart anyone who gets caught in the middle #the jade sea has shattered and flooded cantha #quaille is a mess of these aftershocks from within #was it worth the mission?

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forgeofthenine · 6 months

Text

Random NSFW headcanons about Zevlor

I was trying to work today and all I could think about was this man and what he's like in bed, so now I'm sharing it with everyone else. I have more headcanons about both him and Dammon if people want them.

General NSFW under the cut, all of its pretty tame but let me know if I need to put up a content warning

So, to start off with, no one out there not even Larian can convince me that Zevlor doesn't have experience. This man is at least twice my age and quite literally hot as hell. Unfortunately though, during and after the fall of Elturel into Avernus, I just don't think Zevlors even had time to think about personal pleasures like that. It's hard to get laid when your group of refugees keep trying to win a speedrun of the fastest ways to die in Faerun.

It might take a while to finally bed this man, but when you do it's well worth the effort. Zevlor is such a gentle lover in all respects, including sex, and he always makes your pleasure a priority. He's the kind of guy to forget all about himself because he's so focused on trying to get you off.

As for kinks, body worship is a big one. He loves to worship your body, no matter how you look. It's all soft kisses and gentle caresses over any skin that's revealed to him. The little murmurs of praise muffled against you are so precious, and darling Zevlor will spend hours reminding you what you mean to him if you don't stop him sooner.

Worship him too, let him know how much you love his body. It's so worth it. Tell Zevlor how strong he is, how much you appreciate the way he protects you, call this man handsome. The way his brow furrows at first before he melts under your combined words and touch is a sight to see. Kissing over each and every infernal ridge and bump he has while saying this is a sure way to bring Zevlor right to the edge.

Speaking of his infernal traits, I can see him worrying somewhat if his partner isn't also a tiefling, for the first time at least. Mostly because those infernal traits definitely spread to tieflings dicks too-

Zevlors not small by any means, he's particularly girthy and anyone would need a bit of prep and warming up before they take him, but the best part are the ridges. You know how some sex toys advertise themselves as 'ribbed for her pleasure' and such? They're just describing Zevlors cock. Like all male tieflings, the entire length has small but noticeable ridges and bumps, and the head seems to come to a slightly more tapered tip than usual.

Despite how he warns you that his stamina isn't what it used to be, don't be fooled, Zevlor will happily fuck you until you both see stars.

Afterwards, when you're all tired and happy while lying against his chest, is one of the only times you'll hear him purr. It's such a deep, low baritone you feel it more than you hear it, but it's there nonetheless. That, mixed with his fingers brushing up and down your bare skin, is a sure fire recipe for sleep.

Overall, Zevlor is one of the best lovers out there. Attentive, sweet, and with killer anatomy, who could pass up such a catch? I'd literally kill for this man-

#bg3 smut #baldurs gate 3 smut #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 zevlor #baldurs gate 3 zevlor #zevlor x reader #zevlor x tav #zevlor x you #bg3 x reader smut #bg3 x reader #baldurs gate 3 x reader

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in1-nutshell · 3 months

Note

Hi! I wanted to ask if you could write the TFA autobots and elite guard reacting to finding a batmobile Bubby on earth?

Bubby was lose during the war and is the around the same age as Ratchet and Ultra magnus. And maybe have a little romance with Ratchet.

Thanks! :)

This is something new! Batmobile Buddy it is! One of the best detectives on Cybertron! If this isn't what you want, please let me know.

Hope you enjoy!

Bot Buddy who's alt mode is a Batmobile with Ratchet, Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime, and the Jettwins

SFW, Platonic, slight romantic, Cybertronain reader

TFA

Buddy was one of Cybertrons best detectives during the war.

She was hailed with finding many lost Autobots and catching Decepticons off guard with her swiftness and skilled martial artistry.

She had some teaching from Master Yoketron but decided to leave the dojo to help High Command in the war.

Buddy met Ultra Magnus as his personal bodyguard.

The old one had taken leave to get repairs and some of the back up guards had been called into the draft.

Buddy was personally called after Magnus had heard of her reputation.

Even though the job was temporary Buddy took her job seriously in guarding Ultra Magnus.

They bonded during that time from the near-death situations to potential strategy plans suggested.

“Ultra Magnus.”--Buddy

“Buddy? What seems to be the trouble?”--Magnus

“If I may be so bold…”--Buddy

“You may.”--Magnus

“Is it wise to move the troops in this sector? We would be leaving this flank completely unguarded.”--Buddy

“We would need to take that risk.”--Magnus

“But there is also a chance that the assault team could come in. We have a refugee camp in that area, it will be vulnerable.”--Buddy

“Hmm… you are right. We will need to alert the troops at once.”--Magnus

“Absolutely, sir.”--Buddy

Magnus had offered Buddy a spot in the Elite Guard once the knew guard had arrived, but she politely declined in return for wanting to go back and do her detective work.

The two did stay in contact, especially once the number of hostages they were finding grew in numbers.

It was during one of these cases that Buddy met Ratchet.

Buddy had returned another group of Autobots to a nearby relief camp.

Buddy wanted to know the status of each patient admitted.

“How are they?”--Buddy

“Sweet Alpha Trion! Don’t you know better to scare a field tech?!”--Ratchet

“Sorry, I just wanted to know if the Autobots are okay.”--Buddy

“If you don’t mind waiting a couple of hours, then of course.”--Ratchet

A couple hours later, Ratchet is wrapping up everything up when he sees Buddy taking a nap on a chair nearby.

“You really waited here for all this time?”--Ratchet

Of course, so… do I have to wait more?”--Buddy

“Lucky you, I have all the reports. They are all going to be fine. Some better than others, but they’ll live.”--Ratchet

“That’s good. That’s good.”--Buddy

“Why did you wait?”--Ratchet

“I like to know whether my work was good or not.”--Buddy

“Really. Is that all?”--Ratchet

“…Maybe…”--Buddy

“You kids and you’re words.”--Ratchet

“Hey, I’m your age!”--Buddy

“You don’t act like it!”--Ratchet

“…”--Buddy

“…”--Ratchet

“Hahahahahah!”—Buddy and Ratchet

That was where their friendship began.

The two kept in communication after Buddy left the camp.

They talked about their daily lives every now and then. There would be rare times when the two would be able to meet up in person.

Everything was fine.

Until Buddy went radio silent.

Ratchet had tried to reach Buddy multiple times, even going as far as picking up some favor from the higher ups.

No one had any notation on Buddy.

Timeskip to Earth

Optimus was tired.

He had been dealing with Sentinel’s attitude all day and now he had to babysit the Jettwins.

Why?

Sentinel had promised them to visit the Plant, but he had bailed out at the last minute… and Optimus was at the mercy of the twins ‘puppy dog’ optics.

When the three of them came into the dark Plant. A single light was turned on in the middle of the common room.

“Where are the others?”--Jetstorm

“Yes! Where? Bumblebee told us about this video game—”--Jetfire

“Wait!”--Optimus

“What?”—Jetfire and Jetstorm

“I just remember something… the Team is out on patrol.”--optimus

“Then why is there a light on.”--Jetfire

“That’s because… we aren’t alone.”—Optimus

Optimus grabs his axe while the twins power up.

The light flickered until it finally turned off.

None of them are ready for the sudden ambush. They thrashed around feeling kicks and chops to their armor before they felt stasis cuffs on their servos and pedes.

The lights turned on.

There was a stranger who looked like a Decepticon with their dark colored paint job, but the red Autobot badge begged to differ.

The bot came over to the Prime and looked at his Autobot badge then turned and saw the twins’ badges.

Silently the bot clicked a button.

The cuffs came loose.

“Sorry about that. You can’t be too careful now a days.”--Buddy

“Who are you?”--Optimus

“And how did you do that!”--Jetfire

“That was so cool!”--Jetstorm

“Do you have powers too?! What powers do you have?!”--Jettwins

“Woah, woah, woah calm, down kiddos. I’m a detective from the Autobot High Command. The names Buddy.”--Buddy

“Detective? How come I’ve never heard of you?”--OPtimus

“Special ops. I look out for the bots who suddenly go missing and no one wants to look for them. I’m the one they call to look for them or I find out and go looking for them.”--Buddy

“Oooohhhh!”--Jettwins

“Who did you come looking for?”--Optimus

“I take it you’re Optimus Prime.”--Buddy

“Yes?”--Optimus

“I came to look for you and your team.”--Buddy

“Oh! Who called?”--Optimus

“… A dear friend of mine was on your team. I didn’t get a chance to tell him what happen on my pass assignment… I found out after some digging. Its hard to figure out space bridge engineering when you don’t know a lick about it.”--Buddy

“Who was your friend?”--Optimus

“A brilliant field tech named Ratchet.”--Buddy

“The Doc-Bot!?”--Jettwins

“You know him?”--Buddy

“He is our field tech along with our friend Sari.”--Optimus

“What’s a Sari?”—Buddy

That was when the rest of Team Prime had decided to show up.

Now it was understandable that the Team was on edge seeing a dark armored bot looming over the three Autobots on the ground.

But one of them quickly gets everyone to lower their weapons.

“Put those weapons down, that’s an Autobot!”--Ratchet

“An Autobot? They look like a Decepticon to me!”--Bumblebee

“Put it down!”--Ratchet

“You know them?”--Prowl

“Yes!”--Ratchet

“Ratchet!?”--Buddy

“Buddy!”--Ratchet

Buddy ran to Ratchet hugging new dents into him.

“Oh my—”--Prowl

“That bot did the impossible!”--Bulkhead

“She’s hugging Ratchet! And he’s hugging back!”--Bumblebee

“Shut it!”—Buddy and Ratchet

The two Autobot looking at each other before laughing.

“…Prime I’m scared.”--Bumblebee

“Me too—I mean don’t be rude.”--Optimus

#transformers #transformers x reader #maccadam #bot buddy #tfa optimus prime #tfa ratchet #tfa ultra magnus #tfa jettwins #tfa x reader #tfa x platonic reader #tfa ratchet x reader

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kilojulietsierra · 2 months

Text

You Promised - 1940s James "Bucky" Barnes x OFC

I LOVE 1940s Bucky so much and so I wrote this!

Summary: Bucky finally wins the favor of the pretty new girl in the neighborhood and together they make the most of the week before he ships out. Bucky makes her a promise the night before he leaves, and he intends to keep it.

Warnings: all my work is considered 18+, shameless flirting the both of them lol, fluff, angst,talk of war, there’s a tiny altercation in a dancehall, protective Bucky, allusions to smut, allusions to premarital sex which was frowned upon, nightmare mention, minor ofc is a refugee, pre serum Steve makes a couple appearances, happy ending

~~~

Bucky had seen her a handul of times around the neighborhood. Had done a bit of chatting up the neighbors to learn the little about her he could. She was new, relatively, to their block. Mrs. Martin in his building had said she remembered her folks before they had moved away, the girl had just been a baby then. He'd heard her talking to Frankie at the deli and her accent wasn't from around here, she'd grown up somewhere else. Mr and Mrs Lewis had even told him, just the other day when he'd stopped to help change their tire, that her family had moved back in to take care of a sick grandmother. Her mothers or fathers side they didn't know, but they lived in the place next to them and she was "such a sweet girl James, she'd straighten you right up."

Today she was walking out of the grocery a paper sack in one arm and a small stack of library books in the other. He smiled. Tis was his chance and he was more than happy to take it. Part of him, admittedly the slgihtly shallow part, wished he was in his uniform or at least dressed better than his work clothes.

That didn't stop him from picking up his pace and cutting across the street to bump into her. "You sure got your hands full. Here let me help." He ducked his head to catch her eye and spare her an easy grin as he gestured towards the sack of groceries.

Her eyes were a pale, sea glass green and they were sharp and skeptical as she appraised him. "I can manage, thank you though."

"No, not a chance, my ma would never forgive me." He deftly snagged the bag from her, grinning wider. "Besides, I think we live across the street from eachother. It's Lettie right?"

Those pretty green eyes narrowed at him, her brow furrowed "It is…"

"James," He settled her groceries in one hand and extended his other to her, "Everyone calls me Bucky though."

"Strapping young man like you can't get them to stop?" She quipped even as she held her hand up for him to take, "Your teeth don't seem that bad to me." One single brow arched and her face was passive as she held her books tight and walked on down the street. Not waiting for him to follow.

Bucky smiled wide as he fell in step beside her, keeping his stride slow and leisurely. "Cute," He looked down at her but she didn't look back. Unphased he elaborated, "Buchanan is my middle name, family name."

"Ohhh," She looked at him finally, tucked her sleek red hair behind her ear as she turned to walk backwards eying him in a way he couldn't quite place. "You're the Barnes boy. Mrs. Lewis told me to watch out for you." She looked pleased with herself, thinking she'd got some sort of upperhand.

Still grinning Bucky picked up his pace, just so he could step past her and lean down close and say, "Funny, she told me the same thing about you." And he continued on ahead of her biting his bottom lip and waiting.

"Now, just a minute, what is that supposed to mean?" She jogged to catch up to him again.

He didn't respond just smiled, kept walking, and threw her a lazy wink as they walked on down the street.

At the next corner she turned on him again, "What's your angle Barnes?"

"What angle doll?" He countered her overly formal use of his name with one that earned him a slght pink flush to her cheeks.

"Just a nice neighbor boy, carryin' my groceries? What is it? All the other girls in Brooklyn had their fill?" She shifted the books in her arms and Bucky saw one was a Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

"No angle," He nodded his head for her to continue and went out on a limb as he put his free hand at her shoulder to turn her and keep her moving, "Okay, that's not entirely true," He nudged her forward again smiling at the triumphant look on her face when she spun on him. "I just mean, that you are prettier than any girl I've ever seen and I've been dying for a chance to steal just a little bit of time with you." He slowed to a stop in front of what he knew was her building and grinned when she continued on a few steps before she noticed.

Her eyes were calculating and predatory as she scrutinized him. Looking for the angle, as she had said.

He noticed then the second book was a copy of the Hobbit he'd borrowed himself years ago.

"Alright, I'll bite, a little bit of time for what exactly?" She looked almost unimpressed, with herself, for asking.

Licking his lips Bucky smiled and took a step closer so she would have to tilt her chin up to look him in the eye. Which she did, standing her ground, and he loved it. "To ask if I could take you out one night this week."

"Just one night huh?" Her face didn't change as she said it

Was she really…? Bucky faltered the slightest bit, cocked his head to the side as he tried to figure out the real meaning in her words. He pushed his luck. "Every night if you'd let me."

She smiled. The barest tilt of her lips and Bucky felt ten feet tall. He was in love with this girl already, or would be if he wasn't careful.

"How about we just start with tomorrow night?" Her face softened but her eyes kept the spark in them.

"Done." Bucky didn't hesitate. "There is one catch though."

She rolled her eyes and then they both had to step away from the stoop as one of her neighbors exited the building. Both of them mumbled their apologies before she continued, "Always is."

"Not anything bad." Bucky assured her. "See i've got this friend, my best friend really, he's a great guy but shy."

Lettie nodded, eyes skeptical again. "So you actually want me go out with this friend?"

"God no!" The moment the words left his mouth he cringed, but the sting of his own embarrasment faded when she chuckled and ducked her eyes to the sidewalk. He caught a peak at the tip of her tongue as it wetted her lips and his confidence came back, "I'm keeping you all to myself sweetheart, trust me."

Her cheeks were pink when she looked back up at him and she was biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too wide. "So, this friend…"

"Steve. Great guy. He just, needs a little push out of his shell if you know what I mean." Bucky almost felt bad, but God help him he desperatley wanted to find his pal a girl. "Was just thinkin' maybe you had a friend, we could make it a double date."

Lettie's eyes were skeptical again and she glanced behind her before she responded, "A friend that likes shy boys or a friend that likes any boy?"

When he caught her meaning Bucky licked his lips and looked her up and down, "Oh sweetheart, surely you don't have friends like that? I had you figgured for a good girl." He was going to fucking marry this girl, God help him.

She flushed a darker shade of pink and laughed, rolled her eyes again but settled her greens back on his blues after a heartbeat. Lettie licked her lips and looked him up and down herself. "Most of the time." Her eyes locked on his mouth as Bucky sunk his teeth into his bottom lip for a fraction of a second.

Unable to stop himself Bucky hummed approvingly and hunted for her gaze again before he spoke, "Then why don't you bring one of your nice, sweet friends with you tomorrow night and she can keep Steve company while you and me see what kinda trouble we can get into?"

Lettie answered by taking back her brown paper bag full of groceries and taking the first few steps up to the front of the building before she turned and said. "You better be right here by seven tomorrow night, Barnes." She settled him with a look which softened after a second. "Earlier if you want to make a good impression."

"Yes ma'am." His cheeks hurt from smiling and he shoved his hands in his pockets. She was almost to the door before he called after her, "Hey sweetheart," she was grinning when she turned around, her face still skeptical but in a teasing sort of way now. Bucky took a few steps backwards towards his side of the street, "Wear somethin' you can dance in."

~~~

Bucky was outside her building at 6:45pm, fighting the urge to smoke a cigarette while he waited.

The front door opened at 6:50pm and Lettie poked her head out, "Why Mr. Barnes, I'm proud." She sounded snarky but she was smiling as Bucky jogged up the steps to meet her. She pushed the door open wider and waved him in.

He stepped right up in front of her and took the door, looking over her he sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. "Well hello to you too doll." She looked so pretty he had to force his eyes to meet hers. "You look gorgeous."

She rolled her eyes but blushed that rosy pink color that he liked. "You look pretty sharp yourself."

He'd worn his uniform. Shined his boots and everything. "

That'll help." She added cryptically as she started up the stairs.

Bucky paused at the bottom, "Help with what?" Lettie bounced back down a couple stairs until they were eye to eye. "Help convince papa you're a fine young man that's gonna take good care of me."

"Oh," Bucky felt a rush roll through him as she grabbed his hand. He used the hold to keep her in place as he held her gaze intenesly and added, "I'm gonna take real' good care of ya sweetheart."

Her father had been nice enough, intimidating but Bucky had won him over quickly. Her mother was a looker with the same red hair as Lettie. A younger sister that he'd seen poking her head around the corner to sneak a peak had the same pretty green eyes and looked like she'd be a world of trouble herself in a few years. If the way Lettie and her mother had both scolded the younger girl and sent her scurrying was any inclination.

"I'm impressed." Lettie said once they were back down on the street.

"Already?" Bucky teased and laughed when she playfully shoved him towards traffic. "Kidding." He tugged her close and looked her over, "Thought springing your folks on me was gonna send me runnin'?"

She didn't answer but that was answer enough. Bucky picked up her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Lettie smiled and rolled her eyes even as she let his lips linger. He liked that little bit of attitude mixed with that soft and sweet. He liked it a lot.

"We should uh, we should go. I told Isaline we would meet her at the station. I wasn't sure where we were going." Lettie seemed the slightest bit flustered but her eyes were still bright.

Bucky smiled, wrapped her hand in the crook of his elbow and led her off down the street. "So is this the nice friend or the really nice friend." He coughed out a laugh as she smacked him in the chest.

"Isaline is a sweetheart, she's a little shy herself but only, well, you'll see."

When he watched her greet her friend at the station the rapid chattering in a different language caught him off guard. He stood back, a little awkward, but with an easy, charming smile on his face.

"James this is Isaline, Isa this is James, or Bucky as he somehow prefers to be called." Lettie introduced them with a big smile.

The friend was pretty and Letties comment made more sense when he heard how heavily accented her English was. On the train the girls sat and chatted while Bucky stood, one hand on the rail and listened as they went back and forth between English and French. As they left the train Bucky grabbed Lettie's elbow softly and leaned into her ear, "Aren't you just a treat?"

The girl with him blushed a bright red but smiled, "What do you mean?"

"You speak French?"

"My family lived in Montreol for most of my childhood." Lettie lowered her voice, "Isaline's family fled France a couple years ago, before…" Lettie trailed off.

Bucky nodded, "Brave girl." He whispered back before he wrapped Letties hand through his arm again. Isa and Lettie linking arms and letting Bucky lead them down the street to the little dancehall he liked best. Steve would like this girl, even if she was shy, she was pretty for sure, a killer smile and brave enough to escape the Nazis. Right up his best friends alley.

~~~

Steve was waiting for them out front. Standing off to the side, hands in his pockets, wearing that same old jacket. Bucky had to grin. He whistled then called out, "Hey punk, over here!"

When Bucky introdruced him to Lettie and Isa Steve was ever the gentleman. Then as Isa rattled something off in French to Lettie, Bucky and Steve exchanged a look. Steve furrowed his brow at his best friend, Bucky just smiled and shrugged.

Lettie chuckled and then linked her arm through Bucky's, whcih pleased him greatly, as she addressed Steve. "She wants me to tell you that she's sorry her English isn't so good, but that she'd like it very much if you would help her practice some tonight. Preferably while she's running her fingers through your hair." Isa giggled beside her friend and Bucky outright laughed.

Steve gulped as Bucky clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him towards the door with the music spilling out. "What're you laughing at Buck?"

Bucky laughed again as Isa hooked her arm in Steve's and began to drag him forward at a jog. "I think we're both in trouble tonight pal." He felt a pinch in his side as he laughed again and turned to tip his gaze down to Lettie, "What was that for doll?" With his same easy grin he walked her towards the line to get in, his pace a slow kind of swagger. Feeling good in his uniform with a gorgeous girl on his arm.

"Isa is not trouble." She defended her friend, "She's just... flirtacious. It's 'cause she's French."

"I'll say." Bucky laughed again, falling in line behind the flirty French girl and Steve. While they waited Bucky ducked down to whisper in her ear, "What would a guy have to do for you to whisper to him in French and play with his hair? Hmm?"

Lettie rolled her eyes and flicked the bill of his cap, "He'd have to take me on at least two more dates."

Bucky smirked and raised his brows as he straightend his cap. In his head he counted out the days until he shipped out. "I think I can make that happen." "

Oh do you?" Lettie smirked as they came to the door, "I think I'll be the one that decides that Mr. Barnes."

He kept smiling as he paid for the four of them to get in, "Y'know, technically, it's Sargent Barnes."

Her cheeks were rosy from her permanent smirk as she shook her head, "Whatever you say Bucky." She teased him, not giving him the satisfaction of acting impressed.

With one hand on her back he guided her through the door behind Steve and Isaline. Once she was in front of him he leaned in to whisper beside her ear again, "You're just a little firecracker aren't you?"

There was a brief moment where she halfstepped, intentionally causing him to bump into her back as he followed her and on reflex he set a hand at her waist to steady them both. WIth him close Lettie glanced over her shoulder and gave him a look, "I thought I was a treat?"

Bucky liked the way she felt just barely pressed against him and the way her waist fit so perfectly in his hand. He smiled, a little mischevious and leaned in so close his nose brushed her hair, "Girl can be both. Perfect combination if you ask me." He caught the way she blushed and smiled wide just before she looked away from him and it was doing dangerous things to his ego.

~~~

Lettie knew she wasn't the best dancer but she had been excited. Impatient even to let Bucky take her out onto the floor. It hadn't taken him long and they'd quickly abandoned their friends in the corner to camp out on the dancefloor. They danced song after song until the band took a break, She was warm and a little breathless when she had nodded and let Bucky pull her towards the back of the hall for something cold to drink.

She stood a little behind Bucky while he spoke with a server behind the bar and busied herself trying to spy across the room at Isa and Steve. Neither of them had ran away yet, which based on what Bucky had told her while they danced was an improvement. She hadn't seen them out on the floor even once, but it looked like Steve had a bit of a pink hue to his cheeks which made Lettie laugh to herself.

"Hey honey, you gonna give anyone else a go tonight?"

"Excuse me?" She turned towards the unfamiliar voice.

"You heard me sweetie. You been lettin' that pretty boy hog you all night. Think I should get a turn, huh?"

The disgust on her face was evident when she spat back, "I think you should quit callin' me names and beat it."

"You little s…" The mans hand was a blur of motion but it froze midair when Buckys hand caught him by the wrist.

"That's a real bad idea." Bucky said calm as can be as he held an iron grip on the man with his left hand and reached towards Lettie with his right. He twisted the mans wrist just enough to cause some discomfort and push him back.

"You outta put muzzle on your bitch there." The man snarled even as Bucky twisted his arm further.

Before Bucky could retalliate though Lettie was pushing past him, "You outta put a bag over your head so the rest of us ain't gotta suffer that ugly mug."

"Okay doll, that's enough." Bucky dropped the mans wrist in favor for catching Lettie around the waist and pulling her back, spinning her around behind him once again. He saw the motion out of the corner of his eye and groaned, "You're killin' me." He caught the other mans sloppy haymaker easily and twisted him around with it, pinning it at what looked to be an extremely uncomfortable angle. He shoved the man back towards his group of friends, "You boys, better sort your pal out there." Bucky gestured to the still fuming, stumbling, loudmouth and then turned back to Lettie

"Nuh-uh." Bucky shook his head as he pushed her back by the hip, "Leave it doll, let's go." He reached for the two cokes he'd bought and gently ushered her back from the scene of the incident.

"You're just gonna let him…"

"I…" Bucky drew out the syllable to emphasize a point, "Am keepin' you outta trouble."

Lettie chewed on her lip, not noticing the way Bucky was figinting back a grin, "You should've let me…"

"Let you what doll? Sock him?' Bucky glanced over his shoulder then back to her, "Was gonna do it myself till you went tearin' after him like a prize fighter."

The scowl on her face softened slightly and Bucky tilted his head to one side, smiling down at her, "Sweetheart, I think you did enough damage without either one of us puttin' hands on him." He tugged her closer, let his arm wrap all the way around her waist and she relaxed into him almost immediatly.

"I'm sorry James." She finally, had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

"Don't apologize, I kinda liked it." Bucky threw her a wink and held her gaze a beat, "My little firecracker."

Lettie scoffed, purposfully ignoring the way he had used 'my'. She leaned back enough to pluck a Coke bottle from his grasp and take a sip. "I kinda liked it too." She mumbled against the mouth of the glass bottle.

"What's that?" Bucky leaned closer so he could hear.

She sighed deep and stood up a little to repeat herself in his ear, "I kinda liked how you… ya know…" Lettie trailed off not sure how to explain that she had found his quiet, confindent, control of the situation so attractive. The way he could have clearly swung on the troublemaker but instad chose to use his brain as well as his muscles.

He must've seen it in her eyes, or heaven forbid read her mind, because Bucky pulled back with a shit eating grin, "Oh really?" He licked his lips and gave her a nearly inappropriate look, "I'm glad." He all but whispered against her temple and followed it by a careful press of his lips. When he pulled back she was grinning too and they left it at that.

~~~

For awhile the four of them had sat at the little corner table and chatted. Bucky had kicked Steve out of his chair, forcing him to go and sit beside Isa so Lettie could sit next to him. Soon he had his arm draped over the back of Letties chair and was smiling contently as the girls chatted across the table.

After awhile Bucky had all but bullied his pal into taking the pretty French girl out for a spin on the dancefloor. Lettie had giggled beside him as Isaline had nearly drug Steve along behind her. Together they sat there, watching from the sidelines as their friends danced, or tried to.

"Gosh is that how clumsy I looked?" Lettie laughed hiding it behind her hand.

'Not a chance," Bucky ducked his head to meet her gaze, "You looked like a dream doll."

She turned that pretty pink color and couldn't hold his eye. Bucky chuckled, "How come you can be so gorgeous, so quick, square up with a guy twice your size without thinkin' twice," He paused and reached a careful hand out to tip her face back to his, "And still get so flustered when I say somethin' nice?"

Lettie bit her lip and shook her head a little, eyes dropping closed for a moment when he stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "I don't know."

All he could do was smile. When he caught sight of the others coming back he gave her a soft smile and a wink.

~~~

The four of them had split up at the station, Bucky once again nearly forcing Steve to walk Isa home, giving Bucky and Lettie the chance to walk home together. Alone.

She had ahold of his elbow again, only this time she had both arms wrapped around his and they laughed and teased eachother as they walked. At the front steps to her builing Lettie's heart dropped slightly and she took a fortifying breath. She turned to face Bucky and asked outright, "You're leaving soon aren't you?"

Though it might have caught him off guard he didn't show it. He only took her hand in his and nodded, "My company ships out Friday."

Lettie nodded, looked intently at his hand that engulfed hers, warm, rough to the touch but gentle. She put on a smile, forced but not insincere, "I had a really great time tonight Bucky."

That brough his smile back as well. He picked her hand up to his lips and kissed the top of her thumb, "So did I."

SHe studied him intently, eyes searching for some answer he was more than willing to let her find. He stood there patiently, with his easy grin firmly in place while he waited, hand still holding hers.

"Even though I kinda tried to start a fight?" She chuckled sheepishly.

HIs grin doubled, "Oh especially since you tried to start a fight."

She swatted at his chest and he took it in stride, even tugged her back to him after.

"So you'd consider, maybe, taking me out again?" Lettie was fighting back nerves that evaporated when she saw the way his face cracked into a wide, honest smile.

"Sweeheart, you have no idea how much I'd like that." He took that as a sign that he could get away with wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her against him. "Can I come fetcch you tomorrow? We can get a bite to eat, just you and me this time?"

Lettie was beaming when she nodded, "Sounds perfect."

The way she was looking up at him, matched with the way she had all but melted into him, gave him hope but she was a handful and he was a gentleman. So, he asked, "Lettie," he tipped her chin up with his knuckle and looked her in the eye, "Can I kiss you goodnight?"

"Yes please."

Bucky had to remind himself to keep it short and sweet. The way all the air left her in a rush as he pressed his lips to hers drew him in. He'd meant it to be a quick little peck, empitome of a gentleman, but then her hands had reached for either side of his jaw and he couldn't hold back the happy hum in the back of his throat. He swiped his lips over hers again and spread a hand wide over her back to press her even closer to him.

When he finally forced himself to pull away he saw her eyes still closed and her lips still parted and couldn't help himself. "Look at you." He murmered to her, catching the way her eyes fluttered open only for her to moan and let them fall closed once more as he allowed himself one final kiss. Electricity trilling down his spine as she captured his bottom lip between hers as they pulled away the second time.

Lettie was trying to catch her breath and her eyes were wide and lit from within.

"See you tomorrow beautiful." Bucky tipped her face gently so he could press a kiss to the corner of her eye, not trusting himself to kiss her properly again.

WIth a happy hum she let her hands slide over his shoulders and down to squeeze his biceps as she smiled up at him sweetly. "Can't wait."

Bucky held the door to her building open for her and returned her silly little wave as she scampered up the stairs. He stood there unitil he heard her door upstairs open and close. "Neither can I." He whispered to himself, with the shake of his head, as he let the door swing closerd behind him.

~~~

"You're too good for the likes of him Lettie, you mark my words."

"Sal!" Bucky scoffed, "C'mon, you've known me my whole life"

"Exactly!" The old man pointed at him accusingly as he set another bottle of Coke down.

Bucky shook his head, offended, "Don't do me dirty like that Sal, c'mon." The man behind the counter laughed loudly as he walked away, sharing a conspiritorial wink with Lettie.

Still shaking his head Bucky shifted to face her on his stool, "You might have everyone fooled, but I know better."

Lettie scoffed, "Oh, you know better? Do you? A few dates and you've got me all figured out, is that it?" She propped her elbow besdie her plate and arched her brow, waiting.

"Workin' on it." Bucky grinned, reached down to grab the leg of her stool and drag her closer. It made her giggle and he loved it, "You're no angel darlin' but you are definitly too good for me."

That surprised her and she grinned even wider, licking her lips she spoke softly, "Well then aren't you lucky?"

"Very lucky." Bucky leaned in to kiss her cheek.

"You knock that off Barnes! People eat here."

Lettie snorted out a laugh, as Bucky jokingly growled, "Sal, you're killin' me here." He caught the way Lettie was looking at him out the corner of her eye, "Don't you enourage him doll." She snorted out an even less lady like laugh and went back to her food. "You're both killin' me."

Bucky snuck a hand out to tickle her ribs earning him a squeal of laughter and a hard swat to his forearm. "Behave yourself." She scolded him, jabbing a finger in his direction.

Bucky surrendered, hands in the air and everything. "Okay, okay, best behavior." He tossed her a wink as he went back to his own plate. Both of them fighting back smiles, cheeks aching.

Sal walked back by after a minute and gave Bucky a hard look, "I take it back, this girl, I think she's good for you." He smacked Bucky hard, affectionantly but hard, on the shoulder and turned to move on down to another couple at the end of the counter.

Bucky caught Letties eye and kept his voice low, "Oh, she's very good for me."

Lettie flushed bright red and hid her face in her free hand, "You are the absolute worst." She hissed back at him.

He furrowed his brow, asbsentmindedly twirling his fork between his fingers, "Really? Pretty sure that's not what you ..."

"James Buchanan, I swear..." She left her threat to trail off in the static between them. Her face flushed and Bucky grinned like the cat that ate the canary.

"Okay, like I said, best behavior." He left it at that, only reaching for the hand she had been hiding behind and tugging it to him so he could press a kiss to her palm. Then with a happy, contented smile he remained on his best behavior through the rest of lunch.

When the two of them left, Bucky left a little bigger tip on the counter than he needed to and tucked Lettie into his side as they headed back out onto the street. Neither of them paying attention to the looks that trailed after them. The group of girls in a booth that looked longingly at the handsome young man and the open and obvious adoration for the girl that wasn't them. The older couple that shared a knowing, reminiscint smile, and Sal who shook his head with a chuckle as he cleared their plates away.

Out on the street Bucky and Lettie continued down the sidewalk, his arm over her shoulders and their fingers laced together.

"Buck?" "

Yeah doll."

"What happens while your gone?" She tried to keep her voice light.

Bucky swallowed thickly and did the same, "Told you, we're gonna go over there, kick HItlers ass, and be back in time for you..." He paused mid stride to spin her around and pull her back so they stood face to face, "To take me ice skating for Christmas."

Lettie rolled her eyes in that way she knew he liked. "For me to take you, huh?"

"Well, we already established I don't know how, so... yeah. You're gonna have to hold onto me all night." He fought back a grin as he walked into her, pushing her to step backwards, "I'm probably gonna make a fool out of myself, hanging on you the whole time." He made his point by wrapping his arms around her tightly, still keeping them walking down the street. Lettie trusting him completely as she continued stepping backwards.

"James, I'm serious." She looked up at him with bright but serious eyes. He returned her gaze and slowed them to a stop at a cross walk. His sharp blue eyes left hers to watch the traffic go by for a moment. "We talked about this Lettie." He looked back to her, kept her wrapped up tight. "

You hardly know me."

"Don't matter." His answer was so immediate and certain it took a little of the fight out of her. "You're my girl. We both know this ain't..." Bucky trailed off. For once he was the one at a loss for words, "Don't matter it's only been a week. It's never been like this for me before Lettie."

With a heavy sigh she wrapped her arms around his neck and relaxed into him. "Me either."

"So, you'll wait for me?" He gazed down at her lovingly, hopefully. His eyes nearly fluttering closed at the feel of her nails scratching through the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

"You know I will. " She smiled up at him just as in love, even if neither of them had said those words just yet. "As long as you promise to do your damndest to come home to me."

HIs smile turned into a smirk, "Such a mouth on you." He kissed her before she could say anything back, being so bold as to swipe his tongue into her mouth right there in the middle of the sidewalk. She nipped at his bottom lip as he pulled back and he let her draw him in for another slow kiss. "I promise Doll, I'm comin' home to you."

They stood that way for a moment longer, more unspoken promises being shared in the silence. Lettie was the one that broke them out of it, "You, better let me go, so I have time to go round up a friend for Steve and get ready."

"You look good in what you're wearin'." Bucky almost pouted, carefully bunching up the fabric of her skirt in one hand.

"Thank you, but" She swatted his hand away, "You promised to wear your uniform for me tonight, so I have to go get dolled up." She winked when she used a play on his favorite pet name for her, "So those other girls out there don't get the wrong idea."

"Don't see how they could when I can't keep my hands off you." Bucky offered smoothly as he dropped a short, teasing kiss to her lips. "But, you know I love it when you get all done up for me." His eyes were downright sinful when he looked her up and down and he smiled at the blush on her cheeks. "You sure you're okay meeting us there?"

"I'm sure." She patted him on the chest, took a moment to enjoy the feel of the hard earned muscle under his shirt and then dropped her hands when Bucky gave her a look. "Don't you..."

"Wasn't gonna say a word." He bit his bottom lip and looked her up and down. Unabashedly remembering how her hands had felt on his bare skin, the slight red marks she had left behind. Bucky slowly backed away before he got himself in anymore trouble.

"Hey Sarge!" Lettie called after him, teaasing him again, "Forgetting something?"

WIth a laugh and a shake of his head he joined her back on the corner of the sidewalk, and with a hand on each hip he pulled her into another kiss. "I'll see you tonight."

~~~

It was too bad Isaline hadn't been the girl for Steve, it turns out they were just two different types of shy. Isa was shy becuase she was new to the States and still didn't feel completely at home. Steve was shy because, well, he was Steve.

Lettie liked Steve the little she'd been around him. Bucky was right, he was a great guy, he just was a little unsure of himself. Lettie remembered the first little tiff she and Bucky had had, on their second date, when she had brought up what Isa had said about Steve. But Lettie had apologized for speaking harshly about his best friend and Bucky had apologized for raising his voice.

They had sat in a park down by the water and talked after that, Bucky filling her in on growing up with Steve and she understood better. Even became a little more invested in finding him a girl, vowing to take up the mission while Bucky was overseas along with most of the competition. Admittedly the date she'd found for him tonight wasn't the best match but she'd had short notice. Mae was smart as a whip and pretty, but a little on the stoic side. She had been excited though.

Of course that was after Lettie had told her that Bucky, her handsome Army beau had got them tickets to the Stark Expo and was going to bring a buddy along for her. Bucky had talked him up, sharing all the best things.

Mae had looked at her sideways when the boys arrived, "That's Buckys best friend?"

"Yeah." Lettie called them over and then turned back to Mae. "Don't be rude, he's the sweetest guy. You'll see."

"He could be sweet and look like yours. Is that too much to ask?"

Lettie rolled her eyes already feeling bad about the setup but excited for the expo and to spend the night with Bucky.

~~~

They had stayed out so late that Lettie was certain her folks would be upset, even if they liked Bucky which they did, it was well past the decent hour to bring a girl home. Who could blame them though? He was shipping out in the morning. This would be their last night together in God knew how long.

She swayed with the motion of Bucky bumping into her as they walked, "Where that pretty mind of yours wander off to?" He asked when she glanced up at him.

She gave him a soft, sadly tinged smile and apologized, "Sorry, was just thinkin'."

He didn't have to ask, he just held her tighter and dropped a kiss to the top of her head. "You got the pamphlet right, on how to get letters to me?"

Lettie nodded but didn't trust herself to speak. They were a few blocks from her house now and her throat got tighter with each step.

Bucky breathed deep and tried to lighten the mood, "Wish I could keep you out all night. Keep you all to myself 'till I have to leave. But, I think your folks like me and I don't wanna mess that up. Would throw a real wrench in my plans."

With a snort Lettie gazed up at him, "Your plans huh?"

"Mhmm."

When he left it at that she finally cracked a smile and a hint of a laugh, "Care to share those plans with me Barnes?"

WIth a wide smile Bucky pulled her to a stop around the block from her home. "Nothin' too crazy. Just go to war, come home, convince you to marry me, which admittedly may be difficult but I'm up to the challenge," He laughed at the eye roll that earned him and continued, "Get a good job, find us a place, figure out how many kids we're gonna have."

"So you do, just got it all planned out don't you?" Lettie shook her head.

He nodded once slowly, not saying anything else for a long while. Then he tugged her to him by the waist and kissed her, "How does that sound?" He whiispered against her lips.

Lettie wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed him to mold her body against his and squeeze her tight as they breathed the same air.

She thought of a lifetime of the laughing and smiling, the teasing and squabbling. Of his wandering hands and hugs that set the world right again. With heat rising up in her chest she thought of the one night they'd been able to steal together. The way they had laughed and fumbled and whispered together in the dark. How she had felt so adored and loved and at the same time so alive and indescent in the most amazing ways. She thought of the way he had looked at her, and she at him.

It wasn't that they were the only people in the world, far from it, but that they were only ones that either of them could imagine having for the rest of their lives.

With no sense of how long she'd been thinking she hugged him tighter and whispered into the side of his neck, "It sounds amazing."

His arms held her tighter, closer, if that were even possible, and then her feet were off the ground and the world was spinning. When Bucky sat her feet back on solid ground she was laughing and he was giving her that obnoxiously charming, easy grin she had fallen for so quickly.

Bucky brought his hands up to cradle her face as he kissed her again. More so this time, "I wish I could take you home with me tonight." He barely pulled back from her to say the words and then he was devouring her lips again. "One more time before I go." He wouldn't give her enough time to respond between kisses so she just hummed, moaned more like, happily into his mouth and carded her fingers through the hair at the back of his head.

A shiver rolled through her at the thought of another stolen night spent thouroughly exhausted and wrapped up in his arms. The promise of a future where he wouldn't have to sneak her home after. Where they could stay that way, wake up wrapped in eachother.

Eventually Lettie moaned again, nipped at his lip to get him to give her a chance to breath, and they were both giggling as they pulled apart. Bucky licked his lips like he was savoring the taste of something sweet and it made her heart flutter.

All of the sudden she couldn't keep her hands still. They slid from his neck to frame his jaw and then down to his firm chest and even lower over his torso. The memory of watching the muscles there ripple, flex and contract above her brought heat to her cheeks.

"You're thinkin' too much again doll." He was teasing her now, as he took her hands in his and started them walking back down the sidewalk before they got themselves in trouble.

"You mean it right?" She blurted out as he tucked her back into his side and turned the corner towards her building.

"Every word." He kissed the top of her head again, hugging her to him the whole rest of the block. In front of her building he smiled at her, "Want me to walk you up?" He didn't want to leave her yet.

Lettie took the first step and then turned towards him again, they were eye to eye like this, and shook her head. "It'll be quietter if I go up alone." She draped her arms over his shoulders and closed her eyes, smiling serenely as his hands moved to her waist.

They stroked up and down a few times before he wrapped his arms around her completely. He was going to ask for one more kiss but she beat him to it. One of her hands reached up to tip his cap off his head and the other combed through his jet black, slicked back hair underneath.

His eyes closed with the gentle touch and he smiled when she pressed her lips to his. This kiss was softer, sweeter, a proper good bye, as they held eachother in the dark on their Brooklyn street. When his eyes opened and saw her there, green eyes glassy and lips swollen he hadn't hesitated, "I love you so much." He lifted his own hand to tuck a strand of hair back and swipe away a tear from the corner of her eye, "I promise you doll, I'll do everything in my power to come home to you."

"I love you too, God, so much it scares me." She sobbed out a little laugh and leaned into his hand. "And you better keep that promise."

Bucky laughed too, a lump in his throat and fighting back uncharacteristic tears of his own. "You better get upstairs." He kissed her again, quick and light. Trying to ease the heaviness of the mood.

"Good night Bucky." She tilted her head to kiss him, one more time, and then set his cap back on his head. Crooked, the way he liked it. Then she backed away.

"Sweet dreams doll." He held her hand in his until it had slipped away and he watched her turn at the door and smile back at him.

She waved, that same silly, flirtacious wave, she'd given him every night for the past week and then blew him a kiss. How could he not laugh, shake his head at her and return the wave. He even blew her a kiss of his own, laughing at himself but loving the way she beamed back at him. Then the door swung closed behind her and Bucky was alone in the darkness. With a sad smile he shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to walk across to his own building. He knew he wouldn't sleep tonight.

~~~

Lettie could barely sleep either. She had woke early, her eyes jumping to the clock. In less than an hour Bucky would be reporting to muster at the ship yards, and by lunch he would be on his way to England. Then on his way to war.

Not knowing what possessed her she bolted out of bed and threw a robe over her nightdress. When she had dashed down the hallway she had nearly bowled over her father who stood in the kitchen. The collision slowed her down enough to apologize and clear her thoughts for a moment.

"What are you doing darling?" Her father questioned her, concern etched in his face, "Are you alright?"

She didn't know how to explain. She needed to see Bucky, one more time, if she hurried….

"I'm fine Papa." She blurted as the hurried to the door and nearly ripped it open. When she dashed out of the apartment she collided with a solid form for the second time that early morning.

This time however the man she had collided with cursed slightly under his breath and caught her in his arms, "Easy doll, where you runnin' off to?"

She was speechless when she came to her senses and saw Bucky standing before her. Crisp and clean shaven, uniform pristine and that crooked smile on his face. All she could do was wrap her arms around him and hug him to her. "I wanted to see you, one more time before you left."

Strong arms wrapped her up tight as he chuckled into her messy, morning hair. "Guess that makes two of us."

Lettie didn't see her father poke his head out of their apartment door, nor did she see the look the two men exchanged. Bucky appropriatly sheepish at the current postition in which he was entangled with the other mans daughter, but his hold on her never weakened.

To both of their surprise her father coughed, breaking them apart, and gestured them back inside the apartment. Bucky hadn't planned on sitting at the kitchen table with Lettie and her parents that morning, but it did his heart good. Her father had poured him a cup of coffee and shook his hand. Her mother had kissed him on the cheek. Lettie had sat beside him in her robe and disheveled hair and that was exactly how he wanted to remember her.

Like this he could picture her in their own home, walking into the ktichen in her robe, hair a mess from the night before to kiss him goodbye on his way to work.

After Lettie had walked him down to the front door, he hadn't let her come outisde with him. She shook her head, laughing at him when he said it was one thing for him to see his girl in a robe, but no way the whole neighborhood was getting a peak. They had kissed goodbye again and again and again until he absolutely had to leave.

Then Lettie walked back up to the apartment sat down at the kitchen table with her parents, and cried.

~~~

War was hell.

Even in Brooklyn, war was hell.

Lettie had held her breath between each letter. Each of them a heaving gasp of fresh air as she opened them and read Buckys words.

She focused on her work, she'd got a job at one of the factories like so many of the other girls. She spent all day punching rivets into fuselages and often caught herself wondering what she would do with herself when the boys came back.

Lettie liked the girls she worked with, they had all become good friends. Some of them were married, a few of them had kids, a couple were single but most of her new friends had a man they loved fighting overseas. Those had been the friends she'd confided in when Bucky's letters had stopped.

War was hell.

She knew that.

He wasn't allowed to tell her much about it, but she knew that of course there would be long gaps in communication. There had never been one that had gone on so long before though and fear had settled in her stomach like a lead weight.

Isaline, who worked with her, did her best to keep her friends spirts up. Told her that her boyfriend was just busy fighting Germans, and as soon as he was able he would write her another of his lovesick letters. Telling her stories of the men in his platoon and their rowdy shenanigans.

Just when Lettie had nearly given up hope, had settled into the bleak depression of not knowing, a runner had came to her station on the line with a telegram. Her heart had stopped and her rivet gun had dropped to the ground with a clatter as she stumbled.

No.... No, no, no....

One of the married women had caught her and steadied her, shushing her in her thick Brooklyn accent.

Isa had plucked the telegram from her fingers and opened it with a pale, sickly expression on her face. An expression that had disappeared instantly, replaced with elation, in French she exclaimed, "Listen, Lettie listen. for the love of God, girl listen!"

Lettie's world stopped spinning and her eyes settled on Isa as she read the telegram, beaming.

"Doll, I'm safe, I'll write soon. Love Buck"

After that the letters started up again, this time with even more fantastical shenanigans which included Steve now which he promised to explain later, and even more promises. He loved her, he was safe, he was coming home to her as soon as this was all over.

Then one of her friends from the factory had drug them to the cinema, demanding they get dolled up and go out, boys or no boys. Which is where she saw Bucky for the first time in over a year.

There on the screen, his face scowling in concentration across from none other than Captain America, Steve Rogers. She had recognized a few others in the reels from Buckys letters, men from his platoon and the girls had giggled together as Lettie retold the stories she'd heard. Once she got home that night she had written him and informed him he very much had a lot of explaining to do.

She never got a response to that last letter.

War was hell.

Again, she found herself repeating old mantras, the weight settled back in her stomach.

This time however, it was not a telegram that knocked the wind out of her. It was Sargent James "Bucky" Barnes, leaning casually against the front of her building in the warm afternoon sun, smoking a cigarette and wating for her.

~~~

She awoke with a start, heart racing for some unknown reason. Until a warm, heavy hand settled on her waist, "Sorry doll." His voice was hushed and hoarse in the silence.

Lettie rolled over and saw, once her eyes had adjusted, Bucky lying wide awake beside her, one arm propped behind his head and his chest rising and falling faster than normal. She slid over to him and tucked herself into the space he made for her against his side. "Nightmare?" She whispered softly as she pressed a kiss to a scar on his chest, one of the thick, ugly ones, and then rested her head there.

"Mhmm." Was his only response, aside from sinking back down into the matress and pulling the covers up over them.

"Want to tell me?" She asked against his chest.

She felt and heard him swallow thickly and then his arm around her tightened. "Not this one sweeheart." He murmered into the hair at the crown of her head and then dropped a kiss there. "Just tell me I'm home."

Lettie smiled and shifted so that she could look him in the eye, take his face in her hand and kiss him. "You're home." Kiss, "You're home, in bed, with me." Another longer kiss and then she carded her fingers through his sleep mussed hair. "RIght where you belong."

Bucky hummed appreciatively, wrapped his arms tighter around her and pulled her impossibly closer. HIs body had changed, he had grown into a man over there. His chest filled out, his arms and torso no longer lean but bulky. His back was solid muscle as were his legs. He had changed too. Not for the worse, just changed. Darkness chased him, and so many others, but he was sill her Bucky.

A fact made evident when his lips carressed her throat and he murmured, "Y'know, I'm pretty sure you promised, once upon a time, to play with my hair and talk dirty to me in French if I took you out two more times."

Lettie breathed out a laugh, "Oh really? That just don't sound like me at all." She teased even as she stroked through his hair again. A nip to her collarbone brought out a giggle. "Can't believe you remember that."

Bucky hummed again and rolled up onto his side. shifting her onto her back and gazing down at her. "Lettie, I tried not to think about home too much,noene of us did, after awhile it hurt too damn much." He reached a hand up to trace her cheekbone. "But, that week with you, God there were times I played it like a movie over and over again in my mind."

The way he looked at her gave her butterfilies, just like he had back then. Lettie smiled up at him and wrapped her arms around his neck, to bring him closer.

He dropped a sleepy, short kiss to her lips and then added, "And I distanctly remember you promising to do exactly that."

Lettie laughed and pushed him off of her. "You wouldn't know what I was sayin' anyway." She pointed out as she moved back into his side and laid her head on his chest.

"You could read me a diner menu doll, and I'd be just fine." He chuckled at himself and tugged her closer, already feeling the weight of the nightmare fading. They were quiet for a long time, Bucky distracted by the warmth of her slight breath over his bare chest and the feel of her twisting the gold band on his finger over and over. He smiled, content and let his eyes fell closed as he focused on the comforting repetetive motion of his wife toying with his wedding band as she drifted back to sleep.

After awhile his eyes grew heavy and the motion of Lettie's fingers slowed. As if with her last bit of energy before sleep reclaimed her she whispered to him in the darkness, her French slow and whispy as she faded, "You're home, my love, home with me. Where you belong."

Bucky breathed deep and released it in one long exhale, all the negativity of the nightmares gone with it, and then laced his fingers throught hers. "I'm home." He followed her in sleep with his hand holding hers and a soft, content smile on his face.

~~~

#bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes x original female character #1940s #wwii #40s bucky #40s bucky barnes #sebastian stan #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic

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old-school-butch · 5 months

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What do they think Hamas wants? What do they think Israel is supposed to do? Do they seriously think Israel is supposed to be like sure here you go we are all going to leave Israel and you can have everything? Do they think that would bring about peace? I’m serious. Like really do they think there is anything Israel could do that would stop any of this? Do they think Israel should’ve done nothing and this situation would’ve just disappeared? Americans are the dumbest fucking people on the planet. Hamas wants compliance or death, that’s how terrorism works, that’s war.

Whoever is running the information warfare at Hamas is truly brilliant. The ideology of Islamists has been run through some kind of autotuner so it sounds like it came from a chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Western liberals are eating it up. While liberals are still catching up on which river and which sea the chant refers to, they still don't grasp that the end goal here is the elimination of the state of Israel entirely. And while 20% of Israelis are Arab Muslims, there are zero Jews in Gaza. The PR people are saying Zionist these days instead of Jews, so maybe it doesn't sound too bad when they say Kill All Zionists but that's just the English translation. Zionism is the creation of a Jewish state. Hamas will call it the 'Zionist entity' because they don't recognize it as a state. They don't recognize it because all states should be Muslim. Israel is occupying territory that should be Muslim. When they say 'end the occupation' it sounds like a call for liberation of an oppressed people, instead of the desire to destroy Israel, kill or expel the Jews and create a Muslim state in its place.

Yemen's Houthi rebels (who are currently attacking Israel) have a slogan "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam" and I think it says a lot that they take the time to double down on how much they hate Jews/Israel instead of a single 'Houthis are great!' thrown into their own slogan.

The Islamists have noted the 'anti-colonial' rhetoric in Western universities and capitalized on it by positioning Israel as a proxy for the West and thus a scapegoat for the West's sins of imperialism. It does rely on some very old anti-Semitic tricks - because Jews assimilate fairly well (because they don't have an evangelical aspect to the faith) they are both within a culture and othered from the culture - the perfect scapegoat. Many liberals shrugged when the Nazis marching in Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" but the suspicion that Jews control the media, capitalism, also socialism, Hollywood (and any other center of power you can imagine) runs very deep in Western cultural anxiety. Imagining Israel as a prowerful villian is all too easy when you're primed to believe that.

A wild example of this is how Westerners view Israel as a colonialist power rather than a gathering point for religious refugees. The reality that Jews originated from the land of JUDEA should not be hard to grasp, but is conveniently ignored. The fact that they've negotiated with colonial powers like Britain and the UN is viewed as a sign of political power, even though the main goal of those colonial powers was to prevent Jewish refugees from flooding their own countries. And the memory that the post WW2 boost in political heft came at the price of the Holocaust in Europe, seems to have been lost. The reality that most Israelis are Jewish refugees expelled from Muslim countries, is conveniently ignored. There are enough white faces and dual citizens in Israel for guilty Westerners to find a convenient scapegoat to do all that decolonizing and let themselves be destroyed for our sins. Not that anyone is thinking that hard about it, it just feels right, because it's safe and convenient to accept blame and then shift it to someone else - no matter how many land acknowledgements they crank out.

I guess Westerners think colonizing is something only white people do, and they are blissfully unaware of the size and scope of the Arab Islamic Empires of the past. And also apparently unaware that Islamists explicitly say they want to recreate that empire. Zionists want a single state - and I have a lot of issues with the idea of a religious state at all, but no one can accuse Jews of ever having or wanting to create an Empire. Israel might be criticized for not having a more liberal democractic state, but Hamas isn't even trying to create one. It wants a single Muslim state occupying their entire region, where Jews are killed or expelled and Islamists can consolidate regional power - that's their goal. But the slogan is 'end the occupation' which sounds way nicer than 'end the occupation of land of Israel by Jews so we can make an Islamic state in its place and kill all the Jews who don't run away fast enough.'

Maybe it's that most Westerners don't live in a theocracy, and have no sense of just how controlling and energetic theocratic societies can be, that they can't grasp the idea of global jihad and what that really means. "The Caliphate is the answer" is written in Arabic on protest signs, flying under the radar of English-speakers and certainly not seen as hate speech, but when people tell you they want to establish a global world order under Islamic rule, and are actively coordinating their efforts between states and regions - you should believe them. Moderation is apostasy, punishable by death. Anyone negotiating with Israel faces opposition from more radical Islamists ready to take their place. This is why Islamists spend most of their time attacking more moderate Islamic states and leaders. And by 'moderate' I mean the Taliban, which can barely set up a state in Afghanistan - because it means diverting resources from expanding and conquering other areas. A group called ISIS-K is trying to overturn the Taliban to bring back the glory days of the Khorason, an entity so sprawling it would involve invading China, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which would undoubtedly spark a global conflict. That doesn't phase them. Hamas can barely control the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which rejects any peace accords with Israel including the Oslo accord. Dying as a martyr is the highest achivement - eternal war is not a problem. The Islamic world is failing to contain radical movements it created and supported for its own interests.

The Palestinians are a good microcosm of this. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the region was invaded by its neighbors. The war ended with Jordan occupying the West Bank and Egypt occupying Gaza and normally the people living there would have been absorbed into these countries, or created a self-governed state. Instead Palestinians, as a group, were created as a stateless people. They didn't want to form a state within the boundaries determined by the war, but instead remain as refugees from a war and promised the 'right of return' i.e. that Israel would be returned to them. Importantly, the war didn't have a declared end. It's still happening, which is how they are still refugees 75 years later. And they live in 'refugee camps', otherwise known as buildings and towns, but it's all temporary in this narrative. Does no one wonder why the pro-Palestinian rallies call for a ceasefire and not for peace? Peace is not desired, just a pause in fighting until they can regroup and try again.

A separate reality was created where the 1948 war is still happening, Israel is not real, it's a 'Zionist entity' occupying the land and that refugees includes everyone displaced by the 'ongoing' war, and all their descendants are refugees too because they have nowhere to live - because where they are living is just temporary. And ‘all they want is to go home’ (but not their current home for 3 generations, the home back in Israel ofc). In this world, they all have to right to live in the region that the zionist entity is occupying, where their duty is to establish a Muslim state. The purpose of this fiction is to create a perpetual problem for Israel, a stateless population whose entire existence is focused on them eventually overthrowing Israel. But it's had unexpected effects.

Palestinian refugees have been more than willing to bring violence to any country that has taken them in as immigrants. Their nationalists have a long list of assassinations of anyone who supports a peace treaty with Israel, including the King of Jordan, the former prime minister of Lebanon, Robert F Kennedy and more. They've also started a civil war in Jordan until they were expelled to Lebanon, where they hijacked a series of international flights and started a civil war there that lasted for 15 years. Palestinians living as refugees in Kuwait aided Saddam Hussein's invading army until they were expelled when his regime fell. These are the reasons none of Israel's neighbor's will accept any more Palestinian refugees, but the Islamist problem remains for any country in its path. What I have found most disturbing among feminists on Tumblr, however, is the complete wilful ignorance about Islamist ideology and its relationship to women. You think you’re ok with the Quran? Read it. There aren't many religions founded by a conqueror who wanted to rule the world. Read what it says about conquest, murder, torture, raping and enslaving non-Muslim women. Arab slave traders castrated men and bred female slaves who were kept as captive wives. Using sexual violence as a tool of war and as a reward for Islamic fighters is long documented and continues today. The birth rate in Gaza is about 5 children per woman and frequently exhorted to be higher. Why? Arafat said it most clearly ‘the womb of the Palestinian woman is the weapon that will defeat Israel.' Population and fertility are part of the political landscape and Islamist strategy. It's how Lebanon went from being a Christian majority country to a Muslim majority country today. There is no reason whatsoever that feminists - who have not shied away from criticizing the sexism of Christianity or Judaism - should mince words when it comes to criticizing Islam in the strongest possible terms. Islamists - who combine Islam with a goal for global dominance - should ring every alarm bell we have.

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tavshortfortavern · 5 months

Text

Being delulu is the solulu

Tav x Dammon slowburn

Heavily based on my Tav, Artemis who goes by they/them and a drow. Lawful/Chaotic Good alignment. Spores Druid.

Tropes: Unrequited (at the beginning), friends to lovers, slowburn, they fell first- he fell harder

This could be a fic but I'm not confident for that yet. Have this outline instead of how i imagine this pairing play out. Enjoy my Tav pining away for this npc

Tav x Dammon during the game

Tav grows to like Dammon after partially fixing Karlach's heart in Last Light Inn

His quick offer to help, gentle attitude, and skill catching their eye. The first time they met, Tav clocked him as handsome but slowly comes to appreciate everything else

Later on Tav wouldn't stop noticing his blue eyes, they weren't infernal like the other tieflings. Light blue, similar tk gemstones

So they've caught some feels but with the Shadowcurse, the cult and planning a prison break- that gets put to the wayside

Still, they always look forward to seeing him working at his forge when they're at Last Light or when they speak with him to trade

Is very subtle and discreet when it comes to liking him. No one probably notices. They're a little more generous in paying, they always look for him when they walk into last light, and they've got a softer expression when talking to him

When they reach Baldur's Gate they stay silent but are instantly looking for him. Trying to recognise his form among the many refugees, straining their ears to hear that familiar sound of a hammer, and asking about him (and by him they mean 'other refugees not present') to the tieflings at the refugee camp

Their companions point out another blacksmith in rivington since they need new gear but Tav dislikes the thought of turning to another smith thats not Dammon

He's their favorite after all but they don't say that

But they enter the Lower City. Tav being Tav is on rooftops and jumping to get around- when they hear a familiar sound of a hammer. Is that who they think it is!? They look down at the source of the sound and see a familiar face.

They call out to greet him excitedly, startling said blacksmith out of his work, looking out his forge to see the adventurer recklessly climb down from the roof of his shop.

They of course fall to the ground in an undignified heap but sit back up to greet him. He hears laughter next as the rest of your companions climb down after their leader.

Dammon notices them and excitedly greets Karlach. Bringing up that she looks well rather shyly

Something sinks in Tav as the two converse, seeing the way he regards their tiefling friend

They bury it and soak in the happiness of reuniting with a friend

Now was the time to make allies. An army controlled by the absolute was about to invade. They inform him of the situation and have his promise to stay safe and help when the time comes

Tav's mind is completely occupied by the many tasks they needed to accomplish in the city until the time of the invasion

Fast forward, Tav is at High Hall with their companions and every ally they could muster. Its the final battle up ahead and the air is beyond tense

Outside is chaos and everyone is look at them. Them. For encouragement. Something. They gave their speech, it seems to do the trick but their heart is pounding. There's never been more pressure on them, the stakes never higher

One misstep. One wrong move. And its ove-

Then Tav is speaking with Dammon and he recounts everything they've been through since the grove. Whatever happens, he trusts you.

And the pounding heart ceases.

From simple words of faith.

They're not completely at ease for the battles ahead but they decide it doesn't matter. They have to win. For these people they've come to care about. For the civilians like him who's at the most danger

They (he) deserve a chance at a peaceful life.

Tav defeats the Netherbrain. The city is saved. though it needs rebuilding.

He's the first thing they search for among the rubble. They find him bruised and shaken but alive, having taken shelter with the other tieflings

Tav is quick to tend to his injuries. Thanking the powers above he made it out intact

Tav x Dammon post-game

Tav sticks around the city. There's a lot to rebuild and heal after all.

Some of the companions depart, off to accomplish their own personal goals or seek one.

Never let it be known that their newfound status as a savior stops them from menial tasks and errands. They'll be picking up rubble and delivering supplies for weeks at a time, or spend even longer in healing wards

While they earned their fame for defeating the Absolute, they won hearts for staying and healing the hurts

Their healing spells becoming well known and lauded for. Even more so Heroes Feast and Create Water. Supplying a significant amount of food and water for the less fortunate

Thankfully they always have their room at Elfsong tavern that miraculously stayed largely intact

Being so close to his forge, Tav frequently comes across Dammon working even more. People needing tools and repairs more than ever, it seems like he never leaves his forge

That worries Tav so they make time to visit. Once they see his haggard appearance they make sure to visit with food and drink.

There was a shortage thanks to the disaster but they've always been a hoarder and with most of their companions away, camp supplies are in excess.

He's one of the few people in the city who'll treat them like a person instead of a saint or legend. And the hero is in desperate need of some levity during this

Its not an unusual sight to see Tav lounging by his forge with a meal, taking a much needed break from helping rebuild, conversing about whatever as he took his own break (heavily enforced by Tav).

He mostly talks about his comissions but sometime brings up how the other tieflings are doing.

Tav finds he doesn't talk about himself a lot but eventually learns he's a bit of a loner, gets absorbed with his work to the point of forgetting to take care of himself, and surprisingly under all that politeness, has a side to him that doesn't mind making deals with a nearby diabolist for infernal iron.

In return he learns of Tav's little loot hoarding tendencies and thievery. This happens when they approach him, calling his name in a hushed tone trying to get his attention.

He's confused at their behavior when they hand him piles of infernal iron. His eyebrows shot up as Tav rather excitedly presents him with it

When asked about it they mention going to hell and killing a devil, taking everything that wasn't bolted down in his home.

If it was anyone else he wouldn't have believed them for a second. But Tav is a whole other beast, he's starting to learn

He notices some of the materials look rather familiar. Enriched infernal ore. Similar to the steel watchers... He stares at Tav questioningly who looks anywhere else trying to come up with an explanation

C-can't have them going to waste now! Right? Those steel watchers are gone (that i definitely did not have anything to do with), its time to recycle, Tav tries to explain

So you admit you stole them, Dammon replies but inspects the iron anyways.

After learning how much he likes working with infernal iron, Tav gathers all the material they had stored in their chest to give to him. He doesn't know if he could pay for all of it but Tav just wants to see what he makes of them

Dammon is a little flushed seeing how much they're looking forward to his work. And even more so at the effort they expended trying to gather all of this

He's probably one of the few people Tav consistently interacts with since staying in the city and vice versa since he's not the social type either

Before they could count themselves allies, now they've naturally fallen into being good friends who hang out in their free time.

Dammon is always amused when Tav comes by with a dozen different things to be done for a dozen people that asked for their help. Their fame hardly changing them

He's also come to expect their reminders to take care of himself.

He used to the low key loneliness of living by himself. Even with the bond he's formed with the refugees he forgets to meet up with them while working. So when Tav starts coming by its a welcome change

He would begin working from first light, until well into the night when Tav shows up with a warm meal and a cold drink, they spend a while recounting their day and what needs to be done before returning to their own tasks

While slow going he begins to open up about his past. His life in Elturel, the descent into Avernus, his apprenticeship, sometimes touching on his childhood

Some days a rougher than the last. The collective trauma of the ithillid invasion affecting everyone and Dammon wasn't completely free of his experiences in the shadowcursed lands.

He's gotten used to moving on and hiding it but Tav has spent way too much time with their own group of traumatized weirdos to not notice

They've gotten pretty good at getting people to open up about deep rooted issues without putting too much pressure. After weeks of working together and solving conflicts he gets more comfortable talking

Having someone listen was a nice experience and allowed him to reflect on some things he refused to think about

Tav tells him about their adventures with the tadfools. They notice he pays extra attention whenever Karlach is brought up and adjusts accordingly, bringing up more stories involving her. Liking the smile he has on when they do so

They've had a few hiccups and issues. With the city as vulnerable as it was, a few malignant forces tried their luck seizing power. But thankfully Tav was there

A vampire coven, a few remaining cultists, and bandits couldn't hold a candle to an elder brain. With some new allies Tav successfully repelled them with little issue

Of course Dammon was treated to the sight of a gore covered adventurer looking sheepish asking for repairs and new arrows a few times

One time they showed up particularly banged up making him usher them inside and treat their wounds with what medical supplies he had

When they were particularly injured after a fight Dammon let them rest in his place. As they were resting in his room they noticed a certain book left out on a chair

That day was spent relentlessly teasing a blushing tiefling. He should have known a nosy Tav would have found that book

There's never a dull moment with Tav but he's come to enjoy it

But nothing lasts. When the last of the enemies falls and everyone seems to have everything at hand, Tav feels the call for adventure once more

They did promise a companion a cure for their affliction and plan to set out of the city to follow a lead with them

This means a round of goodbyes from the friends they made in the city. Last but not least Dammon

He's surprised when he's informed the day before but figures it was only time. They have one last meal at elfsong tavern, toasting for goodluck. He admits he'll miss them.

He's disappointed he couldn't do much else the next day when he gives them some extra arrows

It doesn't strike him immediately but after the first few days the forge feels too quiet

Sometimes he would look up from his work when he hears someone approach expecting Tav to be there

He hears stories and rumors later on while having a drink in elfsong tavern.

New exploits Tav accomplished, the people they saved and the monsters they've faced. One bard started singing about their adventures and he finds himself returning to hear them

While he enjoys his work things feel a lot more monotonous lately with them gone. He finds some spark of familiarity hearing about their adventures

Tav sends letters every now and then. Briefly outlining new quests and how their doing. Finishing by saying they hope he takes care of himself

He sends his own in return, updating them of the city and the rebuilding, reassuring them he's eating regularly but that's as far as hearing from them as he got

Months go by and he hears from Jaheira about a reunion party with the heroes of Baldur's gate with the possibility of Karlach being there. He hasn't heard from her in so long, much less know how she was faring

One of the things he regrets is not finding a way to fix her engine and having to send her back to avernus when she just escaped

When he hears the other tieflings planning to write letters to this reunion party he jumps in

He's not sure how a letter would get to Karlach who's in Avernus but he is sure that Tav would find a way

So he starts it by adressing it to Tav before asking him to pass it to Karlach knowing they'll be more than happy to

When Karlach Visits

Tav reunites with some old friends to finally fix Karlach's engine. Having found Zariel's forge and plans to travel there. They need to be armed to the teeth

They just so happen to be in Baldur's Gate.

Tav brings them over to Dammon's forge, already knowing he'll be happy to see Karlach again

When they return its without any announcement as usual. He's focused on a new project when he hears a throat clear. He tells them to wait a second assuming its a client. Tav's voice catches his attention. He whirls around and sees his friend with that familiar smile

He's greets them happily but his eye catches the sight of Karlach and his tone shifts. Its a touching reunion

Its obvious how captivated he was. Tav would stand to the side admiring the scene

Eventually the conversation turns to their purpose there. Tav explains the mission and he's more than eager to help.

As they trade they enter casual conversation

The conversation between them turns to the city, Tav asking if he's eaten anything, roasting his cooking, Dammon defending said cooking, mundane things but companions are left to watch in silence as these two friends catch up

Then Karlach asks about the city and they both go in to the rebuilding efforts. Tav goes in to the various misadventures that occured, Dammon jumping in to include an emberassing moment that he saw happened to Tav.

It derails as they start bantering, bringing up inside jokes and references born from the time spent around each other in the city

Tav has their hand on his shoulder, leaning close to tell a joke. Dammon leaning back standing comfortably next to them, snorting at what they just said when Karlach pipes up-

"So how long have you two been together?"

This is getting long, will make part 2

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 tav #bg3 dammon #tav x dammon #bg3 headcanons #when life gives you lemons (Dammon's letter) u make lemonade (write a slowburn friends to lovers)

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