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mochinek0 · 10 months

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Reunion

No one from Françoise Dupont High School expected Marinette Dupain-Cheng to walk into the ten year reunion. As far as they knew, she hadn't been invited. Marinette strode in, with her head held high, and walked right up to Lila Rossi.

"I want to thank you for being such a bitch to me, Lila." Mari smiled, "You changed my life for the better."

"E-Excuse me?" Lila questioned.

'There' no way that forcing her out of school and isolating her gave her an amazing life!'

"That whole shit about telling people what they wanted to hear." Marinette began to explain, "I got really tired of defending myself and being told that I had to 'love you' to make you a better person by the staff. I got tired of being stacked with doing shit for free: all that babysitting I never said I would do, the banners, uniforms, clothes, fundraisers! It was exhausting for a fifteen year old."

Mari smiled, "Once you turned everyone against me, I realized how much free time I had! I signed up for homeschooling and worked extremely hard to graduate early. I even skipped a couple grades. It turned out that my husband's family were huge fans of my designs, so they offered to pay for my schooling if I moved."

"Husband?" Lila asked, concerned, "I didn't realize you had gotten married."

"Yeah." Marinette stated, "We met when I was seventeen and got married when I was nineteen; we have two kids."

Lila looked up and down at her arch-rival. Aside from a growth spurt and a larger chest, Marinette didn't look like she had changed at all. She looked like she was in her early twenties!

"So, thank you for bullying me." Marinette continued with a smile, "It was the best thing that could have happened to me."

Lila stayed silent. She didn't know what to say to that. None of her other victims had ever thanked her. She could feel eyes on them. She knew people were listneing in on their conversation. If she started to make a scene, it wouldn't end well.

"We'll, I'm married too!" Announced Lila.

"Oh, congrats." Marinette smiled, "Where is the lucky person?"

Lila spotted a tall, dark, and handsome man walk into the venue.

"There he is." Lila smiled.

Lila watched as her prey came towards them.

'Just a few more feet and I'll be able grab him. I'm sure he wouldn't mind playing along for a few minutes.'

Lila reached out a hand to grab him, when he put his arm around Marinette's waist and kissed her.

"Hello, Habibiti." he spoke.

"Everything okay without us at the company?" Mari asked.

He sighed, "Yes. It was just Grayson being himself."

Marinette giggled, "I'm sorry, Lila. This is my husband, Damian Wayne. Where were you saying your spouse is?"

Lila plastered a smile on her face, "They just stepped out. They had their cellphone out. It must be an important client. We're both models."

'There's no way she is married to this guy! The sooner she leaves, the sooner I can tell everyone I recognize him as an actor.'

Lila couldn't believe her luck. Adrien had just walked though the doors.

'Marinette was obsessed with him for years! Her fake marriage will be exposed and I can get the guy to stay with me. It doesn’t matter how much she paid him. I'm sure I could pay him more.'

"Marinette!" Adrien shouted.

He was quick to run over and hug her, pulling her away from her husband.

"Agreste, put my wife down." Damian growled.

Adrien turned his attention to Damian and froze.

"Hey, Wayne." He smiled, before looking around, "Where are the kids? Where's my neice and nephew?"

'Kids? They're really married and have kids?'

"They're with my parents, Adrien." Mari answered, "I'm sure they're being fed sugar and will pass out soon."

"So, is that an invite?" the model asked.

"To my parent's place for sweets?" Mrs. Wayne questioned, "You live here! They call me like once a week saying you were at the bakery!"

Adrien chuckled, "No. What about my time with the kids?"

Marinette looked to Damian, who shrugged. She turned to Adrien and shot him a look.

"Tell you what, you can see them in two days." she replied, "A whole day with Uncle Adrien."

'Uncle Adrien?'

"Really?" Adrien cried out, happily.

"But, you got to plan it." she answered.

"Disneyland Paris?" the Agreste heir suggested.

"Fine." Marinette growled, "But if you lose one of my kids, again, I will hurt you."

Adrien glanced towards Damian.

"Adrien, if you think my husband is scarier, just because you have seen his sword collection, you're wrong." Marinette Wayne declared, "You lose one of my children, I will hurt you worse than my husband could ever imagine."

"Got it." Adrien smiled, "Plan awesome VIP experience for the kids!"

"Great!" Mari smiled back.

"Man, you moving really toughened you up." the model winced.

"I punched my brother-in-law the first day there because I thought he grabbed my ass." Mrs. Wayne spoke.

"That is still one of my best days ever. No one has underestimated you since." Damian stated, before kissing her head.

"So, what are you doing here?" Adrien questioned, "Didn't you graduate like two years before us?"

"Oh, I just wanted to thank Lila for bullying me and getting me homeschooled." Marinette smiled, "It sucked that she bullied me, at the time, but if she hadn't done that, I wouldn't be with Damian and we wouldn't have our kids."

Adrien quickly turned to Lila, "Thank you for being a bitch to my best friend. I love my niece and nephew. Marinette, do you think we should get her like a fruit basket or something?"

Mari laughed, "We have dinner plans so we're gonna head out. Enjoy the reunion, Adrien."

Adrien took a step back and eyed Marinette's dress. It was a short black bodycon dress with puffy transparent sleeves. He eyed the black heels, warily.

"Dressed like that?" he questioned.

"Eyes on my wife's face, Agreste." Damian growled.

Adrien rolled his eyes, "She's all yours. I don't think I've ever seen you dressed like this, is all. You think you'll be able to take care of the kids dressed like that?"

Marinette answered, "They are staying with my parents tonight." before walking away.

Adrien watched as Damian placed his hand at Marinette's waist, likely making sure she didn't fall in those heels.

Adrien smiled, evilly, "Hey, Marinette!"

The designer turned to look back at her friend.

"I want another neice or nephew!" he shouted.

Marinette's face morphed from shock to embarassment, before she quickly glared at her best friend. She squeaked as she was quickly lifted into her husband's arms.

"Damian, you put me down!" she snapped at him.

"No." her husband responded.

"Why not?" she growled.

"Adrien won't get his wish if you're in jail for harming him." Damian smirked.

Marinette buried her face in her husband's chest and remained silent.

Adrien laughed as Marinette was carried out of the reunion. Nino walked up to him, confused.

"You….You kept in touch with Mari?" he questioned.

"Of course!" Adrien smiled, brightly, "I helped her with her math sometimes and she talks with Father about designing. She's my best friend."

"Designs?" Rose asked.

"Marinette is a fashion designer in the states." he answered, "Her husband's family runs an international company. She occasionally designs for their clothing line, but they do other stuff, too. Marinette has an office in their building, but she mostly does custom work. I think last year someone asked for a wedding dress. It was around $25,000."

"Seriously?" Alya asked, full of surprise.

"Oh yeah!" Adrien smiled, "She's an amazing deisgner. A lot of her dresses and suits have been coming out on runways and red carpet events."

"You're forgetting that she bullied Lila!" cried Sabrina, "She was mean to her! How can you be friends with her?"

"Actually, it was the other way around." Adrien stated, "Lila once claimed that Mari pushed her, after school, so hard that she injured her knee and was forced to walk home with a limp. I tried to tell you that Marinette couldn't have done it; Marinette had been with me the day before. You told me I was just confused. You never let me speak. You just decided Lila was right."

The class just stared at him.

'Had they really done that? Had they ignored Adrien when he tried to defend Marinette?'

"You never listened to me or Marinette when we told you about Lila being a lying bitch." he shrugged.

"But you're married!" Kim shouted, "How can you choose Marinette over a model?"

"I didn't. I'm bi and dating a male model from my father's company." Adrien announced, "Lila was fired when she was sixteen. Wasn't Lila held back a grade? Why is she even here? You didn't graduate with us or even from this school."

"It was a computer error!" Max spoke up, "Lila said that-

Adrien rolled his eyes, "Her mother called Natalie and declared she was owed a meeting with my father. She said we ruined Lila's future by forcing her to model. She threatened to sue the Gabriel brand until we showed her the 'signatures' on the forms. Turns out, Lila forged those so her mother's hands were tied. Her mother started shouting how she should send her to boot camp, back in Italy, as the left the house."

One by one they turned to look at Lila.

"i-I wanted to see everyone." she whispered, weakly, "I missed my friends."

"Thank for stopping by." Adrien stated, "You can leave now."

"Adrikins!" Chloe shouted.

"Chloe!" Adrien called back, "I missed you. We loved that spa treatment. You're the best!"

Chloe smiled and pulled Adrien away from the rest of the group to socialize with the other students.

"You still talk to that trash?" they heard Chloe ask.

"Rossi?" Adrien questioned, "Nah. You missed Marinette by a couple minutes. She came here and thanked Lila for being a raging bitch. The rest of them were still trying to kiss ass."

"The queen, herself, and I missed it." the Bourgeois heiress teased.

"Date night." Adrien quipped, "She brought Damian and the demon brigade."

"I missed the little ones?" she screeched.

Adrien laughed, "They're with her parents. Better book your time with them before they leave again. Oh, and Mari is already threatening bodily harm if anything happens to them."

"You lost one last time!" Chloe cried.

"I said I was sorry!" Adrien rebutted.

Chloe scoffed, "You're lucky you didn't die that day."

"I know." Adrien sighed, "Would it be weird if I put them on one of those kid leashes? I feel like they would fuck with me and purposely try to get lost to see me sweat, again. Honestly, I don't know if it's a mini Damian or mini Marinette. Don't get me wrong, Damian is frightening and he could probably work in the CIA torture room, but seeing Marinette pissed off, scares the living crap out of me. She's creative and could probably make something specifically to hurt me."

Chloe looked up from her phone, "I bought you the leashes. They'll be here tomorrow. You're welcome."

"Chloe." Adrien replied, "You didn't answer me."

"I was frenemies with her for years, Adrikins." Chloe answered, "Mari will find some way to hurt you and she wouldn't need her godly husband to do it. You have every right to fear for your life for pissing her off. Look at what happened to the idiot brigade: they believed a liar and bullied her. None of their dreams came true. The Waynes own half the companies those idiots wanted to work for. I wouldn't put it past Damian to rat those losers out to his family and have them blacklisted. You have seen how overprotective he is of their kids; he's the same way with her."

"True." Adrine sighed, "He still yells at me when I hug her."

"Idiot." Chloe declared, rolling her eyes.

The class looked at each other before pulling out their phones. They looked up Marinette and the Wayne family. The class shifted nervously as they realized what Chloe had said was true. The Waynes and Marinette owned their jobs. They were all comfortable with their jobs, but they weren't anything to brag about. They had all wanted bigger and better things at thirteen.

None of them were the doctors, rock stars, DJs, journalists, environmentalists, or the Olympians they thought they would be. They worked desk jobs or became something close to what they wanted. Lila knew she would never model again when Gabriel told her that he was going to blacklist her. The Waynes owned everything from food to biolabs to steel to shipbuilding and aerospace. Lila silently left the reunion as everyone came to terms that their dreams ended long ago.

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deliciousangelfestival · 2 months

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Lovers Say Goodbye | 3 - B.Barnes

Character: soft!dark Bucky x ex-girlfriend!Reader

Summary: Bucky finds solace and love in an unexpected place, only to have his world shattered by a shocking revelation about the person he cared about.

Chap 1, Chap 2, Chap 3, Chap 4, Chap 5 , -

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Please let me know what your thoughts are. I'd love to read all your comments. Thank you once again.

Main Masterlist || support: Ko-fi

A few Months Later

"I just realized," Bucky murmured, his voice a low rumble transmitted through the earpiece.

"What is it?" Steve responded, concern lacing his words.

Bucky kept his eye focused on the target through the rifle scope. "She never spoke much about her family when we were together," he explained, his voice devoid of emotion. "Only brief mentions."

It was true. You'd never delved deep into your family life, only mentioning their retirement and love for world travel aboard cruise ships. Back then, Bucky had harbored anxieties about being accepted by your parents, worried they would disapprove of their relationship.

However, the truth's unveiling didn't erase the raw pain in his eyes. Instead, it sparked a chilling realization: you were equals. Both of you are masters of the deceptive game.

"Well, something must have smitten you good," Steve chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood.

Bucky's response was devoid of humor. "Sex. Good sex."

"Hey!" Steve exclaimed through the earpiece. "No need to get graphic with me."

A phantom sensation washed over Bucky, a memory of your touch. He recalled the caress of your fingers on his skin, the warmth of your breath against his neck, the intimacy of your body pressed against his. His mind fixated on a specific detail - the strength evident in your legs wrapped around his hips.

Bucky wondered, was the pleasure mutual? Did the experience hold the same significance for you, or was it just another masterful performance?

"Such a shame," he muttered, the bittersweet memory turning to ash in his mouth. "Good memories turned to ashes."

His words were cut short by the sharp crack of the rifle firing. Steve, observing the scene through a remote monitor, cheered. "Bullseye!" he exclaimed, the celebratory tone at odds with the gravity of the situation.

Taking lives was Bucky's expertise. His agency issued the order, and he executed it with unwavering precision, regardless of the complexity of the mission. Most targets were simply names and faces, strangers with no personal connection.

This time, however, the target was significant. He had become a pawn in Bucky's desperate game, a calculated move orchestrated solely to attract your attention. He had murdered an informant.

This time, the target was a high-ranking CIA informant, sacrificed solely to get your attention.

Steve warned, "This is a double-edged sword, Buck. They'll know your hand is in this, and they'll know it's personal."

Bucky's voice was cold and resolute. "That's the point. They'll know this is my work. They'll know it's personal."

He held firm to his belief that his reckless act, taking out the CIA informant, would draw you back. He envisioned them sending you to him, a twisted reunion of sorts.

However, reality unfolded differently. His agency commended him on a job well done, their client's debt to the agency now settled. This outcome was the polar opposite of his intended result.

Meanwhile, you remained oblivious to the chaos he'd unleashed across the miles.

You were deep within the isolated European country, laser-focused on rescuing the hostages. The news of the assassinated informant and the potential storm brewing back home hadn't reached you yet.

The adrenaline coursed through your veins, a familiar yet intoxicating sensation. Your mind buzzed with activity, fueled by the thrill of the unknown and the ever-present danger. This was the lifeblood you craved, the constant stimulation that had been absent during the past two years.

Flashback Start

Two years spent undercover in a war-torn country, posing as a florist. A stark contrast to the thrilling, high-octane missions you had always thrived on. But it had been necessary. The previous agents sent to infiltrate Bucky's life had all returned in body bags. You were the agency's last resort, their ace in the hole.

They had given you a mere 24 hours to transform yourself from seasoned operative to unassuming florist. The moment you saw Bucky step into your shop, everything you'd built, every practiced smile and fabricated story, teetered on the edge of collapse.

Your hand hovered near the concealed gun nestled beneath the counter, yet it remained unmoving. Something was different. The usual cacophony of the city seemed muted, replaced by an intense silence that amplified the sound of your own ragged breaths and the frantic thump of your heart. Bucky's eyes locked with yours, his gaze a stormy sea of conflicting emotions.

For a moment, the world held its breath. Time seemed to slow, stretching into an eternity where only the two of you existed. The air crackled with unspoken words and unresolved feelings, a potent mix of danger and something else, something you couldn't quite define.

Your mind whirred as Bucky approached the counter, requesting flowers for a funeral. You meticulously combed through your inventory, carefully selecting blooms that held the weight of grief and remembrance. The familiar scent of lilies and carnations filled the air, a stark contrast to the turmoil brewing within you.

As Bucky wordlessly left the shop, the heavy bouquet cradled in his arms, a wave of conflicting emotions washed over you. You watched his broad, fearless shoulders slump as he headed towards the funeral, a lone figure burdened by sorrow. It was no ordinary funeral; you knew it was for his former handler, the man whose death had orchestrated everything – the death of Bucky's handler, Operation Pandora, and ultimately, your own undercover operation.

Initially, the CIA's instructions were simple: observe Bucky. They were aware of his safe houses near your flower shop, anticipating his return and potential request for employment. However, the agency and you, along with them, had never expected this turn of events.

Your new mission: to distract Bucky, to prevent him from digging into the death of his former handler. While you played your part, Director Brandon and a team of agents worked tirelessly to eliminate any trace of Operation Pandora. It was a meticulous process, ensuring absolute secrecy, hence the two-year duration.

When Brandon called and said, "It's finished," you left. Leaving behind the lingering whispers of a life that had become a carefully constructed facade, you didn't hesitate.

You lied when he asked if you regretted anything. Those two years with Bucky were a break, a rest from the usual danger. But it wasn't real because you were lying while he genuinely cared.

Flashback Ended

You wanted to forget everything, so you took a mission where you couldn't contact anyone. Your only job was to save hostages, which took time, planning, and working together. It was hard, and you got hurt, but finally, your team succeeded in saving all the hostages.

Months later, when you finally boarded the private jet for your return, you were surprised to find Director Brandon onboard. Usually, he remained at headquarters, awaiting reports of successful missions. His presence sent a tremor of apprehension through you.

Brandon gestured towards the seat across from him. "Sit down."

You complied, fastening your seatbelt as you settled in. "Why'd you come all the way here?" you inquired, a cold compress pressed against your right eye, the throbbing evidence of a recent punch.

The plane taxied down the runway and lifted into the air before Brandon spoke, handing you a file. "You need to see this."

Your eyebrows shot up as you set down the ice pack. "Another mission?"

Brandon shook his head. "No. It's about the aftermath of... what we did."

Curiosity piqued, you flipped open the file. Your breath hitched as a photograph greeted you: Bucky, his face obscured by a mask, gun clutched in one hand, a hostage held captive in the other. You'd never witnessed such raw fury in him before, but a deep-seated certainty gnawed at you - you were the spark that ignited this inferno.

With a defeated sigh, you closed the file. "Can't you handle this?"

Brandon's voice held a hint of regret. "If I could, I wouldn't have come to get you."

Another sigh, heavier this time, escaped your lips. "He wants to talk to me."

Brandon nodded silently. You leaned back in your chair, closing your eyes. "Just tell me when we land."

Each passing moment was fraught with tension, the image of Bucky burning into your mind. The weight of your choice, the lie you'd woven, pressed down on you like a physical burden. As the plane soared through the clouds, you braced yourself for the inevitable confrontation, the consequence of a past drenched in deception.

*************

The car sped through the bustling city streets, a tense silence hanging heavy in the air between you and Brandon. The file containing Bucky's photo as a ruthless hostage-taker lay discarded on your lap, the image seared into your memory.

"We have to prepare for the worst," Brandon said, his voice grim. "We don't know what that bastard will do to you."

You remained quiet, your gaze fixed on the cityscape blurring past the window. A kaleidoscope of emotions swirled within you: regret, guilt, and a flicker of fear.

Brandon continued, "You can't do this alone, Y/N."

"I know," you finally responded, your voice barely audible.

Brandon offered a heavy sigh. "Good. I've gathered some agents who..."

His sentence was abruptly cut short by a deafening explosion that rocked the car. The rear driver-side tire gave way, sending the vehicle swerving wildly across the street.

"What the hell?!" Brandon exclaimed, his voice laced with shock.

Adrenaline surged through your veins, the years of undercover training kicking in. "It's him," you stated, your voice steady despite the chaos unfolding around you.

"Damn it! Where is he? We wiped our tracks clean," Brandon cursed, his grip tightening on the steering wheel as he fought to regain control of the car.

You craned your neck to look through the rear window, spotting a lone figure standing on the overpass ahead of them. Bucky. He held a sniper rifle aimed directly at your car, his masked face unreadable.

"There," you said, pointing towards him.

Panic flickered in Brandon's eyes before he slammed on the gas pedal, shouting to the driver, "Faster!"

The chase was on, a desperate attempt to outmaneuver a vengeful Bucky and reach the safety of the agency headquarters. The once quiet car ride had morphed into a heart-pounding race against time, the line between hunter and hunted blurring with each passing moment.

The car lurched and swayed, tires screeching in protest as Brandon fought to regain control. Explosions echoed behind them, a deadly symphony composed of shattered glass and mangled metal. Each boom sent tremors through the car, a chilling reminder of Bucky's deadly precision.

You watched, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs, as one by one, the cars accompanying them were systematically eliminated. Bucky, a relentless specter on the overpass above, picked them off with chilling ease. Each shot rang out like a death knell, extinguishing the hopes of their backup and leaving you and Brandon increasingly isolated.

"Damn him!" Brandon roared, frustration and fear coloring his voice. "He's like a goddamn ghost!"

With a final, bone-jarring explosion, the last remaining car sputtered and screeched to a halt, flames licking at its mangled frame. You and Brandon exchanged a grim look, the weight of their predicament settling like a leaden weight in your gut.

Just as despair threatened to consume you, a figure materialized on the edge of the overpass, silhouetted against the afternoon sun.

Bucky, his mask a stark contrast to the golden light, dropped down onto the hood of the flaming car with an agility that defied physics. He landed in a crouch, the glint of his rifle barrel reflecting the dying sun as he turned his gaze towards you.

A tremor ran through you, a primal mix of shock and awe. You'd known of his skills, witnessed glimpses of his prowess during your time together, but this... this was something else entirely. He moved with a lethal grace, a predator stalking its prey, and the cold certainty in his eyes sent a shiver down your spine.

"Shit," you muttered, the single word encompassing the maelstrom of emotions churning within you. With a chilling certainty, you knew this was no longer just a mission gone wrong. This was personal.

You fumbled for your gun, the familiar weight a cold comfort in your trembling hand. But your movements were sluggish, weighed down by the shock and the adrenaline wearing off. Before you could even raise the weapon, a click echoed in the air, the sound of a safety being disengaged. It was too late.

Bucky lowered his mask, revealing a face etched with a mixture of pain and fury. His eyes, once full of warmth and affection, now held the hollow glint of a man consumed by vengeance.

"Welcome back, Alex," he said, his voice a low growl. "Or should I say, Y/N?"

The familiar name, once a term of endearment, now sounded foreign, laced with a bitter edge. You remained silent, the weight of his words and the betrayal they carried settling heavily in your chest.

He waited, his gaze lingering on your face, searching for something, perhaps a flicker of recognition, a spark of remorse. But there was only a void, a reflection of the shattered trust that lay between you.

"I've been waiting for a long time," he finally spoke, his voice devoid of its usual gruffness, replaced by a chilling emptiness.

You found your voice then, a mere whisper escaping your lips. "Why are you doing this?"

Bucky remained silent for a moment, the only sound the crackling of the burning car nearby. He took a slow step forward, his eyes never leaving yours.

He reached out, his calloused fingers tilting your chin up, forcing you to meet his gaze. The touch sent a shiver down your spine, a conflicting mix of familiarity and fear.

"Don't you know?" he whispered, his voice raw with emotion. "I'm doing this to get your attention."

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Author Note:

My dear readers and followers,

Could you please share your opinions about this series with me?

If you enjoyed it, I'd love to hear why it appealed to you.

If not, I would greatly appreciate your feedback and advice on improving the series.

Thank you!

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months

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When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 9: We’re Friends When You’re On Your Knees]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Y'all, you are not ready for this one. Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, sexual content (18+), murder, Aemond "there are other Targaryens" Targaryen having feelings again (good ones?? not good ones?? both?? who knows bestie, not me!), an unexpected family reunion, must be the season of the witch... 👀

Series title is a lyrics from: "7 Minutes In Heaven" by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: "Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued" by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 8.4k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

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You watch her from the shadows of the dungeons, rusted iron, phantom echoes of falling water, chilling drafts that come from nowhere and everywhere. She has not yet noticed you. She is beautiful, regal, arrogant, even as she sits gnawing on crusts of bread and the gristle of chicken bones, scraps that Lord Larys throws to her like she’s a pig nosing its way through a trough, an animal that is clever and yet condemned. And if she is livestock, then what are you? A creature of darkness, of nightfall, lethal and treacherous, a wolf or a bat or a spider. You step forward and into a ray of light that cuts across the stones like the path of a comet.

Baela gasps and drops the tibia she’d been working on, cracking it in two, sucking out the dead-blood marrow. Her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes catch on you. She is not afraid; you have never known Daemon Targaryen’s eldest daughter to be afraid of anything. She is fascinated.

“I’m sorry,” she says, crawling across the floor of her cell. She grips the metal bars and peers out at you, kneeling there like she’s praying. You suspect Baela has never prayed to anyone or anything. “I didn’t mean to almost burn you. I didn’t realize you were standing on the steps with him until after I’d given Moondancer the order. It all happened so quickly.”

You cannot appear to be angry. You have no reason to be angry if you are Aegon’s captive. “I take no offense. I wasn’t harmed.”

“No one had any idea the Usurper was here,” Baela says. Still her eyes are bright, entranced. “We believed Dragonstone to be vacant.”

Good. You give her a dismal smirk. “No. Not so vacant after all.”

“Are you with child yet?”

A bolt shoots down your spine like cold lightning. “What?”

“That’s what he’s trying to do, isn’t it?” Baela says. “He wants an heir from you. His wife is dead, his sons are dead. He couldn’t get his claws on me or Rhaena. But you can give him a Valyrian-blooded prince.”

Aegon has never mentioned having children with you. You don’t know if this means he doesn’t want them, or if he does not wish to place demands upon you, or if he is indifferent, or if he believes it to be impossible. “I have nothing to show for his efforts.”

“Has it been unspeakably awful?” And if Baela seeks to console, this is secondary to her personal interest; she is curious, she is absorbed. Her fingers close more tightly around the iron bars. “He’s a drunk, a degenerate. He’s vile. He’s deformed. Has he tortured you? Has he violated you in a hundred different ways? Does he tie you down, does he strike you, does he cut and bruise you?”

And this is the Blacks’ story, one they could never begin to suspect might be fiction: that you are a martyr, that Aegon is a monster. In place of an answer, you give Baela the treasures you have brought her. You pass them through the gaps between the bars: a bottle of ink, parchment, a quill with a point like a blade.

Baela takes these objects, amazed. “You can help me send a letter back to Harrenhal?”

“I don’t know if I will be able to get to the rookery. But I’ll try.”

“The Usurper allows you this much free rein?”

He trusts me. He loves me. He’s bedbound and in agony. “He’s rather distracted at the moment.”

“He’s dying, hopefully,” Baela says. She has already begun to write. And there’s a reptilian sort of coldness that is snaking deeper into you, constricting around your bones, gliding through the blood-slick chambers of your heart, too much a part of you to ever rip out. But now Baela’s face softens. She looks up dolefully. “Moondancer, she’s…she’s gone, isn’t she?”

You bow your head as if this is something tragic. “She did not survive Sunfyre’s attack.”

“Fucking beasts,” she seethes, resuming her writing. “When my father learns of this, he and Caraxes will come to rescue us. And he will burn the Usurper alive.” She finishes her letter, rolls up the parchment, and hands it back to you.

“How will Daemon know that you authored this and under no duress?”

“My signature,” Baela says, grinning. “I end all of my correspondence to him with Your ever-obedient daughter. It is a joke between us. If it was absent, he would notice. His suspicions would be aroused. That is how I would signal if I was ever forced to write to him against my will.”

There is dark satisfaction like a spell shimmering in your arteries, nerves, the void-black pupils of your eyes. You return her smile. “Perfect.”

“Don’t fear,” Baela tells you, and reaches through the rusted iron bars to clasp your hand. You fight the reflex to tear away from her, this woman who certainly maimed Aegon and might have killed him. You find yourself studying her, measuring her height and weight, calculating how much milk of the poppy it would take to end her life. “Cregan Stark is south of the Neck now. He will move heaven and earth to possess you, everyone knows that. Soon we will have Northmen marching through the Riverlands with Caraxes and Sheepstealer safeguarding them from above. And after the Riverlands they will be in the Reach, and then finally King’s Landing to stabilize the capital. The Usurper and Sunfyre cannot fight. Daeron is scarcely more than a boy. The Betrayers are avaricious, overconfident drunks. The Greens will be vanquished before winter.”

“And what about Vhagar?”

“Together, Caraxes and Sheepstealer can bring her down.” But there is doubt in Baela’s voice, yes, a vacillation that is rarely heard from her.

“I hope so,” you reply, one of countless lies.

You take Baela’s letter to the rookery, open it, examine it carefully for the subtleties of her handwriting: slopes and dots and lines. Then you get a fresh piece of parchment and painstakingly draft a very different message. Not a plea for help, but an assurance that all is well; not a summons to Dragonstone, but a confirmation that the castle was found to be unoccupied and is now held firmly by Baela and Moondancer.

And you end the letter before tying it to a leg of the raven trained to fly to Harrenhal:

Your ever-obedient daughter, Baela Targaryen

~~~~~~~~~~

“Please eat something, Your Grace. I beg you.” Lord Larys Strong’s face is creased with servile, attentive worry. On the plate before you is fresh, warm bread and a dish of salted butter. In your bowl is a crab soup thick with vegetables, the broth tomato-based and red like Autumn’s hair, like blood.

“I can’t.”

“Would you like me to bring you something else? I could have the chefs prepare roast chicken, or duck, or boar…”

“No.” You push the bowl of soup away. You and Larys are alone in the Great Hall, seated at the high table which presides over a silent, vacuous chamber. The room was built to resemble a dragon lying on its belly; the entranceway is its mouth, two massive doors edged with stone teeth. There are dragons everywhere, these talismans of Aegon’s house, these creatures that are monsters to some and saviors to others.

Larys studies you closely. His voice is tender. “Your Grace, please. Can I do anything for you?”

You consider him, an enigma that is useful and subtle and dogged in his loyalty. “What is it that binds you so faithfully to Alicent and her children, Lord Larys? House Strong was so favored by Rhaenyra. Her heirs were your blood, no matter how much she tried to deny it. You could have risen high in the Black Council. Make no mistake, I am very thankful for your service to the Greens. I am glad to count you among the greatest of our fortunes. But what inspired you to turn your coat?”

Larys smiles at you. He has eyes like rain, the wavy abundant brown hair of his spurned family. His hands rest on the handle of his cane. “Your eldest brother is an acclaimed swordsman.”

“Yes,” you agree, caught off-guard.

“And so was mine,” Larys says. “House Strong, is it any wonder what we valued most? My father loved Harwin. He was so fiercely proud of him. He was interested in him, he understood him. They would whisper to each other all through feasts, all through tourneys, conspiring, chortling, enmeshed in this synergy that left no air for anyone else to breathe.”

“And your father never understood you.” Just like Bartimos Celtigar overlooks Everett, a son gifted with books and quills instead of horses and swords. “Never even tried to.”

“It is a terrible thing to be in the midst of your family and yet feel alone.”

“It is,” you say, remembering the Blacks’ festivities in King’s Landing.

“Now Lyonel and Harwin Strong whisper to no one,” Larys says, his smile widening into a dark, victorious grin. “And I am the Master of Whisperers.”

You remember the words that Otto Hightower spoke to you as he waited for his execution in the dungeons of the Red Keep: These dark, contagious facets of life change us all. They ruins us. Time, heartache, violence. You become capable of inconceivable things. You would scheme and deceive. You would murder. “Do you ever regret it?” you ask Larys softly. Becoming a sinner, a killer, a kinslayer.

“Never,” he replies. “Dowager Queen Alicent was the first person to ever truly listen to me. To make me feel worth something. Worth anything. To advance her interests in every way possible…that cannot be an injustice. It is the cleanest kind of loyalty. And I have no doubt my sacrifices will be repaid. If the Greens triumph, that is. When this war is over, Alicent’s son must sit the Iron Throne.”

“You mean Aegon.”

“Yes, of course.” But something mournful passes over Larys’ face like a shadow; he peers down at his hands to hide this from you.

He doubts Aegon will live. He foresees Aemond or Daeron inheriting the throne instead. You stand from the table, your chair squealing shrilly against the stone floor. “We should bring the king his supper,” you tell Larys. “He needs his strength.”

Aegon does not like you to be there when the maesters prod at him, scrub his wounds, rebandage his shattered legs. You were once his healer, yes, but now he believes you to be his wife. He does not want to be your patient. He does not want you to see him as a wounded man writhing in bed, as someone helpless, pathetic, weak, doomed.

The maesters are just finishing when you arrive with a tray of buttered bread and fresh soup, steam rising from the bowl of red like entrails that litter the earth once a battle has ended. The maesters are gathering up bloody strips of linen to be burned. Aegon is sobbing; his silver hair hangs in chaotic waves, both hands cover his face.

Your voice is hushed and heartbroken. “Aegon…”

“No, I’m okay,” he says, sniffling, mopping the tears from his cheeks with his bare palms. Then he reaches out to you. “Come here, come here, come here.”

You go to him, sliding the tray onto his bedside table until it clinks against the glass bottles there: rose oil, red wine, milk of the poppy. You climb onto the bed and Aegon’s arms circle around your waist, pulling you in closer as he buries his face in the warmth of your chest, your throat, covering you in hurried, imprecise kisses. Dimly, you wonder what he tastes when he breathes you in; you wonder what colors bloom in the sunless passages of his lungs.

“I missed you,” he murmurs. You can feel the dampness of his tears on your bare skin, the roughness of his scars.

“I was only gone for a few hours.”

“Too long,” he says. “Far too long. How’s Sunfyre?”

“He’s down on the beach, Your Grace,” Larys answers from the doorway where he has materialized like stars at dusk.

“Is he eating? Ambulatory? Wading in the water?”

“He’s…” Lord Larys hesitates. “He seems to be in a great deal of discomfort.” And yes, you know this to be true: Sunfyre the Golden’s wings hang in shreds, his wounds are inflamed with infection, and there is something wrong with him inside as well, a wheezing when he inhales, blood that seeps from his nostrils and his jaws. There’s nothing anybody can do for him. No one can touch him but Aegon, and Aegon can’t leave his bed.

Aegon says to Larys, low and sinister: “I want Baela dead. I want her burned.”

“She is far more valuable to you alive, Your Grace.”

“I am the king and I wish her to die.”

“Corlys Velaryon is her grandsire,” Larys implores. “If he discovers you executed Baela, he may recommit himself to Rhaenyra’s side. He may launch his own rebellion even after Rhaenyra is defeated. If you wish to win and keep the Iron Throne, I advise you to spare her.”

Aegon sighs and glares out the window that overlooks the Narrow Sea, his arms still linked around your waist. You begin to weave his braid for him. “Aegon,” you say gently. “We’ve brought you supper. Please eat it.”

“I’m afraid I’m too nauseated by my own inadequacy. Perhaps later.”

“You want to be well again. And you will be. But you have to eat.”

“I really don’t think I can.”

“Aegon, please.”

“Well…” He glances over at the bowl of soup and then gives you a mischievous smirk. “I suppose nothing tastes better than a crab, does it? Particularly when it is served in bed.”

“Or on the floor of a library.” You smile and kiss him: his pale face, his trembling lips. You finish his tiny braid like a silver chain and tuck it behind his ear. Then you pour him a cup of milk of the poppy, just one pearl-white splash, just enough to sand the serrated edges off his anguish.

“No.” He stops you, a hand on your wrist. “I don’t want to be useless again. I don’t want to be swimming in dreams. I want to be here with you.”

You shake your head. There are tears stinging in your eyes. “But you’re in pain.”

He grins, brushing your hair back from your face. “I’ve been in pain my whole life, Angel.”

And he manages to force down half the soup and two brimming goblets of wine before he sinks beneath the sea of his consciousness, while outside waves crack open against the rocks and Sunfyre leaks viscous threads the color of crimson, roses, flames.

~~~~~~~~~~

“You sent that raven a week ago,” Baela tells you when you bring her your offering, your clandestine kindness: apple cake, black tea. “More than enough time has passed for it to be received at Harrenhal and acted upon.”

You fill a porcelain cup with tea from the kettle and give it to her through the iron bars of her cell. “Perhaps the raven went astray.”

Baela ponders this as she alternates between unladylike chomps on a wedge of apple cake and slurps from the cup. “Maybe my father has been away from the castle. Maybe he’s out on the battlefield with the Stark men.”

Or maybe he believes you and Moondancer to be perfectly well and presiding unopposed over Dragonstone, and therefore not in need of his attention. What a welcome delusion to live under. I’m sure he’d rather be fucking Nettles anyway. You take the empty cup when Baela has drained it and refill it with tea. Baela accepts the nearly overflowing cup gratefully. She has had nothing to drink since she was taken captive except muddy rainwater that pools in one corner of each cell, guided by stone gutters that run along the outside of the castle. The tea is cloudy with cream and laced with sugar; still, her nose wrinkles a bit when she swallows it down.

“Bitter,” she notes distractedly.

“It’s made from leaves grown here on Dragonstone. Formidable, but not very sweet.”

Baela cackles; it echoes through the dungeon. This is the same voice that commanded Moondancer to brutalize Sunfyre, to send Aegon plummeting to the sand. Are her eyes already losing their viperish sharpness, is her heartbeat slowing? “Just like me!” She finishes her cup of tea and eagerly holds it out to you through the bars. You pour it full of the earth-colored brew once again.

You ask her as she licks apple cake crumbs from her fingers: “Why is Cregan Stark so determined to wed me?”

“He wants you. He considers you worthy of him.”

“But he doesn’t understand me. He doesn’t really know who I am.”

Baela shrugs indifferently. “None of us love anyone because of who they are. We love them because of who they make us believe we are.” She sips her tea and blinks groggily. “In any case, he will be your honorable savior, and you will be his illustrious damsel, and when the traitor dragons are dead he will spirit you away to Winterfell to bear his wolf pups. It’s not so bad a fate, I think. Not for someone like you. You aren’t ill-suited to matrimony. You are docile enough. A caretaker, a healer. You seem like the sort of woman who would be content with just one man.”

Yes. If he was Aegon. As you watch her kneeling on the stone floor of her cell, Baela sways and almost nods off, seemingly unaware that she is doing it.

“Burning might be too swift a death for the Usurper,” Baela says, smiling dazedly. “Cregan should have some of the Boltons flay him. They can all take turns wearing his hideous scars.”

“Yes. Skins shed, skins regrown, some of us change them over and over again.”

Baela stares at you inanely. She is beyond comprehension. Then she collapses to the stone floor, the porcelain tea cup spilling from her grasp and breaking into jagged white shards.

You take the key to the cell off the hook out in the corridor and unlock the door of iron bars. You step inside, still holding the tea kettle in one hand. You set the kettle down and drag Baela until she is propped upright against a wall. Her pulse is slow, but still present; she moans feebly as you position her. But it is all for a good cause; you must ensure she drinks the rest of the tea, the witches’ brew of leaves and cream and sugar and a fatal dose of milk of the poppy. Outside you hear a deep, prehistoric rumble as Vhagar flies over Dragonstone and scouts for a landing spot large enough to host her. Aemond is back again.

You angle the spout of the tea kettle between Baela’s paling lips and ply her with a small amount, less than a mouthful, then you rub her throat in just the right place to trigger her reflex to swallow. You know this trick well; you have used it on grievously wounded soldiers. You used it on Aegon after he was burned. You repeat the steps until the kettle is empty. Then you lay Baela flat again and watch her chest rise and fall slower, slower, slower until it stops. But still, you leave nothing to chance. You nick Baela’s wrist with a paring knife from the castle kitchens, until now tucked away in a pocket of your gown, emerald green silk to match the side of this war that you are pledged to. Her blood, unpropelled by the rhythm of a heart, dribbles sluggishly rather than spurts. She’s gone; she’s with her mother and Luke and Jace and the young sickly Viserys and Rhaenys, Otto and Helaena and Jaehaerys and Maelor and Autumn’s silver-haired son that she never had the chance to name. You wonder if the struggle goes on in the afterlife. Perhaps presently Otto and Baela are scratching and yowling at each other in a castle made of clouds.

Upstairs, Aemond is already in Aegon’s bedchamber. They are speaking in whispers when you enter, and you catch only pieces of the exchange: capital, Cregan, marriage, Daemon, crown. Larys stands in the corner of the room, his hands laced atop the handle of his cane. He gives you a reverent bow in greeting. He might not be so pleased to see you once he learns what you’ve done.

Aegon stops talking abruptly when he spots you and gestures for Aemond to go quiet as well, a commanding sweep of his hand. Aemond follows his brother’s gaze to the doorway. His lone blue eye climbs up and down you like a man on the rungs of a ladder. His hair is in one thick braid from his flight; stray white-blond strands that have been ripped free hang in disarray around his stoic, unreadable face. Aemond does not bow to you and never will. He only leers, a silver-haired wolf, a hawk with unhollow bones.

“Hello, Angel,” Aegon says, beaming or at least attempting to. He is frail and pallid and too thin and dripping sweat. There are indigo rings around his eyes like bruises. His legs are swollen, grotesque mountain ranges beneath the blankets. You rush to him and sit on the edge of the bed, feeling his forehead for fever and combing your fingers fondly through his hair.

Aemond sighs irritably. “Anyway, I’d like to torture her.”

“My prince…” Larys urges.

Aegon holds up a palm. “Now now, Lord Larys, let’s hear his proposal. Exactly how much do you intend to torture Baela?”

“Quite a bit,” Aemond says.

“To death?” Aegon asks hopefully.

“I don’t see why not.”

“My prince!” Larys says again. “Please, consider the possible ramifications, she is a prisoner of substantial strategic value, if your mother was here she would caution—”

“I’m afraid that Baela can no longer be interrogated,” you confess, and they all turn to you. There is a long, laden pause.

“And why is that?” Aemond says.

“Because she is dead of poisoning.”

“What?!”

“In her cell. Her body is there now. Feed her to Vhagar or Sunfyre, throw her in the sea, do whatever you wish with her. But she has paid her debt for the harm she inflicted upon us.”

Slowly, a grin splits across Aemond’s face. Larys shakes off his shock and resigns himself to it. But Aegon is neither proud nor reconciled. “You did that?” he says softly.

“You wanted Baela dead.”

“Yes, I did. But you don’t take life,” Aegon says, remembering what you once told him in King’s Landing. His oceanic eyes are stunned and fearful; not because Baela is was murdered, but because you were the one to end her. Because until now he was still able to tell himself that you could somehow escape this war unscarred, unruined. “You preserve it.”

“I preserve yours,” you reply. And when you offer him milk of the poppy—with no fear, for you know precisely how much it takes to kill a man—Aegon refuses it again, taking his suffering pure and sharp like the glass of a mirror.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What will happen to him?” Aemond asks you. You’re sitting on the stone staircase together under overcast midday skies, sipping wine and watching Sunfyre amble lethargically up and down the beach. You aren’t sure what’s made him so restless: his own dire injuries, Aegon in torment within the castle walls, something else entirely, some premonition that only beasts of ancient magic know. At last, Sunfyre seems to have exhausted himself and crumples onto the sand.

“I think Aegon will walk again. Eventually.”

“But he won’t be able to fight.”

You shake your head. “No.”

“Fuck,” Aemond hisses caustically, glowering out over the ocean.

You look at Aemond, needing to ask but terrified of the answer. “Can you win without him?”

“Can we win, you mean?” He smiles faintly, then sobers again. “I think so. Just before I left the Riverlands to come here, I received reports that Daemon had sent his lowborn little child bride away with Sheepstealer. He is trying to protect her from Rhaenyra’s assassins. My bitch of a half-sister has thus done us a remarkable favor. If Daemon is alone, I have no doubt that Vhagar can slay Caraxes. They say Daemon has fled Harrenhal. He’s hiding from me. I will find him, and I will burn him. I will end this war.”

“You need to be with Criston when his army faces the Northmen.”

“Of course,” Aemond says; but something in his face worries you.

There is a high-pitched shriek overhead, a glimmering flash of vivid gemstone blue. You startle and Aemond’s hand juts out, grabs you by the forearm, yanks you closer to him; then he relaxes when he recognizes who it is.

Aemond sighs loudly. “Why the fuck can’t he stay where he’s supposed to be?!” Then he stands, helps you to your feet while he’s at it, and heads down to the shoreline to meet Daeron and Tessarion.

The Blue Queen circles the beach several times, Daeron peering down as if struggling to understand something, his long white-blond hair whipping in the wind. At last Tessarion lands, her claws sinking into the wet sand, ocean froth bubbling around legs. Her long, swanlike neck stretches out towards Sunfyre, soft inquisitive squeals emanating from her jaws. Daeron leaps down from the saddle and strides to where Sunfyre is sprawled helplessly on the beach.

Alicent’s youngest child is clad in mint green—including a cape that billows out behind him in the seaside breeze—and glinting gold accents everywhere, buckles on his boots and the clasp of his cape and even a freckling of studs in his ears. He props both hands on his waist as he scrutinizes the crippled dragon. “Well, you’re not Moondancer.”

“He ripped Moondancer’s throat out,” Aemond says. “And then he ate her.”

Daeron whistles and gazes at Sunfyre admiringly. “I heard that Baela and Moondancer had taken possession of Dragonstone. I came to murder them. But now I see my services are unnecessary.”

“Baela is dead.” Then Aemond adds, nodding to you: “Here is the executioner.”

Daeron considers you, then laughs and assails you with a spirited embrace that nearly knocks you off your feet. “Welcome to the family, Lady Celtigar.”

“She’s the queen now.”

“Is she?” Daeron asks, eyebrows raised. “I was not under the impression that our brother was in any particular hurry to marry again.”

“His priorities seem to have shifted,” Aemond says.

“Can I see him?” Daeron looks around the beach and then up at the castle, shielding his eyes from the greyscale daylight. “Is he not outside with you? What is he doing in there? Not reciting prayers and composing poetry, I’d imagine.”

In Aegon’s bedchamber, Daeron cannot conceal his shock, his dismay; he gawks at the king like he is a three-legged dog, a blinded orphan. He stands thunderstruck at the end of the bed, taking in the vague yet horrifying outlines of Aegon’s shattered legs, the gauntness of his face, the fact that he is incapable of playing any meaningful role in the war for the foreseeable future. You sit on the bed beside Aegon, Aemond lurks by a window, Larys observes intently from a respectful distance, his eyes following every word as they flit through the air.

When Daeron recovers somewhat, he says: “I need to know what to do about Hammer and Ulf.”

“Why?” Aegon replies wearily. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Apparently, Mother once offered them the seats of House Costayne and House Merryweather as compensation for their efforts on behalf of the Greens, and they accepted. But now that’s suddenly not good enough. They’re asking me for the Riverlands and the Vale.”

Aegon turns to Aemond. “Is there anything left of the Riverlands these days? Should we find a new name for them? The Smolderlands, perhaps? The Everything-Is-Dead-Here-Now-Lands?”

“This is serious,” Aemond says flatly.

“I’m entirely serious.”

“Should I just tell them they can have whatever they want?” Daeron asks. “And then when the war is over and we’ve won…you know…pretend not to remember that conversation?”

“They can’t be given territory of any importance,” Aemond says. “They aren’t nobility.”

Daeron amends: “More relevantly, they are devoid of accountability and self-discipline. They drink all day and whore all night, and…oh, I mean no offense, Your Grace.”

“Fine,” Aegon says, preoccupied. There are fat beads of sweat on his bloodless face, glistening misery in his eyes. He gazes sorrowfully down at his left hand where he once wore his golden dragon ring before he lost it the same day he destroyed his legs. You pour him a cup of red wine and he drains it in seconds. You fill another.

“My point is that Hammer and Ulf are increasingly unreliable. I am only halfway convinced they could even show up for a battle before it was over. And yet we need them. Especially if Sunfyre cannot fight.”

“Agree to their requests,” Aemond says. “And if they survive the war, we will deal with them then. Rhaenyra’s faction is the greater enemy. We cannot risk the Dragonseeds racing back into her arms.”

“Lord Larys?” Aegon prompts dimly

“I could not agree more, Your Grace.”

“And on the subject of Rhaenyra,” Daeron continues. “Tessarion and I can take King’s Landing. Syrax is the only dragon in the city now, and Rhaenyra has never ridden her into combat.”

“No,” Aegon says. “We cannot risk setting the capital ablaze and turning the people against us. And Mother is there. Everett is there.”

“Everett?” Daeron looks around, baffled. “Who the fuck is Everett?”

“Angel’s brother. Not the firstborn son. The other one.” And as Aegon explains this, his chest is heaving and his eyes are glazed over. He tries to reposition himself in bed and has to bite down on his lower lip to keep from crying out, hard enough to draw blood.

“Is there anything else?” you ask Daeron and Aemond, a warning in your face. He needs rest. He needs to sleep, to heal.

“No,” Aemond says. He paces towards the door and snatches Daeron’s cape as he passes by him, hauling him out into the hallway. You follow after them.

As soon as he is out of earshot of Aegon’s room, Daeron tells Aemond: “He doesn’t look good.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Aemond, I think you should prepare to—”

“He’ll be fine!” Aemond snaps.

“You don’t think I’m losing something too?” Daeron demands furiously. “You don’t think I want him to be well again? Of course I want that. But if wishing people to live made it possible, the world would be a very different place.”

“You are needed in the Reach,” Aemond says, and that’s all.

Daeron glares up at him, incredulous, defiant. “This will be over soon. I hope you’re ready for what comes next.”

Then he storms out of the castle, soars down the long stone staircase, meets Tessarion on the windswept beach and takes flight into the southwest where the earth is green but the nights are an inescapable, dreamless black.

~~~~~~~~~~

Aegon is weeping again; you hear him from the hallway. It is after nightfall, and the castle is illuminated only by firelight. Candles flicker; the hearth crackles and pops. In the shadows, Aegon lies with his dragonfire scars and his fractured legs and his useless hereditary magic, tears streaming down his face. You have a vision of what he will look like when he’s dead; you imagine the Stranger reaching up from underneath the bed to seize him with claws like a raven’s talons and drag him out of existence.

“I need it,” Aegon sobs when he sees you, grasping for the glass bottle of milk of the poppy. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to need it, but I do.”

“I’m here, Aegon. It’s alright. Let me help.” You pour him a cup of the bitter remedy, a strange gleaming white like pearl, opal, moonstone. Then you tilt the cup against his lips. Aegon gulps down the milk of the poppy and then falls back into his sea of pillows.

He murmurs, eyes closed as you graze the backs of your fingers feather-lightly over his unmarred cheek: “I wanted to start over with you.”

“You’ll still get the chance.”

“No,” he whimpers miserably. “I ruin everyone. Everyone I’m given, everyone I touch. Helaena, Jaehaerys, Maelor. We don’t even know where Jaehaera is, in Storm’s End, lost on the road, taken captive, dead. Otto, Autumn, Aemond, Mother, Sunfyre. And now I’m ruining you too.”

“You’re not,” you plead with him in a whisper. And not for the first time, you think: What do you require from me, Aegon? Wrath, compassion, healing, children? What can I do to give you hope again? Tell me and it’s yours. I’d do anything. I’d become anyone. “Aegon?” you begin, trying to ask him; but he is already unconscious. He’ll likely be out until sunrise.

You drink cup after cup of red wine and sit in the flame-lit shadows with him, in the quiet, in the liminal space between decisions, envisioned sins and prospective virtues. Then you leave the bedchamber like a ghost, a creak here and a tap there and no other trace. You wander down long, twisting corridors framed by dragons of iron and stone. And at the other end of the castle beyond a door you’ve never opened before is the lair of a very different breed of dragon: tall and lean and ambitious, his eyepatch removed and stowed away for the evening, his long silver hair hanging freely to his waist.

He is wearing cotton sleeping trousers but nothing else. He is seated at his writing desk and scrawling something onto parchment in black ink, a list or a diagram or a design for a new crown upon his ascension to the throne, you don’t know and you have no intention of asking. You have far too many things on your mind already. You feel nauseous and unsteady, you feel like you can’t possibly go through with this. You can’t imagine it. You can’t fathom what he would feel like, taste like.

Aemond steals a nonchalant glimpse of you, having no sense of your inner turmoil. “Can I assist you with something?”

“Yes,” you say simply, sipping your wine under the stone arch of the doorway.

He looks up at you again, his quill suddenly still in his hand. His two eyes are on you, one wide and river-blue, the other a soulless glittering sapphire in a tangle of ruined flesh. And now he understands. There are other Targaryens, he had said. “Take off your clothes. Sit down on the bed.”

You step inside his bedchamber and close the door behind you, setting your empty cup on the edge of his writing desk. You walk to his bed—dark green blankets, gold thread—and shed each piece of clothing you have on, a black gown and everything under it, not looking to see if Aemond is watching you, too anxious, trembling wildly. But you know his gaze is on you when you—standing naked and shivering in the firelight—begin to pull back the blankets and hear the sharp reprove in his voice.

“I did not tell you to hide yourself from me,” Aemond says. “Sit at the edge. Yes, there. Good.”

You perch on the bed and wait for him, your ankles linked, legs swinging restlessly, arms crossed over your chest. Aemond is staring at you from the opposite end of the room. You can’t look at him; you look elsewhere, at the tapestries of dragons hanging from the drafty stone walls, at the thick candles that drip white wax. And this won’t be like lying with a stranger, but it won’t be like lying with someone you want either, because you are profoundly uneasy and monstrously ashamed and perhaps even afraid.

Aemond is approaching now, firelight skating over his smooth, unsinged skin. He is undoing the tie at the waist of his trousers. He yanks them off, revealing himself to you. He is already hard, and he is massive, vast in length and width. The panic hits you like a breaking wave.

“Oh,” you gasp in alarm, unable to stop yourself. Then you explain so he won’t be offended: “I’m not going to be able to take you if I’m not ready.” You rest a hand on your bare thigh, slip it between your legs, begin to stroke yourself the way Aegon does, trying to relax, trying to think of him…

“No,” Aemond says, moving your hand aside. “Let me.”

Obediently, you rest your palms just behind you on the mattress, open your thighs for him, inhale sharpy as Aemond’s long, artful fingers touch you somewhere only one other man ever has. And you’re a traitor, the worst kind of traitor, because it’s working: you can feel yourself opening for him, hungering for him, coating his hand in slick warm wetness.

Aemond isn’t looking at your face. His eye is fixed on the place where his fingers are circling, where he is now pushing two inside of you, and while it happens abruptly and roughly enough to startle you it is not quite painful, or maybe it is, just the tiniest bit, but the pleasure eclipses the pain, the pleasure is a current you are powerless to swim against.

“You can tell me to stop,” Aemond says as he strokes you from the inside with his fingers buried to the knuckles, his breathing labored. “I don’t want you to. But if you tell me to stop, I’ll listen. Okay?”

You nod, and instead of an answer you give him a moan, stifled but unmistakable, dark treasonous forbidden ecstasy. And this snaps something in Aemond, it unleashes a part of him he’d been keeping tied up like an untrustworthy animal, one that could maul or maim or kill. He drops to his knees, hooks his arms beneath your thighs, drags you to him until his lips and tongue are on you with dizzyingly blissful pressure. You fall back onto the bed, one hand twisting into the blankets, the other in his waterfall of unruly silver hair, pushing him even harder against you as he licks ravenously. Aemond doesn’t seem to mind; with each roll of your hips and bitten-back plea his enthusiasm blooms, hums and triumphant chuckles spilling from his mouth as he swallows down the proof of your desire. It’s starting, that swift climb towards a high like nothing else on earth, something Aegon once taught you was possible. You are a betrayer, but with the very best of intentions; you are making a sacrifice, but it feels so much like a gift.

“Aemond, I’m ready,” you pant, your fingers hopelessly knotted in his hair. “You can do it now, you can…” And then you lose your words because instead of rising to his feet, Aemond stays right where he is, his tongue insatiable, his face drenched in your wetness.

He’s going to make me…I’m so close…

“Aemond, what are you waiting for…?”

His lips close around the spot where you are most sensitive and he sucks forcefully, and that feeling like a shuddering, irresistible unravelling strikes you harder and faster than it ever has before, so intense it is almost painful, sharp and commanding, not something he is doing with you but to you, and you know even in the golden haze of the climax that this is not about love but about power, pride, control, worthiness.

He doesn’t stop. He is licking you again, opening your folds with one hand, thrusting two fingers inside of you with the other. You are still feeling the pulsing, involuntary aftershocks of one high when the next begins building, building, building, and when you close your eyes all you can see are waves on the ocean in a storm, swelling to impossible heights and ungoverned by anything except the dubious mercy of nature.

“Aemond please,” you beg in a frayed whisper, bathed in sweat and guilt and frenzied lust. “I’m ready. Just do it, please…”

And then he wrenches you into another vortex and it takes everything in you not to scream, not to jolt awake the skeleton crew that tends to Dragonstone and its surreptitious guests. You are beyond complete thoughts, beyond sentences. You are boneless, your muscles have turned to mist and air, you are entirely under Aemond’s control and that’s where he has wanted you all along.

“Aemond, please, please, please…”

Unable to resist any longer, he stands—wiping the glistening, dripping sheen from his face with the back of one hand—and forces his cock inside you to the hilt. He does not slow down when he meets resistance, and you don’t tell him to. You moan in shock at the disorienting fullness, you cannot help it; it is a feeling on the knife’s edge between ripping agony and euphoric pleasure. It is something you would gratefully die of. He moves within you, deep and quick, his hands clasping your hips. Emotionally, you feel nothing but a razored, perilous, impersonal intensity; in your body, it is paradise.

Again? Again…?!

“Are you going to come for me one more time, Angel?” Aemond taunts you as he thrusts; and that’s Aegon’s name for you that he’s using, and it’s wrong, and Aemond knows that, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to break the spell he’s got you under, you can’t tell him to stop, you don’t have the will to, and if this is about power then you know who’s won out of the three of you, you know who has steel in his bones and lightning cracking in his veins.

It’s different this time, pleasure rising like the tide in your whole body, a peak that is not concentrated so clearly between your legs but everywhere: fingertips, spine, belly, heart.

“Come for me, Angel. I know you can do it.” And then for the first time Aemond leans in close to you, his pristine scarless chest pressed to yours, his lips traveling from your throat to the curve of your jaw, his tongue darting into your mouth before you can turn away, and he tastes like pure, mineral lust, and maybe that’s not just because of what he’s done to you, maybe that’s all he is all the way down, hunger that is never satisfied, a need to consume like fire burns flesh.

You whimper, a desperate vulnerable sound, a pleading for him to finish what he’s started and give you this one last high, just one more, just one, please, please, you’ll do anything.

“I’m better than him, aren’t I?” Aemond demands as he fucks you, and there’s no other word for it. This isn’t making love, this isn’t a meeting of souls, it is using someone else’s body to patch up all your hollows, all the pinprick voids you’ve been walking around with for years, losing yourself one blooddrop at a time until you pass by a mirror one day and think who the hell is that? “I know how to take care of you. I know what you want. I can do things Aegon never could. I’ll make you come again. I’ll give you a prince.”

And he coaxes it out of you like the memory of a dream, more like an ether than something you could name: a shimmering elation all over, a cry you can only muffle by biting down on Aemond’s neck as he pounds into you, and then he at last he surrenders what you came here for, but only after all the rest of it. He fills you with himself, so much of it that you can feel it pouring out onto the blankets, immense flooding wet warmth that gives you no satisfaction whatsoever.

I’m a traitor, you think, and for all the times you’ve changed your skin this is the very worst of them. I shouldn’t have done this. I wish I hadn’t done this.

Aemond lifts himself off of you and rolls onto his back, panting alongside you as you both stare up at the ceiling, drenched in each other’s salt and knowing things that were once so unthinkable. Aemond is gazing over at you. His clear blue eye is tracing your lips, your breasts, your hips, your folds that are soaked with his sweat and seed. You don’t want him watching you. You feel sick knowing he’s watching you. You get up from the bed and begin putting on your gown.

Aemond says: “We should probably try again tomorrow.”

You shake your head. “I can’t,” you reply quietly.

He sits up on the bed, his lone eye narrowed and suspicious. His hair is damp and now flows over his shoulders in disheveled silvery waves. “What?”

“I can’t do this again. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s it,” Aemond flings. “Just this once and never again. Never again in our whole goddamn lives.”

“It feels like betraying him. It is betraying him.”

“And what if he can’t father any more children?!”

“Then I’ll be barren.”

Aemond glares, petulant, affronted. “I thought you wanted to help this family.”

“You didn’t do this for your family. You did it for you.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m a fucking monster.” He tears off the bed, tugs on his trousers, ties the knot with swift furious hands.

“Aemond, I didn’t say that, I don’t think—”

“You’ve done enough,” he seethes, pawing through a chest of clothing. He finds a shirt and pulls it on, gathers up his things, rages to the bedchamber door. He whips it open and disappears into the nightscape corridor.

“Aemond!” you call after him in a fierce whisper, as loudly as you dare to. “Aemond, where are you going?!”

“To take Harrenhal,” he pitches over his shoulder. And then he’s gone, and maybe it’s your fault, and maybe it isn’t, but either way you are wholly convinced that it is.

You bathe in one of the massive tubs heated by the lava that runs deep beneath the rocky earth of the island, scouring away every trace of Aemond, lathering yourself with soap scented with pine, rinsing, lathering again. Still, you can feel the way he moved inside you with such battering, rapturous force. Still, you miss him, you miss being able to talk to him and look to him and trust that he will protect Aegon in every way he can, for no matter how much envy Aemond is built of you believe his love for his king is stronger.

You return to Aegon’s bed, always so careful now not to jostle his legs, his shattered bones that are only just beginning to mend. You are petrified that he will know somehow—that he will see it on your face, smell it sweating from your pores—but Aegon has nothing for you but seeking hands and contented, drowsy sighs.

“Where’d you go?” he mumbles, still half-asleep, drawing you in closer. “I missed you. I keep dreaming that everyone’s gone. I watch you walk through the doorway and I’m left here in bed all alone.”

“Aegon?”

“Yes, wife.”

“Do you need children with me to be happy?”

He waits a long time before he answers. When at last he does, he chooses each word carefully. “I have never felt a calling to be a father. I’ve never been any good at it. Jaehaerys, Jaehaera, Maelor…they were mine, but they also weren’t, and I can’t explain it. I felt nothing for them except a vague sort of sympathy that they had the misfortune of being born to me. Now, did a lot of that have to do with my relationship with Helaena? Probably. And do I think things would be different if I had children with you? Yes, I believe they would be, to some extent at least. But I don’t need children to be happy. I just need you.”

You say with tears in your eyes and your voice splintering: “I’m so sorry, Aegon.”

He is mystified. “For what?”

“For not being a better person for you. For not being able to cure or protect you. For not being able to end the war.”

“Angel, nobody can,” Aegon says, fingers snarled in your hair, lips to your forehead. Then he smiles; you can feel the warm, playful curl of it against your skin. “Well, except Aemond, of course.”

~~~~~~~~~~

She is there to greet him when he arrives. She creeps out of the shadows like a spider, long limbs and volcanic-glass eyes, whispers like wind in brittle fall leaves and flesh that will never refuse him. She wears black, not for one night like you did but always; she has long dark hair that she never cuts or braids or ties back. Sometimes there are raven feathers in it, sometimes herbs or powders from spells, sometimes twigs and petals, sometimes blood. It all washes out in the cold cryptic currents of the Gods Eye. Once Daemon Targaryen was here, but he did not have a wound in the shape that she could fill, could walk into like a doorway and stitch herself into the velvet-gore lining of his lungs, his liver, his heart. But now Daemon is gone. And Harrenhal has a new king to reign over the city of bones and ashes.

She meets him under the starlight that trickles in through the ruins of Harrenhal, less a castle than an architectural graveyard, less a place of beginnings than of calamitous ends. Her fingernails trace his scar and she tells him it is the mark of a hero. She touches her lips to his sapphire eye and tells him it reminds her of a god. And thus the doorway opens, and Alys drifts through it, silent and resistless like smoke, like a plague.

Perpetual Resurrection, Aemond thinks. He knows they are the words of House Celtigar. He has studied the mottos of every noble house in Westeros; but none speak to him more than these.

She touches him and he sees everything he could be. He tastes her lips and drinks down the smooth intoxicating fire that burns the boy he once was away.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader

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motherofdogs1010 · 5 months

Text

Masterlist

I write with chubby-coded/plus sized, racial inclusive readers in mind; very rarely do I mention anything about a reader's physical appearance, all are welcome and are written in mind for everyone to enjoy!!

Must be 18+ to join taglists

I also take frequent mental health breaks since I do suffer from poor mental health, BUT writing is my safe space so I will always come back to you guys ❤️

Key:

💋 18 + Smut

😊 Fluff

💔 Angst

🖤 Dark Storyline

😉 Omegaverse

Laurel Sickness (Sonny Carisi x Reader) 🖤

Summary: Laurel Sickness is an case of extreme case of obsessive love that is sweeping the globe with no explanation. People are becoming just as mad as Apollo once was when he first set his godly eyes on the virgin nymph, Daphne.

Warnings: 18+ only, dark!fic, toxic behavior, gaslighting, dystopian society, dark!Sonny Carisi, stalking, stalker!Sonny Carisi, the world's messed up in this story, age gap relationship, forced relationship, eventual non-con/dub-con, Stockholm Syndrome

Part I Part II TBA

Need to Know (Peter Parker x Reader) 💋

Inspired by Doja Cat's "Need to Know"

Summary: When she was ready to get back out on the dating scene after dumping a certain Winter Soldier, Y/N was a woman ready to get back out there. She just never expected to find herself in a relationship with a certain nerdy spider.

Warnings: older woman/younger man, age gap relationship, heavy smut, drinking, swearing, daddy kink, mentions of cheating, toxic ex behavior, eventual pregnancy

Part I Part II Part III COMING SOON

Little Darling (Thomas Shelby x Reader) 💋

Summary: Birmingham has received a new club, one that is showcasing a exotic type of dance that is drawing in crowds, but it is one particular dancer that catches Thomas Shelby's eye... one that goes by the stage name: Little Darling

Warnings: 18+ only, eventual smut, stripper!reader, mentions of prostitution/sex work, canon Peaky Blinders violence, swearing, drinking

Part I Part II Part III Part IV COMING SOON

Letters to Juliet & Romeo (Thomas Shelby x Reader) 😊💔

Inspired by 'Letters to Juliet' film...

Summary: Heartbroken and in the midst of the Great War as a nurse, Y/N L/N writes to a person she never expected to write to before... her brother's friend, Thomas Shelby... But the war's over now and it is time to face the letters...

Warnings: angst, wartime talk, fluff, reunion, pre-Peaky Blinders Tommy, solider!Tommy, nurse!Reader, chubby!reader, age gap (everyone is of age)

Part I Part II

Of Messiahs and Seeds (Dark!Paul Atreides x Reader) 🖤💋

Summary: Emperor Paul of House Atreides has set forth with expansion of his empire on the planets that have resisted and has now come across the last stronghold that resists him: Terra Millennium...

Warnings: 18+ only, eventual NONCON/DUBCON, eventual forced marriage and pregnancy, violence, language, drinking, chubby!reader, dark!Paul Atreides, spoilers for Dune Part 2

Part I Part II Part III COMING SOON

A Jedi in Arrakis (Paul Atreides x Reader) 💋💔😊

Summary: While on the run from Empire troops, Jedi padawan Y/N comes to find out that hyper-driving in a compromised craft can have some major setbacks when she discovers not only is on a new planet but a whole new galaxy as well...

Warnings: jedi!reader, eventual 18+, NSFW, angst, fluff, eventual smut/pinv!sex, oral sex, talks of questioning the Force and teachings, spoilers for Dune Part I and II, eventual marriage

Part I Part II Part III TBA

Solar Flare (Feyd-Rautha x Reader) 💋

Summary: Chosen as the bride of na-Baron Feyd-Rautha, Y/N finds herself at the hands of the sadistic na-Baron who seems keen on having his bride on their wedding night...

Warnings: 18+ only, NSFW, arranged marriage, DUBCON/ pinv sex, fingering, loss of virginity, brief knife kink, small breeding kink, crude language, forced arranged marriage

Dividers by @firefly-graphics & me

Banner by @vase-of-lilies

#masterlist #law and order svu #peaky blinders #dune #peaky blinders imagine #dunexreader #svuxreader #tommy shelby x reader #reader x character

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faerievampling · 4 months

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✩Masterlist✩

All stories are 18+

Link to my Ao3

Requests are open: I accept prompts, requests, anything Astarion related. No limitations. I always do my best to answer and if I haven’t responded, I am probably working on it <3 (check out my ask tag below if interested in what I’ve answered)

All chapters of my longfic Killing Time below :)

Astarion:

One Shots & Headcanons

A Long Night - After Astarion and Tav have their first fight, Astarion is desperate to make up but can't fight his frustration. Set during Act 3, before the end of Astarion's personal quest.

A Night to Remember - Tav, Astarion, and Halsin have a threesome at the Elfsong Tavern during the events of the game.

A Sweet Heart - Astarion follows the sweet scent of Tav's arousal to her tent, unable to help himself.

A Vampire's Courage - The Dark Urge and Spawn!Astarion, after having decided to remain friends, have been traveling together after the defeat of the Netherbrain. One night, an opportunity strikes, and Astarion makes his move.

Letting Go - Tav and Astarion work through some trauma together.

The Life of Astarion's Dark Consort - Headcanons for what eternity would be like with Lord Astarion. Part 1. Part 2.

Threads - Astarion pulls you aside after getting distracted by Tav’s new outfit. Focused on Astarion's POV and pleasure.

Tender - After the tadpole is gone, Spawn!Astarion's newfound vampiric strength must be tempered when making love to Tav.

Homecoming - Part 2 of A Vampire's Courage, but can be read as standalone. After finally sleeping together, Durge and Astarion have unfinished business. Smut and feelings ensue.

Miracle - Years after the defeat of the Netherbrain, Astarion and Tav discover they are pregnant. Part 2.

His Pleasure - Ever since the defeat of the Netherbrain, Astarion and Tav work to help Astarion find his own pleasure in the bedroom.

Killing Time

After thousands of years together, the Vampire Ascendant and his Dark Consort receive an unexpected guest.

Updated Every Sunday. Current total word count: 58k

Ao3

Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Visitor

Chapter 2 - Decisions, Darling

Chapter 3 - The Arrival

Chapter 4 - The Hunt

Chapter 5 - Pink

Chapter 6 - Blind

Chapter 7 - Eternity's Promise

Chapter 8 - Draconic Bindings

Chapter 9 - Power

Chapter 10 - A Radiant Reunion

Chapter 11 - Stargirl

Chapter 12 - Beholden

#astarion #faerievampling asks answered #Killing Time

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ooostarwarsfandom501st · 14 days

Text

Reunion

Hunter x Fem! Jedi reader

Summary: you reunite with your old squad after Order 66...

Warnings: Mild descriptions of injuries, a bit of angst, fluff, happy ending, kissing, Order 66 mentions, I think Hunter deserves his own warning as well ;-)

Hey! This is my first small one-shot on Tumblr. I have been writing a few stories and other things in my life, but it is not something I've done in a while, so it's probably not my best. But please, feel free to leave a comment with some ideas for other one-shots etc. Enjoy!

Kallar.

Worst kriffing planet in your life! Not so much the planet itself, but more the traumatic events that happened there.

Before the war, you were a young Jedi Knight. Your old master, Plo Koon, had supervised most of your training, and you were thriving. At least, until the war came and you were thrown into a big pile of galactic bantha shit.

At first, you served with the 104th battalion along with your old master. You and Commander Wolffe worked well together and things were always a little bit easier, when you did it together.

But after a bit you grew more and more restless, not really having a feeling of being useful - at least, as much as you used to have. You tried pushing those ridiculous thoughts away, but that proved a lot harder than you thought.

Although you loved the Wolfpack who had all become your friends, despite the Jedi Code, you knew it was probably time to move on.

That's when Clone Force 99 came into the picture.

Those boys were everything you loved and longed to be. Diving headfirst into battle with a more or less reckless plan, but somehow always pulling it off. Sometimes, it honestly surprised you how well they worked, considering there were only 4 of them.

Crosshair was the most difficult one to connect with. He didn't really understand the need for a Jedi General, when him and his brothers had always worked alone. You did understand his point of view, but you weren't going anywhere. You loved this squad. It took many rotations, but after a rather difficult mission where you saved his life in a daring manner, he slowly began warming up to you.

Then came Tech. After you got over his ridiculously huge brain, you started paying more attention to his, as his brothers call them, 'info-dumping's' and it turned out that they were actually quite interesting. And when Tech realized that you were paying attention and sometimes even asking him questions, he always found you whenever he had something new to share about the planet you visited, or when you discovered an animal.

Wrecker was the easiest one to connect with. He was a giant with a heart of gold, always making you laugh until you couldn't breathe, always showing some new work out, and always having a blast with you, whenever you blew something up together. Being friends with Wrecker came as naturally as breathing.

And then Hunter.

The dark, mysterious, smoky and broody Sergeant of Clone Force 99. The first time you ever laid eyes one you, you were afraid your heart was giving out. Everything about him was captivating. His eyes telling but a million secrets, his voice sending shivers down your spine despite saying the most regular things, his majestic hair that you one time were allowed to braid because the temperature on Tatooine was unbearable Maker even his scent drove you crazy. When you learned about his enhanced abilities, you instantly knew that he must have heard your raping heart, but by the little smirk he send your way, he seemed to like it.

Although you cared deeply for all the boys, Echo as well when he joined the squad, Hunter was different. Your relationship wasn't labeled or anything. But it definitely wasn't platonic either. Not judging by the looks you always sent each other, or the way you always looked out for each other, touching each other in some small way like fingers brushing against each other, a hand on your back or on his arm. It was something much deeper. And you both knew it was so wrong. If you were caught, it would mean the end. But that didn't exactly stop you.

Not until Kallar.

When the troopers turned on you and Master Billaba, and you were the only one who got away, albeit with a nasty blaster shot to your shoulder, you turned and ran and you didn't look back once.

You heard the news. The Clones killed all the Jedi.

Your world was turned upside down. You thought about your old Master, about your old battalion, but mostly about Clone Force 99. If you faced them, you knew, you wouldn't be able to kill them.

So instead, you ran.

And for a while you hopped from planet to planet, earning credits by doing small jobs here and there. You hid everything. Your lightsaber was safely tucked away on you small ship, and instead you carried a blaster. You changed hair color, clothes and everything else you could, to change your appearance. You were constantly checking over your shoulder, afraid that the Empire would show up. Or worse, Hunter.

And then you met Phee. Completely random on the street, when you were running a job for some wealthy family. You were weary of her first, but then she showed you Pabu and now you owe her your life.

Life on Pabu was something else. Calm, warm, and everyone was so nice. And the best part of it, no one knew how you were. It was perfect.

As you were on your usual morning stroll, you got a comm from Phee, telling you to come to the square and meet her new friends. This wasn't the first time this had happened, and you were excited to see who Phee had met this time.

"Alright Phee, I'm here. Now who are..." you trailed off, freezing in your spot, when your eyes came in contact with the ship that had been your home many rotations ago.

Your brain was working overtime to find the best possible escape route, but it was too late. Four heads turned and starred at you, their eyes wide and mouths open.

"Y/N..." Wrecker was the first to open up, a smile spreading on his lips. But when he took a step forward, you took a step back on instinct and you saw the hurt flashing in his eyes.

"We... we thought, you were dead... is it really you?" He tried again, but you still said nothing.

"Uhh Y/N do you know them?" Phee was obviously confused

"Well obviously she must be rather cautios of us, given the circumstances in which we saw her last. But I believe she looks to be in good health" Albeit a surprised tone, Tech spoke up, adjusting his goggles.

It was too much for you. You were scarred, you couldn't look any of them in the eyes, especially not Hunter. So you turned and ran. Just like you did on Kallar.

Ignoring the calls from behind you.

______________________________________________________________

They couldn't believe their eyes, when they saw you. Hunter had been heartbroken that day on Kallar, and he never thought, he'd ever feel better. Then Omega showed up, and he suddenly had a new purpose in life. But when he saw her standing there on the square... he felt his world turn upside down again.

"Who was that?" Omega asked carefully, making Hunter look at her with soft eyes.

"An old friend who we thought had passed away" Hunter explained, not wanting to go into too much detail right away.

"You should talk to her" Echo nudged him, "We'll go with Omega"

Hunter shot his brother a grateful look and rushed after his cyare.

When he found you on the beach, his heart did a flip. You looked just a beautiful as the last time he saw you. You had changed, yes, but you were still you.

"Y/N please don't run away again" he begged, and when you turned around and finally met his eyes, you had tears in them.

"I- Hunter" was all you said. All you could manage to say. You still kept a small distance.

"I thought, I had lost you. When the regs starting shooting at you and Master Billaba... we are not with the Empire, cyare. I promise" his words were firm, but his voice were shaking.

Carefully, he took a step forward, and you stayed.

"Why did it happen?" You asked, having about a million questions.

"It's a long story, why don't you come back and I'll tell you everything?" he moved closer and closer until finally, he stood right in front of you.

You felt yourself breaking again, tears streaming down your face as you let Hunter embrace you.

"Oh Hunter..." you choked.

"Cyare... I missed you" he whispered, kissing the top of your head.

"I- I missed you too" you spoke, wiping your tears away after calming down.

For the first time you looked at him with love again, smiling softly at him. So much had happened. So much was lost. But now you had finally gained something again.

You didn't waist another second as your lips crashed against Hunter's, who let out a surprised groan, but quickly kissed you back, sneaking his arms around you as your lips moved in sync.

It was everything you and dreamed of for so long. It was perfect.

If possible, you pulled each other even closer and only pulled away to catch your breath, Hunter's forehead leaning against your own.

"Let's go back, I still have a million questions for you and the boys" you whispered, a pleasant smile on your face.

"On one condition" Hunter said, making you raise a brow at him. "No more hiding this. I love you, cyare. Will all my heart"

You didn't think it was possible, but your smile grew and you pecked his lips again.

"I love you too, Hunter. Now let's go back before Wrecker eats all the dinner"

And as you both laughed and bathed in the morning sun, you took his hand and for the first time since forever...

You were truly home.

______________________________________________________________

Okay, this is not my best work, but I still quite like it. Hope you all enjoyed as well <3 Again, feel very free to comment ideas for other one-shots etc. also, which characters you want to see. It can also be other clones or other Star Wars characters<3

Also - I probably wont be writing crazy smut, maybe spicy stuff but not full on crazy haha.

Bye <3

#star wars #tbb crosshair #tbb hunter #tbb omega #the bad batch #tbb s3 spoilers #tbb season 3 #tbb tech #clone force 99 #tbb batcher #tbb echo #tbb wrecker #hunter x reader #tbb hunter x reader #hunter x you

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precious-little-scoundrel · 29 days

Text

| Ida’s Law

Introductory Part

Summary: The American War Effort had conceded to the enlisting and commissioning of women into the Air Force at semi-integrated status. Deemed a more reliable if not safer combat post, the going rank of officer in the Air Force was intended to secure fair treatment and combatant status for these women, as it had for their male counterparts. Like most things in war -or life, if one is a woman- such recognition must be fought for.

Warnings: disturbing content- if you made it through last one this one should be a breeze, however it picks up where we left off so expect mentions of war, wounds, illusions to past rapes, Nazis being racist fucks, possibly some internalized misogyny about it all and some hopefully very 🥹🤧 reunions

A Note Going Forward: With this part now published, I am happy to open this series up for prompts. Ideally I’d like this series to end up being exclusively prompt-inspired and will be putting out prompt lists accordingly. I think that will be a fun way to keep the interaction going, stretch my own skills and explore all the different scenarios that may intrigue y’all. You’re welcome to come up with your own prompts, too. All are welcome, none guaranteed but let’s be real -I’m obsessed with this AU so I’ll likely do it. For now I’ll be keeping all writing to POW Camp and Liberation and Post-Liberation timelines.

“Well, what do we know?” Ida Brady asked the first officer out on the other side as they began to filter through the laborious processing of the camp. She counted them down, one familiar face after another appearing through the doorway again with no worse indignity than the new identification tags hanging from their necks.

“I hate a guy named Johann, and I like a guy named Fritz, and the lieutenant guy wasn’t bad.” Maureen declared, straightening her precious cap atop muddy auburn tresses. “Who went and named their son Fritz after the last war? I mean really? Who does that to a kid? It’s like he’s making up for it now, though, awfully nice.”

“Mm, I thought so, too.” Ida hummed, “Might keep an eye on that one, work on him a bit. You think, Kendeigh?”

“Work on him yourself, Ida.” Maureen scoffed.

“Not much to work with.” Ida retorted, the first general reference to her disfigurement she’d made. “What do you know? What’s up?” she left off to inquire after Tallulah Smith who came out the other side of processing looking more than exasperated.

“Know? They don’t know squat.” she said, “Never heard of a Cherokee.”

“I’ll be.” Maureen was grinning sharply. “Wasn't enough being a woman for ya Smith, ya had to go and be a brown one.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” She griped, “They kept insisting I was a fighter pilot. That’s what all the ‘dark ones’ are, according to them. Told them I’d rewire their insides and maybe then they’d take my engineering degree seriously.”

“I’d like to see that.” Maureen murmured, drowsiness beginning to take over at the comparative calm of their new surroundings.

“Looks like we got everyone, yeah?” Ida peered over the heads of the crowing room and counted out her charges in a silent tally.

“Looks like.” Smith agreed. “Got billet assignments?”

“I do. Colonel Clark, most senior prisoner here, said the combines are strict but the rooms aren’t. Let’s try to behave until we feel our way, then we can swap, if they allow.”

“It’s going to smell like feet no matter where and who we share it with.” Smith pointed out and Ida heaved a great sigh as if that were the hardest prospect she’d yet encountered.

“Mm.”

“Buck is out there!” Maureen suddenly cried out, grabbing at Ida’s arm, pointing out the window at the muddy yard.

“How nice. Gotta get this sorted first, eyes in, Kendeigh.”

Maureen reluctantly tore her eyes away from her dearly missed pilot. “Yes sir.”

“All right,” Ida’s voice carried as well as it ever had, commanding immediate quiet and attention, “those in the 350th, 419th, -the hundredth!- on me. Gather ‘round. That’s it, come on. Alright, well, we made it, well done. Truly, well done to all of you. Now I know you well enough to not accuse any of you of being pure idiots, just because we made it to where we wanted to go doesn’t mean any of what’s ahead is going to be easy. Be wary, don’t let your guard down, you don’t know plenty of these men and they don’t know you, I’m sure there are measures in place for spying already. Be sensible. I am certain we can rely on the kindness of those in the hundredth, but even then keep in mind, if you are cold, they are too, if you're hungry, you best believe they are hungrier, the last thing we need is a crisis of chivalry in here. Rely on them, except their help, but don’t ever take from them. Understood? And one more thing, since the human spirit is irrepressible I feel it’s warranted to make one more housekeeping note. None, and I do mean none, no inner relations at all are allowed. I don’t care how cold you are, how sweet he’s been, or how much you’ve missed him. The Red Cross aren’t sending rubbers, and don’t ever take the promise of a pull out. Do you want a one-way ticket to a death camp or a bullet to the head? Get pregnant. Simple as that. You think the Jerries think poorly of you now for being female? Try being a matron. The point is to blend in as much as possible, keep that in mind. Whatever you do, keep that in mind. Understood?”

“Yes sir!”

“Colonel?” One voice demurred, raised hand and respectful title only forerunners for an obvious objection incoming.

“Yes? Sanchez, isn’t it? You’re not one of mine, I think.”

“No, sir, 55th -fighters.”

“Yes, well, welcome. What’s your question?”

“No offense sir but- what about the guards?” Sanchez asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Brady replied with typical candor, “I believe so far we’ve seen a mix here. I’m sure our friends can give us tips on who to watch out for.”

“No sir, sorry I meant-“ Sanchez kept her teeth clenched until her thoughts seemed to form better, “-you said no relations. What about the guards? No disrespect meant colonel and I don’t know about yours, but mine -they weren’t pulling out.”

“Mm.” Maureen thought that if Ida smashed her lips together any tighter they’d turn whiter than her skin, the bent aviators she had managed to preserve this entire time did a remarkable job of masking whatever feeling was stiffening her spine to the current degree, but all the same, her spine was stiff, “no offense taken, an excellent point. I’ll inquire about any possible…remedies. Anyone else?”

A multitude of hands shot up and Ida Brady scanned them with bewilderment until she realized her lapse in specificity. “Anyone else with questions, I meant! Saints alive. No? Good, let’s claim our bunks and see about a wash.”

After the dark interior of the building, being processed for hours, the hazy late afternoon light of outside glared painfully against Ida’s bloodshot eyes as she stepped out, leading the way down the three wooden steps to the muddy yard. Monochrome, this place, brown wooden buildings and brown earth and a muddy sky and brown flight jackets one after another.

And there in the midst of it, waiting for them with ever constant patience and thinned stateliness was Gale Cleven and his lost blue eyes and an alarmingly symmetrical set of facial scars.

“Major.” Ida felt her face soften into an odd expression she realized was likely that of relief. Cleven had that way about him, it was better suited to her preferences than Egan’s blustering warm hearted concern, Colonel Harding’s gruff joviality or her John’s perpetually intense concern. Her little brother was, oddly, nowhere to be seen now and that was a comfort in this wide open, highly observed space.

“Colonel.” Gale Cleven’s eyes weren’t a lost blue anymore but a pair of stormy seas and Ida steeled herself for pity. She found smoldering rage in his face instead. Another relief.

“How was it?” he was nodding to the command hut.

“Fine.” she assured.

He was searching for something in her face and Ida was sure it was easily found skin deep along her puffy, purpled left cheek, but if she had anything to do with her expression alone, he’d be kept guessing for ages. “Good.” he decided at last but his smile was tight, “Made John wait in the combine, he’s in there pacing like a madman. They make a note of who’s attached to whom, Colonel,” he explained, “a more discreet reunion seemed in order.”

“We’d appreciate all the direction you—“ Ida had begun but was cut short by Lt. Kendeigh who broke ranks from the processed group and came out of the hut behind Ida like a bat out of hell, running up to Cleven and tackling him in a hug, rather like a dog with their long lost master.

The Major’s lanky frame staggered under her surprise attack, perhaps more from shock and ill preparedness than poor rations and a weakened constitution. Or at least Ida, hoped that was the case.

Well, there went all intentions for discretion about partiality on their part, five seconds had gone by and Maureen still hadn’t let go, her valued cap about ready to knock off her head and his too. Seeing the gig was up, Cleven even belatedly brought an arm up to hug her shoulders, his pleased face bashfully pacifying her intensity. “If it isn’t my favorite bombardier.” Cleven mumbled, his lips failing not to tug upwards in the tiniest of smiles, and he gave her a pat on the back.

“Buck!” Smith was coming in hot behind Kendeigh and knocked Ida’s shoulder in her haste to get around her and join in. “Thank Jesus you’re here.” she grunted as she squeezed him and Kendeigh both, “I mean -we’re sorry you’re here but since we’re here-“

“Glad you’re here, too, Smith.” he assured her gently, another pat on another back and Ida watched Cleven’s composure began to flake as he took stock of their roughened appearances. “It’s gonna be ok now.” he offered, and coming from someone else that statement would’ve sounded a great deal less impressive than it did coming from him. It also sounded hollow without Bucky’s typical parroting of the upbeat sentiment. “Let’s get you girls sorted.” he nodded at Ida who fell in alongside him, if only to distance and displace Kendeigh and her over familiarity just a tad.

“What’s your Kommandant like?” Ida asked by way of conversation as Gale directed them in a trudge along the brown paths towards his specified hut.

“Think I know him as well as you.” Gale admitted, “Tried to stay low, been no reason for socializing. Wouldn’t advise a trip to the camp doctor though.” He added the last part after a beat.

“Why?”

“Your Johnny says he’s got an experimental mind.” Gale smiled wryly but there was a grieved look behind it that made Ida’s pulse pound in alarm, “If you go in with a cold, you might come out with a radioactive arm instead.”

“Noted.” Ida muttured with a shiver, wishing to god her jacket hadn’t been taken off her a couple stops ago, the sun was waning in the dull sky and the breeze was frigid without it. “Speaking of doctors,” she decided to go for it, “is Johnny -my John- is he alright? At the gate it was such a racket, was he…standing?”

Gale paused in his step up into the combine, brows knitted in surprise and she noticed along with him that their little march had drawn quite a little audience from the fellow inmates. Females in a Stalag -what a novelty. “Yeah, John’s fine. He’s fit.” Gale still had that quizzical look on his face.

Ida swallowed hard and gave him another curt nod, one she wanted to come across as grateful but wasn’t sure it did, her battered cheek was responding less and less to her mind’s commands. “Right. This us?”

“Yeah. Figured we’d try to keep as many close as possible.” He explained, “Welcome to paradise.”

“What did y’all name this shack?” Maureen asked him as she stepped over the threshold, it was dark inside and smelled of lumber and smoke.

“We haven’t.” Gale admitted, forlorn at the realization that things like that didn’t occur to people like him. If Bucky had been here, he’d have had it named in an hour, and something awful, too. Something that would make them all laugh.

“Damn oversight, Gingerale.” Maureen teased merrily but Cleven noticed the dimming light in her eyes as she took in the cramped, uninspired utility of the place. One wooden doorway after another.

“Talked it over with Colonel Clark during your processing,” Gale said, “decided it were best if we mingle you all among the men we know. Boys from your squadrons, friendly faces. A few of you in each room.”

“I call dibs on yours.” Maureen unabashedly grinned up at Cleven but Ida saw how a heartbroken look of protectiveness skittered across his features.

“Alright.” he muttered without a fight for once.

“Mm, Smith, Sanchez, Tong, you in here.” Ida decided and having snapped her fingers she was moving on to the next stuffy room. Asking Cleven at each about their current occupants, and with the precision of memory required of a woman who had to memorize her opponents on the promotional ladder, chose their new bunk mates accordingly.

“And where’s Johnny bunked?” she asked him in a low tone as she watched the next set settle in from the doorway.

“In with me, further down the hall, Demarco, Hambone, a few others.”

Ida seemed to hesitate as she eyed up an extra bunk in the current room that the last of her girls were settling into.

“Don’t be a stick, colonel,” Maureen spoke up gently, a surprising liberty even for her, “you need friends right now. Bunk with us. Everyone’s going to be fine. Can’t be all places at all times, ya know?”

Ida didn’t reply but after a moment she admitted, “I should go see John.”

Gale and Maureen exchanged a look and then moved in unison to catch up to her as Ida Brady walked, brisk as if she were back home at Thorpe and about to pick a fight with Jack Kidd, down the long hall to one of the last rooms. “In here?” she asked Gale, pointing at the closed door -they liked to keep it so for warmth and privacy, and to acclimate the guards to it being closed when the radio was out.

“Yeah that’s us.” Cleven replied, reaching out and snagging Maureen back a step as Ida turned the handle. “Let’s give ‘em a minute.” he suggested, referring to the Bradys.

He held her jacket sleeve for a brief moment before turning it to grab her hand, he’d missed those hands. To his horror their usual calloused elegance was a swollen paw of bruises. “The hell, Maureen?” he whispered in shock, turning it over to examine it, grip strong around her wrist before she could pull away. “Who did this?”

Maureen did her best to shrug, “Some bitch stood on them.” she said simply, and surrendered the other hand for a similar heartbroken inspection.

Kendeigh was indeed not as visibly marred as Ida Brady or a few of the others, but still, Gale kept turning her crushed hands over and over, recalling with vivid agony the way he’d admired them at all manner of work before. To hurt them that way, to restrain her so meanly- “Maureen,” she’d never heard his voice dip so low, and his eyes were simmering where they cataloged her hurts, “what’d they do to you?”

“What’d they do to your face?” she shot back, perhaps more perturbed by the immaculately symmetrical scars on his once porcelain face than her own condition. Women expected the treatment they’d gotten, in some twisted way, but this on the other hand, it disturbed her.

Gale looked taken aback by her question and quickly dropped her hand to touch his right cheek as if to remind himself the scar was obvious to everyone. “Flak.” he replied a beat too late.

“Awfully precise.” she snarked.

“I asked you first.”

“I told you, a bitch stood on them.”

“I’m your superior officer.”

“Who it looks like someone had some fun with,” Maureen snapped back, “who did this?”

“What happened to you?” He hit right back but his voice quavered.

“I’m fine now. I wanna go see the boys. Come on.”

“Just- give them another minute.” Gale insisted, pulling her back away from the doorway again, “It’s a lot.” He reminded, “For a brother to see his sister like -that.”

Maureen couldn’t argue with that, besides Gale looked so sad and more fragile than she’d ever seen him, and the gentle hold he had on her jacket was as needy and scared as a child’s. “I’m glad we’re in this together.” she whispered.

“Me too.” he admitted, guilty and sad over how true that was before letting her press her lips to his.

Ida Brady didn’t know what she expected when she opened the door, not much she supposed, just a living brother with any luck. It was a decently tidy room, plates stacked on a rough hewn board at the far end, eight bunks lining the walls, stacked three tall. A table was in the middle and there sat dear old Crank and Hambone too, Murph with Benny. A card game was ongoing.

They looked so fine, quite normal, all in all.

All motion in the small room stopped upon her entrance. Cards were dropped and cigarettes forgotten in open mouthed shock.

“Holy shit -colonel?” Demarco didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body, and his disbelieving horror over her appearance came through loud and clear in his greeting. She hadn’t seen him at the gate.

The same for Hambone’s face, one that had never bothered to be discreet in pleasant circumstances, much less in shocking ones like seeing a notorious superior officer come in looking about as battered as a body could get -although his torn cheek was one to talk. Crank recovered first, in his mild, stammering sort of way, glancing at the lean figure who still stood looking out the lone window.

“Well, if it isn’t Ain’t Pretty Brady.” Crank clapped uneasily, summoning her nickname from basic just to cut the tension, it served to startle John.

He turned from the window abruptly, blank faced and unblinking as he realized the sister he had been watching for had already arrived. If their ole nan from the motherland had suddenly materialized before him he could have hardly looked more haunted or aghast, wide fringed fox eyes and that straight fold of a mouth -always so very held together, her little brother. Even after his third belly landing.

But those startled unblinking eyes...

Ida wanted to tell him to blink, that it was all alright now, that they were both alive and that it was good enough, it had to be. But she seemed to have fully lost all power over her throbbing cheek at last, she could feel her lips move in a motion she realized with supreme panic was likely a wobble of emotion. She ripped her aviators off, as if seeing her eyes might help his to come alive.

“John John?” she croaked in greeting, oblivious of the childish endearment tumbling off her lips in a room full of soldiers. If it were something their family was in the habit of doing, Ida Brady might have rushed him like Maureen did her pilot, or held out her own hand to be held, asked for a gesture from him -after what she’d gone through, surely it couldn’t have been weakness to want a clap on the shoulder, a flick to the bicep, a little “well done” for staying alive.

But she just stood there and watched him clock her shame. She could feel her swollen lip splitting in real time as the swelling and incessant trembling tore the taut skin apart, they’d passed around a single canteen in processing and it wasn’t enough, the walls of her throat felt collapsed together. Maybe she should have asked for a mirror first, maybe Cleven or Kendeigh or Smith should have told her she’d bring a whole room to a frozen standstill by her looks alone. They’d seen her at the gate -were these meager lightbulbs really so much more illuminating?

“Eye-eye.” Johnny let it out in a breathy rush as if he’d suddenly come to, and then he was in front of her, hands cradling the sides of her neck, thumbs hooked gently under her bruised jaw. A calloused pad swiped away the ticklish trickle of blood sliding the crease of her mouth.

Eye eye -his onetime baby babble for Ida, and she’d never let him forget it.

She could have wept at the useless sentimentality of it, of the gentle familiarity of familial hands, at the seething loyalty storming across his face.

“The fuck did they do?” he articulated at last, voice gravelly as shit but also reminiscent of the squeaky olden days when his castrato role suddenly no longer served one Sunday in choir.

“You’ve got legs.” she answered instead, sounding maniacal in her happiness.

He looked at her like she’d gone fully crazy as well as beat, “Yeah? Yeah I do.”

“They said, they said you didn’t.” she chuckled, a bizarre merriment trying to take hold in her relief, “During interrogation, that bespectacled cunt told me you had your legs crushed when you crashed.”

“No? No- no I jumped.” He insisted, then let go of her face to step back and gesture to two fit legs, as long and lanky as she remembered, as long and lanky as her own. “I jumped, I’m fine. They told you that?”

“Yeah.” Ida said, “Told me the longer I didn’t comply the longer you were without medical attention. I -I’ve been so…uneasy…about you.”

“I’m fine.” He repeated, hands back on her shoulders and she was grateful for it despite the bruises he was gripping, grateful for the way he kept touching her like he was going to hold her together with his own two hands, same blood, same flesh, same memories, maybe whatever she’d lost he could supply back like a blood donation. “Those sons of bitches.” he cursed them.

“Plasma for planes.” she agreed.

He kept looking at her, at her cheek and at her ragged hair and at the missing buttons, “You didn’t tell them anything did you?” he suddenly asked, wide eyed. “You know i’d rather die than have you tell.”

Ida scoffed, and gave him a grin, the best one she could manage with her cheek and split lip, “What do you take me for, Johnny?”

“A cold hearted bitch, I hope.” he returned the small smile but his voice cracked, still that hint of something long gone and juvenile.

“That’s what their Lieutenant called me.” Ida confirmed, a little proud, and sensing a renewal of his inquiries, Ida chose to take the offensive and call out for a conspicuously absent Kendeigh, “Candy! Didn’t you want to tell Johnny about your charming admirer? The Lieutenant?”

Kendeigh came round the doorway hastily, her lips puffy and cheeks oddly red. Cleven followed after and matched her, and his blush did nothing but highlight those scars of his. “Brady.” Maureen greeted, boldly hugging Ida’s very stiff brother without care —due to his red cheeks and rigid shoulders Ida concluded Cleven had given his own inner-relations talk to the men—, “Yes, I wanted to -oh hello Crank, Benny you son of gun- wanted to tell y'all about my ticket outta here -hell Hambone, how’d you manage to get uglier? -see my integrator, he found me fairly fetching. I think one of these days he’s gonna roll up in his shiny car and take me away from here and you’re all gonna wish you’d taken time to learn a little know-how about Alligators and their hibernation tactics in the winter. He was enthralled.”

There was an awkward silence hanging in the room, Crank grimaced a smile out of sheer generosity of heart and Benny Demarco still sat with his cigarette neglected on his open lip. Cleven, used to her preening brazness kept a tight lip, though a thousand questions seemed to swirl in his eyes.

“He the one who stood on your hands?” John Brady asked her without hesitancy.

Maureen whirled round then, comedy hour over and an angry flush creeping up her neck at his directness. “No.” she snapped. “Can’t some of them be alright?”

“A German’s a German.” he countered.

“There’s Fitzs and then there’s Johanns.” she disagreed nebulously and only Ida got her reference.

“And a shower is a shower,” Ida butted in before this became an experiment in an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force “which we need, badly. We’re…filthy.”

“We’ve got working sinks, trough sinks.” Cleven clarified with an apologetic look as if it were his fault the showers only ran once a week and poorly at that, and the water they had was frigid already in autumn.

“Water is water.” Ida reasoned in return, wondering when Johnny was going to finally let go of her arm.

“We’ll clear it out for ya.” Cleven said.

“And we’ll guard the entrance.” John added emphatically.

“Thanks.” Ida muttured, “Some of us could use to mend our uniforms.” she added, refusing to blanch at the subtle inventory of her jagged tears and crusted blood being made by every man in the room.

Maureen at least had her jacket intact. Her cap, too.

“Here, you can have my trousers while I stitch yours.” her John decided and was unbuckling his belt before she even registered the hand gone from her shoulder.

“What?” Ida balked, “You’re going to go ‘round in your skivvies?”

“Not as uncommon around here as you’d think, Ida.” Gale said, a small smile on his face. “I’m afraid order and decorum has gone to shit without you.”

“Well I’m here now.” she replied sternly but didn’t stop Johnny as he stripped.

“And so am I.” Kendeigh grinned and all Ida could do was to bless the saints for having let only one terror into the camp, were Bucky Egan to be here too, things would become intolerably lax. As soon as she thought it she repented it, sending up a prayer for the poor, absent bastard.

“Say Benny, you’re shorter, can I have your pants?” Maureen pleaded.

“Why mine?” Demarco protested, only offended at the height implication.

“Because Cleven’s too tall and I’ve already been in his pants.”

“Maureen!”

“Ida, order somebody to give me their pants.”

“You can have mine.” Crank offered kindly, and then stood up and bashfully began to unlayer. It left him in skivvies, a snuggly sweater and his flight jacket.

“It’s a good look, Crank,” Maureen grinned at the finished product as he handed the trousers over. “I’m seeing you in a different light.”

“Maureen!”

“Just sayin-“

“Take the pants with you to the washroom!” Brady interjected desperately as Maureen looked ready to strip right here and now. “Jesus, Kendeigh.”

“Touchy, touchy.” Maureen ribbed him, out for blood in her tired state and if she couldn’t have that of the Germans she would of her friends’.

“Alright let’s - let’s settle down.” Gale implored, a tired expression firmly etched onto his face and Ida herself considered giving up on the wash altogether and tumbling into the available bunk to court the oblivion of sleep. Were it only blood and dirt she just might, her usual tidiness be damned.

As it was -it was, there was…the filth was so much worse.

And if Ida thought on it too long she’d go mad and want to pour boiling lye on herself to wash herself clean and to kill the shame of it. She’d have to scrub the pants before she gave them to Johnny to be mended, it was bad enough for a brother to see the blood and busted seams.

“Yes, settle down for God’s sake.” she echoed Cleven, and something about her hoarse voice compelled Maureen to temper herself more than any direct order could. “A wash, come on, let’s get the girls. Oh and one more thing, Cleven-“ Ida turned to Gale and found him alert, eager to help. She was afraid she was only setting him up for failure but she had to make an effort to find those “remedies” she’d promised Sanchez. “There any lemons around?”

The incredulous look on his face suggested he thought she knew better, but he was ever polite in his reply, “No, colonel. No lemons.”

“Mm. Nutmeg?” she tried to recall each wicked trick she’d heard condemned when a girl got herself in the family way without the needed family in place.

“No, no nutmeg.”

“Mm.”

“Nothing but potatoes and cigarettes, ma’am. Do you- why?” he asked.

“Nothing.” she assured, “Just, a hot toddy sounds good right about now. You know?”

“Uh,” he floundered, half in suspicion and half in genuine confusion, “never had one.”

“Well then,” she grinned as she passed him, “that’s something to add to our to-do list for when this is all over. Jameson, though, none of that Kentucky stuff.”

“Yes ma’am.” his tone was vacant, smiling concern brittle, “You uh, you alright, Colonel?”

Ida gave him a withering look and then Gale too, had cause to be repentant.

“Come on Kendeigh, let's get the rest.” Ida gestured as she followed Gale back into the hall, aware of Johnny’s eyes still on her, still taking stock, “They better not be in bunks without a wash. Come on, showers, everyone! Out, come on out. You can sleep afterwards. Out! Would one of you be so kind as to wake us up in time for roll call?” she inquired of the male officers straggling behind her in the hall.

“Course! Yeah, for sure.” about five offers went up.

“You wake Me up.” she clarified coming to a full stop, wary of the enthusiasm, “I’ll wake up the rest.”

“I’ll get you up.” Her John said.

He’d probably sit and watch her sleep, too, needle and torn pants in hand, like a creepy little owl but that was one of those things she figured make or break a family, you either find it endearing you have a brother who rarely blinks or you go mad. Today, after all of it, she didn’t mind having a guardian Angel. Or a watchdog. Speaking of-

“Hey,” she asked him, “you two flew out together, where’s Bucky?”

But no one had an answer for that, not even Little John.

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#masters of the air #mota #mota fanfic #mota oc #Intergrated au #those who can #john egan #john brady #gale cleven #benny demarco #gale cleven x oc #john egan x oc #john brady x oc #Maureen Kendeigh #Ida Brady #Tallulah Smith

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jamilelucato · 5 months

Text

a little visit (fred weasley)

pairing: y/n x fred weasley summary: in the wizarding war's aftermath, (y/n) unexpectedly reunites with Fred Weasley at the Weasley Jokeshop. notes: so this is something that has been sitting in my drafts for a while, and I thought to upload it even though I do not plan any sequence whatsoever (I'm sorry) warnings: war mention; maybe a bit sad; no kisses here, sorry.

It hadn't been years since she saw the Weasley twins. Well, maybe a couple of years. Five? After the war, dates were a mess. People were trying to reorganise their lives and move on from the losses. It wasn't the time yet for reunions, but this one happened.

"Come on, take me in," the child begged.

(y/n) looked down at her little nephew. She had an older brother (alive still, thank Merlin), but the man was working his ass off to reconstruct his house, and so, more often than not, (y/n) would babysit for his little boy. The kid was six and full of opinions; most of it (y/n) endured with a smile. But there was a spirit of troublemaking in the little boy's ways, and (y/n) should've known better than to take him through Diagon Alley, especially where the Weasley Jokeshop was.

"Urgh," she sighed. "You have ten minutes, but it's just it."

And before the little boy was too out of range to hear, she added, "And I'll only buy you one thing! Pick well!" But even warning him, (y/n) presumed the boy would find a way to try and get more items than necessary.

Knowing she should not leave her nephew alone in the enormous store, (y/n) entered it right after, sighing. The whole place was so Gryffindor. Of course, the owners had once been Gryffindor students, but it was weird to see they hadn't broken out of the patterns, the reds, the gold. (y/n) had been a Slytherin, but nothing about her nowadays gave it away. Or so she thought.

She was so distracted by the items and the colours that she barely noticed the man approaching her until they bumped midway. "I'm so sorry, miss," he answered automatically.

"No, I… I…" her voice dried off when her eyes met his. "I apologise."

He smiled instantly at recognising her. "That's a first."

"Hello there, Fred Weasley," or so she thought he was Fred. George and his twin were alike and identical, but there was something about the smiles Fred offered her back at Hogwarts… they were always so mischievous.

George had a collective way of smiling. It was more put together, she thought, as if in effort. Fred's smiles were more involuntary, often making his face crooked.

"What's a first?" (y/n) asked, noticing the man kept grinning but failed to offer her a proper response. "Me apologising or me at your shop?"

"Both," he replied, and even though (y/n) had no way of knowing, she guessed he had only thought of one of the alternatives, but they both fell so well he accepted them. "Hello, (y/n)."

"Ah, he does remember my name," she replied, smiling just as mischievously as he had.

"I must. Few people can tell me apart from Georgie. The least I can do is acknowledge the ones that do," Fred shrugged, dismissing the fact that he remembered her as nothing. But it wasn't nothing to her. "By the way, how can you still tell us apart? We haven't talked…."

"Since Hogwarts? Since the war?" she gasped after saying the last part. People weren't yet supposed to be referring to "the war". It had been a brutal, dark time for the wizarding community, and it was too soon to mention it so casually as if it had been just another Tuesday.

But Fred seemed not to give proper care to her calmness.

"I have my tricks, Weasley," she answered in the end, shrugging. "You don't tell me all of yours; why should I tell you all of mine?"

He smiled again, but more lightly this time.

"Well…" he cleaned his throat, changing his tone to a more businesslike one. "What can I do for you today, Miss?"

She supressed a smile of embarressement. "A discount?"

He couldn't help the small chuckle he let out.

"I'm here with my little nephew, Rick. I'm sure he'll want something out of my budget," (y/n) finally explained as her eyes wandered the place, looking for said kid. But she did not find him.

"Well, good thing the kid is relative to one of my dearest school friends," Fred said, tilting his head.

"Dearest?" she echoed.

Fred shrugged, dismissing it. In a second of conversation, he had done it twice. It was starting to bother (y/n).

"Let's see what the little guy wants," Fred proposed. "Where's he?"

(y/n) grimaced. "If only I knew."

"You're his aunt." Fred pointed out categorically.

"Yeah," she nodded.

"You brought him here."

"Yep," she agreed again, monotonely.

Fred raised a dark red brow at her.

"I'm sure he'll find me once he gets what he wants," (y/n) said as she crossed her arms. Noticing that was the end of their rapid quest to find her nephew, (y/n) changed the subject. "How's momma Weasley?"

She had met the woman twice. Once, back at Hogwarts, when she was a simple student girl. Mrs Weasley had shown up to see Harry Potter compete at the Triwizard Tournament, and when she went to hug her sons, (y/n) was casually by. The second time was again at Hogwarts, but this time (y/n) was already a graduate, and Mrs Weasley was much more of a warrior than a mother. The scenario didn't allow them to interact, but (y/n) saw enough of the boys' momma.

"She's doing okay," Fred replied, his eyes wandering around as if he was conjuring the image of his mother before him. "Haven't seen her in a while, frankly. After the war, she kinda became too worried about us, which gets annoying."

"Well, she almost lost you." And there it was, (y/n)'s slip. She knew it was bound to happen — it was the actual last time she saw Fred Weasley. She just hoped it wouldn't be mentioned so soon in their conversation. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have."

Fred raised a hand as if stopping her apology. "It's true; you haven't got to be sorry about that," he said. "I did scare everyone, didn't I?"

"Worst prank ever."

That comment made him grin. "It wasn't a prank; I was on the brink of death," he tried defending himself, but he was smiling too much to be convincing.

"Ewh," (y/n) shrugged. "Worst prankster ever, still."

He finally let his laugh break free, and she followed, both looking so young by interacting.

Of course, the reason for the laughs was rather stupid — Fred had seen death and came back. Or at least, she heard. (y/n) was casting spells and curses as if her life depended on it that day (and it did), so she had little to no time to worry about other people, except maybe her brother, who was battling by her side. She had glimpsed some Professors and Mr and Mrs Weasley, but even when they talked, they weren't talking. It was all survival.

Besides, (y/n) and her brother had the not-so-ordinary task of fighting their father, who battled for the Dark Lord's side. She was glad she had Rick's father by her side, but it was still hard for a daughter to cast unforgivable curses at her daddy.

When she heard the first whispers — "A Weasley has been hit" — she wanted desperately to know which one, but she had no time. (y/n) had to care for her own brother, the father of a baby boy she did not want to see orphaned.

After the end of the battle, when Harry Potter had emerged victorious, (y/n) finally mustered the courage to look for the Weasley family. She saw Fred in a chaotic state but doubted he'd remember as he was passed out. Madame Pomfrey was giving her whole life and power to bring him back. (y/n) stood on the sidelines, quietly watching, and when the Hogwarts lady got up and said he would wake up soon, (y/n) was so relieved she ran away, scared of having to deal with the Weasley's hugs.

Fred's laughter echoed through the colourful shelves of the Jokeshop, creating a symphony of joy that transcended the painful memories of the past. As their laughter subsided, (y/n) couldn't help but feel a strange mixture of comfort and nostalgia settling in.

Before (y/n) could settle again, in a more calm posture, she glimpsed a short shadow running around. She looked at Fred, only to realise he had seen the shadow too.

"Do you think that was…"

"My nephew?" (y/n) finished his sentence. "Possibly. Did you see where he went? You know the place best."

Fred scratched his head, a playful glint in his eye. "I might have seen a little troublemaker sneaking into the Skiving Snackboxes aisle. You know, where the Nosebleed Nougat is."

"Oh, Merlin," (y/n) muttered, shaking her head with a smile. "I'll have to rescue him from his own choices."

As they navigated through the aisles, (y/n) couldn't help but notice Fred's subtle changes. The mischievous spark in his eyes was still there, but it was accompanied by a depth that only life's challenges could bring. The war had left its mark on everyone, evident in the lines on his face and how he carried himself.

When they finally found Rick, he was gleefully examining a box of Nosebleed Nougat, unaware of the worried expressions on the adults around him.

"Rick!" (y/n) scolded gently, "You can't just pick anything you want."

"But Auntie, this is so cool! Imagine making someone's nose bleed!" Rick exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

Fred chuckled, exchanging a knowing glance with (y/n). "Well, it seems like he's got the true Weasley spirit."

After persuading Rick to choose a more harmless prank, they made their way to the counter. As Rick excitedly chatted about his selected item, (y/n) couldn't help but steal glances at Fred. The connection they had shared during the war, the unspoken understanding of loss and survival, seemed to linger in the air.

When it was time to pay, Fred leaned in and whispered, "On the house for the little troublemaker."

"Fred, I can't—"

"Consider it a gift from a friend," he interrupted, a warmth in his eyes that (y/n) couldn't ignore.

(y/n)'s cheeks were as red as Fred's hair.

"Well, thank you", she finally said, avoiding Fred's eyes. "Wait, where's George? Have you two finally learned to live apart?"

Fred liked her tone, and he answered truthfully. "He's been after some supplies, so the shop's my responsibility today."

"Brave of George to let that happen."

"Ha ha," Fred pretended to laugh at (y/n)'s benter. "Anyway, let me accompany you on the way out."

"Oh, you don't…"

"It's not like the shop is too busy." Fred pointed out, not letting (y/n) win that argument.

As they went for the exit, (y/n) felt a mixture of emotions swirling within her. The encounter had brought back memories, both painful and beautiful. The war had taken its toll, but here they were, finding moments of laughter amidst the remnants of their past.

They stood there momentarily, the bustling sounds of Diagon Alley surrounding them. It was a moment suspended in time, a chance encounter that felt both fleeting and eternal.

"Listen," Fred began, his expression serious yet hopeful. "I know we haven't kept in touch, but I'd like to change that. Maybe we could grab a coffee sometime, catch up properly."

(y/n) hesitated for a moment, the weight of the years between them palpable. But then she nodded, a small smile playing on her lips.

"I'd like that, Fred. I really would."

As they exchanged contact information, (y/n) couldn't shake off the bittersweet feeling in her chest. The scars of the past were still there, but in the laughter shared and the promise of a new connection, there was a chance for something beautiful to bloom.

As they parted ways, (y/n) couldn't help but glance back at Fred, who had faced death and returned to find moments of joy in the simplest things. It was a melancholic happiness, a reminder that even in the aftermath of darkness, there could be sparks of light and the possibility of forging new connections.

And so, (y/n) walked away from Diagon Alley, her nephew's hand in hers, carrying the weight of the past and the tentative hope of a future yet to unfold.

#harry potter #fred and george #fred weasley #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x slytherin reader #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley x you #fred weasley fanfic #george weasley #fred weasley fanfiction #y/n x fred weasley #fred weasley x y/n

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frenchkisstheabyss · 5 months

Text

✶ Bliss ✶

✶ Pairing: model!minho x model!chubby!fem!reader, model!hyunjin x model!chubby!fem!reader

✶ Genre: fluff, angst, smut

✶ Summary: Weeks of being caught between your two lovers, sitting idly by as your heart battles your head, must come to an end. You have to decide once and for all which door to leave open and which to close forever.

✶ Word Count: 2k-ish

✶ Warnings: a lil possessiveness, reader's getting over some insecurities, heartbreak, oral sex (f receiving), some strong language

✶ A/N: This is the last of a three-part series. You can find 🖤 part one here 🖤 It took me a bit to finish this because life was doing its thing but I'm happy with how it turned out so I hope you lovelies enjoy it!

You should’ve never come here. You should’ve stayed as far away from this man as possible. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk. The reality is that you didn’t stay away. Hyunjin called and you came now you’re coming around his fingers, allowing yourself to be claimed once more by the lust filled demons of your past. And, oh, what a glorious one he is...

As he lulls you down from your high with gentle kisses along your neck, you await the intoxicating afterglow you’re accustomed to. Only there is no glow in the "after". It's dark and empty, Hyunjin’s words echoing through your mind on a loop.

“He can’t have you. I won’t let him.”

It was such a rush the first time you realized how badly Hyunjin wanted you. He’d confessed to you front row at a fashion show. To anyone watching there was nothing notable about the quick whisper in your ear or the brushing of his hand across your knee. They couldn't fathom the way such small gestures had turned your world upside down.

You felt so special. Special enough to let him see you in secret with promises that one day you’d go public. Make things official. Be a real couple. Finally have the love story you dreamt of.

“He can’t have you. I won’t let him.”

The undertone of toxic possessiveness sours the nostalgia sweetening this reunion, bringing you to a realization that has somehow eluded you up to this point. In his eyes, you’ll always be a thing. A precious thing, his absolute favorite thing, but always you belonging to him and never him to you. This is not your fairytale and he is not your prince.

“This can’t happen again” you sigh, pressing your hands to his chest to create distance between you. Hyunjin scoffs, rolling his eyes at the foolishness of such a statement, “Will you say that next time too?” You could go back and forth with him, exchanging verbal jabs until he beats you into submission, but it’d be for nothing.

“Take care of yourself, Hyunjin.” You smooth out your dress and throw your jacket back on, pushing past him with an indifference no one’s ever shown him before. Give him your love. Give him your hate. He can find a way to work with either one. Your indifference, on the other hand, is alien to him. It’s a savagely forged blade to his gut, slicing him open and leaving him to bleed out in the halls of his own exhibit.

“So you love him more? Is that it?” he calls out, catching you before you disappear forever. You pause, searching for the most honest answer that you can offer. “I love me more,” you say, shocked by your own words, “at least I want to love me more, and I need someone who makes that easy for me.”

“And he does?”

“Yes, actually, very much.”

Thoughts of Minho wrap around you like a warm, fuzzy blanket making you crave his presence. Wherever he is, doing business in Seoul or on a shoot in LA, you want to be there. “Hyunjin, honey, people are pulling up!” his manager, a sharply dressed older woman in designer glasses, announces strutting through the doors. You peek outside to see how right she is. His adoring public is already arriving, ready to file in and shower him with enough affection to last a lifetime.

Not that any of it will ever be enough. Not when the only one who matters is about to walk out of his life. His manager looks you up and down, trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing here. “I didn’t know we were opening early” she quips, cutting her eyes at you. “I’m leaving, actually.” “Oh, what a shame.” Hyunjin interrupts, nearly knocking into his manager to get to you, “See you around sometime?” “I'm sure you will.”

Waving goodbye to his manager before she sets you on fire with her mind, you throw yourself back out into the cold autumn night. As the door of the gallery shuts behind you, so does the door leading back to what you shared with Hyunjin. You know without question where your heart is. It’s not with him anymore and it never will be again.

“You want me to go hiking?” you ask, smiling politely at the waiter setting your plate down in front of you. “Thank you” Minho nods to the departing waiter before turning his attention back to you, “Yes, you. We can spend the whole weekend hiking and camping. It’ll be nice to get away, don’t you think?” You’ve never seen Minho this excited about anything. He may not show it on the outside but that little twinkle in his eye gives away how passionate he is about the trip and how much it'd mean to him if you came along.

Next week will be the first time in a while that you'll both be free of your hectic schedules and all he wants is to be with you. Of course, you want the same thing, even if you run the risk of being eaten alive by bugs in the process. “I think it’ll be wonderful” you agree, twirling food onto your fork, “Let’s do it. I’ve always wanted to wrestle a bear.” Minho nearly spits his drink out laughing, “Who said you had to wrestle a bear?” You grab a napkin, reaching across the table to wipe the wine from his chin.

“That’s what you do when you go camping right? Forage for food. Wrestle bears. Challenge mountain lions to a foot race. Survival show stuff.” Minho can’t find the words to explain how completely wrong that is, he’s too busy trying to keep it together in front of the other diners. Osteria Francescana is one of those restaurants that's impossible to get a reservation at unless you know someone. They won’t even put you in their book if you don’t meet the standards for their elite clientele.

It’s always made Minho uncomfortable to be in places like this. As gorgeous as it is, with its fancy menu and candlelit dining room, it’s not really his scene but tonight it has to be. He wants to ask you something. Something that has him nervous enough that he couldn’t touch his food if he wanted to. He thought that getting dressed up and taking you out on a romantic date might give him the courage to say it but he's quickly learned that it makes no difference. You scare the hell out of him all the same.

“Have you thought about us?” he asks, forcing himself to get it over with. You sense that something’s off. Not knowing what, you proceed with caution. “Thought about us as in...” Minho clears his throat, fidgeting with his rings. “Being together. Just me and you. I know that Hyunjin—” “Hyunjin isn’t anything to me,” you say, refusing to let him go any further. You knew that this would come up eventually. Minho never pressed you about your history with Hyunjin. He never asked if you still saw him or forced you to open up about your feelings but he was bound to get curious. It's only natural.

Maybe he’s been avoiding it, too afraid of what the truth might be, but there’s nothing to worry about. Not in the slightest. You lock eyes with him, taking his hand, “I love you, Minho. You’re the only one I want. I've known that for a while. I just didn’t wanna rush you.” Correction, talking about the camping trip isn’t the most excited you’ve ever seen him. This is. His ears are turning red and he can’t stop himself from smiling no matter how hard he tries.

“Rush me? No. I love you too. I always wanted—I do want—will you be my girlfriend?” “I’d love to be your girlfriend.” You rub your cheeks to chase away the tingly feeling coming over them. He asked you, he really asked you. Instead of stringing you along with only the hope of something serious, he went for it. It heals your wounded heart, wipes away some deep seated pain, to know that he loves you the way that you love him.

“We should do something to celebrate. What do you think?” “Hmm,” you muse, one of your high heels skimming the inside of his leg. Minho tilts his head to the side, glancing under the table and back up at you with a mischievous look on his face. “I wasn’t talking about that.” you scold, realizing too late what you’ve started, "Get your mind out of the gutter. No!"

Teetering on the edge of the black marble sink, you have to bite down on your lip to keep from making noise. Sneaking away from your table had been easier than you thought. No one seemed to notice you walking off to the bathroom or Minho slipping in behind you a few minutes later. You don’t know what’s gotten into you. You shouldn’t be doing this and that’s precisely why it feels so damn good to do it.

Any worries you have about getting caught disappear when you feel the warmth of Minho’s mouth pressed against your core. He catches himself humming at the taste of you as he licks up one side and down the other. Repeating it until your clit’s stiff and twitching, begging for his attention. He flicks his tongue against your clit just enough to get a reaction out of you. You run your fingers through the soft strands of his chestnut hair, tugging at it to signal that you want more.

Kissing the plush of your inner thighs, he spreads you wider to admire the beauty of you being so drenched and needy when he's barely done anything to you at all. Slowly, he dips the tip of his tongue into you, swirling it in circles just beyond your entrance. “Please” you whine, melodic and low. Minho grins at how adorable you are. “So cute.” You grab onto the sides of the sink, fighting for control of your trembling body. “Shit, why do you taste so good? Hmm?” he pants, diving back in for more.

A moan escapes your lips, the pleasure too intense to contain. You shove your fingers into your mouth, a desperate attempt at blocking the next one but it only works for a short time. Before you know it you’re drooling around your fingers, moaning between rapid, shallow breaths. Knowing that he needs to work quickly to avoid suspicion, he devours you with the hunger he should've had for his dinner. But you're so much tastier than anything this restaurant could offer him.

The wilder he laps at you, the wetter you are, and the more of you he needs. Nothing has to be said for him to know when you're close to your peak. Your body gives you away every time. Minho takes your hands, his fingers intertwined with yours, steadying you as the tension snaps, leaving you clenching around his tongue. A sensation of pure bliss radiates through your body as he holds his pace, stopping only when you're too overstimulated to take anymore.

Standing up, he brings you into his arms and rests his head on your shoulder. He holds you lovingly, not expecting a thing. To him, you’re the most precious woman, his absolute favorite, and at last, you belong to each other. It means everything to bask in this moment—in any moment—with you. You close your eyes, kissing him on the forehead, bathing in the ethereal glow of the “after”.

This is your fairytale and he is your prince.

#stray kids angst #stray kids fluff #stray kids smut #lee know fluff #lee know angst #lee know smut #hyunjin smut #hyunjin angst #chubby reader #plus size reader #stray kids x chubby reader

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try-set-me-on-fire · 6 months

Note

hello I am a slut for forehead kisses so may I request that prompt if it inspires? 🥺

I know I said reunion kiss was next but I have conflicting ideas about that one and this popped into my head and google doc nearly fully formed, so here you go. On ao3 here!

By the time Eddie has locked his car and is bolting up the stairs so fast he very nearly trips and eats shit, he’s 23 minutes late.

“Sorry, Cap,” he says, trying not to sound out of breath and discretely tugging wrinkles out of his uniform. “Water main burst near Chris’ school, must have happened after I left the house ‘cause I didn’t get any traffic alerts.”

Bobby snorts. “As your captain I have to say ‘try to be punctual next time,’ but as someone who also lives in Los Angeles… it happens.”

Eddie sighs in agreement and slides onto one of the bar stools. At least it’s not a day where they got called out immediately, he’d feel terrible if he arrived and everyone was already out on the truck. A coffee mug — Eddie’s favorite at the station, a deep speckly green handmade number somebody had found at a farmer’s market — lands next to him, along with a familiar warm presence at his side. He smiles as he looks up at Buck.

“Hello, husband,” Buck says, grin so bright Eddie thinks he might be bioluminescent if they turned off all the lights.

“Hi, husband,” Eddie says, figuring he’d probably glow in the dark, too.

Eddie supposes he’s probably had more eventful 72 hour time spans in his life, though he’s hard pressed to remember one where the majority of the events were this good. It’s not like it started fantastic, his shoulder still hurts like hell from landing on it when the factory floor went out from under them, and there were the three horrifying hours where no one could find Buck and it felt like the world was ending. He hadn’t kept his cool very well, he’ll admit it, and he’s fully expecting teasing to set in any time now that they’ve had a few days and Buck is perfectly fine.

They’d found him in a little pocket in the debris two floors down, not a scratch on him. He’d lost his radio, but otherwise he was sort of just waiting around. Legs crossed, hands behind his head, chill as anything. He could have been at the goddamn beach.

And he’d looked at Eddie, a happy little smile on his face, and said “I knew you’d find me,” and Eddie — who’s lungs hadn’t been working right since he’d tried to call Buck on the radio and got silence in return — had kissed him instead of saying I always will.

And when they’d got back to the station he’d gone ahead and said it out loud, too, and I don’t know how to be without you and I love you, I’ve loved you for so long and move in with me and marry me, we should get married, please marry me.

Buck’s knuckles had been almost creaking with how tight they’d been gripping the sleeves of Eddie’s uniform. “Why? I mean- we haven’t- you never- how could you want that? It’s me, I-“ he’d laughed, trying to make it into a joke. “Won’t you get sick of me?”

“I want to share my whole life with you,” Eddie had said, and then laughed a little breathless. “And Buck, I- I think we already do. Your toothbrush is in my bathroom and I have a green lawn chair because you said it looked like a frog and- and you fixed the holes in my wall and you’re raising my son. We share- my house feels most like a home when you’re there. So. You can be there, forever, if you want. You want a couch? I have a couch. You like my couch.”

Buck had laughed, tears in his eyes, kissed him again, and said “I love your couch.”

So Friday evening they’d been sitting on the aforementioned couch as best friends eating pizza and drinking beer, and Sunday morning they’d got married, and had an all day long party in their backyard with people dropping in and out whenever they weren’t at work or had other places to be and Eddie had smiled so big and laughed so hard his cheeks still ache, and Sunday night he’d had sex with a man for the first time. He, Eddie Diaz, had sex with Buck (who’s last name is now sort of a toss up until he decides how he wants to change it, a process that turns out comes with a lot more paperwork and waiting than a marriage license). Not even just sex- Buck fucked him into the mattress so hard Eddie thinks he may have had some sort of religious experience. He came so hard he got a little mad about it after. Like. Is this what it’s supposed to be like? He could have been having sex this good the whole time? Buck had laughed at him, loud but not unkindly.

He’d learned what it’s like to sleep in a bed beside the man that he loves. Buck is warm and his feet are cold and he is delightfully solid and unmovable. He snores, especially when he curls up in his sleep, but Eddie has spent years sleeping in a big shared room in a fire station and years before that falling asleep in a war zone, so it doesn’t bother him. This morning they’d woken up holding hands even though they hadn’t gone to sleep like that, and Eddie is in love, in love, in love.

Sometime about halfway through their first shift as a married couple they’re called to a car gone over a cliff in the hills. It’s not gone very far over the cliff, and is resting on stable ground, and the occupant inside seems more shaken up than anything, but someone’s still got to get in a harness, and like usual that person is Buck.

Eddie can feel Chimney smirking off to the side as he triple checks Buck’s harness and line, but this is something Eddie always does and not a new feature of some sort of honeymoon phase. Buck’s life is precious, has been since the beginning, he’d never risk it with something as preventable as an improperly secured strap. Back last year, when Buck had been in the coma, it had been the one thing he’d not felt guilty about. The harness had caught him. Eddie had triple checked it. He always has and he’s not going to stop now.

"Be careful,” he says, darting in to give him the quickest kiss he thinks he can get away with. So, that part is new, sue him.

Buck's eyes get wide, and then he nods very solemnly. "I will," he promises, looking at Eddie for another long minute before he goes over the side.

To his left Bobby lets out a huff of air, and he's making a face and shaking his head when Eddie turns to investigate. Eddie raises an eyebrow.

"It's that easy?" Bobby gestures down the side of the cliff, amused. "I should have had one of you marry him ages ago."

Eddie laughs, and turns back to keep an eye on the line.

“We’re going to the roof,” Eddie says, after they’re back at the station. “For fifteen minutes,” he concedes to Bobby’s raised eyebrows. “To engage in strictly pg13 activities,” a final plea.

Bobby sighs, and Hen cackles as he waves a defeated hand at them to go ahead. Eddie hooks his arm through Buck’s and they stumble up the stairs side by side, laughing like they’re getting away with something.

They only got twelve minutes before the alarm rang again, and it was non stop after that till the end of the shift. Eddie’s shoulder is almost too stiff to move at this point, and Buck looks dead on his feet.

“You wanna just come home with me?” He asks, leaning on the locker next to Buck’s as he changes.

“Uh…” Buck looks tempted when he emerges from his t-shirt, hair all ruffled, but then he shakes his head. “Nah, we took both cars for a reason, I should go grab stuff from the loft.” The logistics of very suddenly moving in together are still working themselves out. Eddie thinks he could probably push — Buck practically lived with him before, anyway, what could be at the loft that he would miss so terribly it couldn’t wait another night? — but they’d planned their day like this so they could both go on Chris’ beach day field trip tomorrow without having to squeeze packing around it.

“Alright,” he agrees, though he can’t help feeling a little reluctant about it. He hasn’t been apart from Buck for more than an hour since he’d been lost in a pile of rubble, and he doesn’t really want to go separate ways now. He leans in for a kiss, and the way Buck smiles into it might be able to tide him over for just a little while. “I’ll go get the kid. See you at home.”

“Okay. Goodbye, husband,” Buck says, a little sparkle back in his tired eyes.

“Bye, husband,” Eddie laughs, soft, kissing him again.

There’s three unpacked boxes pushed to the side of the living room and two others empty by the recycling, contents dispersed around the house. By mutual, exhausted decision they’d agreed to deal with the rest some other time and collapsed into bed. They can’t even really make out properly, one or both of them yawning into it repeatedly until Eddie laughs and rolls onto his back, setting his alarm for the morning and settling more comfortably under the covers.

“Night, Buck,” he breathes, leaning onto his pillow to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”

Buck does the little smile with startled-wide eyes he’s done every time Eddie’s said it so far. “I love you, too. Uh- sweet dreams.”

And that should be that, another happy night of wedded bliss, but the thing that Eddie knows and kind of forgot is that after a long and hectic shift Buck gets a little restless no matter how tired he is, brain running overtime, so after trying to wait out his tossing and turning and yawning Eddie eventually sighs, turns the bedside lamp back on, and pokes him in the side.

“What’re you thinking about?”

Buck frowns at him. "Eddie. What if I die in my sleep?"

He doesn’t think it’s a real question, but it still makes his stomach lurch a little. "Why would you do that?"

Buck makes a face. "I wouldn't mean to."

"I mean- why are you afraid of that?"

Buck frowns harder. “I don’t know. I heard once you yawn because you’re falling asleep and your brain thinks you're dying, so it tries to get you a burst of oxygen to save you.”

“Okay, but- you’re not actually dying.” Eddie reaches a clumsy hand under the covers till it collides with Buck’s chest, where his heart is somewhere inside beating steady. “You’re okay. Just tired.”

Buck nods, but he hasn’t stopped frowning. “What if you die in your sleep?”

Eddie hums, shuffling onto his side to face Buck more fully. “I don’t plan to.”

“Okay,” Buck says, trusting Eddie’s word even in a hypothetical he would in actuality have no control over. “What if Bobby dies? Or- or anybody. What if… a meteor destroys the station and we can’t go to work?”

Eddie snorts, and then feels bad about it until he sees Buck grin a tiny bit. “I think we’d still have jobs, Buck. They’d rebuild the station, we might all just have to work at different houses for a while.” Buck frowns again, and Eddie winces at introducing this new worry. “Hey. If a meteor destroys our station I promise I will beg on hands and knees to get transferred to the same place as you.”

Buck laughs, just a small exhale of air through his nose. “Feel like you might wanna stay upright. They might cite professionalism and all that.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, kissing his cheek. “I will beg on two feet to stay by your side whenever I can, as long as I can.”

“Alright,” Buck says, a little choked. He slings an arm over Eddie’s side and settles in close against him, and Eddie thinks that might be it until he says, very quietly, “What if I’m not a good husband to you?”

“Oh, Buck.” This question is a real question, the one that was hiding behind all the others. “You're doing pretty great so far.”

“It’s been like two days.” Muffled, somewhere around Eddie’s collarbone.

“Yeah, and they’ve been a pretty great two days.” He drags his hand around Buck’s ribs, everything made soft sandwiched by blanket and sleep shirt. “I asked you to marry me because I wanted to be married to you. I wanted- you to be married to me. My husband.”

“Yeah, that’s usually why people ask that question,” Buck mumbles, not, apparently, in the mood to easily accept comfort. “But what if-“

“Are you afraid of me?”

“What?” Buck reels back in surprise to look at him. “No. Of course not.”

“Then why are you scared I’ll change my mind?” Eddie can feel the raised line of a scar on Buck’s back through his shirt. The one from getting tossed from the board the first time he’d gone surfing, Eddie’s pretty sure, years before they met. “I won’t. I’m not going to get tired of you, I’m not going to leave you behind, you’ll never be too much for me. You-“ Eddie takes a breath, tries to get his thoughts in order. “You make my life better by being in it, and that has always been true, and you know we’ve gone through some shit before. Even… even when you were suing the city because you were a lonely little idiot and I was pissed at you because I was a mean little idiot, all I wanted was to be by your side. When I was bleeding out in the street I just wanted to be with you. When you were- when you were dead on that ladder I’d have done anything-“ Eddie exhales, hard. Buck is on his left side, birthmark buried in the pillow, so Eddie has to snake his hand up to tilt his head for access to it. They’ve only been able to kiss each other for a tiny handful of days, but it doesn’t feel new, really, when he presses his lips to the pink blotches of skin. “I don’t know how else to explain it to you, but I will keep trying every day for the rest of our lives, if you’ll let me.”

Buck kisses him, hard, holds him tight. “I- yeah, I-,” another kiss, slower. “As long as I can- I’ll tell you, too, I- I’ve never been anywhere I’ve felt- it’s so easy to be here, in your- in our home.” Buck’s fingers find Eddie’s scars, twin bullet holes, touching them so reverently he thinks the scars might heal right up and vanish. “You make me-“ He kisses Eddie’s cheek, up by his eye, his nose, right between his eyebrows. “I don’t know how to say it. If you try every day, can I try, too?”

“Anytime,” Eddie vows. “Every day, anytime you want.”

“Alright,” Buck says, tail end of the word getting swallowed by another yawn. Eddie kisses his forehead again, or maybe just smiles against it. “I love you, Eddie. So much.”

“So much, too.”

It’s a little bit of a stretch to be able to turn the light off again with Buck still wrapped around him, but he gets it on the second try. He’s not sure how well he’ll be able to fall asleep tangled together like this, but that’s fine. Buck is warm. His feet, where they’re bumped here and there into Eddie’s legs, are cold. They breathe in, and on this inhale are entirely synched. There’s no place he’d rather be.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #my writing #911 abc #they’re just fuckin sappy i dunno what to tell ya

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visceravalentines · 19 days

Text

the driver

it turns out I am chewing on them every moment of every day. I'm sure this fic will permanently satisfy the hunger of course ✨🌷🙃

2.3k words. character study happy ending post-credits type beat where everyone lives and drives off into the sunset together. pre-slash but Randy is so down bad he doesn't know how to cope. nobody do the math on mileage or drive time I made it all up Minnesota isn't even real

They’re about 50 miles over the Missouri border when Benson asks him.

“You think you could drive, man?”

Randy looks at him sharply, not sure he heard him right. He must not have heard him right.

Benson glances over and his eyes are bloodshot beyond belief, the skin beneath them dark and hollow. His crow’s feet have multiplied. “I gotta sleep, Randy, or we’re gonna end up in a ditch.”

After a beat of careful consideration, Randy nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I could–I can drive.”

The car lurches to the right as Benson pulls over immediately, puts it in park and slumps in his seat. His head falls back against the headrest and he digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck.”

Randy watches him with an intent he can feel but can’t parse, hasn’t been able to parse all day and the night before and the day before that. He stopped being scared, really scared, a while ago. Fear still gnaws at the edges of him, jittery and mean like rats in the walls, but it’s not the same.

He’s no longer afraid Benson might kill him. He’s afraid he might decide he doesn’t need him anymore. And those are different things.

Benson’s big hands drop into his lap. He stares blankly through the windshield at the half-set sun, exhausted.

Randy has the urge to touch him. To clap a hand on his shoulder, give it a little shake. He plays it out in his head. Yeah, man. I’ll drive for a while. Don’t worry about it. Get some rest.

His hands stay clasped between his thighs.

“Don’t really know where we’re goin’, so I guess you can just pick a direction,” Benson says. “Anywhere but back that way.” He shoots Randy a pointed look, but the point is dull and bleary.

Randy nods. “North. I got it.” You can trust me. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s not.

Benson pours out of the car like his bones are dissolving. He stretches mightily, arches his back and groans loudly, and Randy flinches and doesn’t know why.

He gets out and the breeze hits his face, smells a little like home and a little bit different. He gazes down the highway, tracks it all the way to where it disappears beyond a sun-washed hill. He’s never been this far north before, never been out of Louisiana except for a family reunion in Florida one time.

He wonders, for a second, if maybe they could see them all. All fifty states. Benson’s car might not make it that many miles. But it would be something. It would be cool.

“You sure you’re good?”

Randy turns, squints into the sun. Benson is lit from behind, face in shadow, but Randy can feel his eyes, the way they probe like fingers at his mouth, his neck.

“I’m good.”

Benson taps his fist against the roof of the car. “Super.”

They trade sides, cross paths in front of the bumper. Randy slides into the seat and it’s still warm from Benson’s body. He feels like he's sitting in his shadow. He's been wearing his shirt for two days now, the smell of stale cigarette smoke working itself into his skin. It's like he's being assimilated, wrapped in a cocoon of brash words and an army green jacket. He presses his spine against the backrest and folds his arms around himself without thinking about it.

Benson yanks open the door and snaps him out of it. He sits forward and feels under the seat for the lever to slide it up a few inches, touches something sticky, makes a face. Benson’s got longer legs than he does, even though they're about the same height. Benson is big in Randy's mind. Or maybe Randy is small. Does Benson think he's small?

Like he can read his mind, or thinks he can, Benson shoves his seat way back. “Jesus, Randy, you’re allowed to take up space,” he mutters as he pushes the backrest almost horizontal.

No one’s ever told him that before. Does Benson know no one’s told him that before?

“Don’t wreck my fucking car.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t get pulled over.”

“I won’t.”

Benson nods once like a punctuation mark. “Good boy.”

Randy exhales heavily.

He buckles up, hesitates as he sets his hands on the wheel. Ten and two. He slides them together to meet at twelve, where Benson always grips the wheel with half a hand, pointing at things, eyes anywhere but the road, talking with his whole body. Then he slides them back to ten and two, at least for now. One thing at a time.

He signals before he pulls back onto the road even though there’s not another car in sight. He presses the gas gently, like he’s wiping a smudge off someone’s cheek. And just like that, they're back on their way.

Benson’s car is old as shit and runs like it’s doing him a favor. It takes Randy a minute to get used to it, the resistance of the pedals and the way the wheel is about as sensitive as the bottom of a work boot. He’s careful with it, not because it’s old or unreliable, but because it’s his. Because he’s trusting him with it.

He’s the driver now.

Benson moves in his periphery, fast and sudden like he does, and without meaning to Randy jerks, jerks the wheel. Benson gives him a look, reaching around for something in the backseat. “Sorry,” Randy mumbles.

“Just be cool,” Benson says with his jacket in his hands. He balls it up to use as a pillow, shifts around, settles in and shuts his eyes.

Be cool, Randy repeats to himself. Be cool, be cool.

“Are you…going to buckle your seatbelt?” he asks. He’s been waiting to ask. Now seems like the last opportune moment.

Benson opens his eyes and looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What are you, a fuckin’ cop?”

Randy feels his face flush. He looks away. “Sorry. Do whatever you want.”

“You know if you slam on the brakes and I’m layin’ down like this I’m goin’ through the windshield, seatbelt or no.”

“Do whatever you want,” Randy says again. “I’m just…trying to be safe.”

Benson grabs the seatbelt, yanks it across his chest, clicks it into place with attitude. “Happy?”

Randy glances at him and away, almost smiles in spite of himself. Yeah. “Yeah.” For once, he thinks he might really mean it.

Benson grumbles and closes his eyes. He fidgets for a while, bullies the jacket into a different shape, but soon he falls still and quiet. Randy figures he has nothing left in the tank after the events of the last thirty-six hours, nothing more to give to Randy or anybody else.

He drives like the backseat is full of fine china, nice and easy, until Benson starts to snore. It's a cute snore, kind of nasally and pitched higher than his voice. He slams the door on that thought the moment it arrives, shoos it away and casts a guilty look over at Benson.

He’s never seen him look so at peace. There's a tension missing from his face, a furrow between his brows that Randy only registers in its absence. He wonders if he has nightmares like Randy has nightmares. Probably. Probably worse. But there’s no sign of them now; he’s too wiped out.

Now that he’s not waving a gun around and yelling, he resembles the old Benson. The guy who greeted him at the start of each shift with a casual wave and nothing to say. The man who moved like he was in a dream, seemed checked out completely until you caught his eye and realized he hadn't missed a second of what was going on around him. Not even the little things. Not even Randy.

As the miles wear on, he wonders which Benson is more real, the quiet one or the loud one. Maybe they’re two sides of the same coin. Maybe everyone has someone else inside of them, raw and bright, harder to swallow. Randy always figured he was the only one slumming around with that particular burden–the monster of his guilt, his anger, feelings too big to unbottle lest they rip him in half–but maybe he was wrong. He's been wrong a lot the last couple days.

It doesn’t probably matter which is more real because he likes them both: the Benson who once followed him out the back door under the guise of a smoke break to make sure he was okay after a particularly egregious run-in with Chris, and the Benson who beat the shit out of his own personal boogeyman in the parking lot of an elementary school until his hands bled. Randy understands both of them. Feels a connection to both of them. Knows he can count on both of them when it matters.

Randy leans back and feels it then, feels it all, the world shrinking behind them, the past pinned to it like a poster on a corkboard, the dying sun to his left and the man on his right and Benson’s fingerprints worn into the leather of the steering wheel. And it's exhilarating, it's amazing. It's freedom and possibility. Hope, even.

And he desperately, deep in his bones, wants to be someone Benson can count on. When it matters or doesn't. He knows he isn’t a fighter or a talker, but he cares. He cares so fucking much sometimes he wants to bite through his own tongue. Maybe that could be worth something. For the first time, sitting in the driver's seat on the run from the law, he thinks maybe that might be enough. He might be enough.

He has Benson to thank for that, too.

He hasn't felt like this since he was a kid. Maybe ever. Light. Free. The way the highway unfolds in front of him forever makes him feel like maybe he could fly. He kind of wishes it would rain and he can't say why. Only that he wants the air to smell like wet asphalt, like dirt.

And he wants to thank Benson. He doesn’t think he can, like, he can’t just say it. Thanks for killing all those people. It really opened my eyes. Thanks for scaring me shitless, I needed that. No way. He’s gotta be cool. Find some other way.

He reads the names of towns he’s never heard of on the highway sign. They’ll have to stop somewhere eventually, right? Get a motel room or something. Benson deserves to sleep in a real bed. Randy would love to sleep in a real bed. Probably they’ve got to lay low a little while longer. Probably two states north isn’t far enough.

Benson drives like a grandma. Randy hasn’t said anything, but he figures they could be at least to the border of Iowa by now if Benson wasn’t so hung up on driving three miles under the speed limit and calling it “flying under the radar,” even as cars peeled by them on all sides.

But he’s the driver now.

He realizes this is something he can do. A way to repay him, just a little bit. Randy didn’t get them into this mess, not exactly, but he can get them far, far away from it. Safety, serenity. A place where no one knows their faces. He can find that for Benson. He can take him there. He can make sure he wakes up somewhere better than the shithole behind them.

He eases his foot down on the gas, coaxes the needle on the speedometer up and over 80. The car huffs a protest, but it obeys.

Good boy, he thinks, and he smiles.

Benson stirs just after they leave Iowa. It’s still dark out, but the horizon is starting to bleed pink. He sits up slowly, stretches, nearly elbows Randy in the face. “Fuck,” he groans, “what time is it?”

“Breakfast time, almost,” Randy says. “Just looking for somewhere to stop.”

Benson blinks around the sleep in his eyes, peers through the window into the dark rushing by. “Where are we?”

“Wisconsin. Or maybe Minnesota. I’m not…a hundred percent sure.”

Benson furrows his brow. “Jesus Christ, Randy. You break the fuckin' sound barrier?”

“No,” Randy says calmly. “Everyone speeds on the interstate. You just keep an eye on it, it's fine.”

Benson gives him a long look and for a second, Randy thinks he might be mad. But then he breaks into a grin, chuckles, shakes his head and stretches again. His shirt rides up and in the dark of the dawn Randy can just make out the triangle of hair on his stomach. He bites his cheek.

“Speed Demon Bradley. Who’d’ve thought.” Benson yanks the backrest up, sits back and looks out with fresh eyes on new scenery. “You got a destination in mind, captain?”

Randy does. Has for the last few hundred miles. “Yeah. I was thinking…maybe Lake Superior?”

“What's so superior about it?”

“I don't know, it's…really big. Like…huge. I just thought…it would probably be pretty. I’d–I’d like to see it.” With you. I'd like you to be there too.

He glances over and Benson is staring at him with an odd look on his face.

“...what?” Randy says.

Benson starts nodding, frowning thoughtfully, then reaches over and thumps Randy on the chest. “Then let's go see it.”

The impact echoes through his heart and lungs. “Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah. Randy makin’ decisions.” Benson claps his hands once, loud. “I like it. You wanna go see some big fuckin’ lake? I'm all for it.”

Randy fights a grin and doesn't know why, so he stops, lets it come, feels the stretch of it across his face. “Cool.”

Randy looks over and thinks he’s beautiful. Bloody knuckles, bad attitude, and all. He lets that thought linger for one, two, three seconds before it blows out the window like a wayward receipt.

“Cool.”

Benson rolls down the window and sticks his head out like a dog. The air whipping into the car smells nothing like home. His hair blows back and he squints into the wind, the early sun kissing his cheeks pink.

“I can take over,” Benson offers over his shoulder. “I’m guessin' you need a break.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Randy squeezes his hands on the wheel at ten and two. “I got it. I'm good.”

And he really means it.

#the passenger #the passenger 2023 #randy bradley #benson the passenger #the passenger 2023 fanfiction

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pedros-frozen-pizza · 24 days

Text

Don't Tell Sarah

Pairing: fem!reader x no outbreak!joel miller

Description: You're visiting family on your spring break when you make an unexpected reunion with your best friend's dad, Joel.

Warnings: MINORS DNI! This post is 18+

No outbreak, age gap (reader in early 20's, Joel in early 50's), unprotected p in v, pet names (no use of y/n), fingering, cream pie, squirting

Word Count: 3k

As your plane lands, you quickly switch your phone off of airplane mode to check your texts. Your brother is supposed to pick you up, but he always forgets these things.

‘Are you here??’, you quickly text him as you start to gather your belongings.

Before you stand up, you remember to text your best friend and roommate, Sarah, that you've made it safely.

You make your way off the plane and into the terminal to head towards baggage claim. When you finally exit the airport, you see him, your brother who you haven't seen in months. He somehow grew a beard.

“Jeez, took you long enough to get out here,” he pokes. “They made me move my car twice.” You give him a quick side hug before he takes your bag and loads it into his trunk.

The drive was long, between the Austin Airport and your childhood home, but it was nice to catch up on all the family drama you missed while away at college. It's your junior year, and this is the first time you've come back to see your family. Most of your classmates are on beaches in Miami, or taking breaks in Italy, but this is how you chose to spend your spring break.

A text from Sarah snaps you away from the conversation.

‘So glad you're safe! When you have time, don't forget to bring that gift to my dad!’

You already almost forgot. Sarah had crafted a mug for her father, detailed with a large owl on the side of it. She was a talented artist, and was excited to gift this to her father when she saw him next. Unfortunately, she had to stay behind this time to finish up a project for her internship.

‘I'll make sure he gets it!’ you type back and set your phone down.

It had been years since you had seen Joel. You grew up with Sarah as your best friend, with many late nights at her house. It'll be good to see him again. Just as good as seeing your own family even.

You make it back to your family's house and exchange greetings with your parents. Your mom has planned out your entire week while you're there. Sunday brunch, dinner with extended family on Tuesday, and so forth. It'll be good to reconnect and spend time together after being apart for so long.

Monday rolls around, and your mom only had plans for the morning. It was getting to be late in the afternoon when you decide to head over to Joel's.

“Can I borrow your car?” you ask your brother. “I have to go bring a gift over to Joel from Sarah.”

He shrugs and throws the keys to you. “Don't wreck it,” he jokes as you head out the door.

Joel's house wasn't far from your family's, but with rush hour starting, the traffic was awful. When you finally make it, you find yourself nervously walking up the steps. You've never felt this flustered around him before. Perhaps it's just that it's been so long? That must be it.

You knock a few times before he answers.

“No! Is that really you?” he exclaims when the door finally opens. “Sarah said you'd be by this week, and I'm so glad she was right! Look how beautiful you are.” He gives your body a quick scan, but you can't quite tell his intentions with it. His hair had grayed out a bit, but otherwise really has not aged at all since you last saw him.

“I just got off work and was about to shower,” he starts. “But if you want to come have a seat, I'll just be 10 minutes.”

You make your way into their front sitting room. Everything is exactly as you remember it from your childhood. Sure, he's gotten new furniture, but the pictures and decorations are exactly as Sarah had left them.

He walks back down the stairs with a clean pair of jeans and a dark gray t shirt on. His hair messy from a quick towel dry, and his scent strong from his woodsy cologne, you forget for a split second that he's your friend's dad; no having thoughts like this about him!

“You want some coffee?” He gestures towards the kitchen.

Of course, how did you already forget what you were here for? “Coffee sounds great!” You follow him into the kitchen. “Actually, I'm here because I have a gift from Sarah for you.” You beam, and pull the box holding the mug from your bag. “She made it and was really excited for you to have it.”

He opens the box and pulls out the hand-crafted mug. “That girl,” he starts, but trails off. He smiles as he turns it around in his hands, almost as if he's inspecting every angle. “We should get her on the phone.” He states after a moment.

You pull out your phone and dial her number to video chat. “Guess what?” you ask, quizitively when she answers. “He loves it!” You face the phone over to him. The three of you talk for a while, sipping cup after cup of coffee until it's nearly dark outside.

“Well,” you sigh. “I shouldn't keep you any longer.” You start to get your bag.

“It has gotten pretty late,” Joel shrugs. “Did you want to stay for dinner? Since it's late, I was thinking I'd just order delivery.”

You take a moment to actually consider, before deciding to stay. You quickly text your mom. ‘Hey I'm staying for dinner at Joel's. I'll be back later tonight :)’

After a few moments, he sets down his phone and says, “Well, delivery said it'll be here in 45 minutes. Wanna watch a movie?”

You nod and follow into the living room. He puts on some action movie. You haven't seen it before, but it seems extremely predictable in what will happen next. As the movie goes on, you find yourself inching closer to him. When you're close enough, you lean your head on his shoulder. He jolts a little at this motion, and turns slightly to face you. You have know idea what's gotten into you, you've never had feelings like this towards Joel. He just… the way he looked over you when you first got here, and how fresh he was after the shower. Ugh, and how he smells now. You can hardly contain yourself. You lean your face towards him and to your surprise, he does the same. Before you even have the chance to think, you kiss him. You jump back a little bit, and lock into the most uncertain eye contact you've ever experienced.

You start to stutter. “I don't… I didn't… I… I’m sorry, I didnt…” But before you can get any real sentence out, he kisses you again. This time with more passion. You kiss him back, and don't stop this time. Your tongue slides into his mouth, and his into yours. He tastes so good. At this, you decide to swing yourself up onto his lap, straddling his legs. Oh God, he’s so hard. Without even questioning what sort of boundaries should be in place, you start to grind down on him just ever so slightly.

“Fuck,” he whispers, then let's out a grown. He grabs both sides of your waist and gently bucks his hips up into you. He slows down after this, pulls back, and whispers, “Are you okay with this? I don't want to cross any boundaries.”

Oh God, what would Sarah think? Never mind about her right now. “Yes,” you breathe out, nodding your head. “Yes, please Joel,” you manage to get out before starting to slowly grind on him again.

He feels his way up and down your body. Grazing your back with his palms, circling around to grip onto your waist, neck and, jaw at times. After a moment of this, you guide his hand up under your shirt, and slip it off over your head. He plays around with your tits through your bra, before reaching around and unclasping it in the back. You're sooo glad you matched your bra with your thong today. He groans at the sight of your newly freed tits, your nipples hard against the cool air. He pinches them first before going immediately to suck on them. He sucks and pinches and bites until each breast has been thoroughly loved. Still grinding on his hard dick through his jeans, you reach your hand down and ask, “Can I take this out, Joel?”.

He considers for just a moment before nodding. “You sure you want this baby?” he asks, genuinely.

“Yes Joel, fuck, I want it so bad,” you manage to stutter out.

“Okay baby girl, I’ll give you this dick, but there's only one rule.” he stops completely, waiting for your full attention. “You don’t ever tell Sarah.”

Fuck, you have to stop thinking about Sarah. She can't know, it would break her. You nod your head, “I promise, I won't tell her,” you whine. He grabs onto your hair at the back of your head, and pulls you down closer to his face.

“Say, ‘I promise Sarah will never find out about this, Joel’” he says into your ear. You repeat the words back to him. “Good girl,” he spits out before letting go of you.

He kisses you again, more sloppy this time, and slowly starts to un-button his jeans. Your hands immediately go to help, and you finally get a feel of his hard cock. It’s so fucking huge, so thick and long. You pull it out completely and immediately start feeling it up and down.

“Hm-mm,” he shakes his head. “You take these off first.” He gestures to the leggings you had thrown on to come over here. You oblige, remove yourself from his lap, and hook your thumbs into your own waistband. You slowly slide them down until they reach your ankles, and kick them off to the side. You stand there for a moment, Joel observing you, the only light from the movie still playing behind you. “Turn around for me,” he commands. As soon as you do so, he grabs onto your ass, gently squeezing, then pulls you in closer to him. He kisses your ass cheeks, then your thighs, then wraps his arm around your waist and slowly goes to feel your mound. His large hand gives it a squeeze before yanking your thong down until it falls to the floor.

“You're such a little slut,” he let's out a short laugh. “Really gonna let your best friend's dad fuck you.”

You giggle slightly at this, but really, he needs to stop reminding you that he's Sarah's dad. She would kill you if she ever found out. “Joooel,” you playfully groan. At this, he slaps your ass, hard. You jolt a little bit, but allow him to continue. He wraps his arm around the front of you again, hand going straight to your cunt. He sits on the edge of the couch, holding you close to him. His finger slides up and down your folds, making you jump when he grazes over your clit.

“You like that, do you?” he teases.

You nod your head aggressively and let out a quick “mm-hmmm, give me more Joel.”

“Oh I'll give you more,” he says with a tone you've never heard in his voice. He sounds possessive, so dominant. He starts circling around your clit with his fingers. “Fuck, I love your wet pussy,” he groans. “Let me taste it.”

He doesn't wait for you to give any permission before he spins you around and immediately starts licking through your folds. Kissing and sucking on your clit, and moving down to fuck you with his tongue. Fuck, it feels so good. You start to have a hard time standing up. Your vision starts to blur, fuck, you're so close to finishing. “Fuck… Joel!” You moan loudly, unable to contain yourself. “I'm gonna… I'm!” But before you can come, he completely lets off of you and pulls you down to straddle his lap again. “Fuck” you scream. You were so fucking close.

“Not yet, baby girl,” he jides. “Not yet, not till I say you can.” He let's out a devilish laugh at you.

Before you can even protest, he slides two fingers up into you. He slides them in and out several times before going right to your spongy G spot. He plays around for a moment before finally saying “Now you're gonna ride my dick baby, you got it? Be a good girl for daddy?”

You moan and nod your head. He pulls his fingers out of you and lifts up his massive cock. Lining it up to your entrance for you, you smash down hard onto it. Lifting yourself and slamming down again, over and over. Your cunt takes every inch of him, like it was made just to fit. You start to move faster and faster on his dick, until you're basically twerking with it inside you.

“Yessss,” he hisses out. “Yes baby, fuck, your tight little pussy feels so- ah, so good on my fat. cock.” Suddenly he holds onto your hips, pulling you down and making it hard to keep going. Now you get it, he's trying to edge himself too. With you now sitting still, but his dick still inside you, he decides to pay attention to your throbbing cunt. He takes a finger first and rubs gentle circles around your clit. Listening to your soft moans and whimpers, he starts whispering in your ear.

“Yes that's a good girl,bbaby. Love when I play with you like that, huh? Your wet little cunt so tight around my dick.” This is all you need. His fingers speed up on your clit, and he bucks his hips up ever so slightly. He keeps whispering those sweet words into your ear until finally, “Come for me baby. Come all over this big cock.”

You let out a moan at this. “Fuck daddy, I'm so. fucking. close.” you let out with a shriek. His fingers working you over so quick on your clit. “Fuck I'm gonna-” your words break off. You squeeze your eyes shut, and can only hear the blood rushing through your ears. You don't know if you scream, or curse, or moan. All you know is that you completely shatter. Your cum bursts out, encasing his entire dick in the thick liquid.

When you finally regain your senses, you make a quick eye contact with Joel. “How was that baby?” he asks, with just a touch of shyness. “Do you think you could keep going?”

Fuck, absolutely you could keep going. You need him to come inside you. You need it so bad.

You nod your head aggressively at him. “Please. Please keep going Joel.” He gives you several long kisses before weaving his arms around you, and flipping you so that you're on all fours on the sofa. After a moment of him admiring your body, every shape and curve, he sticks a few fingers into your hole, feeling his way around before abruptly removing them. He lines up his cock again and slowly slides it in. He does this several times before picking up his pace. A low groan escapes his mouth.

“Can't believe I'm fucking this tight little pussy. So- tight around my cock,” he says, breathlessly before letting out another groan. “Wanna- come inside it baby. Can I fill you up with daddy’s cum?”

You moan. “Fuck yes, come inside me daddy,” you whine. “Fill me up, give it all to me.” You're seconds from coming again when he decides to pick up the pace even further. His pelvis slamming into your ass, and balls coming up to graze against your clit are enough to make you go insane. You're moaning now with every thrust, his calloused fingers holding tighter and tighter onto your hips.

Suddenly, you feel your walls clamp down onto him, and you come again. This time your heat spreading all over the front of him and down onto the couch. Still in your euphoric state, you hear him shout “fuck!”, before completely unraveling inside you. His hot ropes of cum pumping inside of you, being forced further and further up. He finishes completely and pulls out slowly.

“Here, let me go get a towel for you,” he says, but before he can get the chance to move, you sit up and catch the cum that drips out of your entrance. You want the rest to stay in you, as a reminder for the rest of the night. You teasingly bring your fingers up to your mouth and suck each of them clean. His mouth opens slightly, and once you've swallowed all of it down, he gives you several long, passionate kisses.

“You're so sexy,” he says quietly, still observing your every move.

“Can we do this again before I leave?” you ask.

“Ahh baby girl, yes of course we can. Just don't tell Sarah,” he gives a wink at the end of this thought.

The two of you eat your dinner, which had been sitting on the porch for some time. Apparently the driver knocked a while ago, and you didn't even hear it. Once finished, you say your goodbyes and head back to your family's house.

“Jee, what took you all night?” your brother prods when you enter the front door.

“We just were on video call with Sarah and got carried away,” you say with a teasing look.

“Oh that's a relief, I was starting to think you two were fucking,” he jokingly wipes sweat off his forehead.

You flip him off as you walk to your old bedroom to start getting ready to shower. He has no idea how right he is. You look down at your phone and see a text from Sarah. You curse to yourself before reading.

Hey thanks again for making that visit to my dad. I know he’s been a little lonely without me there so I bet he really appreciates the company. Love you girl. ‘Don't tell Sarah,’ you think to yourself over and over again. She can never find out about this.

#joel miller #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you

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