#why does it become so sparse even as the hits climb and climb

[kateis-cakeis]

you know there's something about putting a lot of effort into writing a fic when I know after posting it'll only get comments for a couple weeks. After that it's only kudos and mmmm

I know that the point of posting isn't for comments, but I wish it was more of a thing

#then again i might just be a bad writer #maybe too many people back out of my fics #i know like i do it too i begin reading and im like mmm not for me and leave #but man i just... the most recent comment i got was just about grammar on a 6 year old fic #nothing about the story and i guess im just getting to a point of like why dont people comment after a couple weeks #why does it become so sparse even as the hits climb and climb #idk something about my latest fic (that's almost a year old) having 10k hits but just shy of 100 comments #something about that just demotivates me a little #would like to add that with 100 comments half of them are my replies

[astroboots]

My love, in the Homecoming Universe, would there ever be a time when Frankie does some yard work outside while Santi and Reader watch from inside like 👀 and then they are waiting for him when he gets out of the shower?

HOMECOMING DRABBLE: Peeping

I don't know what you're doing in my inbox lately making me write these horny drabbles but here you go, inspired by this fucking photo that has made us all feral as as of late.

Homecoming Drabbles | Homecoming Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist

It's a thousand fucking degrees outside and Frankie must have lost his mind. The heatwave must have fried his brain. It's the only acceptable explanation Santiago thinks to himself, as he stands by the large living room window, curtains drawn open with just enough of a sliver that Santiago can observe Frankie safely away from the heat, letting in as little of the sun as he can possibly manage.

He doesn't understand why the man tortures himself like this. Even watching him makes heat hives want to break out across Santiago's chest. Meanwhile Frankie is hunched over the workstation bench, sanding down an old dresser you had found at the last trip at the Antique market over the weekend. Worn-out hands working the length of the wooden door in slow, meticulous strokes with the gritty sandpaper as his hands becomes covered in dry sawdust.

Idiota. When he dies of a heatstroke, Santiago is leaving it to you to call the hospital. Frankie is still wearing one of his old flannel (even in this heat) folded up mid-arm, and Santiago can almost feel how the t-shirt underneath must be sticking to his chest with the uncomfortable heat. The man is sweating like something obscene, broad arms slick with it a soft sheen against the dust of hair there, curls furling on his forehead with a slick heat.

From afar, Frankie draws up one hand, covered with sawdust, and wipes the sweat of his brow with the back of it, before he cards his fingers through his hair slicking it back and--

"Santiago, stop peeping like a perv!"

He jumps up at your voice, and if the ceiling was any lower (or Santiago much much taller), his head would have hit the ceiling from how high he jumps in surprise.

"Jesus, Boa, don't just shout at me like that, you nearly gave me a heartattack, and I'm not peeping, I'm just watching Frankie to make sure he doesn't fall over with a heartattack in this heat. What is he doing working on that old piece of junk when it's a million degrees outside?"

"It's not an old piece of junk," you argue, and Santiago rolls his eyes, he's not having this discussion with you again. (Just because it was cheap doesn't make it not junk).

Instead he turns back around and draws back the curtain again to see Frankie's reach over his chest unbuttoning the flannel, button by button, before he shrugs it off his shoulders, the white t-shirt underneath catches, dragging upwards with the motion until it's enough to reveal the sparse trail of hair from his belly button down to his-- and ok yeah, Santiago can see your point now, this does feel like a peep show.

This unreasonable heat should really kill his libido flat dead, because any physical exertion is just asking for trouble. Unfortunately, his dick didn't seem to get the memo, cause he can already tell the twinge of interest as there's the telltale signs of heat swirling tight in his stomach, the way his pants, out of nowhere, feels two sizes too small.

From behind, you walk up to him, until you're so close you're pressed up against him, chin resting on his shoulder. "Not peeping huh?"

Your fingers, climb down his stomach, playfully skittering down the inside of his thigh, until you land on your mark and cup him gently there, and fuck. The wave of pleasure that spreads down his limbs, has his knees buckling and almost knocks him down to his feet. He loses balance, and you take advantage of his brief moment of vulnerability to hold him steady by his hips, before you make a quick work of unfastening the front button of his pants. Sliding it down into his boxers.

For a second he's not sure if the heady lightheadedness building between his temples is from the heat, or the way your thumb swirls around the tip of his cock, spreading the slick precome that is welling up.

You keep your hand there, leaning down towards the window as you pull the curtain apart. From the corner of his eyes he can see the devil of a smile curling on your lips as you pull the latch of the window and open it.

"Frankie, baby, it's hot outside, go upstairs and take a shower or you'll faint."

From the garden, Frankie's head turns to the two of you in attention, and thank fuck that the window sill is in the way and that Frankie can't see the way your hand are inside his boxers, fingers curling around his cock, stroking the slick base of him.

Instead, Frankie nods, dropping his tools on the bench, as he makes his way across the garden and inside the house.

Your lips are brushing against Santiago's ear, making it tingle with heat as you whisper to him in challenge. "Race you upstairs to the shower?"

Follow me on astroboots-writes and turn on notifications to be notified when I post something new!

#oscar isaac #pedro pascal #frankie morales #santiago garcia #triple frontier #homecoming drabbles #frankie morales x reader #santiago garcia x reader #cici drabbles #cici writes #💌 asks

[adelindschade]

A Thousand Embraces (A Thousand Cuts, part 4 - mini Gwynriel Fic)

Because why not? 

“You’re not hurt, are you?” Gwyn asked, oversaw by Azriel. She dabbed at Nesta’s face, scraping it free of dried dirt with a warm rag.

Nesta shook her head. Emerie presented herself after a bath, scrubbed clean of mud and other things, while both their apparel dried from the clothes’ line outside.

“I’m sorry about that,” Azriel mustered after an unnerving silence. “The mating bond is… powerful. We tried our best to deflect him.”

“He didn’t even let me finish my sentence,” Emerie barked, drying her braid. “I was going to tell him she was ready to see him but not to rush conversation, and before I could say the second part, he flies off, and you – you left me stranded, so I had to climb up that hill all over again!” she pointed at Azriel.

“I’m sorry – you were a forethought,” he winced.

“Asshole,” Emerie cursed, scowling. “You make me work when we’re not even training anymore.”

“Officially,” Gwyn corrected. “Unofficially…”

“Oh, we know what you two do on your spare time,” Emerie curled her nose in disgust.

“Huh?” Nesta asked, confused.

“You don’t smell it?” Emerie posed, taking a chair. “They reek of each other.”

“I like to play with his dagger,” Gwyn innocently replied. Emerie wheezed, as did Nesta. Azriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “That wasn’t dirty! That’s the truth!”

“Funny word to describe his-” Nesta couldn’t finish as she slumped forward, hugging her belly as she whistled in airy laughter.

“Enough, ladies,” he commanded.

“Just like old time – remember how he barked orders in the ring?”

“Sadist,” Emerie reminisced, grinning. “Is there an improper conduct to engage in outside relations between student and master?”

“Oh, I bet he loves being called Master,” Nesta joined, smirking.

“Only if he behaves,” Gwyn preened, knowing damn well she was feeding into their shenanigans. If Azriel could become a vegetable, he’d be a beet, because he was red.

“I bet it’s a workout. Does he kick your ass in shape like he did in the arena?” Nesta teased, leaning forward.

She didn’t know why she didn’t notice before how the shadows all but abandoned Azriel, swirling around her obsessively. In fact, as of late, the shadows were sparse to be seen in his presence – likely checking on her, as obsessively he would himself.

“No, he slaps it,” the redhead replied matter-of-factly. Emerie howled in her seat with Nesta squawking alongside her, not expecting the straight answer. Azriel groaned, giving up on life, and resigned himself to another chair. “Kidding! C’mon! I can make a joke now and then,” Gwyn insisted, smiling. “What’s not a joke is the mating bond. That’s legit. Complain all you want but it comes with the territory. Why do you think Azriel enjoys that I spend my day in the library, and avoids bringing me anywhere other than here?”

“Wait – hold up – pause for a second, what?” Nesta shrilled, eyes wide with wonder. “You – him – mates – what? When did this happen?”

How much time had passed that she didn’t notice the change in her friends? What happened under her nose? She felt clueless and out of the loop.

“I haven’t fed him food yet, so the whole mating bond thing isn’t quite fulfilled but he has moments where I question if I want to commit to it. If Cassian is territorial, try this one,” she thumbed to the winged Illyrian.

“Don’t joke about that,” Azriel shouted, seemingly pouting.

“As if I could get rid of him now,” Gwyn remarked humorously.

“You’re okay with it? The whole possessiveness?” Nesta questioned seriously.

“So long he’s okay with the possibility of Eris Vanserra being his father-in-law. An entirely different discovery for another day,” she chirped, dabbing Nesta’s nose playfully. Azriel mocked a gag. “We’re still testing the theory. Beyond the whole primal instinct, he can be a bit much but he’s easy to distract.”

“Ha-ha,” Azriel sarcastically pitched.

“Laugh now but you’ll be the one tapping out for a break when that frenzy hits,” Gwyn sang.

“Says the nymph,” Azriel smirked. “Prepare to eat your words tonight.”

“The only thing you’re eating tonight is – okay – forgot we had an audience, so I won’t finish that sentence,” she squeaked, mindful of her friends nearby. Her cheeks blossomed into the same shade as her radiant hair. Shadows tangled in her hair, concealing her face like a make-shift mask. Azriel boomed in laughter, an unusual noise Nesta did not expect from the otherwise pensive man.

“But you will finish tonight,” Emerie chortled. Gwyn couldn’t resist flashing a grin, though her cheeks were stained red with embarrassment.

“Disgusting,” Azriel gagged, thoroughly repulsed with their vulgarity.

“Just offer yourself as dessert and use that to complete the deal,” Nesta joined along.

“He has to chew and swallow the food to make it count,” Gwyn rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“Sounds painful,” Emerie cringed.

“Swallow?” Nesta smirked.

“Enough,” Azriel roared, rubbing his temples. “Please – spare me. I’ve been punished enough. I ask that you refrain from further jokes. It’s juvenile.”

“Says the cradle robber,” Emerie remarked, upbeat. Nesta snorted at the extensive age difference.

“And that’s why you’re not invited to the mating ceremony,” Azriel gleamed.

“What? No!” all three rioted, throwing various objects at him. He did little to defend himself besides lift his arms. “Jerk!”

“When did this happen?” Nesta interrogated.

“It was… an arrangement.” Gwyn spun her fingers.

“She initiated it, and I liked it,” Azriel supplied, gloating as he recalled the events.

“’It’?” Emerie asked, encircling her hands in a way to imply she needed more context.

“A kiss – and then it led to other things,” Gwyn vaguely elaborated, ending in a shrug. “I was curious!”

“You had an infatuation!” Azriel whispered, coming from behind.

“A schoolgirl crush – and you were shirtless! That was dirty!”

“What was dirty was the thing we did on the desk-” he murmured against her neck.

“Yuck!” Nesta belched. “I don’t need to know that. Please. I got what I needed to know. Wait – no – was it a one-night stand or a friends-with-benefits?”

“Obviously it wasn’t a one-night thing,” Azriel deadpanned, glaring down. He gestured to the couple. He enveloped her from behind and rested his chin atop her crown, demonstrating his full height proudly.

“It didn’t start as fling either. We worked our way up it. Started with a kiss, and then a few more, and then marked it off as we went until I was fully comfortable doing the – the thing,” she stammered.

“Can you not say sex?” Emerie chuckled.

“Sex is so… dull. What we participated was… a life altering experience,” Gwyn dramatized. The shadows were excited, flurrying around them. Azriel bit back his bottom lip, holding back his own snicker.  

“Okay – I’m calling it quits,” Nesta sighed in exasperation. Gwyn let out a melodic giggle.

“Yep, Gwyn wins. Biggest wingspan, huh?” Emerie rolled her eyes.

“Kinky son of a bitch,” Nesta rolled her eyes, glancing suspiciously at an unmoved Azriel.  

“Way to corrupt her,” Emerie seconded.

“Congrats on the sex! I’m going to bed!” Nesta declared, roughly coming to a stand. “If you’re staying the night, keep it down, would you?”

“Uh, I do not have enough rooms to host these two love birds, or enough patching to fix a wall if they get out of hand. Nope, you two get going, and desecrate somewhere else with your pheromones!” Emerie shooed out.

“You act like he’s replacing you,” Gwyn pouted.

“We cannot compete with that,” Nesta loosely gestured to a beaming Azriel.

“Oh, don’t look so proud!” Emerie stuck her tongue out when she spied his gloating.  

“I have no idea what you mean,” Azriel mocked ignorance before lacing has fingers through Gwyn’s hair and using his remaining hand to nudge her back until her back pressed against his chest. He mumbled something in the nook of her neck, prompting Gwyn’s cheeks to burst red, and a smile to grow.

“We’re going to have to deal with this for an eternity,” Emerie groaned, turning on her heel to walk away.

“I’d still trade you in for a Pegasus,” Gwyn happily jested.

“Good thing you won’t be able to get your hands on one, so I’m the best thing you got around here.” Azriel kissed her cheek – and then down her neck – and nipped her shoulder. She squeaked.

“I could always seduce Helion,” Gwyn played along, a twinkle in her eyes as she gauged his reaction.

Predictably, a growl reverberated.

“You’re such an overprotective, paranoid bat,” she sighed. She tipped her head back, into his shoulder, and pouted. “Your wings aren’t that big, and they aren’t soft like a Pegasi.”

“Are you trying to make me jealous over an animal?” he remarked, pressing a chaste kiss to her brow.

“I just want the real thing. I expect one for my mating gift. Can you bribe Helion to spare at least one?”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t help a grin as they swayed.

“I suppose for now, mine will have to do. You can touch them anytime you want. I heard they are very soft but careful, they are sensitive,” he said fondly, angling her face to press a proper kiss to her lips – and then another. Said wings curled around them, encasing her in a wall of protection.

“Out! I don’t want my shop smelling like sex!” Emerie shouted from the second story.

#the valkyries revenge #Azriel gets his karma #its a roast #gwynriel

[one-boring-person]

Request: Cockwarming Jan while riding his motorcycle, like we talked about. The bumps in the road and stopping at the red lights make it difficult for you to not start to fuck properly 😭

Shsbgsge I know there are slight imoracticalities but I hope you like this😅😁💛

Right Here.

Jan Kremfeld (Furia) x f!reader

Warnings: NSFW, smut, cockwarming, semi-public sex

Masterlist

Tagging: @echoe-l @creme-bruhlee @zemo-is-king

Like my work? Buy me a coffee!😁

Yet another groan is muffled by the roaring of the engine as we hit a bump in the road, lust and need coursing through me relentlessly, my body tensed. It takes all I have not to grind back on the man behind me, his thick, vein-adorned cock throbbing notably inside me as it rests in my clenching cunt. With every pothole, his weeping head pushes against my g-spot, sending sparks of pleasure through me, my hands clenching on the handlebars from how hard I'm trying not to fuck myself on him. 

Jan guides the bike as carefully as he usually does, the only way I can tell he's desperate to get home being the quivering length pushed so tightly inside me. His hard, lean body is warm behind me, his chest pressed firmly against my back even as his hips are almost flush with me, facilitated by the way he's made me sit on the bike. Propped slightly on the fuel tank with my skirt (which he insisted I wear) pushed up enough to reveal my slick cunt to him, Jan almost has me in his lap, a little awkward because of his driving but manageable nevertheless. Every now and then, he shifts so his cock slides a little deeper inside me, as if searching for a better place to rest. It drags needy whimpers from me, my body practically shaking with desire. 

Yet another bump goes by and I have to bite back a louder sound as my clit unexpectedly rubs hard against the smooth leather covering the tank. I feel my inner walls clench tightly around the thick cock, heightening the pleasure that accompanies the grinding movement of my sex over the bike itself. The need to cum once more rushes to the surface, the feeling still with since he first pushed himself into my tight cunt when we left the bar, the two of us as hot for each other as possible, his cock already achingly hard by the time we climbed on the bike. This had been his idea; And now I'm wondering why we never tried this sooner.

Thankfully, there is very little traffic around, meaning the roads are safer than they might be. Still, the knowledge that we could be caught is hot in my mind, somehow working to arouse me more as we speed past the sparse cars driving alongside us. The street flashes by us and I find myself getting more and more excited by the minute, inpatient to get home so we can finish what we've started.

The bike skids to a halt, Jan steadying it by putting his feet down on the asphalt beneath us. Glancing up, I take note of the red light above us, working to settle the confusion that pierced the fog of lust in my head. The slight clarity doesn't last long, however, as Jan quickly wraps his arms around me, burying his head in the crook of my neck, the two of us having forgone helmets because of the short nature of the drive to and from the bar. Breathing heavily, he groans softly as he adjusts his hips, softly but distinctly thrusting up into my wet heat. 

The new movement sends waves of pleasure through me, a moan of surprise escaping me, particularly as he repeats his action. His grip around me is tight, his cock throbbing inside me, twitching as I squeeze him, my mounting desire quickly becoming unbearable. Obscene wet noises are just audible from where we're connected, my arousal coating my thighs and the leather beneath me now as he grinds himself into my cunt.

"Fuck, I could take you right here…you're so tight around me, (Y/n)...so fucking tight…" Jan groans in my ear, biting down on my lobe, feeling his thighs tensing up beneath mine, his hips driving harder into me, his teeth moving to my neck, where he starts to suck hickeys into the soft skin. His cock seems to swell slightly inside me, his hold on me going vice-like as he fights the urge to pound into me right where we are. I let out a high-pitched mewl of desire, lifting a hand to the back of his neck to grip at his silky hair, earning me a sound of approval, before he pulls back again as the lights start to change. 

Whining at the movements halting, I bite my lip and try to keep my grip on the centre of the handlebars as Jan kicks the bike back into action, sending us flying into the night again. 

With his newfound desperation, Jan pushes the speed limits, hurrying to get us home as his cock starts to leak more fervently inside me, smearing across my insides. His chest is pushed hard against my chest, the cop pressing me further into the seat as if to make us go faster, allowing his cock to jab into me continuously, his breaths coming hard and fast.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take us long to get back home, though the ride feels like hours. By the time Jan has found our spot in the parking lot, my cunt is positively aching for him to do something, my arousal unbearable as I try to grind back on him, searching desperately for some release. He bites back a groan, pulling the bike to a halt in our bay off to the side, cutting off the engine. Before I can move to climb off, however, he grabs my throat with one hand, keeping me against him as his other hand pushes up under my shirt, pressing his cool palm flat against my warm skin. 

“I can’t wait anymore, Liebling…I need to fuck you.” He growls into my ear, biting my ear once more, “Right here.”

I can only moan needily as he pushes me back down, pressing me flat against the bike as he stands upright, lifting my hips ever so slightly so they press into the tank. Using the hand that was on my throat, Jan pins me down, his other hand pushing up my clothes so he can run it over my skin, smoothing his palm over my ass before laying a sharp smack on the soft flesh, drawing a whimper from my parted lips. As he moves, his cock shifts inside me, rubbing every sensitive spot in just the right way, my walls tightening like a vice around him, pulling him further into my warm cunt. 

“Jan…please fuck me, I need you so badly…your cock feels so good!” I moan out, trying to move my hips back on him, only for him to groan and hold me down. 

“Oh fuck, (Y/n)...” He grates out before pulling his hard cock from my weeping cunt. 

I almost whine at the empty feeling, missing his cock already before he suddenly slams it back into me, allowing me no time to get used to him as he starts up a hard, fast pace, relentlessly shoving himself into me. The harsh movements instantly tear a scream of relieved pleasure from me, which quickly earns me a tight grip around my mouth, keeping me quiet as he mercilessly pounds my soaked cunt. His fingers press into my cheek as he leans down to speak to me once more.

“Keep quiet, Liebling. Those sounds are for me and me alone.” He practically snarls into my ear, his hips ramming harder against me as he moves to bite my neck, sucking more and more dark marks onto my skin as he works himself closer and closer to his climax. 

I nod hastily, drool wetting his fingers as my mouth hangs open behind his hand, pleasure racing through my body, my walls clenching so tightly now it’s a wonder he’s managing to fuck me at all. Every thrust rocks the bike, the only thing keeping us upright being Jan’s ability to stand, giving him the leverage he needs to work himself in and out of me at the pace he wants. Leaning back up again, he makes full use of this, gripping me hard so he can pull me back onto his unforgiving cock, the sound of slapping skin thwarting his attempts to keep our activities secret, mixing with the distinct sound of my slick and his precum, almost grotesque in their volume. 

My body quickly starts to betray me, the pleasure flooding through me swiftly becoming too much to handle, every coherent thought going from my head as I moan uncontrollably into Jan’s rough palm. Repeated profanities leave the man behind me, his voice gritty with need and lust, having lowered an octave from how desperate he is, his cock twitching and hot inside me.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum…gonna fill you with my load, (Y/n)...oh fuck, you feel so fucking good, so tight and wet…shit…” Jan moans, his thrusts losing their rhythm, grip tight on me, sure to leave dark bruises behind that’ll be visible for weeks, his fingernails digging in slightly. 

“Oh, god-” My voice breaks off into a broken moan at his words, my body suddenly erupting into explosive pleasure, every muscle and nerve-ending burning with the euphoria of release. My inner walls tighten unimaginably tightly around Jan, allowing me to feel every pulse and throb of him as he slams himself into me with more vigour, his low groans finally breaking off into a long, low moan as he gives one last, hard thrust up to the hilt and empties himself inside me. He collapses onto me, hips pressed flush to mine as his hot cum fills my cunt, cock spasming and twitching uncontrollably, grunting and panting in my ear in bliss. I whimper and whine beneath him, loving the feeling of his large body folded over mine, my energy quickly starting to wane. 

After a long moment, Jan pushes himself back up, placing a hand on the small of my back as he groans and pulls his cock out of me, my cunt making an obscene sound as our combined loads spill out of me and onto the leather of the seat, leaving me feeling empty after so long of having him inside me. I can barely think straight as my hips sag onto the bike, my chest heaving as I struggle to get my breath back again, going to get back up again until I feel a hand suddenly pressing me back down again. 

“Jan? Wha-ah!” I mewl desperately as a hot, wet tongue suddenly flattens itself over my sensitive clit, dragging up and over my quivering hole. 

Groaning into me, Jan eagerly laps up the warm cum dripping from me, making sure to clean me up thoroughly as he licks up through my folds, holding me still as I whimper and writhe from the overstimulation being supplied to my clit. Only when he’s completely satisfied that I’m clean does he pull away, audibly licking his lips.

“I will never get tired of the taste of my cum on your sweet little cunt, Schatzi.” He says finally, caressing my bare skin affectionately with one hand, “Come on, let's get you inside, shall we? The night is still young.”

I grin happily up at him as he gathers me into his strong arms.

“You might have to give me a moment.”

#break writes #furia #jan kremfeld #Jan Kremfeld furia #Jan Kremfeld x reader #Jan Kremfeld imagine #Jan Kremfeld smut #August Diehl

[irelise]

Yassen Gregorovich - Books vs TV

With the excellent new Alex Rider tv show out, I thought I would make a comparison post for one of my old favs, Yassen Gregorovich, who has a somewhat different feel in the books as compared to the show! This post will largely cover the first book Stormbreaker and should theoretically contain no spoilers for the potential future arcs of the show, since the events of Stormbreaker are presumably non-canon now. (Spoilers abound for the episodes of the show already out, though!)

If there’s any interest, I’ll put up a second post covering Eagle Strike and some parts of Russian Roulette that delves deeper into Yassen and his complicated relationship with Alex. Just let me know!

Much like the show, Yassen was the one who killed Ian Rider. Unlike the show, however, he’s known to be active on the field and the first time we “encounter” him is prior to Alex’s first mission, where Mrs Jones gives Alex a warning:

She took out a black-and-white photograph and laid it on the table. It showed a man in a white T shirt and jeans. He was in his late twenties with light, close cropped hair, a smooth face, the body of a dancer. The photograph was slightly blurred. It had been taken from a distance, possibly with a hidden camera. “I want you to look at this,” she said.

"I’m looking."

“His name is Yassen Gregorovich. He was born in Russia, but he now works for many countries. Iraq has employed him. Also Serbia, Libya, and China.”

“What does he do?” Alex asked.

"He’s a contract killer, Alex. We believe it was he who killed Ian Rider.”

There was a long pause. Alex had almost managed to persuade himself that this whole business was just some sort of crazy adventure…a game. But looking at the cold face with its blank, hooded eyes, he felt something stirring inside him and knew it was fear. He remembered his uncle’s car, shattered by bullets. A man like this, a contract killer, would do the same to him. He wouldn’t even blink.

[…]

“Why are you telling me this now?” Alex asked. His mouth had gone dry.

"Because if you see him, if Yassen is anywhere near Sayle Enterprises, I want you to contact us at once."

“And then?"

“We’ll pull you out. It doesn’t matter how old you are, Alex. If Yassen finds out you’re working for us, he’ll kill you too.”

I always thought this was a pretty good introductory scene -- Yassen has a very deadly reputation in the books, which is established at once then hammered in over and over again. Other traits which come up again and again include his coldness and his dancer’s body which is totally something I’m into, gotta love those “elegant and deadly assassin” tropes

(also, yes, Yassen is blond in the books and definitely not a brunet or even a redhead as in the movie. he also doesn’t have a distinctive facial scar!)

Yassen doesn’t actually have many scenes in Stormbreaker, although the shadow of his presence looms pretty darkly over the narrative. Alex only runs into him twice on the mission: once from a distance -- A lean, fair-haired figure dressed in black detached himself from the assembly line and walked languidly toward a door that slid open to receive him -- and the other encounter also occurs from a distance, when Alex is spying on a mysterious delivery at the docks in the dead of the night...

And then the tower opened and a man climbed out, stretching himself in the cold morning air. Even without the half-moon, Alex would have recognized the sleek dancer’s body and the close cropped-hair of the man whose photograph he had seen only a few days before. It was Yassen Gregorovich. Alex stared at him with growing fear. This was the contract killer Mrs. Jones had told him about. The man who had murdered Ian Rider. He was dressed in grey overalls and sneakers. He was smiling. He was the last person Alex wanted to meet.

[…]

Meanwhile, the guards from Sayle Enterprises had formed a line stretching back almost to the point where the vehicles were parked. Yassen gave an order and, as Alex watched from behind the rocks, a metallic silver box with a vacuum seal appeared, held by unseen hands at the top of the submarine’s tower. Yassen himself passed it down to the first of the guards, who then passed it back up the line. About forty more boxes followed, one after another. It took almost an hour to unload the submarine. The men handled the boxes carefully. They obviously didn’t want to break whatever was inside.

By the end of the hour they were almost finished. The boxes were being repacked now into the back of the truck that Alex had vacated. And that was when it happened. One of the men, standing on the jetty, dropped one of the boxes. He managed to catch it again at the last minute, but even so it banged down heavily on the stone surface. Everyone stopped. Instantly. It was as if a switch had been thrown and Alex could almost feel the raw fear in the air.

Yassen was the first to recover. He darted forward along the jetty, moving like a cat, his feet making no sound. He reached the box and ran his hands over it, checking the seal, then nodded slowly. The metal wasn’t even dented.

With everyone so still Alex heard the exchange that followed.

“I’m sorry,” the guard said. “I won’t do that again.”

“No. You won’t,” Yassen agreed, and shot him.

Largely a reaffirmation of what we saw from the photograph scene, this time in person: Yassen is generally quiet, understated and deceptively relaxed -- up until the point he murders somebody without blinking. I think the show does a good job capturing that aspect of Yassen, with scenes like Ian’s death and Dr. Greif in the car coming to mind in particular. Gotta love that pairing of Yassen’s generally calm demeanour with the bursts of restrained yet lethal violence!

Some other minor but interesting character notes: despite being one of the most highly-paid and successful assassins in the world, Yassen is perfectly comfortable doing grunt work (passing boxes, dressing in shitty grey overalls). Similarly, despite being (presumably) more comfortable working alone, he’s also at ease with giving orders and coordinating large groups of people.

Now, moving onto the last time Yassen shows up in Stormbreaker. This is right at the end of the book after Alex successfully foils the plot of the big bad (Herod Sayle), only to get kidnapped by him while his guard is down. Sayle takes them to a rooftop where a helicopter is coming to whisk Sayle away, but first he wants to have some revenge...

"That’s my ticket out of here!” Sayle continued. “They’ll never find me! And one day I’ll be back. Next time, nothing will go wrong. And you won’t be here to stop me. This is the end for you! This is where you die!”

There was nothing Alex could do. Sayle raised the gun and took aim, his eyes wide, the pupils blacker than they had ever been, mere pinpricks in the bulging white.

There were two small explosive cracks.

Alex looked down, expecting to see blood. There was nothing. He couldn’t feel anything. Then Sayle staggered and fell onto his back. There were two gaping holes in his chest.

The helicopter landed in the center of the cross. The pilot got out.

Still holding the gun that had killed Herod Sayle, he walked over and examined the body, prodding it with his shoe. Satisfied, he nodded to himself, tucking the gun away. He had switched off the engine of the helicopter and behind him the blades slowed down and stopped. Alex stepped forward. The man seemed to notice him for the first time.

"You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

The Russian nodded. It was impossible to tell what was going on in his head. His clear blue eyes gave nothing away.

"Why did you kill him?” Alex asked.

“Those were my instructions.” There was no trace of an accent in his voice. He spoke softly, reasonably. “He had become an embarrassment. It was better this way."

"Not better for him.”

Yassen shrugged.

“What about me?” Alex asked.

The Russian ran his eyes over Alex, as if weighing him up. “I have no instructions concerning you,” he said.

"You’re not going to shoot me too?”

"Do I have any need to?”

There was a pause. The two of them gazed at each other over the corpse of Herod Sayle.

“You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”

Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people"

“One day I’ll kill you.”

“A lot of people have tried.” Yassen smiled. “Believe me,” he said, “it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”

He turned his back on Alex and climbed into the cabin. The blades started up, and a few seconds later, the helicopter rose back into the air. For a moment it hovered at the side of the building. Behind the glass, Yassen raised his hand. A gesture of friendship? A salute?

Alex raised his hand. The helicopter spun away.

Alex stood where he was, watching it, until it had disappeared in the dying light.

HOO BOY where to start! This is a longer scene compared to the rest but I love it so much, it’s probably the best part of Stormbreaker for me and obviously it’s fairly different from the show. I adore the last scene of the show since the tension was delightful, but this hit in a different way. Alex! And Yassen! Actually talking!!! It’s a sparse scene (like most of AH’s writing), but very atmospheric and loaded with meaning all the same.

Let’s start with the obvious stuff first - book!Yassen is fair-haired and blue-eyed (or grey, depending), and has a very measured way of speaking without any accent at all. He very much falls into the archetype of “inscrutable Russian assassin with a mysterious connection to the protagonist” and it’s delightful.

I do like the fact we only really see Yassen in person for two scenes in the entire book, and both times he kills someone ruthlessly and efficiently. (...yes, he did kill Sayle while piloting a helicopter) His reputation is well-deserved and I think the show does an excellent job with that too; every time we see Yassen on screen there’s a feeling that shit is about to go down and somebody is about to die.

The show also does a pretty good job hinting at the connection between Yassen and Alex (ughh Yassen’s expression when he sees Alex for the first time kills me every time). In Stormbreaker, Yassen does (initially) seem colder towards Alex, emotionless, just a man on a job. But even then, we get little hints of warmth shining through such as the way he smiles when Alex promises to kill him, and of course the salute! It’s pretty clear that Yassen has some measure of fondness for Alex, because no way an assassin would normally just let somebody go after they promised to kill him, even if that person is only a teenage boy (especially considering that teenage boy is driven by a desire to take revenge on his uncle’s killer). I also think it’s interesting that Alex reciprocates his salute. He’s clearly aware (even if only subconsciously) of the connection between the two of them.

Though I think what hits the hardest for me is the fact Yassen is the one to tell Alex that he belongs in school, that he’s a child and he shouldn’t be part of this world. Alex in the books is much, much lonelier compared to the show. There was no Jack or Tom there for him, since Jack was kept completely out of the loop and Tom doesn’t even exist in the book. Wolf and the K-Unit largely either ignored or bullied Alex. As for Blunt and Jones, Alex just saved thousands of kids in England yet the only thing MI6 tells him afterwards is that his actions can never be revealed to the public, his youth will make him useful for future missions, and then the only thing they give him is a doctor’s note(!!!) to explain his absence from school.

If that sounds all sorts of terrible and unfair, Alex agrees:

In the end the big difference between him and James Bond wasn’t a question of age. It was a question of loyalty. In the old days spies had done what they’d done because they loved their country, because they believed in what they were doing. But he’d never been given a choice.

Nowadays, spies weren’t employed. They were used.

And of all the people to point out how fucked up the whole situation is and how Alex needs to get out...it’s Yassen, the contract killer, his uncle’s murderer. And Yassen says it straight to Alex’s face instead of just making token protests about how wrong it is to send a teenage boy into danger and then doing it anyway. I think the moment had a fairly big impact on Alex, and I was sad it wasn’t included in the show, but ah well. Another time, maybe?

BONUS

OK i know this was meant to be a book vs tv show thing BUT I WOULD BE REMISS IN MY DUTIES NOT TO LINK TO THE LAST SCENE AS DEPICTED IN THE OLD MOVIE

‘2 minutes of questionable everything’ from the video description about sums it up. the violins. the closeness. the long lingering looks. “i’ll never forget you.”

Anyway, hope this was interesting and at least a bit informative! Do let me know there’s any interest in a part 2 of this post covering Eagle Strike and maybe a bit of Russian Roulette!

#alex rider #alex rider tv #yassen gregorovich #stormbreaker #anthony horowitz #meta #mild spoilers

[thatringboy]

The Way A Soul Lives (Part Two) - TWST

Requested by @yoruzumy0 that I continue This Story, so I hope you all enjoy! Angst is not something I’m very good at, but I got a lot of positive feedback from part one and it made me want to keep trying!

Word Count: 1,633

Warnings: Cursing, magic, blood mention, Character death, mentioned character death and the angst associated with that, implied relationships between characters

Silver sat on the stone pavement with his head in his hands while Lilia hugged him tight, his eyes widened and unmoving from shock. Malleus burst out of the castle with his large staff in hand and reached his companions. The prince stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the body on the ground and his eyes immediately went up to the stars, searching and scanning like the universe held the answers.

And for once, it did. Malleus had been looking at the wings of the dragon constellation for his fallen friend, but instead found the small star sitting peacefully next to his grandmother in the heavens, now protecting the Draconia family for the rest of eternity.

Despite the morbid situation, the comfort of knowing where Sebek’s final resting place was brought a small smile to his face. After all, what was death to the immortal?

~~~

Yuu had expected a mirror to gate them back to Night Raven College, not a singular Black Carriage to fit themself, Grim, Jack, Cater and Vil all into. Needless to say, they did not all fit.

Yuu wondered if this was some sort of punishment from Crowley for leaving and questioned if it was related to the feeling of dread still welling up inside of them. Magic had transported all of their luggage back to the school, but couldn’t transport them individually as well? The nerve that headmaster had!

Yuu would have complained if they could be heard over the complaining of their companions.

“You are sitting on my coat!”

“Well, you’re on my tail!”

“Guys move, I need a selfie to show my followers that I’m stuck here with you!”

“The Great Grim demands that you stop squishing me against the window!”

Yuu rolled their eyes and moved closer to the window to get away from Cater’s obsessive photo taking. They watched the Pyroxene countryside roll past the window and was taken aback about how snow could still be seen under evergreen trees despite it currently being the middle of Spring.

But the trip was not without faults. Every bump in the road jostled the Prefect and made them wonder if the bad feeling in their gut was about to become everyone else’s problem too. Thankfully, the Carriage passed through a gateway and was soon outside the front gates of Night Raven College.

The sight of the grand castle never ceased to take Yuu’s breath away and the view got their friends to momentarily stop complaining. Cater maneuvered himself in the carriage to snap a selfie that had a blurred image of Jack in the background, which got the sweet silence to break into arguing again.

When the carriage finally stopped and the doors opened, Yuu fell out and crashed into someone. They apologized profusely and felt someone stroke their head.

“Non non, forgive me for not being more careful.” Rook smiled down at them and helped them regain their balance.

Yuu stepped away from the third year and watched as he extended a hand to help Vil out of the carriage. The motion was graceful and Yuu wondered how Vil still looked so magnificent despite the commute. Jack ended up falling out of the carriage with Cater and Grim and the sight reminded Yuu of a clown car.

As their friends got to their feet, Yuu noticed that Rook was already in his uniform. “When did you get here, Rook-Senpai?”

The blonde spun around and tipped his hat. “I simply mirrored back to campus an hour ago.”

“Of course you did.” Yuu frowned and held out an arm for Grim to climb up on.

~~~

For someone with a slight case of narcolepsy, Silver didn’t sleep a minute. If anything, he purposefully made himself busy around the castle.

The image kept replaying in his mind as he cleaned Malleus’ room from the damage caused by the demon. The blood soaked stones, Lilia’s screams and the sound of Sebek slumping to the ground. It replayed in real time, slow motion and sped up. The scene was a bad record set on loop and every time he closed his eyes to try to silence the pounding of his head, the images became more pronounced and more intense.

It got so bad that he had to stop and sit down on Malleus’ half-burnt bed to keep himself from hyperventilating. He knew that Fae usually moved on quickly from death and didn’t typically mourn for long, but Sebek’s death was only a few hours ago and his caretakers had made themselves sparse almost immediately.

The sun coming up through the broken glass of the window made little refracted rainbows dance around the destroyed room. Silver saw the pleasant sight and thought of how the universe mocked him. Of course the sunrise after loosing his comrade would be beautiful, what else would it be? Sebek wasn’t a friend of his by any means - if anything they were bitter rivals - but the thought of going back to Night Raven College without the loud cabbage man made his heart sink further. Silver felt tears welling up in his eyes and moved to wipe them away.

“Glad to see you’re still as human as ever.” Malleus stood in the doorway with an exhausted face. Silver’s first instinct would have been to jump to attention, but his body didn’t move. Malleus came and sat next to him, glancing around the room as the sun came up more.

“Your father has been in the library all night trying to find the origin of that beast. I thought I told you to get some sleep, you need it more than us.”

Silver remained silent. What was he to say? He had left Sebek alone to defend the prince and took too long in fetching Lilia. The image of Sebek’s face before he plummeted out the window still burned in his mind. It was a face of determination and fierce loyalty only the Zigvolt boy could pull off. Malleus reached around the human and hugged him close. “Don’t over think this, none of this is remotely your fault.”

“But I could have--”

“We all could have done something differently. I could have stayed and fought instead of follow protocol. None of that matters now.” Malleus’ voice was barely audible. “What matters is how we move on.”

Silver pulled away. “Move on?! That was only five hours ago and you want to move on?!”

Malleus looked hurt. “No I--”

“I know that life isn’t such a big deal to fairies, but can we at least take a few days to mourn him?” he got up on his feet. “Sebek was by far your most loyal guard and you want to move on already? No, we will not stop mourning and we will not stop searching for who did this until I plunge my sword into their chest! I--”

Malleus was up and hugged Silver close. “I don’t want you to stop, I want you to slow down before you hurt yourself in the process. Revenge is a fickle thing; you think you want it, but what you really need is healing. And where does revenge stop? None of it will fill the hole inside of you.”

The soft voice of the prince made Silver tear up again as he hugged Malleus back.

“Alright, I’ll slow down, but only because you asked me to.”

“That is all I want of you now.”

~~~

Yuu braced themself for the running tackle from Epel and Ace and collapsed to the ground under their short friends, to the entertainment of Grim who just floated above the first years.

“Epel, Ace, I can’t breathe!” Yuu laughed.

“If you can talk, you can breathe.” Epel got up and helped Yuu to their feet. “So, how was the break?”

Yuu’s eyes widened and they began to retell their adventures in Pyroxene, the bad feeling in their gut subsiding for now. When they mentioned spending the week with the Howls, Epel’s mouth dropped open.

“So, what are they like? Jack’s parents?”

Ace elbowed the purple haired boy in the ribs. “Why do you need to know, lover boy?”

Epel turned red and crossed his arms. “Just curious, that’s all.”

Ace and Yuu snickered when Jack joined the small group and Epel flushed even more red. The five - including Grim - made their way inside the school and to the mirror hall where the other members of Heartslabyul that Yuu considered friends loitered. Deuce noticed his friend group and bowed to the dorm heads before making his way over.

“Ace, you shouldn’t just run off like that!”

Ace brushed him off. “Pssh, I was collecting the trash!”

“Trash? What trash?”

Yuu facepalmed and rolled their eyes. More mirrors lit up as more students returned from their breaks. A group from Scarabia chatted away about a new dance they learned, some Savanaclaw boys compared their fitness regimes from the break and Yuu swore they saw a few Ignihyde students slinging around brand new motorcycle licenses. Everyone was so happy to see each other and in that moment, Yuu forgot all about their sick feeling.

That is, until Jack tapped their shoulder and cleared his throat. “So, did any of you see the stars last night? I swore that a new one got added to the Draconia line.”

Deuce crossed his arms and nodded. “Yeah, I saw that.”

Yuu’s sick feeling hit them like a truck and they frowned. “Do you think it was someone we knew?”

Epel shook his head. “The chances of that are too slim, probably some distant cousin of someone we vaguely know.”

His certainty made Yuu feel better. The group continued to talk about something as Ortho approached them with a happy expression. He made the first years shriek when he removed his metal face plate and showed them his real mouth underneath.

Yuu’s attention was immediately drawn to a mirror in the corner of the room. They excused themself from the group and walked over to where Malleus, Silver and Lilia had appeared.

They looked dreadful. Lilia didn’t even bother to use his legs to lazily float around and his uniform was unkept, Silver’s eyes and cheeks were red from crying and Malleus’ had a distant look to him, like he wasn’t even there and his body was functioning on its own. Yuu smiled warmly at them. “Nice to see you three, how was your break?”

They clearly didn’t expect anyone to approach them as the three of them seemed to snap out of a trance. Lilia excused himself quickly and disappeared. Meanwhile, Silver remained glued to Malleus side. The prince looked down at Yuu with a sad smile. “It was... eventful.”

“I, uh, I saw the stars last night....” Yuu trailed off, seeing Silver’s face perk up sorrowfully.

“You did?” Malleus placed a hand on their shoulder. Yuu nodded.

“Then you know that tragedy has struck us.” Silver stood up straight.

Yuu looked around, noticing the unusual absence of the second guard. “Where’s Sebek?”

The single tear that rolled down Malleus’ face made Yuu want to throw up. They looked to Silver, but their eyes didn’t meet.

“You can’t be serious...” They whispered. Malleus suddenly hugged Yuu tightly and the Ramshackle student could hear his heart thumping loudly.

Yuu hugged back, feeling hot tears streak down their own cheeks. “W-What happened?!“

Silver opened his mouth to answer, but his voice became lost in his throat. By this time, Yuu’s other friends had noticed their disappearance and cautiously approached the Diasomnia students. Epel overcame his fear of the large Fae hugging his friend and spoke up. “Hey, where’s Sebek? Isn’t he glued to your hip or something?”

Silver glared at Epel, making him shrink away. Malleus let go and looked at the Pomfiore student with an apologetic face. “I am sorry, little one.”

Epel’s voice fell quiet and his eyes widened. “What?”

Yuu turned to their friends and saw the wave of realization hit them all at once. They wanted to curl up into a ball and cry and scream and wake up from this terrible dream, but all Yuu managed to do was look down at the ground. Their only comfort was the hand still on their shoulder.

~~~

“No... no, no, no no no no no...” Ace grabbed his forehead in disbelief.

“By the time I arrived on scene, both Sebek and the monster were already dead.” Silver crossed his arms and looked at his feet. Deuce cursed under his breath and kicked the ground.

“We’re still looking into how the demon could have been created and--”

“That’s not good enough!” Ace snapped at Silver. “You’ve got a killer out there and you’ve spent the first few hours looking at old books?!”

“Ace!” Jack looked appalled by his behaviour. Silver smiled weakly. “That’s what I said, too, but then I realized that we get no work done running on revenge as fuel.”

“You know, I’m getting tired of this philosophical bullshit.” Ace looked Malleus up and down. “You’re all powerful, get a tracking spell up and slap it on part of the monster’s magic that was left behind from the fight!”

Deuce punched him in the arm. “Please, just shut up!”

Malleus thought for a second. “You may be onto something....”

Ortho, who had stood in stunned silence the whole time, touched his chin. “Maybe you’re looking at the puzzle all wrong. When does anyone try to solve a maze puzzle by starting at the front? (Deuce, put your hand down, this isn’t the time) We find who made the demon and work our way backwards, like solving a riddle!”

“That’s how we deal with infestations at home. You find one bug and trace it back to the hive to eliminate them all.” Jack looked around.

Silver and Malleus stood there taken aback. They had spent every last possible minute until they needed to return to the campus pouring over books and contacting mages all over Twisted Wonderland and not one of them had thought of that.

The guard thought the idea over in his head and raised his eyebrows. “That would take several powerful users of magic to cast, but it could be done.”

Epel’s eyes perked up. “Well, we’ve got some of the most powerful wizards at this school, so let’s do it! For Sebek!”

Malleus let another tear roll down his cheek. Sebek had some truly amazing friends despite what the late guard would say about them. He chuckled, getting the attention of the first years. “Alright then, I’ll see what I can do.”

Jack scoffed. “Seriously? This isn’t all on you. C’mon guys, let’s see if we can find anything in the library! He wouldn’t want us to sit by and let Malleus-Senpai do all the work!”

“Yeah!” Deuce, Epel and Ortho agreed. Silver led the first years to the library with newfound energy, but Yuu and Ace hung back with Malleus.

The prefect looked between the young men. “You know, Sebek wouldn’t want anything but this. He’d be proud of their enthusiasm.”

Ace’s hands turned to tightly wrapped fists. “Yeah... it just hurts. A lot. He hasn’t even been gone a day and I already miss him.”

Malleus sighed. “That’s completely understandable. I suppose Faes don’t hold as much sentimental value over the death of our kin since we know we’ll see them again, but even so my heart aches with yours.”

Ace laughed, some tears spilling out of his eyes. “What did I just say about the philosophical crap?”

Malleus chuckled a bit. “I need to go to the headmaster’s office to inform him of the events of last night. Would you two care to join me?”

Ace and Yuu looked at one another. The prefect slipped their arm in the prince’s. “You need a new bodyguard anyways, so why not?”

The three left the mirror hall together, earning some shocked expressions from their classmates, but not really caring. Now wasn’t time for mourning over their lost friend, now was the time to take action and build each other up. Yuu was sure that the news of Sebek’s passing would be a shock to the student body, but deep down they knew that Sebek was still with them. Even if his spirit was in the stars.

After all, in the minds and hearts of others is the way a soul lives.

~~~

Cold...

I feel cold...

I can’t move...

I don’t remember anything...

What am I trying to remember?

His eyes opened in total darkness. He spun his head around frantically, trying to get a bearing of his surroundings, but discovered that he was simply floating in some sort of abyss.

“Well, you certainly slept like the dead.” A deep voice chuckled in his mind. His throat was dry and no sound came when he opened his mouth. Clammy hands seemed to take hold of his mind and hold his head still, looking forward at nothing.

“I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did, young man. It’s not every day someone of your age has the skills that you do.” The voice continued. “Seeing that you were not the original target, but still worth the effort we put into the operation, I’m sure we can make use of you here.”

“After all, service is in your nature. Isn’t it, Mr. Zigvolt?”

#jefweiohfoifeiofiohiohfho #writing angst hurts my cold dead soul #y'all killing me here #ThatRingBoy Blue #TWST #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland writing #twisted wonderland characters #twisted wonderland Silver #twisted wonderland Grim #Silver #Grim #Malleus Draconia #Lilia Vanrouge #Yuu Prefect #Sebek Zivgolt #Jack Howl #Vil Schoenheit #Rook Hunt #Epel Felmier #Cater Diamond #Deuce Spade #Ace Trappola #Ortho Shroud

[rons-hermiones]

Come Find Me

Come Find Me

by rons-hermiones

Summary: Unplanned, Hermione is forced to spend Christmas at the Burrow due to her grandmother falling very ill. After being ignored by Hermione for weeks, Ron is determined to show her how much she means to him. Just before he gets the chance to tell her, Bellatrix Lestrange shows up with other plans for Hermione. Can Ron get to her before it's too late? (Ron/Hermione Half-Blood Prince AU)

Rating: M for language & dark themes in later chapters.

Chapter Twenty Five

Draco had become sparse since returning to Hogwarts. Ron only saw him whenever he was in the Great Hall, or in potions. Both were too crowded to even corner the git. 

Of course, he could ask Harry for the map, but that would raise suspicions. Something he wasn’t willing to do yet. 

Other than that, the month since arriving back has been what Ron could only describe as routine. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Go to class. Eat lunch. Avoid Lavender. Maybe dinner. Quidditch. Do patrols. Terrible nightmares. Repeat. 

In all honesty, he was doing whatever he could to avoid anyone but Harry and Ginny. People so often offhandedly mentioned her, it made him tick. 

“Ah, Harry, do you know when Miss Granger will be back? I’ve missed her at dinners.” Slughorn would question every now and again. 

“Oi! Dreaming of Granger again?” Seamus would ask as Ron groaned her name in his sleep. 

“Did you send my last letter out to Hermione?” Neville would say every time he saw Hedwig. 

“Ron, if patrols are too much, we can always get an interim prefect until Hermione’s back.” Katie Bell would tell him. 

But what he thinks may be worse, is the pitiful stares of those who knew the truth McGonagall wouldn’t even berate him for late work. Dumbledore always gave him a sad smile. His family's letters were always full of concern for his state. Said letters had little update on the Order, souring his mood. 

His mother would ask him what he wanted for his birthday, which was only about a week away now. She couldn’t give him what he wanted though. 

His father would write and tell him they’ve placed wards at the Granger’s and currently have an Auror team dedicated to her case. But it didn’t feel like enough. Nothing was. 

Times like those, he had nearly shared his suspicions with his father on Draco Malfoy, but soon decided against it. 

All he had were silly dreams, a weird instance on the train, and the knowledge of the git spending all his time in the Room of Requirement. It wasn’t exactly concrete. It was nothing really. 

On the bright side, he supposes, he’s somehow avoided Lavender quiet well, but he still knows she’s talking of him. Telling people they’re together and whatnot. He just didn’t have the patience to deal with it right now. 

All these thoughts soon halted as a small Gryffindor first year came up to him, looking nervous. 

“You’re Ron Weasley?” The little boy asked. 

Ron nodded. He was after all on duty, so the kid could need help. 

“Someone in the common room gave me a knut to find you.” 

“Oh?” He questioned confused, “who?” 

The first year who he now recognized to be a little boy named Tommy who Hermione once helped him with his Potions work. 

The little boy flushed, “I’m not very good with names, but he said it was about, Hermi-“

“Hermione?” Ron cut off anxiously. 

He nodded, “Prefect Granger.” He settled for. 

“Okay, thanks so much Tommy!” He called, racing to the common room, somewhere he’s avoided for weeks. 

In the excitement that Harry knows something it didn’t even dawn on him that he’s the most famous wizard in Britain, so surely Tommy would know his name. No, he doesn’t have time to think about that. 

“Honeysuckle!” He called to the Fat Lady. 

“Oh! Been a while!” She said smiling to Ron. 

He groaned, “Honeysuckle!” 

“Calm down! And I try to be polite.” She huffed, swinging open. 

Quickly, he climbed through looking around for Harry. 

“Oh Weasley. There you are.” 

His face dropped. 

Harry wasn’t looking for him. Not at all. 

“I see you got my message from Tommy. I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks, but you’re not an easy man to find.” 

Ron’s fists clench at his sides. 

“Or when Cormac McLaggan groped her after Slughorn’s this weekend! Tore her dress and all!” 

His eyebrow twitched at the memory. 

“No one around here will give me an answer you see. I’ve asked just about the entire tower when Granger will be back. Figured you’d give me a straight answer. You and I seem to have her in common.” McLaggen winked. 

And before he could help it, Ron’s fist connected with his nose, making him fall to the floor. 

Nearby, people gasped at the sight. Unbeknownst to Ron, Neville was there and soon scurried away to get Harry. 

From below, Cormac began laughing. “Touchy subject, eh?” He wiped his bloodied nose, “she talked about you, you know. At Slughorn’s. I, of course, was able to take her mind off you.” He propped up on his elbows, staring Ron right in the eyes. 

“Didn’t know she’d be such a good fu-“ 

Before the words left his mouth, Ron dove on the floor and punched his cheek. Next, he grasped at his collar. 

“I know what you did to her! You thought you could get away with something like that, huh?” He bit out in a dangerous whisper, laced with venom. 

Though scared, Cormac didn’t back down, “I just did what you never could.” With that, he threw Ron off and hit him squarely in the eye. 

“I would never, ever, treat anyone, especially her, that way.” He growled, trying to push the seventh year off, “you don’t touch her!” He bellowed.  

“Oh so watching you run around with Lavender Brown made Granger the happiest bird in Gryffindor. I don’t think so.” He commented. The whole tower knew about Ron and Hermione’s fall out. 

“That’s not the same and you know it!” He defended, kicking him in the groin. 

McLaggen cowered in pain for a moment before moving to punch Ron again. 

By now they’ve drawn a crowd. 

“Run her off, have you Weasley?” He said in between blows. 

“You fucker.” Ron grunted, landing one more blow. 

“Ron!” Harry had finally arrived, per Neville. 

They kept at it. Rolling around. 

“Ron!” He called again. 

Ron could vaguely hear Harry but ignored him. This felt good. Way too good. For the first time since Hermione disappeared he felt like he was doing something. 

“Ron!” A voice, not Harry’s, yelled, grabbing his attention. 

Looking up, he found Lavender standing there in shock. 

“Ronald Weasley, I cannot believe you!” She shrieked. 

Someone had dragged Cormac away, leaving Ron to stand and face her. 

“Come on mate.” Harry says, dragging him up. 

“Oh no, he’s not going anywhere.” Lavender claimed, crossing her arms and standing between them and the steps. 

“I don’t really see why this concerns you.” Ron grunted, wiping some blood with the back of his sleeve. 

“Concerns me? I think it does considering you're my boyfriend!” She yells. 

“Boyfriend?” He questions, “I made it perfectly clear to you what we were on the train!” 

“And I told you-“ she began to retort angrily. 

“What? You told me what? That I couldn’t break up with you. That even though I told you it was over, you just denied it! Didn’t you think there was a reason I avoided you for weeks?” 

The pair of them ignored the crowd forming. Anxiously, Harry continued tugging at Ron’s robes, but he just shrugged him off. 

“This is about her, isn’t it?” She said knowingly with slanted eyes. 

Harry knew the mentioning of Hermione did Ron no good. He continuously called out his name. 

“Don’t bring her into this. Don’t.” He warned, voice dangerously low. 

“So it is?” She fired back. 

“Look Lavender, I’m sorry, okay? I really am. I tried for weeks to break it off with you, and you know it!” Sure Lavender was a bit of a ditz, but she wasn’t by any means a moron, “and I should’ve done it sooner. After that night of the match, honestly, and for that I’m sorry. But when I finally bucked up the courage to end it, you said no, so you can’t blame this on Hermione. You put yourself here.” He told her honestly. 

“No,” she repeated, tone similar to the one she used on the train, “no because if you weren’t so hung up on that-that Mud-“

“Don’t finish that.” Ginny called from over Lavender’s shoulders. “Ron would never, but I will slap you silly.”  

“Great now you have your sister fighting your battles!” She snorted. 

“Well Ginny’s right, don’t ever say that word. Ever.” Ron told her fiercely. 

“Again, defending her! Tell me Ron, if you want to ruin everything we had for her, then where is she huh? Where is she?” 

He said nothing, mood suddenly shifting. 

“If you care so much and you’re so desperate to be her knight in shining armor, then where is she?” 

Again, he stood still. 

“Maybe McLaggen was right. You did run her off, didn’t you?” Lavender laughed menacingly. 

“No. No I didn’t.” He almost whimpered. 

“Whatever, if she were here I would tell her that she’s nothing but a no-good-boyfriend-stealing slag!” She exclaimed. 

“I said to stop it!” Ron yelled back. 

“What’d she do? Hex you? Confund you? Tell you she’d do all your homework?” She accused, “or maybe-“

“I love her!” He admitted. 

The whole room went silent. 

Harry’s hand slackened on his robes. Ginny’s mouth hung open. Gasps filled the air. 

“Alright, I’m sorry if that hurts you, but I can’t help that. I love her.” He takes a shaky breath and runs a hand through his hair, “I’ve been in love with her for years. It’s- I’ve tried not to, but I can’t. I just can’t stop.” Ron said, voice riddled with vulnerability. 

He’d never have the courage to do something like this knowing someone could run off and tell Hermione as much. But now, now, he didn’t have anything to lose, did he?  

It’s not like Bellatrix Lestrange would report the incident back to Hermione, wherever the hell she is. 

Suddenly a harsh sting bloomed over his cheek. 

Lavender pulled her hand away, shaking it slightly as it stung from slapping him so hard. 

“We’re done.” She claimed before stomping upstairs. 

It takes a few moments to register everything that just happened. 

Beating up McLaggen. Breaking it off with Lavender. Proclaiming his love to Hermione to over half of Gryffindor. Lavender finally accepting it’s done. 

“Bugger off or I’ll give the lot of you detention!” Ron yelled to the crowd as he rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. 

Scared, the students scampered back to their respective tasks. 

“That,” Ginny breathed to her brother, “that was epic.” She said a little dazed. 

“Yeah, cheers.” Ron grimaced as he began to throb all over. The initial adrenaline wearing off as both the slap from Lavender and punches from McLaggen began to throb. 

“Come on, we better get you cleaned up.” Harry said, pushing him to the steps, “later Gin.” He called. 

Wordlessly, Ron let Harry’s hand guide him up the steps. 

“Did that really just happen?” Harry whispered a little astonished. 

“Which part? The one where beat up McLaggen. Or maybe when I rowed with Lavender in front of everyone. Oh, how about when I admitted I loved Hermione to the whole buggering tower.” Ron grumbled. 

“All of it.” Harry said with a slight chuckle as he set Ron onto his bed and searched his trunk for a flannel. 

“I reckon McGonagall will be around soon, giving me detention or something.” The ginger groaned in realization. 

Harry shrugged and walked over, “You really think McLaggen would tell and fess up to what he did that night?” 

The cold cloth fell on his cheek, Ron winced. 

“It’s not like Hermione’s here to explain herself. Is she?” He pointed out. 

“McGonagall will believe you. She gets that Hermione can’t be here and that she doesn’t know if she’ll be back.” 

The word ‘if’ echoes in Ron’s head. When, Harry meant when. 

“If?” A voice questions. 

It’s not Ron or Harry’s 

Soon, they turn. 

Neville stands in the doorway. Concern written all over his face. Practically demanding answers with his eyes alone. 

“Hermione might not be back?” He questioned, walking further into the room, ignoring their stunned faces. 

They sat still again, not knowing what to say. Never have they seen such fire behind Neville’s eyes. 

Ron and Harry jumped when he slammed the door. 

“Oi listen up and listen good,” he demanded, voice never wavering, “Hermione may be your friend, but she’s mine too, alright! And I may be daft but I’m not stupid!” Neville cried out. 

“The lot of you have been acting weird since holiday ended. I know Hermione is quite a touchy subject for you Ron, but don’t think I noticed how angry you got on the train. Or you Harry! You’re a terrible liar.” He pointed out. 

“Neville-“ Harry interrupted. 

“No! Harry I’ve given you what, six letters since we’ve been here? Six! And not once reply. You don’t even send Hedwig out the window. My bed,” he points to it for good measure, “is right next to yours, I’m not dumb!” 

“Mate-“ Ron now interjects. 

“And you!” He points to the ginger, “We’ve shared the same room for six years. I've heard you moaning Hermione’s name in your sleep for over half of that! You think I can’t stop the difference?” At least he has the decency to flush, “now, now it’s different. You’re practically screaming for her. I see when Harry wakes you up, tears down your face. Hell, it pierces your silencing charms.” 

The pair exchange a look. They never figured Neville would be the one to figure it out, well that’s not entirely true. They just didn’t think he’d be bold enough to confront them. 

“So I’m asking you, not only as your friend, but Hermione’s too. Would someone please just tell me what the hell is going on!” Neville finishes with a huff. 

His eyes flick between Ron and Harry waiting for a response. Soon, Harry averts his gaze to Ron, who sits for a moment, before nodding slowly. 

“You’re right Neville, we haven’t been honest.”The chosen admits. 

The brunette huffs a gasp of air, “I knew it. This would’ve been a bit awkward if I was wrong.” He says like himself again. 

“Look mate, Dumbledore told us not to tell anyone, you have to swear you won’t say anything.” Ron says seriously. 

“I swe-“ 

“This is life or death, I mean it.” He added. 

“I swear.” Neville states, tone leaving no room for argument. 

Weasley then looks to Harry to explain, not having the heart to. 

“On Christmas Hermione was taken by,” he gulps, eyeing his friend thoughtfully, “by Bellatrix Lestrange.” 

A pained look comes across Neville’s face at the mention of her name. That woman’s caused enough hurt to last him a lifetime. To last anybody a lifetime. 

“No.” He breathed. 

Sadly, Harry nodded, “she came to the Burrow and-“ 

“H-h,”

He briefly eyed the room then shoved it away, thinking he was just hearing things. 

“Harry.”

No, it can’t be. He must be losing it. 

“Mate?” Ron asks worriedly. 

“Ha-Harry P-Potter.” 

This time it’s louder. It sounds so un-Hermione like, but deep down he knows it’s her. 

He stands from the bed shushing Ron with a wave of his arm. 

“Harry J-James Po-Potter.”

“Hermione.” Harry breathes before he can help himself, willing Ron to stand and give his friend his full attention. 

“T-the b-boy,”

“You’re so close.” He whispers through gritted teeth. 

It’s louder now, almost piercing his skull. The pain coming is familiar, but somehow welcome. He knows she needs him. 

“The boy who lived.” 

At this, the dark haired boy falls to a heap on the floor. Thrashing about as he clutches his temples. 

“A pillow Neville, now!” Ron shouts. 

Neville obeys and props one underneath their friends head. 

This time doesn’t last long. Only a few seconds. 

When Harry comes to, his eyes burst open as he gasps for air, sitting up. 

He soon meets Ron’s worried eyes and he can only say one word. The very same Hermione was crying out to him. 

“Malfoy.”

#Ron Weasley #Ron and Hermione #ron x hermione #rons-hermiones come find me #Hermione Granger #romione fanfic #romione #sixth year #hp fanfic #hp

[tuuliivanovas]

I have a giant list of reylo headcanons (Tros spoilers)

This really got out of hand: it turned into 6 pages. oh dear.

Hope some people like this because it was very helpful for me and dealing with my grief. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben does not like Tatooine. Like at all. He stays there with her because Rey seems to like it. He wants to leave but is a little afraid to bring it up.

Rey is comfortable on desert planets. She adapts very easily to Tatooine. She doesn’t know why she stays there is nothing truly keeping on the planet. She has a family, Ben is her family the past has been laid to rest, but she is afraid to leave the familiar. She likes the stars, maybe that's why she stays.

Leaving is a topic they avoid like the plague. There is a slight passive-aggressiveness about it because angst, but they get sad and get over it quickly.

Ben freezes most nights, he's big and generates a lot of heat. Rey legitimately does not understand it. He jokes about giving all of his warmth to her.

(more under the cut, they may turn into short story idea)

They like to cuddle a lot. Both of them are touch starved babies.

Ben is a city boy. 

Rey is not a city girl. 

Rey gets claustrophobic in large groups of people.

Ben tries to make jokes to make Rey feel comfortable. Rey thinks they’re stupid but laughs anyway. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben wants to start cooking again like he did when he was a kid.

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Rey likes watching him do things. She likes watching his hands work.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rey lets her hair grow and Ben braids it. This one was a shock to Rey. Ben tells stories about his mother getting ready for parties and how he helped put braids in her hair.

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben wants to explore his Alderaanian heritage. When he and Rey travel he looks for anything he can. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Both of them realize that even though they are a dyad and have known each other for quite some time and have seen each other's memories. They don't really know each other. They haven’t talked about their pasts, like the little things. They haven't talked about what they like and dislike. Things that don't seem to matter, but do when you think about it. So they sometimes stay up late and just talk.

_______________________________________________________________________

Both of them remember being dead. The nightmares aren’t fun. 

Ben cries a lot. There are a lot of unresolved issues in his head.

Ben suffers from chronic pain after his fall.

_______________________________________________________________________

Luke tried to visit once, but that didn’t go over well. Ben didn’t come back for a few hours and Rey wants to help but doesn’t know how. She knew the family drama goes deep, Ben has talked about it. She has just never seen it. With Leia, it's a little easier, but still very stiff and awkward. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben has some severe abandonment issues. They have one nasty fight about Exogol. Talking about that place takes time and Rey tells him about all the Jedi coming to help her. Ben is jealous and angry. He was tossed into a pit, had several broken bones and he climbed out of there with the only determination of getting back to Rey. When she said Anakin spoke to her jealousy turned to rage. He is upset that the Jedi had more faith in a Palpatine than the last Skywalker. Rey is heartbroken her, own struggle with her lineage is a sore subject. They don’t speak to each other for days until Leia helps them heal the rift. Ben is so incredibly sorry by the end of it. He opens up about how he only had a memory of his father to help him turn. Nothing real, just something in his head. He tells her that she is the hero of this story.

Rey says fuck the Jedi at this point. 

They really don’t fight after that.

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben, even with all of his Jedi teachings, has to relearn how to use the force. He asks Rey to be his teacher. He is so used to his anger and passion being his source of power, but after his nap in purgatory, something changed. (pretty much zuko needing a new source for his firebending lol)

_______________________________________________________________________

He loves Rey’s lightsaber. It's just so her. The yellow is perfect for her, bright and warm. He is very proud. 

Rey asks him if he would ever build a new lightsaber. He doesn’t know if he could. He eventually builds one and the blade comes out a dark purple. 

_______________________________________________________________________

They go on adventures and find information in old ruins. Rey gets interested in the old republic. Ben is a nerd so research a lot for her. They learn about two very curious characters named Bastila and Revan (Because I love them)

_______________________________________________________________________

Rey misses her friends a lot. Ben encourages her to go visit them. Rey asks if he will come and he gently says “No. They don't want to see me.” Rey doesn't want to leave him alone. He reminds her that he is always here. Rey goes and visits her friends and start coming up with a plan to introduce Ben.

The ship lands at the base the resistance is located Rey starts walking out Ben following but he stops. Rey concerned reads him tells him to wait on the ship. She leaves and comes back with Chewie. Ben is petrified as the Wookie approaches him. Ben is a big guy, but Chewie is taller. Ben looks up at him. Chewie still views him as the boy he carried around on his shoulders a long time ago. Two furry arms wrap around Ben and he feels like a child again and breaks down. Rey has tears in her eyes at the display and quietly departs to prepare her friends for what will likely be a very long day.

Rose reaches out first. Makes him work the first moment he gets there. Her reason is that he is tall and can reach things she can’t. It's a little awkward at first but once Ben learns that Rose bit Hux he falls in love. 

Rose’s heart warms when she hears Ben talk about Rey. She has heard stories about Kylo Ren and the boy in front of her aint him.

_______________________________________________________________________

{This section has stuff dealing with pregnancy, if that topic triggers you please skip this section}

.

.

.

Rey confesses that she wants a family. Ben knows that. She explains that she means children. Rey also goes on to explain her fears of being a mother. Ben understands her fears. He really never thought that he would ever be a father so the idea of having his own kids is terrifying and exciting. He won't make the same mistakes...he hopes. Ben asks her if they should start really trying, Rey says no and if it happens it happens.

Six months after their conversation Rey gets pregnant. They are overjoyed. 

They started thinking that they should settle somewhere permanently and stop moving around the galaxy so much. They often live in isolation.

The choice was made for them when Rey got sick about 2 months in. Ben made the executive decision to have her around her friends. The former resistance had better medical facilities than the sparsely populated planet they were living on.

Rey has a rough pregnancy and is in and out of the care of doctors.

Ben is a nervous wreck and this is truly when Finn and Poe lighten up on him. 

Even though Rey has gotten healthier, being able to eat properly over the time she has been with the resistance and Ben, the damage to her body from years of starvation and dehydration has already been done. She is thoroughly humbled and hit with the reality that she is human. 

Ben feels helpless and useless, but Rey tells him that he is exactly where he needs to be. With her making sure is happy comfortable and loved. 

The birth was just as hard as everything else. During the labor, it was not funny, but after the fact, Ben joked about how she caused a small earthquake.

They have twins named Jaina and Jacen. 

Ben cries as soon as holds his children. He is so proud of Rey. 

He is crying. Rey is crying. Everybody is crying.

The entire gang loves the babies.

.

.

.

_______________________________________________________________________

More Domestic/ Headcanons

Ben has a sweet tooth. Its something he has passed to Rey. When ever they are in a marketplace he picks up something for them to share.

_______________________________________________________________________

Ben sees Rey’s drawings and loves them. He wants to learn from her. He’s not very good at drawing but likes spending time with her and watching. Ben shows Rey calligraphy and she wants to learn from him too.

_______________________________________________________________________

Lounging in a bath has become a guilty pleasure for Rey. Freshers were a huge luxury for Rey when she left Jakku and baths in large tubs, taking up huge amounts of water will always make her feel a little guilty but it doesn't last long when Ben starts pampering her. 

Ben likes to wash her hair. It's a long and very loving process and Rey teases him and returns the favor and takes care of him.

_______________________________________________________________________

They eventually make their home on Naboo at Varykino after they have their babies. The estate was gifted to them by the Naberrie Family. Ben was uncomfortable and tried to not accept it. His cousins were adamant and said it was his inheritance from his grandmother and a gift to the last Jedi in honor of the Jedi that was happiest here. 

The estate was so big. The twins would love it. A home that would last forever.

Rey wants to share what she has learned of the force, the dark and the light. Ben agrees, there are lonely kids out there that need to know that their feelings aren’t bad and that they have a hand to hold when they need it. Rey wants her children to be surrounded by friends as they grow. They start their school knowing things will be different.

_______________________________________________________________________

They love to spar, its the only they have any real challenge. Ben is not as rigid as Kylo Ren. Rey notices that his moves are free and flow like a dance. Rey gives him a good challenge with her saberstaff. Ben admits its taking time getting used to not having the crossguard. Rey modified her staff to be detachable and likes to practice dual-wielding with her sabers. Their children and students love to watch them. They draw a crowd every time with a clash of purple and gold.

_______________________________________________________________________

When their school is fully operational and their children just getting into their teens Ben asks her if they should get married. Rey says that they technically are. They made a promise and sealed it with a kiss and they have kids so every box has been checked. Ben knows that but he says that maybe the should make it official with a ceremony with their friends and family with them. Rey says yes.

Jaina helps her mom pick her dress. The dress is not white, but layers and layers of sheer panels of gold and light green elegantly draped on her like the sculptures at Varykino. Ben wears a soft black tunic with matching pants and an elaborately embroidered blue cloak. (He lives to push the boundaries of fashion and it wouldn't be reylo without them looking like Hades and Persephone).

The ceremony was full of love, happiness, and hope. I like the idea of them dancing. Then Ben dancing with Jaina and Rey dancing with Jacen. It's cute and just a perfect happily ever after.

[Quick note I am not good with describing clothes so for visual reference for those that want it, look up the costumes for Magnificent Century for the aesthetic and the level extra that is Ben’s cloak and the whimsy that is Rey's dress.] 

_______________________________________________________________________

And that's all the post-tros headcanons that I can think of at the moment. It kind of turned into a bulleted list of a fix-it fic with my dream happy ending. I'm playing around with my reylo baby headcanons and what will happen to them because...drama. I also am thinking of writing Dark Rey and Jedi Ben solo Au headcanons as well as Dark reylo headcanons if school grants me the time 😌

#reylo #My personal headcanon tag #reylo baby

[bookandcranny]

Stone Heart Gambit

Part 1 - Chapter 2

Soso has always had good intuition, and never was she more unhappy to be right than now. She tails the car until they reach the treeline and then dips off the main road to one of the more concealed footpaths. By the time she breaches through to the other side, she’s late to the party.

Twenty or so college kids are tailgating in the clearing, some of them in rubber masks, others in face paint made smeared and sticky with gratuitous fake gore. Loud music crackles from car stereo speakers, interwoven with the sounds of laughter and drunken jeers. They line up on the lawn to throw eggs and empty bottles at the building and holler with triumph every time one hits its target. Soso ditches her bike and bag and edges around the chaos, trying not to be spotted in the crowd.

Her anxiety spikes. Now that she’s here, her suspicions confirmed, she realizes that she has absolutely no idea what she plans to do about it. Calling the cops would only throw fuel on the fire, and that’s if they even take her call seriously. Some drunken revelry, kept well away from the rest of the town and anyone else who might complain, probably doesn’t register very high for them tonight.

At least Surehouser has the sense not to engage with them. The library’s been closed early, the windows shuttered and dark. She hopes he’s alright in there. He’s such a recluse, she can’t imagine him standing up to this sort of crowd.

Another round of eggs pelt the front doors, met with uproarious cheers, and Soso seethes. He doesn’t deserve this; he doesn’t do anything to anyone and yet, because he’s a little odd, people find reasons to treat him like this. In that moment she hates them, and she hates herself for standing on the sidelines while this happens. She always imagined that when it came down to it, she would be the sort of person who stands up for others, but here she stands, frozen in place and feeling utterly useless.

Move, she tells herself. Do something. Fix it. You’re supposed to be good at fixing things.

In a burst of angry adrenalin, she pushes through the crowd and climbs on top of one of the parked cars. She gathers all the breath and courage she can and screams at the top of her lungs.

“PARTY’S OVER!”

She stomps the hood of the car, setting off the alarm and putting a satisfying dent in its surface. All at once the music cuts off and everyone’s eyes are on her. It should be terrifying, but she’s still riding that bright burst and instead she feels a strange swell of pride. Her own cry rings in her ears, loud and shrill with a hint of a growl to it that she hadn’t known she had in her.

Someone, presumably the owner of the car, curses loudly. “Who the hell are you?”

“Your- your worst nightmare!” A ripple of laughter passes through them and, yeah, that did sound pretty stupid, didn’t it.

One of the boys peels off his mask to get a better look and as he blots his sweaty face with the front of his shirt, Soso realizes that she recognizes him.

“Don’t I run errands for your grandma?” she says. “Kyle. Kyle Farafellis, right?”

He pales. “No, that’s not me.”

“How do you think your grandma would feel about this, Kyle? Are you even drinking age? Huh?”

“Get off the car!” someone else yells.

“Shut up, you’re next!” She points. “That’s right! I know all your grandmas!”

“What are you talking about?”

Okay, so she might not be getting as much mileage out of that bluff as she hoped. Trying to keep her momentum, she instead jumps down, picks up a discarded beer can and crushes it against her head, to try and intimidate them like she’s seen on TV. The can crushes maybe half of the way, and she’s not sure but her head might be bleeding now.

“You’re crazy!” someone says.

“That’s right! I’m crazy, and I can do this all night!”

The group begins to mutter amongst themselves, things like, “not worth it” and “let’s just go” and “need to call my grandma”. Amazingly, they begin to disperse, leaving only an equally amazing mess in their wake.

After they’re gone, Soso wipes her forehead— no blood, just some leftover beer. The rush of manic energy drains from her as suddenly as it arrived and she stumbles over to slump against the steps. She sits down in something sticky and winces. She wonders how often Surehouser puts up with this sort of thing. It’s no wonder then that he keeps to himself, she thinks.

Without the light of headlights, Soso is in the dark now, squinting even under the light of the bloated yellow moon. It’s probably for the best; she’s not sure she wants to see everything that’s become of the place. The library had been her oasis, such a tranquil little place untouched by the rest of the world. Now everything, even her friend the gargoyle, had been defiled and she hadn’t been there in time to stop it.

“Enough sulking,” she chides herself. “You’re not a sulkr, you’re a fixer. Start fixing.”

She starts cleaning up the best she can, picking up and piling the trash out of the way, wiping off as much egg residue as she can with her balled up sweatshirt as a rag. She can clean it later. Or burn it, she amends when she smells the thing. It doesn’t matter.

The vandalism of the gargoyle is what hurts her the worst. She just doesn’t understand how someone can look at something like this and not see the beauty in it.

“Is it just me? Am I really the crazy one?”

The stone creature is sticky with dried alcohol and drawn on in makeup and marker. Soso wipes clean its smooth surface with gentle care, feeling her frustration boil over and turn to tears.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Surehouser wouldn’t want her touching it, but she isn’t concerned with that at the moment, although she does wish he was here just so she could know he’s alright. “I’m going to help. I won’t let them get away with this.”

It sounds like a hollow promise, even to her. What’s she going to do, wave her arms and scream some more? She’s useless. Can’t protect her friends, can’t finish her degree, can’t do anything. Her fingers catch on a crack in the stone, bringing her back to herself.

“Sorry,” she chokes out again. “This is stupid, I should’ve…” She trails off. “I don’t how to do this, how to stand up for people, how to stand up for myself. This was the only time and, and all I could think to do was make an idiot of myself. And I was still too late to even really… ugh. What a mess.”

She takes a few deep breaths. It helps, and so did giving herself a moment to vent. She shivers. Without her sweatshirt, and with her temporary burst of energy now well and truly gone, she’s starting to remember why walking around the woods on an October night in a t-shirt was generally not advised. Cold, tired, and resigned, she gathers up her things to go. The plastic shopping bag slung around her handlebars crinkles in her hands and, on an impulse, she takes out some candy and sets it down on the ground in front of the gargoyle like an apology.

“A little holiday treat, on me. Happy Halloween.” She pats its head.

With that she hops on her bike and rides away. She wobbles a bit at first, but finds her rhythm with a sniff and a wipe of her eyes. As she goes, a silence falls over the clearing. It’s a true silence, not so much as a singing cicada or the rustling of trees to interrupt it. All at once the wind picks up again, the world resumes its steady turning, and a monster made of stone reaches down and curls his clawed fingers around a single, plastic-wrapped sweet.

 --

 She returns home. Her aggravation rolls over in surrender, exhaustion on its underbelly. Phoebe is there handing out candy in her stead and looking very much like she wants to know why, but Soso makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She kicks off her sneakers, tosses her filthy sweatshirt in the bathroom sink, and collapses on her bed with a bag of candy pulled into the crook of her neck like a pillow. It’s not her finest moment.

She manages a fitful doze until a car alarm goes off across the street, rousing her with a groan. She could happily go the rest of her life without hearing that sound. When it becomes clear that the noise isn’t going to let up, she rolls over and checks her phone. It’s one in the morning. She has a concerned text from Carmen, by way of the house group chat, and a number of email notifications she can’t be bothered to check. Is it too much to ask for the rest of the world to leave her alone for a few hours?

After nursing her bad mood with some candy, she gets up to get a drink. The house is silent this time of night but she notices as she starts back from the kitchen that the back door is open a crack. It happens, and it’s not as though they live in a notably dangerous area, Halloween hijinks aside. But as she goes to shut it she could swear she catches a flicker of movement in her periphery. She ignores the quickening of her heart and shuts the door firmly.

There are scratch marks on the door; she feels them more than sees them, little divots in the wood around the edges as if something tried to pry the door open. That cat Phoebe had been seeing around, Soso reasons to herself. She’d probably been feeding the poor thing and now it’s become dependent on her attention. Although, the scratch-marks seem a bit high for a little cat to reach, and a bit deep. A coyote maybe? A bear? That’s ridiculous though. It would have to be a pretty bold bear to wander so far from the woods, as well as a pretty smart on to avoid being detected on the one night when the streets wouldn’t be empty until long into the night.

Feeling unsettled, Soso goes to the kitchen and flicks the nearest light switch. It gives her little comfort. When she turns around, the fridge door is hanging open, swinging gently on its hinges. The car alarm is finally silenced as she adjusts to the new quiet, Soso can hear someone moving.

“Carmen?” she calls. She could be coming back from her party about now, right? Or maybe the alarm woke up Phoebe. It could even be the nocturnal wonder Nessa, who Soso had only met on a sparse handful of occasions as she came and went from her cave of a room.

“Hello?” she tries again, venturing towards the pitch darkness of the common room.

“Hello,” the darkness growls back.

She jumps and just barely holds back a scream. A looming figure moves out of the shadows and as the light falls upon his face, Soso realizes that she knows this intruder. Maybe that would be a comfort if not for the context. The strong, angular features, the dull gray skin, the horns that sprout from his sloping brow, over a face that seems caught somewhere between human and animal. A feeling like hysteria comes over her. Surely she must be losing her mind to think her friend the gargoyle is standing before her.

The monster takes another step forward and Soso scrambles back, colliding with the counter.

“Stay back,” she trembles out, caught between fight and flight as she fumbles around for something to use as a weapon.

The monster, to her astonishment, obeys. He pauses mid-step and narrows his eyes at her, assessing, then backs away. He stands in the threshold of the kitchen, his flame-bright eyes tracking her movements. They maintain this staring match for a moment while Soso slowly regains control of her breathing, and then the towering beast cocks his head to the side and asks,

“May I approach now?” He sounds strained, impatient. Soso can’t help but wonder, if she says no will he listen?

“Please don’t.”

He doesn’t. He sits back on his haunches, lowering himself until they’re almost the same height. His clawed hands come to rest on his thighs. He is naked but for the torn scraps draped over him in the vague shape of some sort of tunic, and the remnants of some petrified plant life that tangle around his forearms like shackles.

“It was improper of me to enter your home without permission,” he says, his voice a rasping baritone. “I apologize.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay then.” She feels lightheaded. Suddenly the floor is moving towards her and Soso realizes about a moment too late that she is fainting.

Something catches her right before she can rattle her skull against the tile, and that’s the last thing she registers before unconsciousness overtakes her.

#original fiction #writeblr #fantasy #my writing #project: stone heart gambit #happy summerween yall

[jamesbucksiclebarnes]

Rating: Mature: Language, VIOLENCE.

Chapter List: [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] | [7] | [8] | [9] | [10] | [11] | [12] | [13] | [14] | [15] | [16] | [17] | [18] | [19]

[AO3 Link] | [Fic Page]

Tag List: @crossbowking, @khaleesislytherin

SERIES SUMMARY:

"Not human. She was not human. They all knew it. Could almost feel it, but couldn't make sense of it. That was why they were afraid. Not because of what she used to be Before. But because of what she was now."

Having found herself serving as the right-hand to the Governor for too long, Synnove le Jacques does her best to make things right with the people of the Prison. Stuck beside her partner in crime, her irritatingly obnoxious and hideously problematic best friend, Merle, she does her best to fight back against the monster she has let the Governor become.

CHAPTER TITLE: The Harvesting of Gore.

After barricading the doors with the hideous lime green sofas we had found in the living room, the five of us decided it was best to scavenge through the place whilst we figured out our next move. I was pretty confident both the back and front entrances would hold quite firm against the biters gathered outside, especially if we remained relatively quiet. Sooner or later, they would lose interest, get distracted by another sound off in the distance somewhere. Either that, or Sasha would come back with help. It wouldn’t take her long to realise something had gone wrong. We were all pretty confident about that, which meant the most we could do right now was wait it out.

Ty and Michonne took the first floor whilst Glenn decided to try is luck in the large garage that connected to the western side of the building. Daryl and I ascended the rickety wooden staircase to scavenge through the second floor.

It didn’t take us long to realise there was little there in the way of helpful supplies. After all, most of the rooms upstairs were bedrooms, bathrooms, of a very sparse office space that was practically useless to us. Still, we decided it wouldn’t hurt to bring back some clothing, even some books from the study if we could.

The largest bedroom – besides the main – belonged to what I assumed were teenage sisters. Twins, by the look of it. Their clothing was all the same size, as were their shoes, though the aesthetic of which were practically polar opposite to one another. The sister whose bed rested against the north western wall of the room seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with the colour pink. A series of posters hung from the plaster beside her pink-duvet-ed bed, two of which were of a boy band of which I had some familiarity, and the other was from a fashion magazine. You could tell by looking from one side of the room to the other that these sisters had been vastly different people.

The second sister’s duvet cover was of a dark night sky, her pillows depicting what looked like a still image of a werewolf howling at the moon. Clothing was already scattered across her side of the room, all dark in colour, mostly black. The shoes were another story altogether. This girl had three sets of Goth boots. Three! I mean, power to her, but those shoes were like two-to-three hundred dollars a pair. She must have worked her ass off in order to afford three of them. Besides those, there were a set of runners I knew would likely fit Beth, and a pair of gumboots – or rubber boots, whatever you want to call them – that could come in handy.

I began to put everything together in one giant pile in the centre of the room. Everything I believed would be beneficial to bring back. It felt kind of weird rummaging through their underwear draw, but honestly? We needed them more than they did.

I was halfway through the first sister’s obnoxiously large collection of pink lace underwear when I felt Daryl’s presence in the doorway.

Turning in place, I held up one of the near-fluorescent magenta bralettes and gave him a wide grin. “Isn’t this just the perfect birthday gift for you? It’ll really bring out your eyes.”

Daryl snorted a laugh, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest as he watched me place the bralette on the ever-growing pile in the centre of the room. “Found anything?”

I gestured to said pile with a grin.

Daryl cocked a brow. “We’re gonna need a damn truck for all that.”

“Never doubt a teenage girl’s ability to overstock their closet,” I remarked with a breathy chuckle, stepping around the pile and moving toward him. “What about you?”

He shrugged one shoulder non-committedly. “Little bits. Ain’t much.”

“Better than nothing at all,” I remarked, to which he gave a nod that did not seem all that convincing. With a frown, I stepped closer to him, tilting my head slightly to catch his lowered gaze. “You okay?”

He nodded, but again, it wasn’t even remotely convincing.

“Hey. What’s wrong?”

His gaze slowly lifted to meet mine as his lips spread into a thin line. A muscle in his jaw tensed before he took in a long breath and blew it out through his nose with a shake of his head. “Ain’t nothin’.”

“Oh, it’s something,” I responded, stepping close enough to reach out and touch the bare skin of his shoulder. “Tell me.”

He sniffed before clearing his throat, swallowing back against something I couldn’t quite decipher. “Just… It’s a kids room, ya know?”

My expression softened and I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second before nodding. I understood. It was difficult sometimes to see the remnants of other people’s lives, as dead and splayed open as a corpse on the morticians table. The people that had lived here may well still be alive out there, but the truth of the matter was that the possibility was unlikely. It was never pleasant to think about the sheer amount of death and destruction that had been wrought by this world within the past year. All of the children that would grow up without parents. All of the children that would never grow up at all. My heart constricted painfully in my chest as I looked up at Daryl’s saddened gaze, fingers squeezing the muscles of his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.

“Yeah. I know.” I took in a deep breath through my nose. “Want me to take it? You can go look through the master, I haven’t even touched that yet.”

Daryl shook his head, but I could in his eyes that he wanted to take me up on the offer. He just didn’t want to admit it.

“Daryl. Go to the master.”

He glanced up at me, slightly startled by the hard, commanding tone in my voice, but the way his expression softened – relaxed, even – at the realization that I was only doing this so he would wouldn’t have to admit being disturbed by the ghost of a child, made me smile.

With a solemn nod, he pushed himself off the doorframe and began to make his way down to the opposite end of the hall, at the pale white door behind which housed the master bedroom. I watched him until he disappeared inside before stepping into the hall myself, turning to look across at the open door of the child’s bedroom.

Something hard stuck in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it back down as I crossed the hall and stepped inside, taking a deep breath through my nose. The distinct tang of plastic and stale air made me blink. The room was small, with dark blue painted walls and a single bay window that overlooked the eastern fields. A small single bed sat against the northern wall, covered by a dusty Toy Story blanket. The sight of it made me smile slightly, though it faded quite quickly when I remembered the what world we lived in.

Taking a deep breath, I moved further into the room, stepping over to the small wardrobe that had been pushed up against the southern wall. I pulled the draws open and began to rummage through the small clothing, pulling out a good handful and placing it on the dusty bed.

Judith was growing unnervingly quick. Soon enough, she would outgrow the clothes she currently had, and would need more. These toddler-sized outfits would fit her soon enough. Better to be prepared for the future, right?

I was partway through rummaging around in the toybox beneath the windowsill when I saw it. It had barely been a glance through the dusted windowpane, but the glimmering silver of the shed out in the paddock caught my undivided attention almost instantly. Even from this distance, I could almost clearly see the tractor sitting beneath the metallic awning, shielded from the mid-day sun, and the rotary blades that attached to the vehicles front.

The idea began to solidify inside my head before I even had the forethought to truly inspect how idiotic it was.

I closed the toybox and climbed atop its lid, balancing on my knees whilst I peered down, through the window, at the ocean of biters gathered around the base of the house. The distance between the edge of the crowd and the grassy expanse of clear ground behind them was… quite far. It would be a difficult jump, likely too far for a regular human to even dream of making. An Olympian athlete, perhaps, but just a normal, everyday person? No. Definitely not.

While I may not have been an Olympian, I was, in fact, not a regular human, either. I was quite confident I could make that jump.

Without taking a moment to really consider it, I reached out and unlatched the dusty window and pushed it open. All at once, the sounds of groaning biters flowed in through the open space, hitting me with enough force to make me pause in my plans.

During that brief moment of indecision, the sounds of meandering biters drew Daryl’s attention from down the hall. He came striding down the wooden floorboards, appearing in the doorway to see me kneeling by the open window.

“The hell you doin’?” he asked in a hissed whisper.

He closed the distance between us, reaching out to slam the window shut before I had a chance to even blink. The sound of the wooden window frame hitting the sill drew the attention of a handful of biters, causing a surge in attempt to claw their way through the front windows and doors. Thankfully, after waiting with bated breath for a moment, it became clear the barricade and glass were holding.

Daryl turned to look at me, one knee still atop the toybox, his hands pressed against the wooden windowsill. “The hell was that?”

I pointed out to the tractor. “See that?”

“What?”

“There. The tractor.”

“A’ight. Great. The hell do I care about a damn tractor?”

“It’s one of those spinny-death-blade tractors.” I grinned at him. “Think about how many biters we’d cut down with that thing.”

Daryl looked at me blankly for a moment before his brows furrowed. “It’s a what?”

“It’s got those rotating blades at the front of it, look.” I pointed toward it again, knowing full well he was already aware of where it was, and smiled wider.  “I could get out there and hot-wire the fucker.”

“Hell no,” Daryl hissed, pushing away from the window and standing before the toybox with a deep frown. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

I straightened, turning on my knees to look at him. “Just think about how easily that thing will cut through the literal ocean of biters down there. We’d be out of here in a hot minute.”

“Ain’t worth it.” Daryl shook his head, staring down at me with a mix of concern and irritation.

I leant back against the heels of my feet, looking up at him with a pouted frown. For some reason, his instantaneous denouncement of my idea had struck me slightly off guard. I’d expected him to agree, to tell me to go for it. We both knew it’d be dangerous, but surely he trusted I wouldn’t attempt something that I thought I wouldn’t be able to do. But, then, it hit me. This was Daryl.

This wasn’t Merle.

Merle would have leapt on the idea, encouraged me, even. He would have told me how much he wished he had a damn video camera so he could immortally capture my stupid, gory shenanigans on film. The prospect of driving a rotary tractor through a crowd of undead would have excited him. He would have wanted to watch the entire thing from the safety of the overhanging eave, laughing the whole time as he yelled out stupid jokes and moronic commentary on my driving skills.

I felt my face fall before I had a chance to stop it. My gaze slid away from Daryl’s, down to the floor for a brief moment before I took a deep breath and turned in place to look back out the window, mostly to avoid him catching a glimpse at my sudden sorrowful expression.

I think he kind of realised my train of thought before I even had.

Slowly, he sunk down into a sitting position on the empty side of the toybox, turning his head to look at me with a sad frown. “I ain’t him.”

My eyes met his. “I know,” I said. There was no disappointment in my voice, only an undertone of thinly veiled grief.

“I ain’t gonna agree to somethin’ that dangerous just ‘cause it’d be cool to watch,” he continued with a sigh.

“It so would be, though,” I breathed, turning back around in order to sit properly next to him. My booted feet rested against the floorboards beside his, toes tapping against the wood. “I know you’re not him, and I’ve never wanted you to be. You know that, right?”

Daryl swallowed as he nodded his understanding, resting his forearms against his knees and leaning forwards. “I used to want to be like him. Followed him around like a damn dog.”

“Isn’t that just a younger sibling thing?” I asked, cocking a brow.

Daryl snorted, glancing up at me. “I don’t know. Is it?”

“The hell would I know?”

He straightened partially. “You ain’t got any?”

I averted my gaze, looking across the room to the empty doorway with small frown. “That’s… a complicated question.”

His lack of response drew me to look at him, seeing the question in his eyes before he even needed to voice it.

I cleared my throat. “I was, uh… I was adopted. My biological parents, they had other kids to other partners, but… Yeah, it’s hard to explain.” Which was true. The fact that my biological parents were as inhuman as I was made talking about them like the vocal equivalent to walking on black ice. I had to tread carefully each time I mentioned them – which, thankfully, wasn’t often. Most people that knew me were aware of my distaste for speaking on such things. In fact, I usually refused to talk about it in general, but, for some reason, it was oddly easier for me to say these things to Daryl than it was to anyone else.

I really didn’t want to ponder as to why that was.

“We ain’t got nothin’ else to do,” Daryl said softly after a moment.

“There are many things we could do other than talk about my clusterfuck of a childhood,” I stated simply, waving a hand to gesture toward nothing in particular.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like… Like…” I lifted a hand, holding up a finger to indicate he give me a second to think.

The gesture made him snort a soft laugh.

“Like, play cards,” I said after a moment.

“Cards?”

“Cards. Or, alternatively, we could find some elastic and make a slingshot to fire random novelty items into the crowd of biters?”

“Again, I ain’t my brother,” Daryl responded, but this time it was more in jest than sadness.

“Don’t bullshit me, you’d enjoy that.”

We both laughed softly for a moment before taking near simultaneous deep breaths and sighing. The silence slowly blanketed the room, enabling me the ability to hear Michonne and Ty rummaging around in the lower level of the house. That, and the sudden, unexplained crashing sound that echoed through the house with enough volume to shake the walls.

Both Daryl and I shot up instantly, making short work of the distance between us and the doorway. We dashed down the hall to the railing that looked over the staircase just in time to catch Michonne and Ty bounding up the steps with a panicked Glenn a few paces behind. The sounds of biters filled the air, along with scuffling footsteps as they shuffled their way into the house from the direction of the garage.

I didn’t hesitate, grabbing Daryl’s arm and yanking him back down the hall toward the twin’s bedroom. Michonne, Ty and Glenn followed frantically behind. Once we were all inside, Glenn slammed the door whilst Michonne and Ty pulled the dark bed across to block the door. Barely a second after they’d pushed the bed in place, a resounding thud struck wood on the other side. Quickly followed by another and another, until the wood began to crack and the frame of the bed began to slide across the floorboards.

That was not going to hold.

Without another moment of hesitation, I snatched both Daryl and Glenn’s arms and began to drag them toward the window I’d entered through earlier. I could hear both Michonne and Tyreese following along behind me as I guided Glenn through the open window and onto the overhanging eave on the other side. Michonne followed quickly behind him.

The door began to buckle beneath the onslaught of the dead behind it, the force of it pushing the wooden posts of the bed against the floorboards with a sickening sound.

We all looked between one another, at a loss for what to do next. There was little room for us to fight as a unit. Michonne was just as likely to slice up one of us as she was to eliminate one of the dead with that sword of hers, given the close quarters.

I turned around in place to take in our surroundings, my mind running through a multitude of different scenarios at once, none of which ended in a particularly pretty way.

Until I spotted the window. The one I had climbed through no more than an hour ago.

Without hesitation, I latched onto both Daryl and Glenn’s upper arms and began to pull them toward the other side of the room, only letting go in order to unlatch the window and push it open. I shouted over my shoulder at the other two as I pushed Glenn none-too-gently out the now-open window, reaching out to do the same to Daryl. He pulled away, giving me a pointed look and waved his hand toward the window, gesturing for me to go first.

There was no time for this.

With an exasperated sigh out my nose, I turned to Michonne. “Go through, help Glenn.”

She, thankfully, did as I asked.

“See, it’s easy,” I remarked to Daryl, waving at him to follow along behind her. “Go.”

He ground his teeth but stepped through the window frame just as the doorway to the bedroom gave way. The wood split and crumbled, sending a wave of biters spilling out, onto the mattress blocking their way.

As quick as I could, I reached out and grabbed the back of Tyreese’s shirt, yanking him backwards and away from the undead. He stumbled slightly, but once I’d pulled him past me and toward the window, I steadied him with a hand on his upper arm.

“Go,” I instructed, using my free hand to pull a blade free. “Now. Don’t argue.”

He didn’t. It looked almost as if he wanted to, but he didn’t.

Daryl helped pull the hulking man through the window as quickly as humanly possible, all but pushing him aside in order to reach back through the window and grab my arm.

The dead were scrambling to get back up onto their feet, though most of them fell forwards once they gained their footing, unbalanced by the mattress. Those that had made it across the bed and onto the floorboards were more fortunate in their attempts.

I barely managed to slide across the windowsill in time to avoid being grabbed, though the momentum of the biters attempt brought it through the window alongside me.

My back hit the tiled eave. The biter came sailing through the window, angled to land almost perfectly on top of me. Of course, I’d thankfully read the situation almost perfectly and managed to raise my legs in preparation.

Once the biter landed on the soles of my boots, I launched it over my head, sending it sailing across the eave and down to the ground below.

Without another moment of hesitation, I rolled to the side, barely avoiding a second biter. Daryl reached down and helped me up onto my feet, pulling both of us back a few paces as a flood of biters began to slide through the open window and onto the eave alongside us.

Behind me, Glenn cursed.

I turned to Daryl, pointing up to the second story rooftop with the hand that wasn’t currently holding a knife. “Get up there.”

He pursed his lips in disapproval, knowing I planned to stay down here, but thankfully didn’t argue this time. Nodding to the others, Daryl tossed his crossbow up onto the roof before jumping and grabbing hold of the guttering.

 Once he had hoisted himself up onto the second story rooftop, he reached down to assist Michonne. The two of them then offered their hands to lift Glenn up, leaving Tyrese and I on the first story eave.

One biter pushed through the window, able to wiggle itself free of the crowd that had basically began to plug the hole, toppling over onto the dark roofing brick. It was followed shortly by another. And then, another.

I didn’t waste any more time. The things were slow to get back up onto their feet, I knew that. Smacking Tyrese on the shoulder to get his attention, I lowered myself into a partial crouch and linked my hands together to give him a hoist. He gave me disbelieving look and shook his head.

I scoffed.

It was an understandable reaction, of course. I was a one-hundred-and-sixty pound twenty-four year old, that was true. But that weight was mostly muscle and my body clearly displayed that.

“Just fucking do it, big man,” I hissed, nodding toward my entwined hands.

He let out a sigh, gave me a concerned look, but reached up to grab Daryl’s outstretched hand as he placed his boot in my palms. The man was goddamn heavy, I’d give him that, but with Michonne’s help on his other arm, the three of us managed to lift him up onto the second story roof.

I didn’t get a chance to follow behind him. The biters from earlier had reached us mere seconds after Ty had pulled his leg back over the above ledge. Their outstretched hands reached for me, but I ducked out of the way quite easily, slipping past them until I was on the opposite side of the window from the others. More of them tumbled through the open window, climbing up clumsily onto their feet before shuffling their way toward me. A few of them miss-stepped, unsettling the tiles beneath their feet and sending their stupid asses sliding down, over the edge of the eave and to the ground below.

I continued stepping further and further back as the biters approached. Each step was careful, my inhuman instincts telling me that the edge was rapidly coming up behind me.

It was when I reached the corner and glanced behind me to make sure my feet weren’t going to slip over the edge that I noticed it.

The silver metal glinted in the noonday sun, striking with such a blinding light that my attention was immediately caught, gaze flicking over to its source. Over in the neighbouring field, sitting, alone, unloved, in that three-walled cage… was the rotary tractor.

I looked up at Daryl, who had been shuffling along the rooftop above in order to keep step with me. He saw the mad grin on my face and gave me a very pointed look.

“Syn,” he warned.

I only grinned wider, glancing back over my shoulder toward the farm shed in the distance. There was little in the way of obstacles, if I were being honest. Now that the majority of biters had been drawn inside, the grassy lawn that surrounded the farmhouse was practically empty. The fields still had a few stragglers, sure, but they were of little consequence to me.

“Syn!”

I ignored Daryl’s disapproving plea, taking off at a sprint, carefully placing my feet upon the rooftop tiles until I came to the corner of the next corner of the eave. Without hesitation, I leapt forward and into the empty air.

The ground came up fast beneath me. I expertly absorbed the impact, allowing my legs to bend and my body to roll along the grass before easily jumping back onto my feet and continuing my sprint in an almost fluid motion, turning in place to face the overgrown field between me and that shiny, shiny metal.

Above the wind cascading through my hair, above the sounds of gurgled biters, I heard Glenn let out a, “Go Syn!” and found myself laughing.

I ducked and slid beneath the biters dotting the lawn between the house and the fields, avoiding their outstretched arms with little effort. The fallen barbed wire fence glinted in the midday sun. I jumped over it and continued on in my sprint toward the farm shed.

A smile broke across my face, wide and unrestrained. God, it felt good to run. The wind in my hair, cooling the skin of my face, the sensation of speed as my legs carried me across the ground in long, rhythmic bounds. Even the feel of the long grass brushing against my sides as I cut through it like a knife, was almost euphoric. When had been the last time I’d run for the sake of running? When it hadn’t been for my or someone else’s survival?

Too damn long.

I reached the shed with little in the way of interference.

The tractor sat with its wheels behind wooden planks, the rotary blades connected by a long and admittedly complicated-looking attachment that extended from the engine. Its green paint was faded and flaking, the metal frame that acted as a guard above the driver’s seat was rusted almost entirely through, and the divots inside the tyres had actual spider webs spun within them. A moment of doubt made me pause and frown as I looked at this mess of a machine. It passed quickly and I stepped forward and began to remove the wooden planks from before the wheels, climbing up into the driver’s seat and letting out a breathy laugh.

This was going to be awesome.

If I could start the damn thing.

It took some fiddling. More than I would ever readily admit. But, eventually, I found the wires I needed, hidden away in the small gap between the barely-held-in-place bonnet and the long pole that lead to the driver’s wheel. Expertly, I used my knife to strip their ends and touched them tentatively together.

The tractor roared to life; the purr of its engine almost deafening. I let out a mad cackle before using the rusted metal of the guard to climb into the driver’s seat. The long gear stick slid into place with a painful amount of grinding, but once the thing got moving, it got moving. It was a bumpy ride, that was for sure, but I enjoyed every goddamn minute of it. Making my way through the long grass, I searched the dashboard in front of me for the right button to start the rotary blades. Thankfully, whoever had owned this block of land seemed to have the memory of a goldfish, if all the labelling on the dash was of any indication.

As I drew closer to the farmhouse, some of the biters came tumbling out of the front door, their attention caught by the deafening sound of the tractor’s shuddering motor. I waited until I had cleared the barbed wire to press the button clearly marked “Blades”.

They spun to life with a metallic purr, slowly at first, but gaining momentum by the second.

The first biter that stumbled in front of me was eviscerated so quickly, I barely had a chance to use my forearm to block my face from the spray of blood and gore.

I let out another mad cackle. “Fuck yeah!”

From that moment on, I drove around the farmhouse in a neat circle, taking out biter after biter with my spinning blades of death, and gaining quite the little tag-along crew behind me as I went. Above me, on the rooftop, the other three watched my antics with a mixture of expressions.

Daryl looked slightly concerned, though the expression was partially obscured by the small smile that had formed on his face. Michonne just looked straight up amused, whilst Tyrese seemed to be confused as to whether he should be disgusted or just happy I was willing to almost literally bathe myself in biter guts to save their asses.

Glenn, of course, was not shy in his blatant enjoyment. He and Michonne yelled out encouragements, pointed out biters that I may have missed from my vantage point, and laughed with each of my exclamations as my tractor and I tore through the undead like an oversized, portable blender.

Bits of biter were being thrown about in all directions, coating me in an immeasurable amount of undead viscera. Honestly, though. It didn’t even bother me. I was having way too much fun.

Morbid though it may have been, cutting through a group of bloodthirsty undead creatures with a rotary tractor was rapidly becoming the highlight of my entire year.

By the time I caught up to the back end of the train of biters following along behind me, the sun was practically beginning to set. I sped up a gear, using the open end of the dirt driveway to turn around, and began to run through the train of biters with increased sped. My mad cackling was almost louder than the tractor engine, though I had to stop quite suddenly as the spray of blood and guts was getting dangerously close to my open mouth.

Gross.

I was right at the end of the line of biters when the old tractor’s engine made a loud clanging sound and sputtered out of commission. A handful of biters were left, shuffling toward me at a very unimpressive speed. Half of them marched right into the exposed blades of the now-stationary rotary, impaling themselves. It was almost comical.

I reached out to grab either side of the rusted metal guard in front of me and pulled myself up, climbing atop the thin bonnet of the tractor. A few of the biters had managed to walk around the pointy thing and were now working on surrounding me. The first one to reach the side of the tractor dropped before they even had a chance to reach up for me.

Daryl.

I could see the lime green nock sticking out the back of the biter’s skull.

Drawing the blades from my belt once again, I slid down the side of the tractor’s bonnet, landing with one of my knives already imbedded at the crown of a biter’s head. I pulled it out and kicked the limp body, sending it sprawling into the three biters currently in between me and the front door of the farmhouse. They all fell backwards in a heap and I stepped forward, driving my blade into each of them one by one whilst they were on their backs.

Straightening as I pulled my knife free of the last one, I took a moment to look around. The dirt was stained almost completely red now, with pits of viscera and gore splattered about the once pristine lawn. Even the white wooden panels that made up the entirety of the farmhouse’s exterior was splattered with crimson.

I’d made a damn mess. And it was absolutely, disgustingly awesome.

Barely more than five biters were left. They milled about on the other side of the tractor, making their way diligently toward me. It took little effort to dispatch four of them, with Daryl taking the final one out with another arrow.

Once I had collected the two he had fired, I began to make my way toward the farmhouse door, sliding past the red car I’d unceremoniously parked by the stairs. I heard their footsteps as the three of them began to make their way back inside, through the upstairs window, whilst I cleared out the handful of biters that had remained on the ground floor.

Glenn’s voice echoed through the house as he reached the bottom stair, catching sight of me standing in the archway that lead to the living room. “That was awesome! You – Oh, my God. You look like a horror movie.”

I glanced down at my clothes, once black and grey, now completely covered in blood and small chunks of gore. Reaching up, I plucked what appeared to be part of an ear that had been caught on the edge of my jacket pocket’s zipper and flicked it outside. “Risk of the trade, my friend.”

I reached up to rub my hand over my face. My palm came away sticky. Gross.

“I do not want to know what my hair looks like right now,” I remarked with a grimace. Getting blood out of near white-blonde hair was a bona fide nightmare.

Michonne and Ty reached the bottom of the staircase next, coming to a stop when they spotted me.

“If Carrie were a sister,” Tyrese said, partially in disgust, partially in amusement. I don’t think even he knew how he felt about what he had just watched transpire. “You’d look like her right now.”

Michonne moved to the side as Daryl reached the ground floor, allowing him to pass by as I lifted the hand holding his arrows up toward him.

“That was stupid,” he grunted as he snatched them from my grip.

“But awesome.”

He didn’t respond, but the way his eyes lightened slightly, and the corner of his thin lip twitched upward told me he somewhat agreed. Without a word, he reached into his back pocket and pulled the red cloth he always kept there out, handing it to me.

“Good thing Hayden got the showers working,” Glenn remarked with a grin, stepping closer to me and running his forefinger along the sleeve of my jacket. It came away wet and crimson, which made his grin turn to a grimace.

I laughed, lifting Daryl’s cloth up to wipe some of the blood from around my eyes, lips, and beneath my nose. The smell was probably the worst part, worse than even the sensation of blood and gore on my skin. It was irritatingly sticky. The sleeve of my jacket would stick to the leather body whenever I moved, and my jeans felt extra uncomfortable when I walked. Still, the smell of rotting gore was not pleasant, especially not to an overly sensitive nose like mine.

“Come on,” Michonne said after a moment, stepping past us toward the front door. “We should load up the car and get the hell out of here.”

#the walking dead #twd #the walking dead fanfic #twd fanfic #the walking dead fan fic #twd fan fic #the walking dead fanfiction #twd fanfiction #the monsters among us #daryl dixon #michonne #tyreese williams #glenn rhee #biters #walkers #synnove le jacques #fanfic #fanfiction

[khadij-al-kubra]

Persephone & Hades AU...

For your consideration, and bearing in mind that the original myth is not really all that toxic at all and is not a show of Stockholm syndrome...

The “””Kidnapping””” of Persephone:

Logan as Hades-

Bespectacled Ruler of the Underworld

Takes his job very seriously (wears a black and blue necktie with his long silky black robes)

Cold pale skin and intelligent grey eyes with slicked back black hair. Looks scarier and meaner than he actually is. (although he can have a bit of a temper if pushed and will have loud sharp outbursts of “FALSEHOOD!”)

Very logical and methodical in how he rules the underworld and keeps the souls passing through organized. Like he’s got the judgement thing down to a T! But despite his cold demeanor he’s actually very generous and kind at heart. He just recognizes the importance of his work and in remaining just yet impartial

Sucker for dogs, hence why he has a three headed one. He just wishes he had more time to play with Cerberus, but alas ruling the dead alone takes up a lot of ones time.

Has a sweet tooth and often indulges in jams made from the pomegranates that grow in his realm.

Is on decent enough relations with his brothers (Emile as Poseidon and Deceit as Zeus), although he STILL thinks that Deceit cheated in their straw draws, but let it go because he’s actually best suited as the more organized brother for ruling the dead.

Is secretly very lonely. Once in a blue moon he’ll sneak up to the surface for fresh air and sunlight. One day he spots a certain someone in a flower field who takes his breath away. (can you blame him, i mean that smile! )

Patton as Persephone-

Supreme flower child! (flowy sky blue clothes, grass green eyes, sun-kissed freckly skin and wheat colored curls, barefoot, flower crown)

Loves gardening, animals, and helping his father Demeter (Roman) with the changing seasons. Loves Roman to bits....He just wishes he wasn’t so overprotective. Like come ON dad, i’m a grown god, i can look after myself. I don’t run off on my own THAT much!

Is protective and loving towards most all forms of life and tries to see the good in each and every soul, both mortal and god/goddess #momfriendtothemax

Unless given reason to feel otherwise. Then...weeeell at the least he’ll give you a stern talking to but at worst...lets just say you DONT want to get on the bad side of someone who can grow massive and sharp thorn bushes and effect earthquakes when pushed too far. XO

Sometimes gets bored with the same old routine with Roman and wishes to get away and see something new from time to time. Maybe have some quiet time to make his own floral crafts and garden peacefully for fun and not work.

Often sneaks off when Roman is busy and goes wandering along dirt paths, sit under or climb a tree, or frolic in the flowers.

Roman as Demeter -

God of the Harvest, but like, EXTRA in all ways shape or form. (”we can top last years crop no problem, MORE WHEAT STALKS!” “No dad, we can’t, then there’ll be too much in this region and not enough for the next.” “LONGER SUMMER!!” “No! Bad idea dad! That’ll throw the seasons off”)

Often dresses in flowing gold threaded and sunset colored robes, but will change ensemble to match the seasons.

Enjoys watching the goings ons of the mortals, they’re just so entertaining! Especially is fond of traveling thespians and will bless the harvest of wherever they perform in.

Loves his son more than anything and has him help in godly duties because it keeps him close so he can keep an eye on Patton MUST KEEP PRECIOUS BAB SAFE!!!

Stubborn (but will never own up to it)

Virgil as Charon-

In charge of Ferrying souls across the River Styx

Doesn’t mind his job all that much but is #done with soooo many of these complaining, noisy and often rude or entitled souls. (like, NO dude, i don’t care who you were ruler of in the living world. Its two coins for passage like everyone else buddy!)

Really just wants a nap (often tries to hit up Remy a.k.a. Morpheus but he shows up late ALL the time)

Is actually very compassionate and gentle. He tries to ease the fears of souls who he sees are younger or were genuinely good in life or died in unfair ways.

Lives for the dark skull & bones aesthetic

Master of snark

Plays chess with Logan when either of them have some rare down time

    Click the cut for full story

One day Roman and Patton are off doing their nature godly duties, and Roman is nagging his son about the proper way to harvest corn. (”Yes father, i know how to do it. you’ve only told me like a hundred times” “well i just want to make sure to remind you and that you don’t cut yourself on the sickle”)

Patton sneaks off one day to pick flowers since it’ll probably be the last bloom before autumn sets. Suddenly he sees a curious crack in the ground and ambles over to it to take a look. (”what sort of creature could’ve made this deep thing?”) He leans in too far however and pulls an Alice in Wonderland.

Turns out that crack was made by Logan. Apparently he’d become so deeply smitten by Patton that he went to his older brother Deceit/Zeus for advice. (Yes he was a dick and a little shit at times-although took his duties seriously when need be-and tricked many of his lovers into bed, but Emile didn’t have nearly as much love experience as their elder brother & Logan was desperate)

Deceit had actually been pleased when his too serious brother told him that he’d fallen for the spring god. His advice to Logan had been to simply kidnap Patton and either bed him then woo him or woo him and then bed him. Logan, of course, didn’t listen because that was the stupidest idea ever! (”what under earth was i thinking? This is the guy who turned himself into a cygnini in order to copulate with a woman behind his wife’s back.”) Besides, he was too painfully shy and socially awkward to try wooing. (He worked with the dead for crying out loud, not the best circumstances for practicing social skills)

He did however create a crack in the ground so he could sneak peeks at Patton from below the earth and admire him from afar. However, he’d been called back on an emergency and forgot to close one particular crack up before leaving again.

So sufficed to say, he was fairly shocked when he suddenly heard screaming above him one day. He looked up to find one Patton falling towards him and just caught him in his arms in time. (BLUSH CITY ON BOTH PARTS)

Patton thanks Logan but is admittedly miffed at him when he learns Logan was the one who’d made that crack in the ground. “What were you thinking leaving a big hole in the earth like that? Some poor oblivious mortal or animal could’ve fallen into it and gotten hurt!” “Apologies I-it was a foolish oversight on my part. i-I certainly hope you are uninjured?”

After a while Patton forgives him when he sees how truly sorry this (admittedly) scary and stern looking god is. (lest we forget he’s one of the big three) And Logan is honestly just trying not to show how flustered he is. i mean Patton is there in his realm! They both realize the crack is far too high up for Patton to get back out through right away. So Logan offers to have Patton stay in his palace until he can fetch his assistant Virgil/Charon to help Patton back up the next day. IN HIS OWN QUARTERS, OF COURSE! Logan says blushing, trying to be a gentleman. Patton agrees, promising upon Logan’s request to only follow one rule: “You must NOT eat anything”. Strange, but okay. Besides, it’ll be nice getting a break from his father. And it’s just for one night, right? (WRONG!)

Patton ends up having to wait longer than he realized because both Logan and Virgil are super busy with ferrying and judging souls. So he wanders around the Underworld. (of course he is marked with untouchable safety from almost everything as a guest of Logan) 

One night however Patton finds himself stumbling upon a sparse garden. He’s surprised that anything is capable of growing down there in the realm of the dead, but even more shocked by the poor state of it. “Really, just look at the se rose bushes. They’re so brittle!” (it’s not Logan’s fault. He’s a busy boi. plus the god of the dead doesn’t exactly have a green thumb) Really the only thing flourishing down there is a single Pomegranate tree. The fruits on it look so red and shiny and juicy and...well...whats the worst that could happen if he eats just a few seeds?

Of course if you know the myth, it means now Patton cant leave. Because, well, greek god realm rules. Sufficed to say, Patton is pretty miffed that Logan hadn’t thought to tell him why he shouldn’t eat the darn fruit in the first place. Logan is greatly frustrated at Patton because a) he didn’t listen, and b) he actually has a point there and he does NOT like being wrong. Still, nothing to be done about it now.

Over time they cool off and apologize to each other. Patton’s still kind of mad though because now he can’t go home at all if he wanted too, but he recognizes that Logan wasn’t forcing him to stay on purpose. So he get’s over it and tries to make the best out of the situation. At least he can finally get away from Roman’s nagging for a while. 

* Meanwhile in the living world, a frantic and angry Roman raises hell. “WHERE IS MY BOOOOYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?” (Thebes did not have a good crop that year)

While in the Underworld Patton starts talking to some souls, listening to their stories and offering kind and comforting words. Which as it turns out makes them more at ease and willing to go for judgement as they pass on. Logan’s fondness for Patton grows as he witnesses these acts of compassion and kindness. He also comes to respect Patton when he sees just how fierce he can be in the face of those who’d been cruel or unjust in life. ”I’m sorry, you did what to how many people!? and NOW you’ve got the nerve to demand entrance into Elysium young man!? Logan, hold my flower.” “Fret not Patton. I have your bougainvillea.”     (art link for this scene)

Meanwhile Patton cant help but notice that, although he’s stern and serious on the outside, Logan is actually a very gentle god deep down. (he picks up on this from the soft tone of Logan’s voice as he speaks to souls being judged who’d suffered in life, or the way he reassures the more anxious ones with facts and logic about the afterlife that set them at eases “it’s not all punishment and Tartarus you know. Statistically few souls on the grand scale are malign enough to enter there. The Asphodel Meadows are quite pleasant, I assure you.”)

Logan works so hard and tirelessly at his often depressing job, but never acts mean or harsh unless a soul is nasty or rude or was truly evil, and Patton gains an admiration of him for that. (besides, he is actually quite handsome and beautiful in a cold distant way, like the stars and moonlight on a midsummers night) Patton also sees what a softie Logan can be when he’s playing with Cerberus. (”Who’s my excellent tri-headed canine? Who is a good demon dog?”) Patton gushes and of course Cerberus and Patton LOVE each other. Watching Patton play with the big dog becomes Logan’s newest favorite thing. (”By the gods Virgil, it is too precious to process!”) 

Sometimes Patton will keep Logan company when there’s a lull in souls. He’ll tell Logan about all the different places he’s seen and what mortals are like when still alive. Logan meanwhile will often go into rants about the fascinating bits of knowledge he’s accumulated over the years from souls who’ve lived full lives. Logan enjoys having someone who enjoys listening to him (not that Virgil isn’t a respectful listener, but Logan sometimes wonders if he only does is because he’s his boss) And Patton really likes being able to share his own opinions and ideas without condescendingly albeit gently being told, (“no, no, my silly sweet boy. This is the right way to do it. Now eat your cereal, you need the fiber sweet pea”) Having picked up some of the mortal’s sense of humor, Patton is very much a fan of word play and LOVES making puns. Logan is...less than amused by them. However, the first time he makes Patton laugh with a clever quip (about Virgil or one of the more disgruntled souls) he swore the whole Underworld actually lit up. He treasures every time he can make that precious god laugh and smile.

Heck, even Virgil warms up to Patton and actually becomes VERY protective of the spring god. Patton sees through to his anxious softie center and enjoys talking to Virgil who is a very good listener. Meanwhile Virgil finds Patton’s sunny disposition refreshing and his warm presence calming. Patton will often keep Virgil company, but can’t always bring himself to follow when he has to ride across the River Styx. The memories and voices coming off the water just make him too sad.

Virgil ends up playing wingman for Logan. He tells Logan how Patton’s been a bit down in the dumps and recommends Logan cheer him up with a present. “That is an excellent idea Virgil, but what? What could possibly be good enough for that sweet honeysuckle?” “Well you’ve spied on him enough times- and don’t try to deny it boss- what does he like?” 

Sufficed to say, Patton LOVES his surprise underworld garden that Logan had worker rigorously on creating for him. He knows it couldn’t have been easy. Of course, being the god of the dead, Logan cannot maintain the garden and Patton is more than happy to have free creative reign over it. He giddily catches Logan in a big hug, and is pleased when a blushing Logan returns the heartfelt embrace, pressing a tender kiss to Patton’s forehead. Then he takes a blushing Patton’s hands in his.

”Patton, my honeysuckle, sunshine of my heart...I cannot contain it any longer. For so long you’ve been the object of my affection, but over the course of our time together down here, although the circumstances had been less than idea, my love for you has only deepened. Would you perhaps...although I am not worthy of you...would you consider marrying me, and ruling the Underworld by my side?” By now Patton is blushing like crazy and in tears because, although he’d been mad at Logan for getting him stuck down there at first, he realizes that he’s come to deeply love the dark god too. Logan worries that he’s crossed a line but then Patton beams and looks up at him with tears in his eyes. “Oh Lo-lo, my brilliant beautiful lobelia blossom, I-” BAM!

Cue a properly pissed off Roman crashing down to the Underworld. He’s also got Deceit/Zeus with him by the ear. “AHA! So THIS is where you’ve been keeping my precious boy!” “Deceit, you told him!?” “He got it out of me. Sorry, not Sorry. I may be the ruler of the gods, but Roman is quite -ow- convincing when angry.”

Roman rushes over to Patton and they embrace, because although it was nice having time to himself Patton did miss his beloved father. After Roman fusses over Patton-“Are you alright? Are you hurt? have you been eating properly?” “yes, yes, i’m fine father. I promise!”- Roman unleashes verbal hell on, well, the god of hell. He reprimands Logan for kidnapping his son, but Patton quickly comes to Logan’s defense saying that it wasn’t his fault and the whole thing had been an accident, not a kidnapping. When he hears the whole story Roman does calm down a bit, and is admittedly happy to see Patton so happily in love as well. (he may be a helicopter parent, but the god of the harvest is quite the romantic at heart and loves seeing Patton so happy. Even if he doesn’t think the doom and gloom Logan is good enough for his precious little sunflower) 

But upon finding out about the pomegranate sees he practically begs Logan to release him so that Patton can come back to the land of the living with him. (besides, he does still need him to help with the seasons and crops) Logan apologizes, saying it’s impossible and there’s nothing he can do. He just doesn’t have that kind of power. Then all three hear Deceit clear his throat.

“Ahem. God of gods speaking, and if you’re all done blubbering, i may have a solution.” So he tells them that there may be a loophole he can work around. He’ll give Logan his blessing to marry Patton, who will also be allowed to go back upworld with Roman, but on the condition that Patton spends part of the year co-ruling the Underworld. He tells them that for the number of pomegranate seeds that Patton ate, he’ll be obligated to spend a month with Logan. “Well darling, how many seeds did you eat?” They all look at Patton expectantly. Technically Patton only at 3 seeds, but heckitty heck, he really wants more time with Logan than three months. And frankly, he enjoyed the idea of getting some time away from Roman too, bless him but he cannot face so much nagging again! 

He lies and says six. Only six seeds. Because it’s not like anyone was there to see him or could know. Weeeell maybe the all seeing god of gods, but Deceit just winks and smirks at Patton, pressing a finger in secrecy to his lips behind Logan and Roman’s backs. So it’s agreed that Patton will spend the summer and spring half of the year in the Living world with Roman and the fall and winter half ruling the Underworld with Logan.

Before he goes back up with Roman though, Patton and Logan are wed. It’s Logan’s first and only time back to Olympus (he forgot how bright and noisy it was up there!) and all the greek gods and goddesses bear witness to their union. Even Virgil is granted a short vacation to be the witness of honor for his two favorite immortals. As it turns out the months apart end up being good for Roman as well as Patton. He gets a lot more work done now that he isn’t constantly fretting (actively anyways) over Patton or keeping him out of trouble or from wandering. 

When they consummate their marriage for the first time, hoooboi! Logan’s so bashful but respectful (never having been with any other being before, mortal or immortal) and Patton thinks its adorably sweet. Having been topside, well, lets just say Patton snuck off every now and then when he could to “frolic” with a few naiads and mortals he found sweet or lovely. So he ends up being a thorough teacher to Logan. Turns out they’re quite compatible in more ways than one ;)

Patton ends up being a fantastic co-king of the underworld. Heck, he’s even incorporated the new job into his aesthetic (he always wears a crown of flowers and bird skulls in the Underworld) and, as it turns out, can be even scarier than Logan! Only when some foolish soul makes him mad or gets on his bad side. So none do. And with the souls being more behaved it takes the pressure off of Virgil and Logan a LOT. But for the most part Patton remains a sweet, kind and benevolent co-ruler to the dead souls, and balances out Logan’s stricter judgements quite well. Logan now has a bit more breather time to read and play with Cerberus since he’s not the only one in charge of the whole Underworld anymore. And he and Patton LOVE spending time together in Patton’s dark yet flourishing underworld garden! 

Patton is always so happy to go back to the Living world with Roman when winter’s over. Of course he hates leaving Logan and misses him. Logan doesn’t do a very good job of hiding his sadness and tears, but understands. He does get a bit clingy their last nights though. (he becomes a kissy snuggly fiend)  Virgil always promises Patton that he’ll take care of Logan while he’s gone. But Patton is a child of the earth and he does tend to miss the sunshine and his father. So he get’s back to work with a newfound exuberance, making the flowers grow, spending time with Roman and frolicking about the world. He always does his best to bring back a new scroll or star map for Logan, who treasures every gift and is slowly building a library for himself.

Sufficed to say, the decades pass by, Logan and Patton attentively fulfill their godly duties, and remain happily and devotedly in love with one another.

Tag List: @altruistic-skittles @thekeytohappiness-is-you @canadian-crofters@icecoldparadise @the-pastel-peach @justisaisfine @bluebloodstains@purpleshipper @patchworkofstars @axyzel @hissesssss @beautifully-terribly@pink-and-purple-flowers @jynxlovesluck @thatsanswitch @6tick6tock6@hanramz-the-fander @azlinne @helplesscreator @thestoryofme13 @bibbidi-bobbity-booyah @accidental-sanders @moonstone-fox @smokeyrutilequartz@phlying-squirrel @madly-handsome @puns-and-patton @notveryglittery@eequalsmcscared @safesandersides @lizziepopanime @anxiously-unsatisfied-world @ab-artist @unikornavenger  @queer-human-being  @grey-lysander @asofterfan  @fangirltothefullest @tinkslittlebelle @allsortsofgeekery @fuck-my-life-i-want-food @ironwoman359

#KDsWriting #Persophone&Hades AU #logicality #sanders sides #sanders sides au #Logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #deceit sanders #persephone #Hades #sanders sides fandom #famders #greek gods au

[white-kween]

Birthday Girl

Summary: Today’s your birthday and your boyfriend Brian wants to make it a special one. The two of you spend the whole day together, presents being given to you left and right. Brian hopes you’ll like one in particular though.

A/N: this is my first fic I’ve ever written and posted on the internet. This is mostly just fluff with a couple sexual innuendos? Constructive critisism welcomed as well!! Anyways hope you guys enjoy:)

Warnings: Couple cuss words and a few sexual comments. Kinda long ?¿

Fem!Reader X 70’s!Brian May

gif not mine

“Good morning, birthday girl” You stirred to your boyfriend, Brian, peppering kisses all over your face.

“It certainly is a good morning isn’t it,” you giggled at the man. God, did he love to hear your giggle. Even though you guys had only been dating for a couple months, he know that you were the one and that he absolutely loves you. Neither one of you has said “I love you”, but it was clear that what the two of you had, was special.

“How’s it feel to be one year older?” Brian asked you.

“No different honestly. Feel the same,“ You hummed caressing his hand that laid on top of you. He looked so handsome laying next to you. You could tell he had just woken up as well since his curly hair was a mess. It was the best part of your day, waking up next to him when you spent the night together.

“Is that so?”he smiled. “I have a lot in store for you today, so why don’t you take a shower and I’ll make breakfast, yeah?” He started getting out of the bed which made you frown slightly since you lost his warmth.

“Sounds great,” you said. He kissed your forehead and then left his room to start cooking. After a couple minutes of still laying in bed, you finally decided to get up and take a warm shower that was much needed.

Making your way down stairs the smell coming from the kitchen became more apparent and it smelt delightful. You were flooded with the smell of cinnamon, coffee, and oatmeal. You looked around and saw an assortment of strawberries, blackberries and apples laid out as well on the table. All your favorite fruits. You saw Brian pouring a cup of coffee and handing it to you.

“Right on time darling” he smiled to you, pulling out your chair for you to sit, which you of course did. Seeing you with damp hair from your shower and an over sized t shirt and sweatpants had him feeling some type of way. His thoughts were cut short when he heard your voice.

“Wow, Bri. You really did out do yourself. Thank you,” your heart swelled at what was before you. The man that you adored dearly, was spoiling you like a queen.

“Well of course darling. It’s your birthday after all,” he said kissing your cheek and taking a seat next to you “I’ve planned out the whole entire day to be a special one.”

“Mmm, so what’s in store?” You asked while taking a bite out of your breakfast.

“It’s a surprise,” he wiggled his eyebrows. “I can say though you’ll want to dress warm,” that last part just confused you. He knew you weren’t a fan of being in cold weather.

“Brian May are you going to have me stand out in the cold on my birthday?!”You said a little over dramatic.

“Yes. But it won’t be too cold, I promise Y/N” he said while pinching your cheeks, which made you just laugh along with him. His touch made you feel on cloud nine. You loved it when he kissed you, held your hand, or just laid his head on your shoulder. He was like a drug and you couldn’t get enough of him.

After breakfast, you went back to your own apartment to change and get ready for your day with Brian. He dropped you off and told you he’d be back to pick you up at 1 p.m. so he could set some things up. Knowing that made you feel giddy inside and made you wonder what his surprise was for you. Since you had a few hours to get ready, you put in a little more effort in your appearance today. After all, it was a special day.

You decided to put on a pair of loose fitting jeans, along with a black long sleeve turtle neck. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you felt like something was missing. It finally hit you that you what you needed was a red toned lip stick. As soon as you finished getting ready, your heard a knock on your door. Looking at the clock you smiled to yourself because he was right on time.

“Coming!” You called making your way to the front door. “Hi, love!”you greeted your boyfriend. To say he looked amazing was an understatement. He looked perfect. He was dressed in black trousers, a loose fitting white button up, and of course clogs. He noticed you were staring at him, which caused a light blush to rise on his cheeks.

“H-hello, love.” He looked you up and down. You looked amazing. He had a hard time trying to refrain himself from kissing and pouring out all his feelings right then and there. “Ready to go?” You nodded and slipped on a pair of ankle high boots and grabbed a jacket, just in case.

You two walked hand in hand to Brian’s car and started your little adventure. Your thoughts were interrupted by Brian’s voice.

“You look beautiful by the way,” he turned to look at you and then back to the road.

“T-Thank you, Bri,” You choked out. He’s complimented you thousands of times and every time you would go tomato red and forget how to even speak. You were in deep for this man. He had your heart.

After a few more minutes of driving, you finally pulled up to what you assumed was Brian’s destination. You exited the car and looked around at the sight before you. It was a paint studio. This made you bubble in excitement since you’ve been wanting to take paint lessons for ages now.

Brian was watching your expression on how you would react to this. He knew how bad you wanted to learn to paint, but he just wanted to be sure you wanted to do this. When you turned to him with a bright smile on your face, he knew he did a good job.

“Excited?” He asked, taking your hand and leading you to the entrance.

“Understatement of the century. I’m ecstatic!” You said, squeezing his arm. He smiled even wider hearing you say that.

The two of you checked in to the painting class and took a seat behind two white painting canvases. You were practically jumping up and down in your seat from giddiness. You calmed down once Brian placed his hand on your knee.

“Hello class! So happy for you all to join us today!” The painting teacher grabbed everyone’s attention. She had such a warm aura and soft tone. “Today we will be painting the night sky,” hearing this made you smirk and turn to Brian. He looked at you and chuckled.

“I promise I had no idea,” he leaned over and whispered to you.

The class was a step by step process which you listened to intently, wanting to make your own painting perfect. However, Brian struggled with paying attention on the teacher and instead focused on you. He watched as you carefully painted the canvas and listened to the teacher. He noticed the creases in your forehead that appeared from concentration, and the little grumbles you made when something didn’t go your way. He had to be reminded by you a couple times to focus on his own painting.

Two hours later, you and Brian were walking out with your ‘masterpieces’. It was evident that you two had no idea what the hell you were doing, but it was fun nonetheless. Both of you climbed back into his car and drove off to the next destination.

“Thank you, Bri. I had a lot of fun.” You leaned over and kissed the side of his head. More like the side of his mop of curls.

“Good I’m glad,” he said while entangling your hand with his. “Next destination now love is lunch. I can hear your bloody stomach gurgling.” he chuckled out to you. Gosh his was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, along with his voice of course.

“Oh shut it, May!” You laughed with him. He pulled up to your favorite cafe. It was small, but the food was delicious and it was a hit with the public. The two of you took your time at lunch and talked about anything and everything. Conversation ranged from his studies to the meaning behind plant names. Odd I know, but that’s what made you and Brian so perfect for each other. The fact that you guys can just talk, with out fear of what the other might think.

Before you two left, Brian had to go to the bathroom. And when he was walking back, he flashed you the toothy grin that he always does, but this time it was different. It was like a wave of emotions over took you and you realized how perfect he was. You’ve always known how impeccable he was, but in that moment, with his curly hair, clogs, and his everything you realized something. You realized that you were in love with Brian Harold May. Before you could go deeper into your feelings of love for your boyfriend, you were interrupted by a hand waving in front of your face.

“Love did you hear a single word I said ?” He asked.

“I.. uh.. sorry Bri. What did say?” You pretty much said in a whisper.

“I asked if you were ready,”

“Oh yeah...” you nodded and stood up “lets go,” you grinned to him and started walking, leading the way for him to follow.

While buckling up, Brian had told you that this drive was gonna be longer. Around an hour or so.

On the drive you noticed how the masses of people and towns was becoming a little sparse, and instead was replaced with on going fields.

“Bri, please tell me you’re not taking me to the middle of nowhere to kill me...” you said half jokingly. Hearing you say this made Brian crack into a fit laughter.

“I would never, Y/L!” He told you still grinning.

“I don’t know, Bri... you could be some mad scientist,”

“Astrophysicist,” he corrected.

“Right. Some mad astrophysicist,” you said, smirking. Of course he would correct you.

Eventually he pulled up to a trail, that led to who knows where.

“Oh my god,” you whispered. That caught Brian’s attention.

“What? Is something wrong?” He asked with a tone of concern.

“YOU REALLY ARE GONNA KILL ME!” You bellowed.

“Y/N, I swear on my life and Queen’s, that I’m not going to kill you!” It’s like you did a whole 180 in your attitude because your turned to him and said “I know,” and kissed him. Both of you go out of the car and locked the doors.

The trail Brian was leading you down was roughly a mile long, which made you regret wearing your boots. The scenery was pretty though, and the view of Brian’s behind was even better...

“Y/N, I can feel you starring at my ass,” Brian said coyly.

“Can’t help it love, you’re just so handsome,” you told him, and giving him a quick peck on his cheek. You doing that made him blush even more than before. “So, where are you leading me to Mr. May?”

“You’ll see love. We’re almost there.” You could tell that he was becoming a little nervous. The reason behind why he was nervous, you had no idea, but you decided not to push it. You noticed that the sun was starting to set, and that it was becoming a little cooler. You cursed yourself for not bringing a warmer jacket with you for tonight.

“We’re here,” Brian said. You looked at the site before you. There was a blanket laid out on the field with a little picnic basket on top. Surrounding it was a few candles, along with a vase filled with your favorite flowers. And of course laying next to everything was his guitar.

“Brian,” you gasped. Tears that you didn’t know you had, started to flow down your cheeks.

“Do you like it?” Brian asked quietly.

“Oh Brian... I love it!” You hugged him tightly. He hugged you back just as tight. Neither of you wanted to let go of each other, so you just stayed there for a moment, enjoying each other’s embrace. Eventually you guys pulled back and walked to the blanket and sat down.

“I thought that we could watch the sun set and enjoy the night sky away from all the chaos in the city,” Brian told you, with a shy smile on his face.

“Sounds perfect, Bri” you smiled back, cupping his face in your hand. “I might have a hard time not starring at you though,” you winked at him. He just rolled his eyes and pulled you to where you were laying between his legs and against his chest. The two of you watched the remainder of the sun disappear and the night sky envelop everything around you. You felt like you could lay on Brian forever, that is until he moved to light the candles.

“Setting the mood, lover boy?” You asked playfully. He shook his head and smiled at your comment.

“I guess I am,” is all he said.

“Good,” you laid down on your back “I’ve always wanted to do it outside,” that made him choke. He had no reply to that at all. He was absolutely baffled at what you said. He looked over at you and saw that you were shivering so he dug into the basket and handed you a blanket.

“Thank you Bri,” you smiled at him, with your teeth chattering. You looked back up to the sky and heard Brian sit down next to you, grabbing his guitar. You smiled when you heard him play a riff and softly singing. You looked at him and it was like you forgot to breath. He looked so beautiful under the night sky, playing his guitar perfectly, along with his amazing voice. You were about to tell him you loved him but he spoke up before you did.

“I have a few presents for you,” he said as he stopped the sound of his guitar.

“Bri you didn’t have to do that. Today already has been enough,” you said while sitting up. You knew he didn’t have a load of cash to spend on you, so you always felt bad when he did pay.

“Y/L, stop. It’s your birthday,” he pulled out a bag out of the basked and handed it to you.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” He was so fidgety from the suspense of whether or not you were going to like his gift. You plucked out the tissue paper one by one just to tease him. In the bag was a black box and an envelope. Instinctively, you chose the envelope first, which made Brian tense up a bit. He was incredibly nervous now. You opened up the envelope carefully and pulled out the letter that was inside. You eyed Brian for a second before turning back to the letter to read it. Immediately, you started smiling because it was so sweet what Brian had wrote. He talked about all the little things he adored about you, and some of his favorite memories the two of you shared. He talked about how in the short time of being together, how you two have grown so much. All of this was making you cry like a sprinkler. It wasn’t til you read the end when your breath got caught in your throat. You read what he had written over and over again. ‘I love you, Y/N Y/L/N’

“Y/L...” Brian spoke up. His heart was about to beat out of his chest. Your eyes looked at his, to see if there was any hints of untruthfulness.

“Do you mean this, Bri?” You asked him in a hushed tone.

“I do...” he nodded, still staring into your eyes.

“Every single word. I love you,” After he said it out loud it was like a weight was lifted off of both your shoulders and you could both breathe again. Without warning, you lunged forward and connected your’s and Brian’s lips together. The kiss was soft and passionate. You didn’t even have to say it back, the kiss was enough for Brian to know how you felt. You pulled back to catch your breath.

“I love you too,” You said, heaving a bit. Brian kissed you again, which you melted into. After a few moments Brian pulled back and that made you groan because you never wanted the moment to end.

“Open the rest of your gift, love” you nodded and reached for the box inside the bag. You opened it slowly and found a beautiful silver necklace with a coin shaped pendant hanging off of it. Engraved in it was the shape of your zodiac sign constellation. You grinned at the necklace, then at Brian. He’s such a dork.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you, Brian.” You leaned over and pecked him in the lips. “Mind putting it on me?” Your turned around and moved your hair to the side to allow him to clip the necklace on easier. You could tell that he was struggling a bit since it was so dark, but he eventually managed.

You both laid down on your backs and looked up at the sky letting the sound of the night and your own breathing being the only thing heard. Until you spoke up.

“I don’t think I want this night to ever end,” you looked at Brian with a little smile on your face.

“Nights not over yet, love” he winked at you. You grinned at his comment. You knew exactly what that meant.

“Does that mean I have one more present in store for me?” You asked him, batting your eyelashes with an innocent look on your face.

“Love don’t start something you can’t finish,”

“You know I always finish with you Bri,” you said smugly. Your comment caused him to chuckle. God you loved that man.

#queen #queen imagines #brian may #brian may imagine #imagines #borhap #fan fic #fluff #gwylim lee #readerxbrian may #reader #gwilym!brian

[reyloforcebalance]

Bonded Chapter 33: Monsters

The newest chapter to my Reylo fanfic (rated T). If you want to check out the previous chapters, here’s the link to AO3!

A BB-9 unit rolls swiftly down the hall of the dreadnaught, its squared dome of a head tilted back, its photoreceptor stuck high in the air.

One might say it almost looks smug.

It moves in a straight line, not bothering to dodge the oncoming traffic.

A couple of officers nearly trip over the droid, sidestepping it just in time. One halts, glaring down with a scowl.

But the droid doesn’t seem to notice. It simply moves forward, only cursorily noting the inferiority of human observation.

It picks up its pace as it nears the end of the hall, preparing for a sharp turn to the right.

But just as it turns, it’s met by a swift kick directly to its round body.

It flies across the hall, barely regaining balance before crashing into the wall.

It sputters in beeps and whirs, searching for the offending boot, ready to meet it with angry burst of curses.  

But it shrinks the moment it identifies the guilty party.

A masked Kylo Ren continues down the hall without so much as a backward glance.

He doesn’t notice the droid. He doesn’t notice the people passing by, bowing as they do. He doesn’t even notice the commotion in the medical bay, equipment crashing to the floor as one of the patients raves and thrashes about.

His mind is too preoccupied, fixed on his destination, on the meeting he’s been dreading all damn day.

He tries to remain even, adopt an inward calm.

But he can’t smother that simmering in his gut, fear mixed with uncertainty and deep reluctance.

He squares his shoulders, charging on with his signature stride.  

He tries to direct his thoughts elsewhere, anywhere.

He thinks back to the meeting of generals, pictures the them gathered around the table. He smirks as he remembers Hux twitching, that low burning resentment as Petrov raved about Kaddak and the usefulness of the slaves. He swells as he recalls Ailen’s report, the First Order’s reputation continuing its upward climb, the rippling effects on their recruitment and negotiations.  

Then he remembers the gaping faces, the wave of shock when he ordered Voigt to submit a list of potentials to lead a raid on slave markets in the Core Worlds.

And he tenses, turning the corner sharply.

He searches his mind for something else to focus on— the ongoing problems with the Corellian government, Sylas and the pirates on Borosk.

But he runs into the same damn wall every time.

He sucks in a breath, clenching his fists.

It’s maddening, this slow, miserable slog.

Every attempt at reform, at evolution, at trying to remold the First Order into what it must become gets met with the same push back, the same outdated way of thinking.

It’s not just Hux.

It’s all the people who think like him, wanting to solve every problem like they’re still at war, dragging him backwards even as he forges ahead. They can’t see, can’t understand why they need to deal with the Corellians through diplomacy rather than firepower, why they need to work with the pirates on Borosk rather blasting them to pieces and starting a damn rebellion.

To them, the idea of devoting resources to stopping slavery is unfathomable.

Why would they?

It doesn’t strengthen their armies. It doesn’t advance their weapons technology. It doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of those who would defy the First Order.

So why would they do it?

To them, there’s no reason, no reason at all…

He barrels down a short staircase, his mind drifting to the unpleasant task that lies ahead.

He twitches, that dread returning like bile.

He tries to redirect his focus to the surroundings but there isn’t much to see. He’s in a narrow hall now, a sparsely populated area of the dreadnought. There isn’t a soul in sight except for a single figure ambling his way, pushing along a hoverlift stacked high with supplies.

Kylo slows as the figure gets closer.

He vaguely recognizes the man. Maybe from one of his rounds to the lower ranks…?

Kylo studies him as he approaches, the man glancing up when he’s just a few feet away.

And that’s when the memory hits, where he’s seen him before.

Kylo slows to a stop, lifting his hands to unlick his mask and bring it overhead.

The man instantly halts, dropping his hands from the hoverlift and snapping to attention.

Kylo tucks the mask in the crook of his arm, eying him coolly.

“You…” He points at him. “Tried out to be one of my cadets.”

The man nods.

That’s right. He remembers now, the skinny one with a knack for evasion and nasty with a vibro-axe.

He didn’t make the final cut. But he certainly left an impression…

Kylo tilts his head.

“General Petrov’s putting together his own unit now, just like mine, did you know that?”

The man just stares, not sure what to say.

“Tryouts are at the end of the week.” He dips his chin. “You’re going, aren’t you?”

“I-I…” the man sputters.

“You should.” Kylo nods at him. “He’ll need someone like you, someone who can dodge as well as he attacks.”

The man gapes.

“Go.” Kylo leans in. “Show him what you can do with an axe.” He squints with a glimmer.

Then he moves on, quickly resuming his signature stride.

He doesn’t look back.

But he can feel the man’s eyes on him, sense his emotions, a mixture of pride and shock.

A smile teases Kylo’s lips.

He doesn’t regret it, taking on the training unit as his own, transforming them into his cadets.

How could he? Not after they put half of Hux’s cadets to shame.

Kylo smirks.

No, they’re much too good just to be a training unit. And they’ve demonstrated something important, something the people in this organization needed to see.

They’ve always been so intent that their martial forces be programmed from birth, raised and trained under the auspices of the First Order.

But does that really produce the best soldiers? Or just the best automatons, men who never question, never innovate, only follow orders?

It’s something to consider. He can’t do much now without Hux pitching a fit. But with Petrov following suit, creating his own unit of untrained brawlers from the lower ranks, the seed has been planted. And in time, it will grow…

For now, he’ll just focus on training his own men, a case study of sorts. It’s felt good to build something new, something different. There’s no way they can know it, but his approach to training them is highly irregular. It’s an experimental instruction style, less of a firm grip, more of a guiding hand. He encourages individuality, gives them a lot of freedom— allows them to make mistakes, learn hard lessons, grow.

It’s like nothing he’s ever done before. Yet he’s taken to it so easily, enjoys it even. He tends to sleep better on the nights he trains with them. It’s not just the physical exertion. It’s something else, something he can’t quite put his finger on.

But he can feel it.

It feels like…

He furrows his eyebrows, searching for the right word. One lurks at the corners, trying to push its way through.

But he grows cold before he can fully articulate it.

Kylo slows, sensing the familiar presence ahead.

His throat tightens.  

He takes a deep breath, trying to purge his body of its disquiet. He needs to become even, detached, siphon off part of his mind and bury it.

It’s been so long since he’s been in a meeting like this, one where he needs to be just as careful about what he thinks and feels as what he says and does.

He halts in front of a large blast door at the end of the hall. He focuses on his breath, letting each one bring him closer to where he needs to be— a void, drained of all warmth, all emotion.

He glances down, turning the face of his mask upward. He stares at it for a moment.

Then he tucks it in the crook of his arm.

He’s wearing a different mask now. An inward one.

Kylo lifts a hand, pressing a panel by the door.

He steps forward the moment it opens, entering a narrow room, sparsely furnished, a long, rectangular table in the center and a console lining the back wall. It’s dim, just a low light emanating from the edges of the ceiling.

There’s a thin layer of dust on the table, an unusual sight in a First Order dreadnaught.

But this is a remote part of the ship.

By intention. This meeting isn’t even on his schedule…

Aeneas stands facing the console, his hands clasped loosely behind him. He turns when hears the door.  

It’s been over a year since Kylo’s seen him, yet he doesn’t look much different. His hair’s grown out some, but his face is the same— long and angled, stubble along the chin, black eyes with a hint of fire, dark skin reflecting the glow of the room.  

He studies Kylo evenly.

Then he lowers, taking a knee.

“Master.” He bows his head.  

Read the rest on Ao3!

#reylo #reylo fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #starwars #star wars #kylo ren #rey star wars #kylo x rey #reylofanfiction #ben x rey #knights of ren

[fredheads]

one word fic prompt - OREOS

read on ao3

“Want some Oreos?” is the first thing FP’s new roommate says to him. 

Okay, first he says “Hi! I’m a hugger” and hugs FP and makes a whole production out of the fact that they’re going to be squeezed into the same sweaty room for the next two semesters. But this is the first conversational attempt, thrown out as Fred’s suddenly on his way to the door with the hand of a random brunette (she’d been in the room when FP got there) locked in his. 

“We’re going to the dining hall. Want some Oreos? Apparently, you just sneak them out in your bag. I mean, or you could come with us.” Fred is bouncing on the balls of his feet, a real energetic guy. “I haven’t eaten all day and I hear the dinners are really good.” 

“Nah, you guys go,” says FP slowly, folding a towel with unnecessary precision on his bed. “I have to unpack.” 

This isn’t true. FP had left his trailer with exactly one duffel bag, and it wasn’t even full. But the girl is glaring at him like she’s daring him to accept, and Fred seems like a little too much for him right now. 

When Fred returns from the dining hall he’s flanked by the same brunette, who FP has begun to assume is his girlfriend. They crowd onto Fred’s bottom bunk and start talking excitedly about their classes and the campus and a host of things that FP has yet to care about. Then Fred has his hand on her thigh, and then they’re suddenly kissing - kissing so frantically and passionately that FP starts looking up from his book to see when and if they’re breathing. 

“Hey, FP-” His new roommate says hesitantly at around nine, “is it okay if Hermione stays the night?” 

(Hermione. What kind of name was that? Rich coming from someone named Forsythe, but still.) 

“No problem,” says FP, and puts his headphones on so Fred knows that he knows what ‘stay the night’ means. Fred wastes no time in putting his tongue down Hermione’s throat again, and FP turns over and faces the wall, turning up the Thompson Twins as far as they’ll go and obstinately not listening to the bed creaking, not listening to his roommate moaning, not thinking about the rustle of sheets or their naked bodies or the way that Hermione moans his new roommate’s name every so often in a way that tells him beyond a shadow of a doubt that Fred Andrews of room 309 knows what he’s doing in the sack. 

/ 

So Hermione’s not his girlfriend. Hermione’s not his girlfriend, or else Fred’s a horrible person and FP’s become an unwitting accomplice in some kind of guy code for cheaters, because after Hermione comes Debbie, and Sandra, and Sarah, and Jessica, and Courtney, and Faye, and Jeanie, and a whole ledger of young women, enough to fill a small cheerleading squad. Hermione does reappear, and Sarah and Jeanie show up again sometimes - Fred likes redheads, he learns - but mostly it’s a rotating door that creaks open around eleven every night, spilling a giggly Fred and insert-woman’s-name-here into the dark shadows of their dorm room where FP turns over to the wall and pretends to be asleep. 

FP’s resigned himself to being the good roommate, to downloading new music onto his device at the library so that he can drown out the girls and the mattress creaks with KISS or Nirvana or AC/DC. Most of the time he’s lucky enough to be asleep, headphones on, by the time Fred gets in, but other nights he hears far too much of Fred’s sexcapades - the volume only goes up so far. 

He’s learned a lot about Fred’s sexual habits that he wished he didn’t know - aside from the obvious, he now knows that Fred has a weird, annoying giggle - that a large part of his foreplay is whispering sweet things in the girl’s ear (sometimes, out of pure curiosity, FP dials the volume down to hear snatches of it) and that Fred Andrews is without a shadow of a doubt a giver. 

But he doesn’t mention it, just because he doesn’t want to have that conversation, and really who is he is to keep the guy from having a good time? FP’s no one, just some dumb kid who’s here on a football scholarship and who’s failing all his classes. FP’s a heavy sleeper - Fred’s no worse than listening to his dad swear at the TV and break bottles and hit things back home. At least he has his music. 

So they don’t talk about it. And in the morning, when the girls slip out, Fred turns his big toothy smile on FP and tells him what a hell of a good friend he is (in Fred’s mind they’re friends now, Fred doesn’t refer to him as a roommate anymore, despite FP never putting effort in) and it’s momentarily like being blinded by the sun. 

Fred’s always inviting him to go places - to the dining hall, to the library, to the pub or to some event or another - but FP never accepts. He’s not sure why. Fred never stops asking though, and he’s started leaving dining-hall packets of pre-sealed Oreos all around their room - possibly out of worry that FP doesn’t know how to feed himself. 

FP appreciates it. They have a long conversation one day about whether golden Oreos are better than the traditional ones - Fred’s on the side of golden Oreos, though FP could have told you that by looking at him - and until Hermione comes storming in asking what Fred got on the English 100 midterm, it’s almost enough to make FP believe he’d made a friend after all. 

/ 

They’re about halfway through a mid-sized high school’s cheerleading squad when the door opens at far past eleven on Friday night - almost two in the morning, by FP’s watch - and Fred and another girl come stumbling in. FP had turned down the volume on his music to lull himself to sleep, and hears every word of their conversation. 

“Sssh, shh,” Fred is saying, his words laced with that annoying giggle of his, though he’s clearly trying to keep it down. “My roommate’s sleeping. We have to be quiet.” His voice takes on a teasing, scolding tone that makes something go loose and floaty in FP’s stomach. “Seriously” 

FP feels a weird fondness for Fred hit him, an unexpected softness in his chest. Fred didn’t have to be that considerate, and yet he was. But the other person’s voice jars him abruptly out of his thoughts. 

“Oh, I can be quiet.” It’s a much deeper voice than FP had been expecting - a man’s voice. He opens his eyes to slits and sees them in the sparse light from the curtain - Fred’s clothed form and some muscular, heavy body in front of him that definitely doesn’t belong to someone named Jeanie. The stranger is standing so that FP can only see his back, running his hands slowly up Fred’s arms. There’s a laugh in the voice - not Fred’s sex-muddled giggling, a heavy, warm amusement that’s surely punctuated with a sexy eyebrow raise. “Can you?” 

Fred’s voice has gone huskier now too, and FP loses it under the sound of his music. Slowly, very slowly, not really knowing what he’s doing, he inches his hand under the sheets toward the player and taps pause. The silence is like a jolt. 

“On the bed,” Fred’s saying, speaking between kisses, and then the bed on the other side of the room creaks loudly as the bigger guy climbs onto it. They keep kissing, lots of little ones that means they’re going slow, taking their time. They smell a lot like beer - the campus pub is one of the few places outside of these four walls that FP has ventured, and he figures they must have come from there. His stomach feels odd, his hands shaky, and he really should have gone to the bathroom before Fred came home. 

“Sssh,” says Fred, and then the rustling that means clothes are coming off, the loud unmistakeable sound of a zipper coming down and denim hitting the floor. FP swallows hard and circles the play button with his thumb, knowing what he should be doing but unwilling to do it. The two of them are laughing quietly, the bedsprings squeaking, but as far as FP knows they’re still making out - because he isn’t quite sure how it would work, the other thing, but - 

Through his headphones, everything seems somehow louder, like listening to your own blood when you press a shell against your ear at the beach. He waits and waits for the urge to hit the play button again, to drown out their playful, sexy, twisted, loud, lovemaking under the wailing tones of an electric guitar, but it’s like his thumb has frozen, or gone numb, and he can’t hit the button. 

He could be annoyed. He could be disgusted. He could at least acknowledge how very, very wrong and invasive it is to listen to your drunken roommate friend make love to a guy twice his size, even if Fred is essentially putting it on display for him like a flagrant piece of performance art. 

Only he just lies there in the dark, legs squeezed together, and listens. 

To all of it. 

/ 

Thus begins the boys. Hermione still comes around, and a nerdy redhead or two, but suddenly it’s not uncommon for Joes and Jacks and Mikes and Stevens to slip under Fred’s covers, to stumble laughingly through his door and leave their socks and jeans in a trail toward Fred’s bed. The dining hall offerings from his roommate get better - brownies and cookies as well as packaged Oreos- and while FP could get such things for himself - he pays for it too, after all - it feels oddly touching and important that Fred is apologizing for his transgression in such a way. FP munches his brownies and turns his music up and focuses on not failing his classes. 

Once, feeling bold, FP inquires about the name of the first boy Fred had had home - the one with the muscles and the hulking back, who had nevertheless patiently and obediently waited for Fred to give the orders  - even as mundane as sit down and kiss me. (FP’s stomach gets a weird kind of churning in it when he thinks about that, which definitely has nothing to do with the Oreos he’s been eating for every meal.) 

Fred laughs. “That was Tom,” he says, knotting his necktie in front of the mirror, “but you won’t see him around again. He likes to play straight. I only got him home with me because he’d been drinking.“ 

Fred had left in the same flurry of energy that he always did, and FP had walked to class alone, his thoughts turning sluggishly through his brain. That was that, then. Fred was the person he’d been warned about - some kind of homosexual predator, stalking the halls of his school and picking out upstanding young straight men, getting them drunk and corrupting them, plying them with drinks and love-talk and his giggly sunlight warmth, luring them into his trap. 

Only Tom had acted pretty damn happy about getting caught. 

Is he homophobic? FP wonders, sliding into the dining hall after hours, when the place is almost closed. He grabs a sandwich and two packages of Oreos and carries them back to his room, mulling it over. It was possible. His dad had raised him on the loud belief that people like that were disgusting, depraved, barely a step above animals. It didn’t seem to FP that it could be natural, and yet Fred (Fred and Henry, Fred and Steven, Fred and Myles) seemed to make it work every night just fine. 

It was just undeniable that he felt a certain way when Fred brought boys home, a way that he didn’t feel when it had only been girls. And he didn’t like the feeling - an antsy crawling, a churning sickness, a heat and heaviness in the pit of his gut that made him squirm and kept him from sleeping. 

So maybe he was homophobic. Whatever. He wasn’t going to say anything about it. 

And if his thoughts turned to Fred and Tom when he was jerking off, that was his business. 

/ 

And yet one day he has to bring it up, because Mike or Steven or whoever had been so fucking satisfied last night, had so loudly and so enthusiastically moaned about Fred’s predisposition toward hitting all the pleasure centres down there that FP hadn’t managed a single second of sleep. It wasn’t the noise - he had his headphones for that, and Fred was good about giving his conquests the caveat that his roommate needed his beauty rest - but it was something about the way the guy acted with Fred – too brash, too experienced, too pleased. It was a boy FP had seen before, and this doubled his annoyance - the possibility that this could become a regular ritual, that Fred and this specific man - rather than a faceless, solid, co-ed cheerleading squad of them - could penetrate FP’s four walls and make loving and passionate sex to his roommate for the rest of the year. 

He steps in front of Fred while he’s on his way out to meet Hermione for a game of frisbee, a red wool sweater on that makes him look annoyingly sporty and collegiate and brings out the sparse brown freckles on his nose. 

“I don’t think you should have guys over anymore,” says FP bluntly. And then, when Fred says nothing - “I don’t want you to." 

Fred had swallowed hard, his eyes welling up with tears - FP had managed to say everything in those few sentences that FP Senior had ever said about gay men in his life - and had only nodded, his lips trembly and his eyes looking anywhere but FP’s face. And so the sex stops, and Fred’s smile stops, and Fred being in the room at all stops for awhile, and the Oreos and brownies and cupcakes stop, even when Halloween passes and they have cupcakes iced in orange with confetti bats - something that ordinarily would have sent Fred out of his mind with glee. 

FP takes two home from the cafeteria and leaves them on a little plate on Fred’s side of the room, adds a package of cafeteria Oreos as a peace offering. They go untouched. 

/

Fred goes every Wednesday to a meeting that is advertised on posters around the quad by an upside-down rainbow triangle and a heart. FP tears one down on his way home from the pub, hoping that anyone who sees him do so will just think him drunk, or a run-of-the-mill homophobe. From this he gleans the room number and that these meetings are open to all, newcomers welcome. 

What the hell. He swallows his pride, combs his hair, and shows up on Wednesday, 

The room is a big, airy, window-y one in the campus student centre. Students are sitting on the carpet in a big circle, and there are a lot more people than FP had expected. Nervous, he finds an open patch and sinks into a cross-legged pose on the ground. Fred’s there, and FP devotes all his energy to not looking at him, though he can tell Fred’s eyes are locked on his face with flaming intensity.  

The leader is a short girl with too many piercings in her ears and a shock of pink hair. She speaks above the general buzz of conversation, and one by one, the other students fall silent and listen to her. The girl smiles. 

"Today’s topic is misconceptions about bisexuality. To start off, does anyone want to share some that they’ve experienced?" 

The girl to FP’s right shoots up her hand before he has time to process the question. "People always think you’re down for a threeway." 

"That’s right. And some people think bisexuality and monogamy can’t go together. Anyone else?" 

"If you’re a girl dating a boy, people think you can’t be bisexual anymore,” speaks up a redhead across the circle. 

The girl with pink hair nods. “Yeah, that’s a big one." 

FP feels lost. Slowly, without looking at Fred, he puts his hand up as if in class. The girl turns to look at him, and FP feels the same nerves well up in his stomach that he gets in lectures when he knows he’s about to say something stupid. 

"Yes?" 

FP clears his throat. He can feel Fred’s eyes burning holes into his face. "I- could you explain what that is?" 

"Monogamy?” asks the girl, blinking confusedly at him. 

“No-” FP’s beginning to regret putting his hand up. His face is warm and he knows he’s blushing, though he couldn’t explain to himself why. “Bisexual. What does that mean." 

The girl beams at him, looking around the circle. "Does anyone want to take a crack at a definition?" 

"Bisexual is when you like boys and girls,” answers an extremely handsome boy to FP’s left, and smiles at him in a way that hits all the panic centres in FP’s brain. He almost gets up and runs. 

“No,” another boy speaks up, cutting him off, “bisexual is when you like more than one gender. Doesn’t have to be boys and girls." 

The first boy grins, showing dimples. "I stand corrected." 

"Bisexual doesn’t mean threeways,” chimes in an Asian girl with a ponytail. 

“Or that you’re slutty,” adds in her friend. “Or open to everyone." 

The definition turns into a long conversation, and FP does his best to follow it. His palms itch, but he feels more relaxed now that the attention is off of him. He can’t tell where Fred’s eyes are. 

FP’s never dated anyone, but he knew he wasn’t gay. FP had sex with girls, liked having sex with girls - had even had some since he’d arrived at this school. But he had not been made aware - not even by his father - of this third option. His stomach feels very tight.  

They break for snacks after the discussion circle, and FP makes a beeline for the cups and water. His mouth feels as dry as the Sahara just from listening. Before he can pour himself some, though, all five-foot-ten-inches of his angry roommate is barrelling up to him and hitting him in the stomach. Fred grabs FP by the arm and drags him out of the room, shoving him into a nearby supply closet and slamming the door. 

"Fred, what-" 

"You can’t be here!” Fred declares, his voice shaking with anger. In the dim light, he can still see his roommate perfectly. FP’s never heard him so mad. “You have some fucking nerve!" 

FP can’t resist challenging him. "Why not?" 

"Because this is a safe space!” Fred stands his ground, and FP is reminded with a jolt of the way he had spoken to Tom, who he’d since learned was an RA, a bouncer, and was older than Fred as well as twice his size. His stomach goes floaty again. “For good people. Who don’t want to be attacked. So please just go-" 

"The poster says open to all,” FP points out. “A guy can’t want to learn something?" 

Fred’s hands are curled into shaking fists. "Why don’t you stay in your world, and I stay in mine." 

"Pretty hard to do when we share the same nine feet." 

"Fuck you.” Fred looks oddly close to tears, the way he had the day FP had told him to stop bringing boys home. He shakes a fist at FP, which FP finds endearingly brave. “I’m just warning you, if you do anything to hurt any of these people, I’ll make you sorry." 

"You’re one to talk about hurting people,” FP retorts angrily. 

Fred pauses to stare at him, his mouth agape and his face pink. “What does that mean?" 

FP hadn’t meant to say any of this, but suddenly the words are pouring out of him, too fast for him to stop. "I mean you never spared a thought to how I felt when you were parading people past me every night. You never thought about how it might feel to listen to your roommate have sex all the time. Hear everyone talk about what a stud he is. Or wonder if something’s wrong with you because you were kissing every fucking boy on the campus except for me." 

FP hadn’t meant to say that last part. Fortunately, Fred’s angry enough that he breezes right by the awkward moment, the air around his retort crackling with heat. "I wouldn’t kiss you if you were the last person on earth!" 

"Good,” yells FP, and then before he can think of anything else witty to add, Fred grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him down to his height and smashes their lips together. 

There’s nothing polite about this kiss - it’s all anger and all tongues and open mouths. FP kisses him and Fred kisses back, his tongue on FP’s teeth and FP’s stomach up somewhere around his heart and his heart fluttering up somewhere near his diaphragm. When they break apart Fred starts to laugh, his laughter vibrating against FP’s teeth. “That’s what this was about?” he asks. 

“What?” asks FP, spots blinking in front of his eyes. His mind is reeling. Something about the way Fred tasted - fuck. Fuck. His stomach clenches, threatens to empty his guts out onto the floor. His hands are shaking. He’s never envied Hermione so much in his life. 

“You were jealous?” Fred’s laughing, but not meanly. His eyes are sparkling. “This whole time?" 

"Wouldn’t you be? 

Fred kisses him again, tenderly, all heavy tongue and wetness on FP’s lips when he pulls away. FP strains forward to follow him before realizing Fred was breaking the kiss. Fred notices and smiles. 

"Do you want to go back to the room?" 

FP looks down at his hands, at their two feet, only inches apart on the closet floor. "I, um..” Fred has a hand on the bottom of his chin, is running a thumb against FP’s lip, distracting him. He feels himself blush - worlds away from the cocky jock he used to be in high school. He keeps his voice low. “I don’t really know how-" 

"It’s okay,” Fred whispers in FP’s ear, and FP shivers, all the way down his spine to his toes. “I’ll show you. And all those other boys?” Fred licks a stripe up FP’s ear, his breath hot on his skin, and FP almost floats away into heaven. “Consider it practice for the real thing." 

#AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES #fred andrews #fp jones #fredsythe #*blows a kiss to briana* #halcooper

[sweetiepie08]

Bedtime Story (Chap 3)

Coco Princess Bride AU

Hector’s not sure how he, of all people, managed to have a daughter who didn’t see the value in love stories. Being the romantic sap he is, he reads her one of his favorites before bed. He hopes the story will show her the power of all types of love and it’ll become of her her favorites too.

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4.  Chapter 5.

Coco put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth faster than her parents had ever seen her. Normally, she’d bargain for just ten more minutes of play time. Tonight, she popped up as soon as her parents told her it was time for bed. Within minutes, she was tucked under the blanket, waiting for her father to begin.

“Hmm, do you remember what part we were on?” Héctor asked, flipping through the book.

“Swordfight!” Coco chirped.

“We were at the part where he’s riding through the woods, right?”

“Swordfight,” she said again.

“Or was it one of the kissing parts?”

“No, swordfight!”

“Oh wait, I remember. We were at the really boring part where they watch paint dry.”

“Papa…” Coco groaned, flopping back against the pillows.

Héctor laughed and held up to book. “Okay, okay. Swordfight.”

[-]

The masked woman scaled the cliff side, occasionally taking a second to look up at the youth waiting for her at the top. He was one of the kidnappers, no doubt. He looked pretty young to have already fallen into a life of crime. Though, she knew in reality this was the case for far too many people. She ignored the sadness this brought to her heart. He was her opponent and soon, she’d have to face him.

Curiously, the youth kept glancing behind his shoulder and fiddling with the hilt of his sword. This boy doesn’t want to fight, she realized. That only made the situation all the more tragic. What was this boy doing here? The kidnappers must have their motives, be it money or political gain. Was he brought on board with the promise of riches or power? He was still young and possibly foolish enough to believe he’d get away with it. High profile cases such as these almost never ended well for either party, which is why she felt the need to step in when she overheard their plans in a Santa Anthony tavern. She was going to make sure at least one person made it out of this alive.

“Um, excuse me?” The boy called over the cliff side. “How much longer do you think you might be?”

Was this boy really talking to her? “It’ll still be a while,” she called back with a bite in her voice.

“If I threw you a rope, would that help?” he asked. “I have extra. It should reach you.”

What was this? A trap? He could easily cut it again once she grabbed on. “It would, but I don’t trust you to help me,” she answered honestly.

“Yeah, that makes sense.” The boy paused and thought for a moment. “What if I swear on my honor?”

“No good. I never trust anyone who swears on an abstract concept.”

There was another pause before he asked, “What if I swear on the souls of my late parents?”

The way the boy said this struck her. She learned to spot a liar during her times on the high seas. She knew when someone was feigning emotion. This boy was no liar. His grief was genuine. His love for his parents was sincere. “Throw me the rope.”

The rope unfurled from the top of the cliff and landed just within her reach. She grabbed ahold and climbed the rest of the way up. When she reached the top, the boy held onto her arm and helped pull her over the ledge. It was confusing, given that the boy was just waiting around to fight. She reached for her sword, even though her arms still ached from the climb.

“Oh, uh, you can catch your breath if you want,” the boy said. He was surprisingly accommodating for a hired killer. What was he doing here?

The masked woman sat down on one of the rocks to catch her breath, but she didn’t take her eyes off of him for one second. He was just too nice, given the circumstances. It wasn’t just good sportsmanship either. He just seemed to have no idea he was supposed to be threatening.

“Excuse me, do you happen to look like a Chihuahua by any chance?” the boy asked.

She looked up, brows knitted together beneath her mask. “No…”

“Oh,” he said with a frown.

“You have a very specific type.”

“No, I just…” The boy looked down, hiding his face, and fidgeted with the hilt of his sword. “My parents were murdered when I was twelve. I escaped but, I saw the assassin. She had a face…”

“Like a Chihuahua?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. He took a breath, then continued. “After that, I ran away to Santa Anthony. That was when I met Chicharrón. He took me in. He let me train with the best swordsmen in the country so that if I ever meet the assassin again, I can avenge my parent’s death.”

“So why get involved in this?”

The boy looked down and shuffled his feet. “Chicharrón practically raised me since he took me in. I had to do this favor to repay him.”

“I see…” The boy doesn’t want to be here. She looked harder at his face. He was young. He tried to hide it behind sparse scruff, but he was young. “Exactly how old are you?”

“Me? I’m, uh…” He cleared his throat and put on a deeper, gruffer voice. “I’m twenty eight,” he finished, drawing himself up.

The masked woman gave him a skeptical look.

He deflated a little. “Twenty two?” he tried, but the woman remained unimpressed. “Eighteen?” he tried again. When the woman still didn’t believe it, he deflated all the way. “I’m sixteen…” he admitted with a sigh.

“You’re young.”

The boy shrugged in response. “It doesn’t matter. I’m still here. I still need to fight you.”

“Very well,” the masked woman said, getting up and drawing her sword, “You seem like a nice boy. I’d hate to kill you.”

“You seem like a nice lady. I’d hate to die.”

They began. The masked woman let him strike first. It was her custom to let her more honorable opponents take the first swing. She liked to play with them a little, find out what they can do. He had skill, there was no doubt about that, but he was hesitant. He didn’t attempt any fatal blows. She imagined he wouldn’t.

“You’re good,” she said, blocking his blow. “You said Chicharrón got you trained?”

“Yeah, trained with the best,” he said with a cocky grin.

She let him advance on her as she led the fight away from the side of the cliff. “And I assume this is the favor you had to do in return.”

“Yup.”

“Tell me,” she said, blocking another swipe, “what do you expect to gain from this?”

“Nothing.” He went in for another jab, which she dodged. “Just paying off a debt.”

“And Chicharrón?” She asked, testing him with a swipe of her own. “What did he tell you about this mission?”

“He said we were going after the guy who stole a bunch of his stuff.” The boy leapt up onto a rock, gaining the high ground. “I just thought we were going to shake the guy down. I didn’t know it was going to go this far.”

She jumped onto the rocks as well, continuing their fight on the rougher terrain. “You got yourself into one hell of a mess. Kidnapping Lord of the Southlands is a serious offense.”

“Wait, that guy’s Lord of the Southlands?!” The boy’s eyes widened.

He hesitated. The masked woman took her shot. With her hand still wrapped around the sword’s hilt, she swung her fist against the boy’s head, knocking him to the ground. She jumped off of the rocks and picked up his lost sword. He groaned, letting her know he was mostly alright, but he didn’t get up.

“Listen, boy,” she said, sheathing her own sword, “The Prince won’t take this lightly. Get out now, while you can.” She threw his sword behind a rock formation and ran off. By the time he picked himself up and found his sword, she’d be well ahead of him. Hopefully, he’d take her advice and leave this whole operation behind.

[-]

She didn’t have to run very far until she came across her next obstacle. The tall man stood in the center of a field surrounded by rock formations. She stopped. He watched her, but didn’t make a move. “Are you my next opponent?” She asked.

He responded with a hand motion.

“Oh, you use sign language. Lucky for you, so does one of my crewmen.” She signed along with the words she spoke. “Can you hear me?”

The man looked elated at having someone else who could understand him. He responded with a nod. I am sorry. I must stop you, he signed.

“Well, I must get past you,” the masked woman answered.

The man signed again. Why are you wearing that mask?

“Oh this?” she tapped strip of black cloth around her eyes. “They’re just terribly comfortable. I made it myself, though I’m better at making shoes.”

What happened to my friend? He signed.

“Do you mean the boy?”

The man nodded.

“He’ll probably have a headache when he gets up, but he’ll be fine,” she explained.

The man smiled, but his lips immediately fell back into a frown. Sorry, we need to fight now.

She drew her sword. “Nothing personal.”

The man advanced on her.  She advanced on him. As soon as she was in arm’s length, he knocked the sword out of her hands. He reached for her. She ducked and slid between his legs.

You’re fast. He signed.

He reached for her again and she ducked out of the way. Her eyes fell on her sword, now laying in the grass across the field. The tall man stood between her and her weapon. She needed to get to it. He was too large to fight without it.

The tall man advanced on her again. She jumped up on a rock behind her and leapt across the rock formations toward her sword. She almost reached it, when the tall man’s large arms shot out and swiped her down.

She coughed when she hit the ground, but hopped to her feet as quickly as she could. The tall man loomed over. He still stood as a wall blocking her from her only weapon. She took a step back and heard a twig crunch beneath her boot. Well, I have one more weapon. With quick, skilled hands, she took off her boot and smacked him across the face.

The man fell back from the blow. He landed on his back, sprawled across the grass. With one hand, he reached up and sighed the letters O-U-C-H. He lifted his head, winked, and dropped back, closing his eyes.

Odd. Her opponent was pretending to be defeated? She cautiously tiptoed around him and picked up her sword. As she began to run off, the man clapped twice to get her attention. When she turned to look at him, he signed, Thanks for sparing my friend, then fell back into his unconscious routine.

The masked woman smiled. She saw now. This man clearly cared more about the swordsman boy than any ransom he might get. She wondered if that was the reason he joined up in the first place. She didn’t have time to dwell on it, however. She ran off. There was still one more obstacle to go.

[-]

She spotted her target from a distance. Héctor was arguing with his captor while Chicharrón tried to pull him along. She noticed Chicharrón stopping to take a swig from a canteen and got an idea. She took a small vile out of her pocket, and inspected it. Once she was sure it was the correct vile, she drank the contents and pocketed it again.

“You there,” she called, running up the hill toward them.

They stopped and turned around, both unsure of what to make of her. Chicharrón pulled out a dagger and pointed it at Héctor’s throat. “Don’t come any closer.”

The masked woman put her hands up and tentatively took a step forward. “No need for that.”

Chicharrón stiffened. “I told you to stay back. You’re after him aren’t you?” He jabbed his dagger at Héctor. “Who sent you? The Prince?”

“No one sent me,” she answered.

“Then you’re trying to steal his ransom for yourself.”

The masked woman paused, before taking another step. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement. A wager, maybe?”

“No,” he growled. “You’ve already beaten my muscle and my swordsman. I know I’ll be no match in a fight.”

“How about a battle of wits, then?”

Chicharrón lowered his dagger, intrigued. “What do you have in mind?”

“A simple test. Your choice decides our fates.”

Chicharrón smiled. “Very well.” He sat down on a rock and sat Héctor down next to him.

The masked woman joined them by the rock. She took out her canteen and a small vile. “We’ll need yours as well.” Chicharrón handed her his canteen. She turned, hiding both behind her, and poured the contents of the vile in one of them.  She shook them up and placed both canteens on the rock. “I’ve poured Padua poison into one of the canteens. It is undetectable by smell or taste and is one of the more deadly poisons known to man. You’ll choose one to drink from. I’ll drink from the other. Then we will find out which is right, and who is dead.”

Chicharrón let out a low chuckle. “Is that all?”

“Wait, hold on. I don’t think we need to resort to poison,” Héctor interrupted. “I’m sure there’s another way we can work this out.”

Both ignored him as Chicharrón continued to chuckle. “Well, it’s so simple. I simply need to figure out if you’re the type to put the poison in their own drink or their opponent’s.”

“Then choosing must be easy.”

“It will be once I work this out. You might have put the poison into your own canteen, as only a fool would drink from his own, so I can’t choose to drink from yours. However, you would have counted on me figuring this out, and put it in my canteen, so I clearly can’t choose to drink from mine.”

“Have you made your decision then?”

“Not yet. Padua poison is from Santa Anthony, and you know I’m from Santa Anthony, which means you might have suspected a Santa Anthonian might know of another way to detect the poison and put it as far from me as possible. So I can’t choose to drink from yours. However, you are clearly a pirate and as a pirate, you’d know all men can be killed. Therefore, you’d want to put the poison as far from you as possible, so I can’t choose to drink from mine.”

“Truly you have a dizzying intellect.”

“I’m not even finished! You might have guessed that I’d know you were a pirate and wouldn’t trust what you did to my canteen, so I can’t drink from yours.”

“You’re just stalling now.”

“I’m not stalling,” Chicharrón scoffed. “I know where the poison is.”

“Then make your choice.”

“I will. I choose…” His hand shot out as he pointed to something in the distance. “What in world is that?”

“What? Where?” the masked woman looked over her shoulder.

While her back was turned, Chicharrón reached out and switched the canteens. By the time she turned back, his hands were back in his lap.

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Must have just been a shadow,” Chicharrón said dismissively. “Now, let’s drink.”

Chicharrón picked up the canteen in front of him and the masked woman picked up the canteen in front of her. He watched her face, waiting for some telling flinch. When none came, he hesitantly took a drink from his canteen.

The masked woman calmly took her drink and set the canteen back down. “You chose wrong,” she said, a confident smirk on her lips.

“No, you chose wrong!” Chicharrón exclaimed, jumping up in triumph. “I switched canteens when you weren’t looking. You fell for one of the classic blunders! The first of which is ‘never pitch a tent over a fire ant nest’ but only slightly less well known is this! Never go in against a Santa Antonian when death is on the line!”

Chicharrón started laughing both out of victory and relief. All the while, the masked woman kept the confident smirk on her lips. She didn’t seem at all surprised when he suddenly stopped laughing and fell to the ground.

“Cheech!” Héctor shouted. The masked woman picked up Chicharrón’s dagger and used it to cut Héctor’s ropes. “You poisoned him,” he said, eyes still fixed on his former friend’s body.

“Yes, but I didn’t kill him.” The masked woman pulled him up by the shoulders.

“But, you said…”

“I lied,” she cut in. “I lied about which poison I used. This one will only knock him out for a few hours.”

“And that whole time, the poison was in your canteen.”

“It was in both,” she admitted, smiling at her own cleverness. “I took an antidote before the challenge began.”

Without another world, she took Héctor by the hand and led him away.

[-]

Héctor resisted and she pulled him along. Being kidnapped by Chicharrón was bad enough. Now he was being dragged to God-only-knows-where by this stranger. He took some time to guess who the masked woman might be while she and Cheech had their challenge. She was able to achieve feats few on earth could. She was brave enough climb the cliffs of hysteria, skilled enough to defeat a trained swordsman and a hired muscle, and clever enough devise a battle of wits on a moment’s notice. He knew of only one woman who could do all that, though he knew her by reputation only.

They’d come to the mouth of a ravine when he finally pulled away.

“Need a rest my lord,” the woman asked, her smirk now turned mocking.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” he stated firmly. “I know who you are.”

For the first time, her face faltered, but only for a second. “You’ve figured it out?”

“You’re the fierce pirate Valentina Rodriguez, aren’t you?”

Her smile returned in earnest and she let out a laugh. “So I am. What can I do for you?”

His expression darkened and his eyes pierced her. “You can walk into the sea and never breathe again.”

She looked taken aback by this, but recovered with a mocking tsk. “That’s a bit harsh. What have I ever done to you?”

“You killed my love.”

“Is that so?” she asked. “Who was it? A noble lady? A princess?”

“No, a shoemaker’s daughter from a small village.” He sat down on a rock and looked off into the clear blue sky. “Her eyes sparkled when she laughed. Her hair fell in soft, dark waves. And her voice… she could sing with the best of the angels…” He snapped out of his nostalgic trance and turned his venomous gaze on the masked woman. “That is, until you attacked her ship, and everyone knows Valentina Rodriguez never leaves survivors.”

The pirate watched him, taking in his. It was hard to tell her thoughts behind the mask. After a moment of silence, she strode past him, looking out into the distance. “I think I remember your shoemaker. She didn’t cry or panic when I took her ship. She simply told me, ‘no.’ She told me ‘I won’t die today. I still need to build my fortune and return to my family.’ She had so much spirit, I almost thought she’d make a good pirate herself. So I wonder…” Her head turned sharply back toward him with a scowl on her face. “How long after she left did you abandon the family that raised you?”

“What?” Héctor jumped to his feet, his scowl matching hers.

“I spoke to her,” the pirate snapped, turning completely around to face him. “She said her family was kind enough to take you in as a boy. That you had to hide from the Prince. She said they kept you safe all those years and now look at where you are. You’ve become his royal companion. You became exactly what they were trying to protect you from. I can only wonder what your shoemaker would say if she could see you now.”

“My parents were murdered,” Héctor argued back. “I had to take up their duties as Lord of the Southlands. I became royal companion to protect my own people.”

“How noble of you,” the pirate sneered. “I wonder how long until you forget your shoemaker for a royal lady.”

“How dare you?” He was furious now. He marched up to the pirate. Her deadly reputation wouldn’t scare him into silence. She knew nothing and he would not let her tell him who he was. “How dare you judge me when you go around, murdering whoever crosses your path? You kill without a care about who you hurt, what lives you destroy.”

The pirate scoffed in response and turn her back on him to look off the edge of the ravine. His temper flared. She would not dismiss how deeply he loved or how painfully he grieved. It was an outrage, an insult to the loved ones he lost. “My parents and my love both died within a week of each other and I haven’t lived a day since.”

She continued to ignore him. She wouldn’t for much longer. The muscles in his arms twitched. Hesitance only flickered in his mind as he reached out. “Now you can die too for all I care.”

With a rage-filled shove, he sent her tumbling over the ravine’s edge. She rolled down the steep hillside. Her mask flew from her face and she called in an all too familiar voice, “You idiot…”

“Imelda! What have I done?!” He threw himself over the side and tumbled after her.

Down they went. Colors swirled. Grass and dirt collected on their clothes. The ground hit their backs with every turn, knocking the breath out of their lungs. Once they settled at the bottom of the hill, Héctor’s only thoughts were for Imelda. When he regained his breath, he rolled over and crawled over to where she lay.

“Are you hurt, mi amore?” He asked, brushing stray hairs out of her face.

“No,” she groaned, sitting up. “What about you? Can you walk?”

“Walk?” A puff of laughter escaped his lips. “You’re alive. If you want, I can fly.” And he felt he really could. His wildest dreams were coming true today. Why not learn to fly?

She smiled; a smile he thought he’d never see again. He put his arms around her and she held him in return. She was real. She was really real. There’d be time enough for questions and explanations later. All needed to know right now was that she was here, with him, alive.

They leaned toward each other, and kissed like they thought they’d never have the chance to again.

[-]

Héctor marked the book and shut it. “I’m sorry, m’ija. I know you must be disappointed to end on a boring kiss tonight but it’s past your bedtime.”

Coco looked back at him, eyes still wide and clinging to her Chewbacca plushie. “I’m not disappointed,” she argued. “But, we can read the book again tomorrow night, right?”

Héctor smiled and ruffled her hair. “Of course we can.” He leaning in and kissed her forehead. “Good night, mi vida.”

#coco #pixar coco #coco fanfiction #princess bride au #hector rivera #imelda rivera #hector x imelda #imector #miguel rivera #coco rivera #dante coco #coco fandom #coco fanart #ernesto de la cruz #chicharron coco

[jacobtulach]

task 5: jacob tulach

Basic Character Questions

First name? Garfield Jacob

Surname? Tulach

Middle names? Jacob.

Nicknames? Jacob.

Date of birth? Jac–December 16.

Age? 43.

Physical / Appearance

Height? 5′9′’

Weight? 220 lb

Build? Thick.

Hair color? Brown.

Hair style? Short on the sides and long on top, usually slicked back. Sometimes a little wild or in his face.

Eye color? Green.

Eye Shape? Deep-set, small, circular.

Glasses or contact lenses? No. (reading glasses.)

Distinguishing facial features? A scar on his left eyebrow. A full beard.

Which facial feature is most prominent? His severe brow.

Which bodily feature is most prominent? Wide shoulders.

Other distinguishing features? Monochromatic tattoo sleeve on his left arm from wrist to shoulder.

Skin? Tan.

Hands? His nails are dirty, his knuckles are bruised, and the skin is rough and cracked.

Make up? Nah.

Scars? Scars from cuts on his left eyebrow, left elbow, and right shin. Small burn mark under his right arm at the bottom of his ribcage.

Birthmarks? Nah.

Tattoos? Yes–left arm has a tattoo sleeve in mostly black ink of monsters/creatures. There’s a kraken, dragon, griffon, bear, wolf, and falcon.

Physical handicaps? He’s got bad knees, and he broke his arm as a child. It didn’t heal right so he can’t bend his right arm all the way.

Type of clothes? Plaid shirts, field jackets, jeans, combat boots, muscle shirts …. cargo shorts, swim trunks.

How do they wear their clothes? Sloppily. His clothes have holes and frayed edges.

What are their feet like? (type of shoes, state of shoes, socks, feet, pristine, dirty, worn, etc) He walks around barefoot quite a bit so his feet are pretty calloused, otherwise he has boots on.

Race / Ethnicity? White.

Mannerisms? He likes to smoke. He’s bad at maintaining eye contact. Always has to be busy with something in his hands so he’s usually whittling or sharpening knives, etc.

Are they in good health? He’s in decent physical shape strength-wise, but he gets coughing fits due to a bad case of pneumonia causing scarring in his lungs. Smoking doesn’t help.

Do they have any disabilities? Nah.

Personality

What words or phrases do they overuse? “Look here.” “Sod off.” “Shut up.” And threatening to gut people that annoy him.

Do they have a catchphrase? “You.” (threateningly)

Are they more optimistic or pessimistic? Pessimistic.

Are they introverted or extroverted? Introverted.

Do they ever put on airs? He wouldn’t know how. He’s very genuine, for better or worse.

What bad habits do they have? Smoking, swearing, drinking, eating too fast, being a terrible conversationalist.

What makes them laugh out loud? Slapstick physical humor that happens in real life, even if it happens to him.

How do they display affection? Spending quiet time with the other person, perhaps maybe hand holding.

Mental handicaps? He’s short-tempered and has a bad memory so he forgets people’s names.

How do they want to be seen by others? Formidable, unyielding, and commanding.

How do they see themselves? As a farce.

How are they seen by others? A quiet, sometimes violent thug.

Strongest character trait? Being pragmatic.

Weakest character trait? Empathy.

How competitive are they? Very.

Do they make snap judgements or take time to consider? Snap judgements.

How do they react to praise? Depends on the person, but in general he will awkwardly try to get out of the conversation.

How do they react to criticism? He internalizes and obsesses over criticism. Unless the person giving it is an asshole, then he wants to beat them up.

What is their greatest fear? Imprisonment.

What are their biggest secrets? Noah Graves is his real son. He has worn a nice suit on more than one occasion, and gone to “brunch” in New England with Noah’s family.

What is their philosophy of life? You suffer then eventually die.

When was the last time they cried? When he was a child.

What haunts them? He dwells on the pain he has caused others.

What are their political views? The strong should protect the weak.

What will they stand up for? Family and the few people he is close to.

Who do they quote? Nothing but old idioms.

Are they indoorsy or outdoorsy? Outoorsy.

What is their sinful little habit? He’ll melt if there’s a dog around.

What sense do they most rely on? Smell.

How do they treat people better than them? Like shit.

How do they treat people worse than them? Slightly less like shit.

What quality do they most value in a friend? Loyalty.

What do they consider an overrated virtue? Honesty.

If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be? Be a good father.

What is their obsession? Woodworking and a good, balanced knife.

What are their pet peeves? Pointless small talk.

What are their idiosyncrasies? His upper lip will twitch when he’s annoyed. He reorganizes the sparse furniture in his house once or twice a month.

Friends and Family

Is their family big or small? Who does it consist of? Pretty big. Several siblings and nieces and nephews. He has one son, and an ex and her husband.

What is their perception of family? Family is more than blood.

Do they have siblings? Older or younger? Yes.

Describe their best friend. Deadpan and a lot like him.

Ideal best friend? Deadpan and a lot like him.

Describe their other friends. Much more chatty and compassionate. Have more of Jacob’s best interest in mind than him.

Describe their acquaintances. Pretty much everyone is an acquaintance.

Do they have any pets? No.

Who are their natural allies? Jupiter’s Fury’s crew, most other pirates.

Who are their surprising allies? His son.

Past and Future

What was your character like as a baby? As a child? He was a fussy baby that screamed a lot. He was much quieter as a kid–speaking up meant being struck.

Did they grow up rich or poor? He grew up as a pirate, so a little bit of both.

Did they grow up nurtured or neglected? Nurtured to become a pirate, but neglected in emotional support.

What is the most offensive thing they ever said? “That’s not what your mom said last night.” (He doesn’t do mom jokes anymore).

What is their greatest achievement? Bringing Noah on a voyage.

What was their first kiss like? A quick peck.

What is the worst thing they did to someone they loved? Not being there for Noah.

What are their ambitions? Keep his head down until he can retire.

What advice would they give their younger self? Fight harder.

What smells remind them of their childhood? Seaweed, peeled potatoes, hot wax, woodsmoke, brandy.

What was their childhood ambition? Become a ship captain.

What is their best childhood memory? Learning how to fight with a knife.

What is their worst childhood memory? Sleeping alone during bad storms.

Did they have an imaginary childhood friend? No.

When was the last time they were crushed with disappointment? When he got knocked out during his last bare knuckle boxing match.

What past act are they most ashamed of? His first kill.

What past act are they most proud of? He very briefly commanded the Jupiter’s Fury when Theo was sick on a voyage.

Has anyone ever saved their life? Yes.

Strongest childhood memory? His father standing over him.

Love

Do they believe in love at first sight? No.

Are they in a relationship? No.

How do they behave in a relationship? Doting but awkward. Unable to discuss feelings.

When did you character last have sex? It’s been since before his latest voyage, so at least a month.

What sort of sex do they have? Rough. He doesn’t take his time either.

Has your character ever been in love? Yes.

Have they ever had their heart broken? Yes.

Conflict

How do they respond to a threat? Be the first to attack.

Are they most likely to fight with their fists or their tongue? Fists.

What is your character’s kryptonite? Noah. Pretty people.

If your character could only save one thing from their burning house, what would it be? Letters exchanged between him and Tara and Noah.

How do they perceive strangers? With suspicion and derision until proven otherwise.

What do they love to hate? Stupidity, small talk, naivete.

What are their phobias? Sharks and guns.

What is their choice of weapon? Fists or knives.

What living person do they most despise? …tara.

Have they ever been bullied or teased? Yes.

Where do they go when they’re angry? He sits on the roof of his villa.

Who are their enemies and why? He doesn’t like to have enemies. He wants to settle things one way or another and not have any lingering bad blood.

Work, Education and Hobbies

What is their current job? First mate on the Jupiter’s Fury.

What do they think about their current job? It suits him. It’s enough responsibility without having all the weight on his shoulders.

What are some of their past jobs? Gunner, carpenter, boxer.

What are their hobbies? Woodworking and carpentry.

Educational background? He’s got a high school level equivalent.

Intelligence level? Average.

Do they have any specialist training? Is fighting a specialty?

Do they have a natural talent for something? Taking hits.

Do they play a sport? Are they any good? He’s good at climbing and he’s a good marksman but he hates guns.

What is their socioeconomic status? Pirate?

Favorites

What is their favorite animal? Dogs.

Which animal to they dislike the most? Sharks.

What place would they most like to visit? The Alps or the Andes.

What is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen? The Galapagos.

What is their favorite song? Johnny Cash - Ain’t No Grave.

Music, art, reading preferred? Art.

What is their favorite color? Green.

What is their password? password7890

Favorite food: Avocado.

What is their favorite work of art? Michelangelo’s David.

Who is their favorite artist? He doesn’t have one.

What is their favorite day of the week? He doesn’t have one.

Possessions

What is in their fridge: 24 pack of Yuengling lagers, gouda cheese, orange juice, milk, and smoked salmon.

What is on their bedside table? Reading glasses and a bottle of water.

What is in their car? He doesn’t have a car.

What is in their bin? Sawdust.

What is in their purse or wallet? A picture of Noah when he was five.

What is in their pockets? Switchblade.

What is their most treasured possession? His table saw.

Spirituality

Who or what is your character’s guardian angel? He doesn’t believe in guardian angels.

Do they believe in the afterlife? No.

What are their religious views? Every man for himself.

What do they think heaven is? There is no heaven.

What do they think hell is? Earth.

Are they superstitious? A little.

What would they like to be reincarnated as? No.

How would they like to die? In combat.

What is your character’s spirit animal? He doesn’t believe in spirit animals.

What is their zodiac sign? Sagittarius.

Values

What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? Imprisonment.

What is their view of ‘freedom’? Not being part of the capitalist machine.

When did they last lie? When he told Noah he’d kick his ass if he didn’t bring back his table saw.

What’s their view of lying? It’s sometimes acceptable.

When did they last make a promise? When he told Tara he’d make sure Noah would finish school and come home.

Did they keep or break their last promise? He fucking tried, okay?

Daily life

What are their eating habits? He is a pescatarian. 

Do they have any allergies? No.

Describe their home. White walls with no decorations, handmade wooden furniture. Bare bones.

Are they minimalist or a clutter hoarder? Minimalist, but his front yard is full of junk from the storm.

What do they do first thing on a weekday morning? Wake up at dawn and drink coffee with a cigarette.

What do they do on a Sunday afternoon? Drink a beer and woodwork.

What do they do on a Friday night? Drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, and woodwork.

What is the soft drink of choice? Sprite.

What is their alcoholic drink of choice? Neat whiskey or Yuengling.

Miscellaneous

What is their character archetype? (Innocent, Orphan, Hero, Caregiver, Explorer, Rebel, Lover, Creator, Jester, Sage, Magician, Ruler) Rebel.

Who is their hero? He doesn’t hold anyone living or dead in that high regard.

What or who would your character dress up as for Halloween? A pirate.

Are they comfortable with technology? No.

If they could save one person, who would it be? Noah.

If they could call one person for help, who would it be? Theo.

What is their favorite proverb?  “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

What is their greatest extravagance? Cigars.

What is their greatest regret? He’s dealt with his regret of not raising Noah.

What is their perception of redemption? It’s not easily earned.

What would they do if they won the lottery? Buy a ship of his own and retire.

What is their favorite fairytale? He doesn’t have one.

What fairytale do they hate? All of them.

Do they believe in happy endings? No.

What is their idea of perfect happiness? Living in a time where he doesn’t have to fight to exist.

What would they ask a fortune teller? What kind of person asks people to pay them to lie?

If your character could travel through time, where would they go? Maybe the future so he could be a space pirate.

What sport do they excel at? Boxing.

What sport do they suck at? Tennis.

If they could have a superpower, what would they choose? Super strength, of course.

@noahgraves @captaintheotulach @bernicehector

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