#— countenance ▸ am i giving you a hot flash? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 3 years ago

Note

more john price please. maybe reader is tongue pierced giving him sloppy head? 👀

"Haven't worn one in a while," you wink, cheeky and a little tipsy. Filled with liquid confidence in shades of amber malt that remind you of the taste on his tongue. You lean in close, agarwood tickling your nose. Eyes flash in a mockery of something demure, staid: lashes cresting, babydoll coy and saccharine sweet, over your glossy eyes in the way you know he likes. Your countenance might have been twee, virginal, but the words that seep from your lips are drenched in hedonism: sultry and sybaritic. "Do you like it, baby?"

⇾warnings: unfettered filth; gendered reader, gendered terminology, female!reader; oral—m!receiving; dom!Price; this is basically just price fucking your throat; reader has a tongue piercing ⇾notes: i am so sorry this took so long. no excuses—but life got away from me for a moment. this has the flavour of sugar daddy Price, and maybe kinda sorta might be a small drabble piece to my sugar!daddy Price fic(s). —i listened to a very specific set of lana songs for this.

"Oh, fuck, love—," his hips lift from the seat of the armchair, forcing more of his spit-slicked cock into your mouth, nearly gagging you. "That's it—just like that—"

You sputter, nose burning at the way he plugs your throat with the blunt, fleshy head of his cock. It bludgeons into the soft lining in the back, pressing taut against the gummy walls that flutter, flexing, around him. His hand is ironclad against your skull, keeping you pliant, open for him. Just for him—

It borders on too much, riding that hazy line between what you can take and what you can't. Your mettle is tested by each inch he forces inside of your esophagus, delicate flesh coloured a mosaic of blue and black as he splits you apart. Your eyes are drenched in tears running down your cheeks as his cock spears your throat, a brackish sea loch, turning you into nothing but a conduit for his pleasure. A receptacle for him.

Really, though: you have no one to blame but yourself.

When you first flicked your tongue out at him, a pretty titanium barbell catching in the soft light of the pub, you thought you broke him.

Knuckles blanched on the glass tucked inside his palm. The calm lake of his eyes rippled when you rolled the ball across your upper lip, frothing, gyre-intense, and arsenic white.

(It tasted like victory, then. Now it tastes of firth and sea spray.)

His voice was low when he spoke, a brassy rumble that barely fit through the grit of his teeth. "You didn't tell me about this, love."

"Haven't worn one in a while," you winked, cheeky and a little tipsy. Filled with liquid confidence in shades of amber malt that remind you of the taste on his tongue.

You lean in close, agarwood tickling your nose. Eyes flash in a mockery of something demure, staid: lashes cresting, babydoll coy and saccharine sweet, over your glossy eyes in the way you know he likes. Your countenance might have been twee, virginal, but the words that seep from your lips are drenched in hedonism: sultry and sybaritic.

"Do you like it, baby?"

His knee hits the underside of the table, the noise only just drowning out the groan that drags, crumpled and ruined, out of his throat. Heady chamois chokes the giggle from your chest when he looms over you, hand white-hot on the skin of your thigh, pushing up the hem of the pretty lace dress.

(The one he bought for you.)

You glance up, and the air is smothered out of your lungs. Intense, bonfire-bright.

"We're going home."

Fullstop. A command. No room for arguments. Not that you could make any with the heavy way he stares at you, eyes drifting to your gaping mouth where the metal surprise catches in the glow.

There is a click in your throat when you swallow, heart lurching in your chest. Your belly burns with the smoke from his cigar, and amber malt from his glass.

His thumb notches inside of your thigh. Danger close, as they say. You wonder if he can feel the dewiness staining your skin.

Price hums low in his throat–a rasping trill that makes you feel like you're a stripped wire. Flayed. Open. Raw.

His eyes are storm clouds over the sea: a thunderclap in the granite distance. He speaks, a rucked husk over smouldering sandalwood, and your spine tingles with the way his slurred accent curls over the words.

"And when we get there, love, I want you on your knees," his fingers press into the dampening gusset of your panties, eyes sapphire grey. "And we'll see how much I like it."

Which, of course, turned out to be a lot.

You pull back, gasping, and wrap your hand around the base of him where he pulses like a heartbeat in your palm. Teary eyes flicker up to him, lashes clumped together, watery from when he'd fisted your hair in his hand and pushed you down to the base. Yeah, take all of me, love.

His eyes glide to you, lidded and heavy. Price gazes down at you, lips pulled up in a wry smile as he watches you fall to pieces with just his cock buried deep in your throat.

In petulant retaliation, you drag the metal ball across his frenulum; a slow roll that makes his eyelids drop, head falling back with a grunt of liquid sin.

Suede fills your nose when his hand cups your jaw, thumb stroking the skin below your wet, glossy lip. You lap at his sensitive, flushed tip, eyes fluttering.

You can't get enough of the way he tastes—clean pine, wet skin, salt. You drink it down like you're parched for him. And you are. His taste rides the line of nicotine and power. It's stupid, really, but think you could stay on your knees for his man as long as he'll have you. Desperate in a selfless way: one that makes you want to hear his smoky growls, the grunts of pleasure, and bask in the briny tang of him in your mouth.

You pull back, dragging your hand up his aching flesh. Precum beads at the tip. Your mouth waters.

It's a feast: the way his thick, fat cock glistens from your spit, flushed vermillion; long veins throbbing under your fingers, pulsing through the velvet flesh. The flared, wet mushroom head. The bulge an inch below, a swollen slope that stretches you unexpectedly when he has you on your back, your knees; fat head shoved inside. Then the stretch, the burn, as he pushes the rest of his girth into you. Unending, all the way to the base. Price is stocky. Thick.

Your jaw aches already.

His stare burns when you meet it over the leaking tip of him, chin falling on his hairy thigh. Lachrymose eyes wide and wanting. An innocent whore.

(Just for him. Just the way he likes it.)

He groans when your tongue flicks out, lapping at the base of him, tongue ring rolling over his baby blue vein.

You breathe in the smell of him—musky, manly: weathered wood, wet earth; loam, humus—and feel your core pulse at the heady scent burning your nose, clotting in your lungs. Your eyes flutter, dimming at the intoxicating miasma of him making your head swim. Your head rolls, cheek flattening on his thigh. The coarse hair tickles your nose. You rub your skin against his, the warmth bleeding into your smarting cheeks.

His hand falls to your head, thumb brushing over your temple as you lick around the base of him, trailing just the tips of your fingers up and down his hard, twitching length. It's lazy compared to earlier, but you need a moment to breathe. To dilute the hypoxia in your head.

His hand is warm on your skin, like the thigh beneath your cheek. They smell of tobacco, smoke. Your eyes flicker up, catching his sapphire gaze.

It's a small lull: a moment when you just take him in, feeling the pulse of him under your hands. Gentle, despite the burn in your jaw from how wide you had to stretch it to fit him. The scratchy ache in your throat. It's hushed. His hips flex in your hands, cock bobbing and dribbling prespend as your whispered graze only just barely touches the velvet skin.

His fingers curl in your hair, eyes shaded in desire. He rasps low, a small breathless rumble spilling from his lips. "Better stop teasing me, love."

You roll the ring over your bruised lips. "What are you going to do about it?"

His eyes crease, tight around the corner. A little rumbling breath spilled from his lips. His chest sinks with his exhale. "You won't like to find out."

It's not a threat. Not really. It's a promise.

There is a slight pressure against your jaw. Your mouth parts, falls open under his wordless command.

"Good girl—," it's almost a snarl: ashy and brittle. "Keep your mouth open for me, yeah?"

He knocks your hand away from his cock, and curls his long, thick fingers over the girth.

You soak him in, breathing deeply so as to keep the tang of him inside of your lungs. A whimper falls when he grips himself tight, head blooming vermillion and spilling more milky precum. He holds it there, letting you watch the way his prespend dribbles down the hard length, gathering at the seal of his hand.

A huff leaves him when he sees your thighs rub together, eyes—dewy and lachrymose—fixed on the fat swell of him. The ticking veins running down the sides. Your saliva and his cum pool at the base, covering his heavy balls in the combined slick.

It's intense. Blisteringly hot. You want him inside of you, splitting you open, and making you take him all the way to the root. Deep, hard thrusts until you can feel them slap against the seal of your cunt pulled taut around the girth of him. You want him to fill you up until you can taste him in your throat, until your belly bulges with the heft, ballooning from the cum he pours into your womb.

You want him to use you. Fuck you stupid until you're swollen and full to near bursting—

The breath pops in your throat, sticking to your larynx when he pulls his cock down, the slick head dragging over your cheek. The noise he makes is caustic. It burns through you until you're gasping from the blue heat of him.

He drags his palm up his length until the head disappears through the seal of his hand. The sound it makes is slick, tacky. Your thighs press together, tighter, desperate, to stem the ache, teeth sinking into the flesh of your tongue until the metal ball scrapes across your gums.

Price looks at you for a moment, gaze softening in the flushed light of the lamp, and it's there you feel the throb in your belly start to thunder. You shift your knees, searching for friction, a little whimper spills out, quivering with longing.

Sprawled on the chair, trousers barely pushed down his thick thighs, and with his flushed, wet cock sitting fat and heavy in his palm, he looks like he was carved from smoke, and made just for you.

His beard twitches. The hand on your jaw tightens just a little. Just enough to bring you back into focus. Your eyes drop again. Obedient. Docile.

"Fuck," the word falls like the crack of a whip. He lifts the fat head of his cock from your tongue, and pushes it against the metal peaking through your flesh. Prespend drenches your upper lip as he rubs his cock over the piercing. "You suck my cock so good, love. You want it bad, don't you?"

You can't speak. Can't think—

The wet, heavy thud of his cock dropping over your mouth makes your eyes squeeze shut. A whimper drags out of your throat when he does it again, and again. His cock slaps over your panting mouth, stinging your flesh, and making your cunt ache.

"Please—," it's slurred around the weight of him pressing against your mouth. Your eyes open, find his. Pleading. Begging. The words tumble out, broken and needy, from your blistered lips. "Please, baby. I wanna choke on your cock—"

"Fucking hell, love—"

His cock slips over your lips, your ring, and he pushes it down your throat, until the head of his cock hits the gummy, slick wall at the back. You gag. Tears blur your eyes, leaking down the corners. It's not enough to choke you, but it makes your chest tighten, and your head swim. Black dots moult across your vision. Your hands grasp his knees, fingers digging into the rumbled fabric of his trousers. Ground yourself. Breathe through it. Easy, and steady.

Hypoxia isn't enough to stop you from getting his cock as deep into your throat as you can.

A briny purl slips out from his mouth when you gasp, tears soaking your cheeks.

His thumb brushes across your cheekbones, smearing the tears that steam down, and catching them on his rough skin. The touch is softer than it has any right to be with him drowning you in the precum that weeps from the tip, spilling down your throat. It's gentle, reverent. The starchy, warm pads of his fingers ask if you're okay if you can take more. Always so considerate.

Your eyes lift, bleary and gritty, and you find him through the haze of smoke billowing out from the end of his cigar.

There is a burn in the back of your neck, your jaw, but you breathe through the pain that licks at you, and hold his molten gaze, drenched in pleasure at the warm, wet give of your flesh. The pinch between his brow is full of euphoria, but it oscillates now with unease, with that cosseting veneer that makes his hands ease off your body, giving you distance. The very thing you don't want.

The sight of him—dressed in shades of smoke and tobacco—pools inside of you like a sickness, a fever. He's a rough cut of a man: guttural snarls and resonant growls of displeasure, of anger brimming in the furrow of his brow, but you'd never been touched with such reverent adoration before. The smeared sheen under your eyes, the deep rubescent flush to your cheeks, and the lost haze in your eyes, all make him shudder with barely constrained desire.

He's greedy for you. Hands always on your skin like an addict; desperate for one more pull. One more hit.

And yet—

Price doesn't take.

He gives you what you want, always: the searing heat of his hands, the bulk of his body, the brutal snap of his hips sending you into the throes of nirvana, his teeth digging into your neck when you offer it up so prettily for him. But rarely, rarely, does he give into that rapacious hunger that curls like fine smoke in the pits of his eyes.

You want him to break. Shatter. You want this man to fall apart in your arms, so you can reassemble him again. You want to be crushed under the weight of it with him until the end of him and the beginning of you is a blurry line. A pulverised puddle of sex and sin and the feel of your atoms stripped bare and congeal into one. To feel his flesh moulding to yours.

The softness in his alder eyes makes you melt, makes you mewl, unable to keep the gale from spilling out.

You want this. Want him. Want the hickory-scented ashes of his resolve in your hands. Calcined and charred. You want to tuck the smouldering husk of his propriety between your teeth until the charcoaled remains are ground out, and masticated with your effort. You'll see this gruff man shatter. Break.

Leaning forward, you flash him a look—that pretty one he likes with your lashes fanned over your eyes, half-mast and full of lust, desire for him—and flick your tongue out again, barbell catching in the ochre glow. His hand trembles when you seal your mouth around the thick of him, hollowing your cheeks as you slurp up the mess of prespend and saliva that covers his throbbing length.

He jerks in your hold, head falling back with a husk of pleasure. Ruin me, you think, molten tongue worshipping him. Wreck me.

He tastes of amber and salt when you swallow him down: heady and musky. You can't get enough of the way he wrenches you open like this, leaving you feeling like a raw wound, a livewire, with just his fat cock sliding down your throat.

Fingers dig into the back of your head as he cants his hips up, thrusting inside the warm, wet cavern of your mouth. Your nose is stuffed, the scent of him clogs the air around you. You can't breathe, but despite the black dots in your vision, you stay put, gasping for air when he allows it.

It edges into discomfort, but you fight through the strain in your jaw, and take him deeper, and deeper. You don't stop until his knuckles press against your nose, until you can feel his hand slipping away from the base, giving you more room. The coarse, auburn hair tickles your lip. You slide down further, tongue flat against the underside of him, and the blunt nudge of his weeping cock battering against the soft walls of your throat makes you gag, makes you choke.

You sputter, tears running down your aching cheeks in an unstoppable deluge. Your nose burns, stings, when you breathe in. You cough around him, and he grunts at the way your muscles spasm, squeezing him tight.

You pull back off the length of him, swallowing thickly. The ragged gasps you take do little to abate the burn in your lungs.

Tears blur your vision, but you force yourself to open your bleary eyes, staring up at him through damp, clumped lashes. As your sight slowly focuses, the image of him leaning back on the chair, teeth grinding together is enough to make you dizzy.

It's the expression of euphoria that etches itself into the furrow of his brow, the curl of his lips—bared, snarling at the feel of your mouth—and the dangerous narrowing of his eyes that makes you whimper, makes you shake. White-hot pleasure spumes inside of you.

You want more. Everything.

Your fingers curl around the base of him, little finger nestled in the wry bed of hair. He throbs in your clutch; a glob of prespend breaks free from the puddle pooling on his engorged, mushroomed head, and slides down the length of him.

It makes your mouth water. It feels a little bit like battling the ferocity of a Chinook. Chafed cheeks, stinging lips all covered with the slickness of your efforts.

You must wear it on your expression, then. Price looks down, and groans, his cock jerking in your hold. His mouth falls open a touch, a huff of pleasure slipping through the seam.

You shuffle forward, knees aching, and place your tongue against the swell of his cock beneath the slow glide of his prespend trailing down. It drips down, and you catch it, smearing the pearlescent bead over the soft, fleshy tip. The muscles in his thighs twitch when you lift your chin, showing him the droplet gathered there.

"Bloody fucking hell—"

You don't wait for him to continue. You want him broken.

He groans as the gluey, wet walls of your mouth surround him, slurping up the excess saliva that pools in your throat, spilling down your chin. You nearly choke on him, then, when his hips jerk as you lave your tongue across the head of his cock, pressing the bead of your tongue ring into his frenulum again.

His smell envelopes you. Heady and rich. A potent cocktail of salt, smoke, and cured wood that liquefies your self-control.

Price's hips lift, more of his cock slips down your throat. You tremble when his hand threads through the loose strands of your hair, fingers curling around the locks until he has a fistful gathered at the base of your skull. You know what's coming. Know, even before his hand tightens, and the lash of pain makes your cunt throb.

It's when you look up at him through misty eyes, lidded and sticky, that he finally crumbles.

The sound he lets out makes you shiver. A moan cut by the jagged end of a broken bottle; husky and molasses heavy.

You moan around him again, unabashed, and taken by the sensation of having him fuck your face in shallow, pointed thrusts. His hand tightens in your hair, pilling your pliant mouth closer.

You love it. The taste, the smell. The inexorable feeling of him using you however he pleases, unleashing something dark and primal that curls around you, wrenched up from the hypoxia of having his cock spear through your esophagus.

There is barely time to brace yourself before his hips buck into you, forcing his cock deeper. The force of his brutal, shallow thrust makes his balls slap across your chin. The forceful gait of his hips increases until he's pounding your throat, groaning deep in his chest.

The noises he makes barely sound human. They drip molten sin, and burn your flesh when he leans over you, eyes sparkling embers in the soft light of the room.

He stops when you gag around him, hands pressed flat against his thighs.

"It's good, isn't it?" he husks, eyes tightening when your throat spasms around him, fluttering. Another grunt when you moan, a weak whimper that vibrates over him. He pulls you back, head tipping back with another rasp of pleasure. You squeeze your thighs together to stem the ache.

Misty-eyed, you stare, transfixed, at the strain in his pale neck: skin pulled taut, veins bulging through his flesh. His Adam's apple rises and falls like a buoy in the middle of a turbulent ocean with each harsh swallow. His cock grinds against your gummy flesh, and you wonder, distantly, if you'd even be able to speak tomorrow.

"Gonna cum—," it's rucked out of him, hissed low: the sizzle of a cigar on dry flesh. Your cunt throbs, jaw twinges with pain. Spit runs down your chin in rivets, pooling over your bare breasts. You feel battered, and bruised: throat raw and aching. But there is something intense about it, about the way he looks at you, now. The way he handles you. This, you think—thoughts a wisp in the static of your pounding head—and seeped in delirium, is him taking.

His eyes lift. Sapphire shatters; a crack, a crevasse, a fissure split down the middle. Black pools, desire-thick, and covetous.

Price's mouth drops: the breath that spills from his lips is drenched in bliss. The hand in your hair tightens, fingers knotting through your locks until your skull stings, and tears leak from your babydoll eyes. A torrent down roseate cheeks.

Broken cerulean falls, catches the cascade of them dripping on the swell of your flushed chest. His feet shift, thighs tensing under your hands, and then he lifts his hips again, sinking his cock all the way to the back of your throat. It's controlled, measured. Inch by inch until he's smothering your nose in the wry bed of auburn that scratches your wet nose. The heady scent of him is intoxicating. Your head swims, dizzy and burning at the sun-warmed moss and rain-soaked granite that clots, congeals around you.

"That's it," he slurs, eyes fixed on you. They tighten around the edges, eclipsed blue: the ocean at night, but his stare doesn't waver from the mess of you over his lap. Pleading, begging. Your gaze turns desperate. "Take it all."

Liquid pleasure blooms in your core. Your cunt aches at his timbre: a cauterised wound; the hiss of a raging fire doused in water. The muffled whimper you let out makes him twitch against your larynx; a hushed groan falls from his lips.

He pulses like a heartbeat when he cums; molten liquid spurting down your throat with each rumbling groan he lets out. He holds you there for a moment before slowly, deliberately, pulling your head back until the tip of his cock rests on your tongue, the slit perched against the barbell. He drenches the piercing in the last mouthful that spits out, eyes sharpening at the sight of it covered in his milky cum.

You know better than to swallow it. Not until you're told. You hold it on your tongue, tastebuds overwhelmed by the salty, ozonic thunderhead tang. You keep it there, in your mouth, like a good girl. Like his good girl, and wait for him to catch his breath. For his eyes to clear from the sea mist that clouds them. It's liquid bliss in shades of blue and sea foam.

His eyes crease, heavy and lidded in pleasure. Pride rears in his languid expression. Good girl lingers in the crevasse you wrought. You shiver, spilling a dollop of his briny release down your chin.

Price cocks his head, eyes hooded. His thumb catches the drop, staining his skin milky pearlescent.

His voice is a smoky purr when he speaks. It makes tremble, flesh fever-hot, at the stormcloud grey in his gaze.

"Any more secrets you'd like to share, love?"

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need-a-fugue · 5 years ago

Text

Little Bird

Summary: A nice leisurely morning in your husband’s arms is exactly what you need right now. But feeling warm and safe can cause secrets and doubts to spill so easily…

Author’s note: For the Flex Your Muscles Writing Challenge from @captain-rogers-beard (6/18). This prompt sparked a little something-something… I’ve been struggling on piecing together a story I’ve been working on for a bit, and this scene just tumbled right out thanks to one lovely, little word… Leisurely.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: all pretty tame, just some sweetness and angst

Word count: 2K

Mornings had been rough lately, streams of light from the rising sun peeking through the window long before your tired body is ready to greet the day, the brilliant orange hues setting your stomach to clench and roil in bitter anticipation. Most days, you roll out of bed with a slow groan, hoping to make it to the bathroom before the full force of nausea hits, only to end up racing in a flourish the moment you leave the small air conditioned bedroom, the Wakandan heat prickling your senses to make this sickness that much more unbearable.

A typical morning meant violently emptying your stomach into the toilet down the hall, your husband at your back – only half awake himself – holding your hair and trailing a gentle, cooling touch down the back of your neck with his blissfully cold vibranium fingertips.

But today, for the first time in weeks, the swiftly rising sun seemed to herald little more than a slow and languid wakening, you and Bucky both stirring and stretching and shifting, leisurely curling round one another, just as you had before this new phase of life began.

For an hour or more, you’d been – gratefully, blessedly – slipping in and out of that splendid sort of sleep that only early mornings can bestow… the kind that had been eluding you for so damn long now. Bucky feels it too, the serene pull of respite that you both know is about to become increasingly rare, a new disruption to your life lingering on the horizon.

But today, there’s no disruption at all. No rush to rise – I’ll take care of the goats later, he whispers into your ear before sliding his way down the sheets – and no sickness churning within.

Today is… easy.

The smallest, softest sigh slips past your lips as you shift your hips beneath him. “You’re spending an awful lot of time down there,” you mutter, voice slow and deep with near sleep.

Bucky tugs you closer, right hand splayed over your hip, thumb tracing delicately along the tender flesh of your abdomen, and he looks up, propping his chin on your middle as he aims those dazzling blue eyes your way. “Never heard you complain about me hanging out down here before,” he intones lightly, wiggling his eyebrows before lowering his lips to your stomach.

“Stop it,” you laugh, squirming beneath him, sliding far enough down the bed that the back of your head flops off of the pillow entirely. “Tickles,” comes out in a barely there murmur as your fingers move down to thread idly through his thick, wavy hair.

He turns his head, laying his cheek once again atop your still-flat abdomen, staring up at you in a way that could only be described as utterly adoring. “I love you,” he announces, exhaling the words just as easily as if they were air.

The corner of your mouth quirks up, a single brow following it in an incredulous raise. “Are you sure it’s me that you love? Because I don’t feel like you’re really paying much attention to me at all.”

His face twists, forehead crinkling. “She is you,” he says plainly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

You let out a small groan, hips twisting a bit again before his hands settle you back into the sheets, holding you in place.

“Stop distracting me,” he tells you, tone chiding, but eyes gleaming as he presses himself closer, head angling a bit at your center. “I’m trying to listen to my baby girl.”

“Yeah, sure,” you sigh out dramatically. “I’ll bet she’s talking up a storm. She’s the size of a freakin’ kumquat.”

“I don't even know what that is,” he murmurs, completely unfazed.

You give him a playful shove, the heat from his body starting to get to you, sheets sticking to your naked thighs. “It’s a fruit. And much like your baby girl,” you mutter with a harrumph, “it doesn’t speak.”

He rolls his eyes and lets out an almost irritated sigh. “I’m listening to her move,” he tells you, an air of absolute duh coating the statement.

You give his hair a short tug. “You are not.”

“Am too,” he argues, raising a brow – but never moving his ear from your center. “Super hearing, remember?”

Now you’re the one to roll your eyes, shifting again, eager to move, annoyance at being held prisoner in your own bed beginning to swell. “It’s probably just her heartbeat.”

He raises his head and gives you a disappointed look. “I know what her heartbeat sounds like,” he says blandly before lowering himself back down. “Thrums like crazy. Like you when you try to run.”

Another light shove. “What do you mean try to run? Is that a crack about my perfectly acceptable human speed? Because I will have you know – ”

“You used to run cross-country,” he interrupts blithely. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

A slight frown tugs at your lips, your stare focusing on the ceiling above for a long, silent moment before you pull yourself up onto your elbows. Looking down at him – so content and relaxed as he rests with his head against your middle – you almost scowl at his ease, your brows tugging tightly together. “You can really hear her move?”

The widest, brightest smile flashes – along with a light laugh as he takes note of the concern belying your crumpled countenance. “Yeah. Does that freak you out?”

“Kinda,” slips out, almost a whisper, as you nervously pull your bottom lip in between your teeth. He issues another short chuckle, and you flop back to the bed. “Reminds me of Alien,” you say, throwing your forearm dramatically over your eyes. “Like I don’t have enough nightmares already.”

Bucky pulls away from your belly and slowly sidles up alongside you, his right hand raking up beneath your loose T-shirt and along your ribs as he goes. “Oh?” he murmurs into your neck, both arms wrapping around your torso as he snuggles in close. A chaste but lingering kiss is pressed to your warm skin, the slightest hint of vanilla – a taste, a smell – hitting his senses, enduring on his lips as he pulls away. “Why you having nightmares, baby?”

“I’m… stressed,” you tell him weakly, still hiding beneath your arm.

He pulls back a bit and lets out a languid sigh, reaches out and tenderly runs the pad of his flesh thumb over your dramatically pouting bottom lip. “Don’t want that,” he says with a frown of his own.

You shake your head and huff out a breath, finally pull your arm away and turn onto your side to gaze somberly at him. Your left hand falls to his cheek, heavily stubbled, the beard coming and going seemingly on a whim. Though you know the truth, his ongoing scheme to alternately annoy you with whiskered kisses and then delight you with long-awaited clean-shaven snuggles an ill-kept secret at best. You stroke your thumb down the length of his face, bringing it to rest in the divot of his chin. Your eyes fall down to stare briefly at the oh-so-familiar dimple, a soft sigh of a declaration tumbling out of you. “I hope she gets this.”

He shifts beside you, drawing your eyes back up to his, to see them narrow with concern. “Why are you stressed, baby?” he asks simply. As though there might actually be a simple response.

You shrug, gaze falling into the small space between you. Outside, the sun has fully risen, the sounds of chirping birds and naying goats filtering in through the half-open window. One of the cats jumps onto the bed, begins rubbing around your ankles, purring thickly.

Bucky gives you a tiny jostle with his vibranium hand, cupped low around your hip. “What have you been dreaming about?” he tries instead.

Another shrug, though this time you swallow thickly and tick your eyes up to meet his. “They’re just… they’ve been… I don’t know… weird. Not nightmares, really. Just… I don’t know.”

“Okay,” he issues out with a curious lilt. “What happens in them?”

You lick your lips, eyes darting away briefly, crease deepening in your forehead as you think. Think of what to say. Of how to explain. “Sometimes… I see her,” you murmur finally, the words sounding uncertain, almost iniquitous, even to your own ears. “As a baby. As a little girl.” You shift uncomfortably, letting out a small, agitated groan. And he tightens his hold on you, brings his flesh hand up to stroke soothing lines down your back.

“You see her?” he asks, a bit hesitant. “Our baby?”

You nod into him, ducking your face and burying it in the crook of his neck. “It’s never anything… bad. Never really anything at all. I’m rocking her at night. Or… I’m watching her color at a table. Or…” Your voice fades off into nothing, other words… other dreams sitting low in your throat, clamoring to rise as you effortfully swallow them back down.

“Sounds nice,” he offers simply, the heat from his breath – from his body, so close – setting your nerve endings aflame.

You shake your head, still choking on the truth. A deep tremble builds within your chest, spills out to quake Bucky’s gripping arms. “It doesn’t feel nice.” Your tired eyes blink shut, a barrage of simple, serene images playing on the backs of your lids. Simple, yet… “It’s like… there’s nothing wrong… nothing I can see. But…” You pull back just a bit, open hooded eyes to stare helplessly up at him. “It all feels… wrong.”

He’s silent for a long moment as he watches you closely, thinks on what to say. A single thumb begins to stroke along your shoulder blade, his hand beneath your shirt feeling sticky and hot, and… unwelcome. You twitch awkwardly, his thumb stilling as a soft sigh spills from his chest. “Just nerves,” he mutters then, no intonation of a question, but a lack of surety all the same. Another sigh falls as he tucks you in close, peeling his sweaty hand from your skin and instead draping his arm heavily over your hip. “I’m scared too,” he breathes into your hair, laying a lingering kiss to your crown. “Scared I’ll screw something up. Scared I might… hurt her.”

You shift in his grasp, head shaking fluidly back and forth. “You wouldn’t. You won’t.”

He rests his chin in your hair, reaches up to begin again the slow, soft stroke up and down your spine. “It’ll be okay, baby,” he whispers, the oft-repeated words laying out promises even he knows are brittle and frail. “It’ll all be okay.”

The anxious worry – the tattered fear – that sloughs off of him, sounding in his voice, pulsating through his fingertips, is enough to make you wish you hadn’t said a word. You shake your head again, an attempt to rid your mind of the building thoughts… the budding what ifs that these odd and portending dreams had been causing to ripple through your subconscious mind for so many days… nights.

But now it’s morning, so different from the night, when all your doubts come out to play. Sleep. Lazy, languid, sunrise sleep feeling like a warm and welcoming breeze blowing across your still-trembling body. The promise of sleep – light and airy and dreamless – seems but a breath away as you lay here… you and your baby both laying here in Bucky’s arms. Safe, if only for today.

“What does she sound like?” you ask, voice light, an almost forced optimism rushing through it.

A crooked smile blooms across his face as he presses another soft kiss into your hair. “Sounds like… a little flutter.”

“Hm,” you breathe out, eyes drifting shut, nothing but a tranquil, faded image of the partially open window playing on your lids. “Like a little bird?”

“Yeah, baby,” he whispers, tugging you close as your breathing begins to deepen, body growing heavy in his grip. “Just like a little bird.”

#bucky barnes x reader #flex your writing muscles challenge #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky imagine #bucky barnes imagine #marvel fanfic #avengers fanfiction #writing challenge

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justjessame · 4 years ago

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Glorious, Before the Burden - The Light ~ 12

“-and then -” meant Loki fully intended to put me through my paces - over and over, until I once again collapsed into my chair for the next meal. Forced to sip and NOT gulp down the goblet he filled for me, reminding myself that I wasn’t a common wench after all, even as I wondered if cutting all my hair off at my scalp wouldn’t make it more bearable if I were to become a dagger wielding maniac.

“Don’t cut your hair,” he murmured, taking a drink from his own cup. My eyes flashed to his face and his shook his head. “You aren’t on task to become a member of my brother’s Warriors, Sigyn, the lessons are far more difficult than what you’ll be dealt with normally.”

“Then why -” I sighed, wishing I could strip to my undergarments, or something less heavy than this damn gown I had to wear. Anything that would give me less pain and suffering during my forced tutoring in the combative arts that Loki was insistent upon teaching me.

His soft laughter told me he was reading me like a book again. “I won’t stop you if you want to lose a few layers,” I couldn’t hold back my eye roll. “It might make the lessons more entertaining for both of us.”

I’d finally had my fill of drink, so putting down my cup, I studied him. “I was under the impression that you enjoy putting me through this -” what would be the best word for it, “rhythmless dance. You always have a smirk on your face, my prince.”

“Do I?” Loki was finding the offerings of our meal quite fascinating. “How strange,” light blue gaze flicking back to me, I swore they were twinkling with mirth. “I’ve been so focused on making certain you don’t end up filleted by an unexpected attacker that I haven’t noticed.”

“How altruistic of you, my prince.” Taking a bite out of my own food, I had to admit, it tasted far better after the exercise and I must have made an appreciative sound because his jaw clenched again.

Loki ran me through the dance patterns that included sharp objects until the light of day started dipping below the horizon. I refused to plead with him for a break or an end, knowing now that he expected it of me - I went until he said we were finished for the day.

“So soon?” I was panting, my hair was damp from the fruits of my labor, and my face was flushed and hot. He, on the contrary, looked as if he had only just begun. It wasn’t fair, or was it? Since he’d been taught the same tactics since he was a child.

Smiling at the cobbles that made up the balcony, Loki shook his head. “Your mouth will get you in far more trouble than any other part of you,” his smile held, as his head rose to look into my face. “I would have laid odds on -” A huff of breath and a harsh chuckle, but he didn’t finish - I wanted to know what he would have bet on being more the cause of my troubles.

“What?” My head tilted, biting my lip, I waited for him to tell me.

“I should take you back to your rooms, so you can sneak out to the gardens, where I’ll be waiting -” another sigh. “We have a routine to uphold.”

“I promised I wouldn’t,” I reminded him, chagrined that he didn’t trust my word. “You asked and I gave my word.” Our gazes were locked and I sighed. “You don’t trust me.”

“You weren’t supposed to -” I stopped him with a raised hand.

“You said that once I knew how to handle myself with one of these,” holding up one of the knives we’d been training with I shook it. “I could go ANYWHERE ALONE.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I stopped him. “Trust goes both ways, Loki. You told me one thing, and then you showed up and -” I stopped, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t plan on going to the gardens alone - if I want to go, I’ll ask you to accompany me, or -” I stopped. “How DO you know that I’m going there?”

The look on his face showed an expression of a person who had hoped that I wouldn’t hone in on that one question. “Sigyn,” he took a deep breath and appeared to be trying to find the right words - silver tongue failing him for once. “I told you that when you wanted me to leave -”

“Yes, that’s when you were in the garden and so was I, but HOW did you know to come in the first place, Loki?” How, unless he’d been watching me all these years?

“You have to understand,” I wanted to, it’s why I asked. “It’s not something I asked for - or something I -” He stopped again, taking another deep breath. “The first time you came here, with your parents?” Frigga had said - I shut my eyes and it came back to me -

“I wasn’t the only member of my family who noticed your glow, Sigyn.”

“She was talking about you,” it came out hushed, before he could say anything else. My eyes opened and he was staring at me trying to gauge my reaction, and I hoped he could because I was having trouble with it. “Frigga said I glowed.”

Loki nodded, licking his lips. “You still do, even when I’m nowhere near you.” He was keeping his distance, which I was thankful for, at least for the moment. “I can be here, in my rooms, and KNOW that you’re heading to the gardens alone. And I have to go - to be there to keep you safe.”

“I see,” I was trying to, at least. “What does this -” the air felt heavy and my gown weighed too much. “Am I missing anything else?”

He stared at me and I thought that he might want to say something, but he shook his head. “No, nothing else.” Liar, I thought, but it would come in time. “Let me walk you back to your rooms?”

Loki tucked my hand into his arm, reverting back to his charming self, and matched my pace as he walked me back to my rooms. We didn’t speak, lost in our own thoughts, my mind circling this new information - I hadn’t really considered which member of Frigga’s family she’d spoke of when she mentioned my first visit, perhaps Odin if I had put thought to it - but knowing she’d meant Loki left me confused by so much. Arriving too soon, I wasn’t ready for the day to be over, but I wasn’t sure how to draw it out without insisting on a visit to the gardens and after - I couldn’t.

“Our trip to Midgard -” latching onto the first topic that came to mind, I grasped it with both mental hands. His brow furrowed as he waited for me to ask whatever was the cause for my outburst. “Are we to pack for it, or will we be -”

Loki’s countenance cleared, and his smile returned. “Ah, yes.” Following me into my rooms, my wish for prolonging our day grew closer to coming true. “Pack lightly,” I watched as he settled in the window seat, which he claimed for his own. “Only those things which bring you serenity or security -” squinting at him in uncertainty, he chuckled. “Jewelry that has sentimental value, a favorite book -” ah, the dawning of understanding came over me. “We can grow our wardrobe upon arrival.”

“Is that wise?” I wasn’t challenging him, I was simply curious. Sitting upon my bed, I listened as he explained how often Midgardians changed their fashions, and how dependent it was also upon where we chose to journey and tour. “So we’ll arrive and then change our garment to suit our surroundings.” A curt nod showing I was catching on and his smirk gave me heart that I wasn’t a complete idiot. “And what will we do while we’re there?”

“Midgard has plenty of diversions, Sigyn,” his smile hinted at nostalgia for past visits. “And they constantly add to them.”

“Such as?” I wanted an idea of what to expect.

Loki sighed, but it didn’t sound like it came from a place of irritation. “If I tell you, then I’ll be robbed of your surprise when you see the sights for the first time.” Like a child who would be refused his favorite toy or trick, I had to smile. “Let me have that much, please?”

“You don’t trust my word, my prince,” I reminded him, eyes meeting the floor. “If I agree, you’ll only think that I do so to appease you for now - and expect -” I didn’t expect that cool, long finger of his to tip my chin up again, to force my face up to his. “You moved,” I accused.

“I did,” he agreed, not the least bit ashamed. “I want to trust you,” the sincerity was heavy in his words. “I do, but you have a propensity for doing what you want.”

“I won’t,” I promised, maintaining eye contact and instilling my words with the same genuine honesty that his held. “Not if you don’t wish me to, Loki.”

“You give me a great deal of power with that promise, Sigyn.” His thumb was tracing my lower lip again, the air went out of the room and everything was still and silent. “I hope I deserve it.”

#loki x sigyn #loki #loki series #sigyn #slow burn #eventual smut #alternate universe #bear with me

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this-forest-within-me · 4 years ago

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I write fanfic, and I’m actually really proud of it! I’ve been writing for many years, and have poetry accounts on Facebook and Instagram, but my main ambition has always been to write fiction novels.

Funnily enough, Robin Hood BBC gives me oodles of inspiration to do just that. This is a short story I wrote for my friend, Michelle, a huge Gisborne fan, for her Secret Santa gift. I hope you like it.

** It is aimed at Gisborne fans only - no outlaws are involved in the making of this **

Third Chances

The end was nigh. Sir Guy of Gisborne, once the Master-at-Arms and evil henchman to the Sheriff of Nottingham, black knight supreme, and killer of Lady Marian, his one true love, was dying. Stabbed by Vaisey, the sheriff himself, in a fight to the death, he lay on the ground in the tunnels beneath Nottingham Castle, and thought about the life he had lived. About the mistakes he had made, and the people he was leaving behind.

Robin Hood, formerly his sworn enemy and love rival but now his brother in arms, held Guy tightly as his breathing slowed, and then, the black knight was gone and Robin laid him gently on the ground.

He was left alone, his lifeless body, swathed in black leather, resting on the cold, stone floor, his black hair fanned around his head. And, when the castle exploded above him, he didn't notice a thing.

***

Two days later, after a full day and night of torrential rain which had doused the raging fire in the castle, leaving a smouldering, blackened pile of stone, the salvage team was sent in. Made up of various villagers from Nottinghamshire, as well as bounty hunters from further afield, their main aim was to recover bodies, along with any valuables that hadn't been destroyed in the explosion, caused by Robin Hood's final arrow, aflame, hitting a barrel of Byzantine Greek fire.

There wasn't much hope for survivors. The Byzantine fire had decimated the castle keep, and there was barely anything left of the imposing fortress. Only rubble and death.

Michelle of Clun was part of a small team who had been sent below the castle, into the secret tunnels that had connected the castle to Sherwood Forest. Unused for many years, they had recently been the scene of a bloodthirsty battle between Isabella of Gisborne and Vaisey, former Sheriffs of Nottingham, and Guy of Gisborne and Robin Hood. The battle, that had been coming for many months, had ended with the death of everyone involved, apart from Archer, the illegitimate brother of both Gisborne and Hood, who now lived in the forest with Robin's outlaw gang.

All that should remain in the tunnels below the castle was the body of Gisborne, which Archer had requested be removed and receive a Christian burial.

Michelle felt a degree of melancholy as she descended into the tunnels depths. Although she hadn't known the imposing black knight in person, she had seen him around, and had admired his dark good looks from a distance. She had also sensed the yearning deep in his soul, for it mirrored her own.

She wasn't looking forward to seeing such a great man reduced to nothing more than a corpse, but the pay for salvaging was handsome, and she needed the money. It had been a difficult year. She only hoped that the sight of Guy of Gisborne's body wouldn't make her openly cry.

There was rubble all around, and, as Michelle and her compatriots scanned the area, she worried that they would not find a body in one piece. Setting out alone, she moved further into the cellar, coughing a little as she disturbed piles of dust. Holding her lantern above her head, she glimpsed a flash ahead of her and recognised the muted shine of a leather-clad arm, and a motionless hand. As she drew closer, she realised a wooden beam had fallen diagonally, wedging itself between the ground and the ceiling, and causing the rubble above it to pile onto the wooden beam. Beneath it lay Gisborne's body, protected.

Michelle called out to her workmates and fell to her knees beside the body. In repose, Guy's face was pale and austere, beautifully handsome. His leather jacket was a bloodied mess, and she tried not to look too closely. She felt a pang of loss. Although she had never even spoken to him, he had felt like a kindred spirit, yet his life had been snuffed out so early. Before she had even had chance to say hello.

She reached out a gentle hand to brush the dust from his face, and it barely registered that he was still warm before his bloodshot eyes snapped open, staring at her uncomprehendingly.

She shrieked, and Denton, one of the other salvagers, reached her first, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"Michelle, are you alright?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "It's Gisborne. He— he's alive."

The rest of the gang joined them, and Guy was briefly and inexpertly examined. He was alive, but in a bad way. He had lost a lot of blood, and his wound was deep and jagged. It was unlikely that he would survive, but Michelle was suddenly galvanised into action.

They fashioned a makeshift stretcher and lifted Guy onto it. He cried out in pain, but his words were delirious and made little sense. There was no room to take him to the upper levels of the castle, so it was agreed that he would be transported further along the tunnel and into the forest. From there, Michelle intended to take him to her home nearby, where she would call for the wise-woman, Matilda.

***

It took a while to manoeuvre their way out of the tunnels, but, eventually, they reached Michelle's modest cottage in the village of Clun. They laid the knight out on her mattress.

"What will you do with 'im, Michelle?" Rose, one of the other salvagers, asked, and Michelle shrugged.

"I don't yet know, but I have to try to save him," she replied.

"Just be careful, Michelle," Denton warned. "He was never a nice man. I'd hate for yer to get hurt."

They left to return to the castle, and Michelle covered Guy with fleeces and ran as fast as she could to Matilda's forest dwelling. The wise-woman was tending to her herb garden, yet gathered her things together and followed Michelle, sensing the urgency in her friend's words.

Once in Michelle's cottage, she stopped and stared at the figure on the bed.

"My dear, dear 'Chelle. Why are yer wasting yer time on this scoundrel? I reckon 'e deserves to die, more so than my poor Robin did."

"Maybe so," Michelle replied. "But he's alive, and I can't allow him to suffer."

Matilda shrugged. "Very well. We will need hot water, and rags. Oh, an' a sharp knife so I can remove these leathers. I need to get to the wound," she added to a wide-eyed Michelle.

Matilda worked long into the day, removing Guy's clothes, cleaning the deep wound, and stitching it. Guy cried out in delirium and stared about him, although he never saw them. He muttered to himself and shouted, speaking to Robin and Marian and Archer, crying for his mother. Michelle did her best to hold him down while Matilda worked on the wound, and it wasn't difficult for he was very weak.

Once the wound was sewn and covered, they attempted to feed him with broth. He took a little and drank deeply when offered water. Matilda added something to the cup, and, eventually, he slept.

Michelle stayed with him almost constantly. His sleep was restless, and his skin burned with fever. He called out constantly, and pawed at the bandages. Sometimes, he cried, speaking Marian's name, begging for her forgiveness. Other times, he shouted for his mother, his voice forlorn and lost. Michelle tended to him, cleaning him constantly, and ensuring he was comfortable. She slept in short intervals, alert to Guy's needs, always on hand to serve him. She was exhausted, but the desire to nurse the knight back to health was paramount. He deserved a second chance; everybody deserved a second chance. Even a third chance.

On the seventh day, Guy's fever broke, and the knight slept peacefully, at long last. Exhausted yet pleased, Michelle pulled blankets around herself and curled up by the fire, falling into a deep sleep.

When she finally awoke, she had no idea where she was. She was facing the stone hearth, and her slumber had been so deep that she was, for a moment, confused. But then, it all came flooding back; entering the castle ruins, finding Guy's body, bringing him home, and nursing him through the worst of his fever.

She rubbed her eyes, sleepily, and stretched. Behind her, the mattress creaked and a tentative voice broke the silence.

"My— my lady. Please tell me where I am and why I am here."

With a gasp, Michelle whipped round, clutching the blankets beneath her chin. Guy was awake, watching her in bewilderment. His gaze softened as he regarded her startled countenance.

"I don't mean to alarm you. But," he looked around the cottage. "I have no recollection of getting here. What happened? And why am I," he looked downwards, appearing embarrassed. "Why am I naked?"

Michelle blushed and scrambled to her feet. It had been easier to keep him unclothed while she tended to his needs, including his bodily functions. She couldn't deny having admired his body while she worked, and she hoped it wasn't written all over her face.

"My lord," she stammered. "I apologise. I found you in the castle, close to death, and brought you to my home. You had been stabbed and everybody thought you were dead."

She watched the puzzlement on Guy's face turn to realisation as he recalled the events that had lead to him being stabbed. He looked stricken.

"Robin?"

Michelle shook her head, regretfully, and his expression fell. "What about Isabella? The Sheriff?"

"The castle exploded," Michelle explained, gently. "They both died."

A tumult of emotions passed over his features before they settled on grim satisfaction. He nodded, stonily. "They got what they deserved."

Unsure of how to reply, Michelle fell silent, and, after a short pause, he looked up at her, hopefully.

"I'm hungry and thirsty. Is there anything to eat?"

Glad of something to do, Michelle fetched him broth and cooled boiled water, and he drank both, greedily, and asked for seconds. Once he was full, he asked for clothing.

His leather outfit was ruined, having been cut off his body by Matilda, who had commented bawdily on his emerging body parts. Cringing slightly, Michelle told him that his former outfit was not suitable to wear anymore, and he shrugged.

"Leathers were the old me. I need something new."

Enthusiastically, she left him consuming more broth and ran to her neighbour's cottage. Robert was tall and built similarly to Guy, and he presented her with clothing suitable for the black knight. Returning to the cottage, Michelle found Guy sleeping again, and she lay the outfit, roughly-made leggings and a loose black tunic, out on the mattress beside him, before setting to work filling the water supply and collecting firewood.

He awoke much later and dressed, gratefully, before attempting to rise. He was too weak, though, and Michelle had to help him, wedging her shoulder under his armpit and guiding him outside so he could relieve himself. Although she turned away to preserve his dignity, he remained unembarrassed in her presence.

"I don't even know your name," he said to her, once they were back in the cottage, and he was eagerly spooning more broth into his mouth.

"It is Michelle," she said, shyly.

He nodded. "Of course. A beautiful name for a beautiful person."

"Oh, I don't know." Michelle avoided his eyes, directing her gaze at the floor, modestly, but he reached out to put a finger under her chin, raising her head until her eyes met his.

"I tell the truth," he said, softly, looking into her eyes. "I owe you my life. You have selflessly nursed me back to health, even though you didn't have to. I don't know how to repay you."

Michelle smiled, faintly. "I'm just glad that you are recovering, my lord."

"It is Guy," he told her, firmly. "You can call me Guy. I am no longer lord of anywhere."

"You will always be a lord to me, Guy." Michelle looked at him, unable to hide the adoration in her eyes, and he stroked a finger across her cheek.

Michelle could feel herself falling for the black knight, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Indeed, the longer he resided with her, the less effort she put into hiding it. She hoped against hope that he would eventually feel the same way, and sometimes, she thought that he did. It was in the way he watched her when he thought she didn't know, in the way his hand lingered on hers when she helped him to move about. It was in the way he spoke her name, like it was the most precious, exotic word he had ever uttered. Maybe he was just grateful to her, but Michelle hoped it was more, because she was mad about him.

The day that she was dreading finally arrived. Guy was finally well enough to return to his home in Locksley. His wound had almost healed, and she couldn't blame him for wanting to leave her small, humble abode for the opulence of Locksley Manor.

She could barely contain her grief as he prepared to leave. He seemed reluctant about something, and hadn't spoken for quite some time, which sent Michelle spiralling into a depressed silence. He had no need for her anymore; this was obvious.

She busied herself about the small cottage, attempting to convince herself that his leaving was for the best, and that she could get back to normality once he had gone, when suddenly, he was by her side.

"Michelle," he said, urgently, and she looked at him in surprise. Next minute, he took her in his arms and began to kiss her with a desperation that astonished her.

Sensing her reluctance to respond, he released her quickly and backed away. "I'm sorry. I overstepped the mark."

"No, no." Michelle reached out for him, then stopped herself. "You surprised me, is all. I didn't think you felt the same way."

"You mean, you have feelings for me?" It was Guy's turn to express surprise, and Michelle nodded.

A genuine smile spread across his face. "Then, may I kiss you again, my lady?"

"Yes, please," Michelle said.

A long while later, they parted and he smiled, taking her by the hand and leading her with him to Locksley. They paused on the edge of the village, looking across at Locksley Manor, Guy's former home. The outlaw gang were waiting in the courtyard, a shadow of their former self. Archer saw Guy and moved a few steps in their direction, a hand raised in greeting.

Autumn had Sherwood in its grasp, and the trees surrounding the small village blazed with russet and gold and brown, the ground coated with fallen leaves that crunched underfoot. Locksley was in mourning, for the great Robin Hood was dead, but, as Guy and Michelle walked through the village towards the manor house, hand-in-hand, Guy realised that not everything had to end in the fall, and that new beginnings were always there if you wished for them hard enough.

The end.

#guy of gisborne #sir guy of gisborne #richard armitage #robin hood bbc #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic writer #my fanfiction #fan fiction #fan fic author #alternative ending #secret santa

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funkymeihem-fiction · 5 years ago

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Honeydew Cha

(A 5k commission done for https://pandaioh.tumblr.com/ Thank you so much for your support!)

“Can’t believe this. Can’t even bloody believe this. Thought I was dating the smartest girl in the world, and here I come t’find out she doesn’t even know what ‘vacation’ means.” Junkrat wrinkled his nose, already smeared in sunscreen and dented by his oversized sunglasses. “Well here’s what it means, love. It means fucking off! We’ve fucked off from Overwatch and finally got time all to us here in Oz. It means we got weeks of leave for our very own pleasure, and we’re supposed to spend it drinking, rooting, or at the beach. It’s supposed to be those four things!”

“That’s three things,” Mei’s voice said from behind the changing screen.

“And here I am, ready for bonding at Bondi and this is how you do me! I’ve already got all our things- towels, blankets, umbrella, esky. Even got my trunks and hat and thong on—”

“Your what on?”

“My shoe, Mei! You know, pluggers, flip-flop shoes. I mean, with the peg I only have the one. Did you think I meant the other kind of thong? Because ‘strewth, I’ll go put one of those on too, if it’ll get you to come to the beach with me!”

“Please do not!” She made no move to come out from the screen and seemed unmoved by his fits. “Besides, I told you I wanted to do other things than just lounge at the beach all day. I got the idea when we were out walking the other night and I think this might be really good for me. And I think you’ll change your tune when I tell you the rest of my plans.”

“What’s to tell? You snuck out and got a bloody job while we’re on vacation at the shore! Got this nice vacay cabin all to ourselves, just steps away from the surf and sand, and you’re not gonna appreciate it. My very fave girl is on holiday with me, and she wants to spend it working?! And they say I’m the mad one?”

Her voice gained a sing-song quality, lilting in tone. “I still think you’re going to liiiiike it! Just give me one more moment and you’ll see.”

“Unless you’re coming out of there with surprise lacies on, I doubt I’m gonna—”

The screen shuffled aside and Junkrat squinted, suddenly unsure about things. Mei definitely was not wearing a brand new set of lingerie all for him, but what she was wearing was certainly enough to give him pause. He recognized it almost at once too: the green sweater vest and matching visor, the little ruffled yellow apron, the polka dot socks, the cheerful winking mascot…and those jean shorts that rode up so high on those nice wide thighs were certainly nothing to be ignored, he especially appreciated that particular part of her uniform. Her new job’s uniform.

“Honeydew Cha? You’re working at Honeydew Cha?” He lingered forward, rubbing at his chin and inspecting her. “Arright, love, you got me interested.”

“I told you!” She flashed him a little smirk. “And I know you might think it’s a little crazy to get a job while I’m on vacation, but… I think it might be good for me? I like spending time at the beach with you and Mr. Roadhog, I really do, but I want to do more than just linger around on the sand all day. I think I want to meet people and talk to everyone and learn new things and…” She suddenly faltered, gaze downcast. “And I used to be a tea waitress back while I was still studying. I remember it being really fun? And then I graduated and went away…and then I was…gone…nine years…”

Junkrat was already upon her, long arms wrapping about her new uniform and rumpling her nice green sweater as he nuzzled at her hair and snorted air into her ear with his pointed nose. She yelped aloud and pushed at him, but it had served to distract her. He plucked at her apron with his mechanical hand curiously. “Getting a job at all though? Is it because of money? I got cash to spare! Tell me what it is you need and I’ll get it! Whatever you want, darl!”

“It’s really not about money, honest. I just want to do something normal. I woke up and everything was so strange, and Overwatch was different and the world was different and the climate is getting worse and my friends are all in trouble and maybe it would be okay if I just did this for a little while and forgot about it all? I could serve tea and chat with customers and not worry about everything, and maybe I could feel like I used to, before everything happened. It’s just simple and nice. Like it could just be tapioca pearls and fruit poppers and people being happy drinking their tea and just being…normal. Does that make sense?”

“Nah,” he blurted out, before noticing her crestfallen expression. He frowned, chin jutting as he tilted his head to rest atop her visor. “I mean! Uh, I guess I dunno what all that’s like. But if that’s what ya wanna do? ‘Course I’m not gonna stop you from working. Just don’t understand why you wanna spend your vacation at work.”

“I like working. I think this will be fun. And this is just a little seasonal part-time sort of thing, just to help the shop for the big holiday vacationer rush. I saw the Help Wanted ad and the owner seemed really grateful for the extra hand. Plus…” She rolled onto the balls of her feet, folding her arms behind her and staring upward coyly. “I mean, if you don’t want me using the Honeydew Cha employee discount…?”

Rat gave her an affronted look before snickering aloud. “You trying to bribe me with free boba, you little tart?”

“Milk tea, half sweet, extra pearls! Just how you like it?”

“Huh. Tempting, tempting. Can I bring in my own container and fill ‘er up? Swear it, I’ll drink it straight out of a bucket. I mean, it would definitely not be the first time I’ve drank some stuff I found straight out of a bucket—”

“Ew, Jamie.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll try not t’let my feelings be hurt when I’m all by my lonesome at the beach. But I got conditions. One— you abuse the hell out of the free boba thing whenever we want. I’m talking Super Gulp American Size! Two— I get to fuck you in full honeydew uniform. With the pony and polka dot socks still on and everything.”

“That’s strange, but okay,” she said, pulling herself to the tips of her toes to kiss his chin. “But not right now, because I’m going in for my first shift! I’ll see you this evening, okay? And I’ll bring you a boba tea every night I work.”

“You better! You got a deal, darl!”

***

Serving boba tea and customer service was a lot different than how she remembered it. Maybe it was just being in Australia? Or had boba tea changed since then? Or had she just gotten older and everything really was just that different from however she remembered this job, from so many years ago. The customers seemed a little grumpier, the machines weren’t the ones she had learned to work, her co-workers were no longer the same age as her, and everything just seemed a little harder than what she’d thought.

She’d been at this little job at Honeydew Cha for a few weeks now, much to Junkrat’s irritation, but it was only for a few hours a day. He tended to lighten up a little when she placated him with a steady stream of all sorts of different tea flavors and treats every time he stopped by…and Roadhog hadn’t cared one way or the other, but she brought him entire bags of leftover pastries after the day was done and he always thanked her anyway. Even then, before each and every shift, Junkrat bothered her to drop everything and go to the beach with him.

But now their vacation time was dwindling and her side job was coming to a close anyway. At least she’d been able to help out the Honeydew Cha during its busiest season. There had been a steady stream of customers all afternoon as the temperature soared and overheated beach-goers ducked inside for air conditioning and cold drinks. Most of them had been quite pleasant, the Australian boardwalk crowd being so infamous for their laid-back attitudes and surf culture.

But there were always the outliers…

It was a group of six: five boys and a single girl, all in their teens or early twenties. None of them bore the mechanical limbs or robotic enhancements of the Outback’s junker clans, but something about their countenance made Mei just as wary of them. Their leader seemed to be the largest of them and was almost as tall as Junkrat himself, though built wider, with spiked black hair and a jacket despite the hot weather. The scraggly lone girl clung to him and giggled in his ear, whispering as he pulled out his wallet and counted out money for her tea. When Mei smiled at them and offered to take their order, the girl glared at her and pulled him closer.

They made their orders with no trouble and they paid, but Mei kept an eye on them all the same, as they loitered in one of the booths and talked and laughed too loudly. She could ignore them at first, but their conversation quickly turned crude and sexual in no time at all. Mei could do little but keep one ear out as she leaned down to check the syrup pumps and count their cups. As the group drained their boba and popped pearls between their teeth, things took a turn for the disgusting.

“Anyhow, that’s why I had to leave that party real fast. Turns out she had a boyfriend.”

“What, the scrag you went upstairs with? That was a fockin’ thing to walk in on. You going at it, with the fat one with the pockmarked arse?”

“Oi. Barely fatter than the ricer they got working the counter here, mate.”

Mei’s heart dropped, freezing mid-stack and staying very still for a moment. Her throat suddenly felt very tight, but she swallowed the feeling down and forced herself to move again, continuing to unpack the cups. So what if that group were being jerks over at that table. Jerks were temporary, and they’d be leaving soon. Those jerks. She just had to let it pass, and breathe, and ignore them…

The voices continued, and even though she knew she shouldn’t, Mei listened.

“She ain’t that bad for one. I’d fuck her. Nice big tits. Bigger tits than yours.”

“What the hell! Fuck you.”

“Ay, you’d fuck anything, mate. Even an omnic. Fuckin’ root rat.”

“Fuck off.”

“She’s prettier than the one at the slope shop on your road. Heh. Go ask her out on a date? Give her a tip and then give her the tip, ay! You can have kids that look like this.”

When Mei dared to peek through the little slit between the top and bottom counter, she already knew what she would see. Sure enough, the group were pulling their eyelids shut, pinching them upwards and making grotesque parodies of their faces. She felt her chest lurch again in a potent mixture of anger, sorrow, and even a tinge of pity. But how dare they! How dare they! She should march right over there and tell them off for being such bullies, for being so—

But could she risk it? The owner of the shop might get angry at her for antagonizing the customers, even the rude ones. And she had been having a nice time before that, just serving boba and treats like in the old days. She couldn’t let it get to her, no matter how awful they were being. Best to just wait them out until they left.

Unfortunately for her, they seemed to have no intention of leaving. They carried on, discussing loudly what sexual positions that they had planned for her and wondered as to her cup size. Mei did her best to stay out of sight, and wished she’d had Snowball and her endothermic blaster with her. That would shut them up, all right. Maybe if she built a new blaster very quickly out of the boba chiller in the back…?

“What about the other girl? The skinny ginger with the sunburn?” One of the boys wondered aloud.

Mei felt her temper flare anew, head jerking up to where said ‘sunburnt ginger’ was working unawares in front of a fruit slicing machine. That girl was one of her younger co-workers, still in her teens, a softspoken local who had admitted to Mei that she had hoped this job would help her get over her shyness. And now that group of boys was targeting her too.

“Wot, that one? Yeah, I seen her here before. No tits or arse on that one, though.”

“Wonder if she’s sunburnt all over? Heh.”

“You know what they say about gingers, mate? They say down th—”

CLACK.

She could ignore it when they targeted her, but she wasn’t about to let it happen to that girl or anyone else in her charge. Mei slammed the empty stack of cups onto the counter with a clatter, swinging open the little door as she went marching straight towards them as all heads turned her way. No matter her cheerfully goofy outfit with the frills and ruffles and polka dots, she descended on the group like a thunderstorm, her jaw set and her eyes narrowed.

“Tíng xiàlái! Excuse me but you need to stop this instant! These awful things you’re saying, you need to stop.” She tried to loom over them as best she could despite her height, little white gloves clenching into fists. “In fact, I think you need to leave! Right now!”

For a moment, silence reigned in the Honeydew Cha as every patient turned to watch the tiny woman in the bubble tea waitress uniform confront an entire pack of Aussie goons. Even the group seemed startled at first, though it rapidly changed to confusion, annoyance, and anger. The girl was the first to react, shooting her a sneering grin and urging the boys on as she wrapped her arms around the largest boy’s arm and shook him to action.

“Leave off, we haven’t done anything wrong! We don’t have to go anywhere!” she said.

The boy snorted and took another swig of his drink. “Dunno why you’re so worked up about what we said, none of it was that bad.”

“No! You need to leave the premises at once!” Mei said, pointing to the door. “If you have a problem, you can call our Honeydew Cha headquarters, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you. But you are not staying here after that. Leave!”

There was an answering array of snickers and insults, but when Mei narrowed her gaze and stared them down, they finally stirred and began to drag themselves upright. Muttering insults and shooting her nasty looks, they finally began to head to the door. Passing by the counter at the front, they headed for the exit…only for the girl to suddenly launch to the side, seizing the jar that had been set by the register. The jar had been decorated with post-it notes and drawings that Mei had made herself, with little cartoons of her yeti doodle thanking them for the tips.

With that day having been busier than ever, it was brimming with tips. Coins and bills filled it nearly to the brim where they simply hadn’t had the chance to empty it. Some of the coins went bouncing away as the girl slung it under one arm, laughed and gave her the finger, and then broke into a run as all the boys followed after her. In a sudden stampede, they nearly broke the door open as they fled.

“Hey!” Mei flung herself after them, but it was too late. She stumbled to a stop at the open door, yelling after them. “That’s our tip jar!”

Hoots and jeers answered her.

“What, you wanted us to leave!”

“Thanks for the tea, you chunky-arse cunt!”

“I got a tip for you right here!”

One of the boys made a very offensive gesture at her with both hands.

“Hey! Hey! You get back here this instant! You can’t—!” Mei lingered there in the open doorway, unable to continue. She wasn’t about to leave her younger cohorts alone in the shop, and without Snowball or her weapons to back her up, there was no way she could take on an entire group like them if things went south. She could only watch as her team’s hard-earned tips got further away in the hands of those goons, their laughter fading as they slowed to a walk, when they saw her unable to chase them. She bit her lip and sniffled, and had just started to close the door in abject defeat when a shadow fell across her.

“Oi! S’wrong, love? What’s going on?”

She whirled about, to where Junkrat suddenly stood above her. “Oh, Jamie! Those awful people just robbed us!! They made a mess and caused trouble and took the jar and they were…” Her expression fell. “They were saying very awful things…About us. About me.”

His face darkened, glancing up to where the group was laughing and walking away, the stolen jar still under one arm. Even if it wasn’t the jar that really concerned him. “You? Saying things ‘bout you? What kinda things?”

His suspicions were confirmed when Mei looked down, refusing to meet his gaze. “It was bad…I don’t want to repeat…”

“Oh yeah?” He asked, voice suddenly too airy. “Well, my tea can wait. Lemme just go see about that jar…and see if maybe I can’t get ‘em to rethink talking to you like that.” He started off, peg leg clacking, and made a strange gesture to Roadhog. The larger man only nodded and peeled off into the crowd, heading in the opposite direction.

Mei watched him go, leaning further and further out the door, still unable to follow. “Jamie, wait! Wait, don’t blow anyone up! Please! I-I’m fine, see! No matter what they said, I’m fine! We can make more tips! Jamie!”

But he was already gone.

***

The gang of goons turned a corner, still celebrating their victory as the girl passed the stolen tip jar to her boyfriend to start counting out. Wasn’t a bad take, especially since it had irked that Chinese lady so much. Heading down an alleyway, littered with dumpsters and bins from the nearby shops and restaurants, they began to talk over their plans for dinner. The tip jar would more than pay for all of them, after all.

Over the sound of their chattering, the clicking and clacking of a peg-legged gait sounded behind them. Junkrat, smiling maniacally as ever, had found and followed them. At a leisurely pace, he started tailing after them, giggling the entire way before finally hooting aloud for their attentions.

“Hey mates! How ya goin!”

The others were none too keen on his appearance, their leader lingering behind to scoff at him.

“The fuck’s a junker doing out here? Lost your way home to the landfill? Oi, need directions to the nearest bin?”

The entire group laughed, and Junkrat abruptly began shrilling his wild laugh along with them. Cackling like a hyena, he bent over and slapped at both his knees with a thud and a clank, before his head jerked upright, yellow eyes alight and lips stretching open in his mad grin. “Ahahaha! Good one, mates! Haha! A trash bin! Ya sure got me! Imagine! Hahaha! A junker and his bins!”

His laughter only rose in pitch and ferocity. They scowled at that, and their leader snorted and flicked a cigarette in his direction, turning to lead his lackeys off along the other length of alleyway. “Fockin’ junkers, ay, radiation-rotted in the brains. Dunno what this city’s comin’ to. C’mon, let’s go—”

“Now hold on, mates! Hold on!” Rat hobbled after them with his uneven limp. “C’mon, I appreciate a good sense of humor much as anyone. Heh, junkers belonging in the bin! Absolute classic. And…say, you know any other real good ones?”

“The fuck you w—”

“Ya know. Maybe about nice ladies working in boba shops, with a ponytail and glasses, Chinese accent? That sweet girl in the green uniform what you’ve had some real choice remarks about. That girl. My girl.” His grin tightened, teeth scraping so hard that they nearly sparked. “How about it! Ya had any real rippers about my girl? Ya wanna tell them to me right now?”

There was a long pause from the other group, glancing to one another before the leader finally snorted and went skulking down the alley more. “Ah, fuck off.”

“C’mon now, let’s all be mates! I just wanna know what you said to my Mei!” Rat said, still following them. “Just tell me what you said to her. And normally I got no qualms at all about taking money that’s just laying out there in perfectly good jars, but… Well y’see, that’s my girl’s money, right there. So you gotta give it back too.”

That made the whole group turn upon him, and several of the larger ones began to advance to back up their leader, standing until they were shoulder to shoulder. Junkrat found himself faced with an entire little crowd of bogans that were nearly as large as he was, and significantly more aggressive. Several of them were already reaching for the batons and knives he knew they were carrying. But still he didn’t back down, and his grin didn’t even waver as he faced them head-on.

“Now this is normally something that I don’t do, but because my girl’s involved and she’s a real sweet sort, I’m gonna give you a choice between easy way or hard way. Now the easy way is, you fucks are gonna go apologize to my girl first of all, and give back what you took from her. Easy squeezy! Or you can choose the hard w—”

The lead man moved, his hand launching out from his belt and holding a glint of metal. The knife slashed through the air, narrowly missing the junker’s lanky frame.

There was a blur of movement, followed by the sickening hollow crack of bone against bone. The top of Junkrat’s thick skull slammed full force into the man’s forehead, splitting skin and crunching cartilage as part of his nose dented inward, and took part of a socket with it. He staggered backward as the knife went spinning out of his grasp, stunned, eyes rolling in several directions before he collapsed against a nearby wall and clutched at his face with a shout. His mates surged forward to aid him, holding him up before he could fall any further.

“Hard way it is!” Rat reared up to his full height, blood trickling a sticky trail down along his grinning features, outlining his wild smile where every tooth was bared, yellow eyes alight. “You’re choosin’ to scrap with a junker?! Good choice, mates! Oi, Roadie! They chose the hard way!”

The other group had just begun to rally, their leader balling his fists and starting to square up with the lanky junker across from him, when there was a low rumble from the shadows at the other end of the alleyway. Amongst the piles of garbage and dumpsters, an immense shape turned its head and began to lift out of the background. The pig-masked behemoth loomed above them, one tree-trunk-thick arm uncurling with a viciously curved metal hook in his hand. Slowly advancing towards the scene, he let the sharpened tip drag along the wall, screeching and spitting sparks as it went.

Junkrat cackled from the other end of the chokepoint. With a metallic clatter, he slammed a fistful of grenades into the weapon he suddenly sported in one hand, aimed right at them. The group of hooligans found themselves penned in between the two junkers, one armed with explosives and the other…a veritable monster that was headed their way.

“Oi!” Still grinning and with his face covered in blood, Rat whistled jovially to catch their attention. “You still don’t wanna apologize to my girl? Then how ‘bout you make it up to her.”

“We didn’t mean nothing by it, ay!”

“Swear, it was nothing!”

“How we gonna—”

“SHUT!” Rat shrilled, lifting his grenade launcher as they shrank back. “You’re gonna drop your money and everything what you got…and if you don’t feel like droppin’ em, then my mate would be happy to uh, give you a sort of pat-down? And I gotta warn you, he’s got a reputation for playin’ a bit rough. Ain’t that right, Roadie?”

Roadhog rumbled dangerously, and the group shrunk into an ever-smaller circle. The girl was the first to crack, audibly starting to cry even as she upended her purse and began tossing her belongings onto the filthy ground. Among them was the crumpled bills from the shop’s tip jar. Following her lead, wallets and jewelry and credits and other bits and pieces began to shower down onto the pavement, and even their foul-tempered leader soon tossed his wallet and cards onto the ground before Hog’s spiked boots.

“That’s all of it, mate, swear.”

“We’re gonna go, we’re gonna go.”

“No harm, ay? We’ll fuck off.”

Junkrat’s gaze darted downward before he snorted aloud, nodding sharply to Roadhog before his blood-smeared grin eased and he cheerfully stepped to the side, waving them forward with his gun. “See! Glad we got all that sorted out. And if me and Roadie see you cunts lurking anywhere within boba’s reach of that shop, well… Let’s just say that Roadie’s got a real temper on him and I dunno if I’d be able to stop the big lug. In fact…seems he might be in a bit of a mood right now. Go on, then, start runnin’.”

They took their chance, bolting forward just as Roadhog’s gargantuan form suddenly broke into a run. Scraping his hook against the brick, he hurled the wicked metal thing forward in a rattle of chains, blurring forward just as the group scattered at the alley’s mouth and dispersed into all directions, their screams trailing after them. Silence soon returned to the little alleyway, and Hog took up his place guarding the entry while his younger partner began picking through the offerings left behind.

***

“Order number 342! Passionfruit Sunset, oolong milk tea, berry matcha!”

Mei didn’t have time to worry about that pack of hoodlums. It was just before closing now, with only a lingering handful of people waiting for the last orders and she had been so distracted by trying to keep up that she’d nearly been able to forget that group of awful people… Almost. She just had to focus on this last stretch before closing. The kitchen was splattered with syrups and flavorings, loose pearls rolled about the ground or burst under her feet, and she was starting to forget which flavors went with which colors.

“Taro milk tea and a lychee with peach poppers!” She started the blenders for the hundredth time that day, only pausing to try and slide the visor back up her sweaty forehead and adjust her crooked glasses. Her feet were staring to ache and her smile was starting to fade, but her crew was counting on her to see them through and she wasn’t about to let everyone down. Maybe she could try to refill the tip jar with her own money today, too? She couldn’t let them down…

No matter how tired she was, she immediately stood to attention when a familiar voice joined the throng of customer conversation. It was just one Australian accent among many, but the screeching tone of it, followed by the sudden movement of everyone away from the door heralded Rat’s entrance. He limped in with the telltale k-thud k-thud of his peg, and immediately sashayed right to the front of the (suddenly dispersed) line and threw down his bag and leaned on the top of the counter in his most roguish pose.

“Hey, babe! Gimme your biggest bucket of half-sweet, and then you can give me a full sweet, right here!” He tapped his cheek and leaned down as if for a kiss. “And then, you can give me a—”

“J-Jamison! Hi!” She interrupted just as he was about to make a lewd gesture, waving both hands before lowering her voice. ”Oh no, is that blood on your forehead? Please tell me you didn’t hurt anybody over a silly tip jar?”

He quickly wiped away the trickles of red that he’d missed earlier. “What do you take me for! Not to worry. Barely even a scratch, maybe a bruise or two. They’re lucky Roadie and I didn’t hook ‘em and cook ‘em. Nah, gave them a spook was all. Swear it.”

“Just so long as nobody got hurt, please?” She sighed, pushing her sweaty hair back once more. “Well, I guess scaring them is okay…they were being pretty awful. And the things they said! And stealing the tips from my team! Just awful, they were being total…Um.”

“Cunts?”

“No, no, I’m not saying that. What’s Australian, something kind of mean but nicer than that?”

“Galahs. Dipsticks. Drongos.”

“Yes! They were being real drongos!” she said with a little smile, before passing him his milk tea, half sweet, just how he liked.

“Thanks, darl. Well isn’t that fine service. Oi, ladies and gents, isn’t that just the finest boba service you ever did see?!” He turned upon the little crowd in the waiting area, and received a few hesitant agreements and nervous laughter. Nodding to himself, he ripped open his pack and reached both arms into it, rummaging about. “Best Honeydew Cha I been to all day, and I think that deserves a tip!”

He produced her stolen smiley-faced jar from the bag and began digging out entire handfuls of cash, credits, and random little jewels and metal bits, stuffing them inside. When that was filled past the brim, he began snatching at cups and cramming them full as well, pushing them across the counter to the stunned boba shop staff. Tucking the last few dollars into a sample cup while they tried to handle the sudden deluge of tip money, he placed both hands on his hips and watched the chaos in an extremely self-satisfied way.

“Oh. And they also send you their apologies for the things what they said to you, by the by. Hope this’ll cover it.”

“W-where did you even get—” Mei sputtered, then turned upon him with that uniquely accusatory smile. “You know something, I’m not even mad that you probably beat up those bullies. Maybe they’ll learn to be nicer. I’m giving you a pass this time. And you’ve really made my team happy so…” She lifted her voice again. “Okay, Honeydew Crew, thank you to Mr. Fawkes for feeling so generous today. And you all did such a great job today that I’m giving you all my share as a bonus…in exchange for you taking care of tonight’s clean-up.”

There was a chorus of agreement as she swung open the little door behind the counter, untying her apron as she looped her arm around his and passed him his favorite half-sweet tea. He grinned at her before giving her a squeeze, letting her guide him of the shop and down the boardwalk where Roadhog was waiting. For a moment, they walked together in silence as he busied himself with his tea…before he nearly spit it out all over the top of her head when he heard her sigh and grumble aloud.

“...I really wish I had gotten to punch them.”

“Ay?!”

“I know! I know it’s mean but…They were mean first,” she huffed, before giggling at his expression. “But, thank you for taking care of those no-good bullies. And for stealing everything back.”

“That’s cold! Oh, I like that from you! Uh, why don’t we leave Roadie to his lonesome and head back to the bungalow, maybe work out some of that aggression you got?” His arm wrapped about her, gripping at her side. “Whaddaya say?”

“I…think that’s a good idea, actually,” she said with a little smile. “But maybe in a little while. It’s still a nice night for a walk. Why don’t you and I go to the beach?”

#meihem #junkmei #meirat #junkrat #jamison fawkes #mei #mei-ling zhou #Honeydew Mei #boba mei #boba #bubble tea #writing #fiction #fanfiction #overwatch

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pluto-art · 5 years ago

Text

Syncytium - Chapter 1

Title: Syncytium Words: 3,311 Rating: T Summary: Teacher AU. Takes place in a fictional universe in which Professor Ronald Pinkus and Dr. Brian T. Globetrotter (played by Pinky and Brain, respectively) are college professors at an esteemed school for mice that focuses on science and the arts. Mainly told from Brain's point of view; sometimes from Pinky's. He's too egotistical for his own good. Pinky is too happy-go-lucky for his own good. The two clash. High jinks ensue. Dr. Globetrotter gets more than he bargained for. Way more than he bargained for...

Fan fiction link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13712482/1/Syncytium

This was 100% inspired by the drawings I did of Brain and Pinky as professors. It’s planned to be a multi-chapter story, and I already have the major points of the entire story outlined. Here be chapter one. Enjoy.

Syncytium - n. a single cell or cytoplasmic mass containing several nuclei, formed by fusion of cells or by division of nuclei.

\/\/\/\/\/\/

January 17, 1994 - 4:35 AM

Darkness.

All around them was dark, it's impenetrable cloak cut only by the crimson beat of the emergency lights.

No one could see them. No one could hear them. No one even knew they were there. But if they could see them, by way of those steady emergency flashes, they'd make out an aging mouse struggling to carry his blue-eyed comrade to safety, light reflecting off his broken glasses. And if they could hear them, all they'd pick up, aside from a distant alarm, would be a heavy, breathless panting.

Brian paused in his efforts to set down the taller, much lankier mouse on the concrete below, an arm coming 'round to support his friend's head. Heavy lids threatened to close their curtains on a pair of periwinkle eyes, their owner barely managing to stay awake.

"Pinky... Pinky, wake up!"

Nothing.

"Pinky!"

He tapped his cheek sharply.

Slowly, surely, the other mouse awakened.

"Brain...?"

"Yes, Pinky. I'm here. I'm here."

"Brain...," Pinky whispered, a paw coming up to grasp his arm tightly before his head fell back into Brain's palm.

"It's all right," cooed Brian. "It's all right, Pinky. I've got you. Shhh. Shhh. I've got you. Shhhhhh shhh shhh shhh..."

\/\/\/\/\/\/

September 10th, 1993 - 7:30 AM

Darkness.

"Sh sh sh! Quiet! Everyone calm down! Quiet!"

A pencil sharpened. A ruler placed just so on a dated, mahogany table. Half-moon violet glasses were pushed square up against a pair of pink, deadpan eyes by a delicate, nail-bitten finger.

"Good evening, class," droned Dr. Brian T. Globetrotter. "Today we shall be delving into the fascinating subject of cellular mitosis..."

Sunlight, warm and bright and quite the opposite of the teacher it poured the morning's blessing onto, shone through the dark, wooden blinds of the university classroom, the better to illuminate the scene. Rows and rows of mahogany benches, arranged in a stadium format, and each with a polished table set in front of it, could barely be seen thanks to the sheer number of students adorning every bit of space available. It wasn't cramped, per say, but it was filled. Not a seat was left, and not for reason of enthusiasm. The countenance of those in attendance told all: no one was here because they wanted to be, but because they needed to be. Required classes were always the least interesting, and the occasional passed note or whispered joke barely managed to keep the atmosphere animated, provided one was even able to communicate such messages without getting caught. It was common knowledge that this particular professor had no room for flippancy. Detentions were a standard affair. Not being spoken to or called upon was considered a kindness.

Said teacher continued his sunrise spiel, seemingly oblivious to the complete lack of interest permeating the room as he droned on and on about the fascinating life of the cell.

Fascinating, indeed. If he at all harbored any excitement about the subject his profile certainly failed to project it, his demure expression reflected on the faces of practically every student in the room. Only one outlier remained: a golden-furred girl mouse, glasses a little askew, cheek resting against her paw as she sighed dreamily. An equally amber-tinted mouse beside her rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"The intricacies of such a seemingly primitive topic are much more complex and absorbing than might first be assumed, and although I don't expect any of you to give a Heterocephalus Glaber's crotch about an ounce of it, we are henceforth going to engage in the undoubtedly invaluable study regardless."

Somewhere in the back, a student scribbled "Heterocephalus Glaber's crotch" on a page of his journal labeled "The Globular List of Insults", sniggering to his freckled companion.

"Please turn your attention to page seventy-five of your textbooks. We will begin with the genesis of the process, in which a single cell divides into..."

But whatever that cell was going to divide into had to be put on hold, for at that moment the classroom door flung open to reveal a completely new fascination entirely.

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Judson!" blurted out the newcomer, one foot in the door and the other still sticking outside the classroom, a loaded box of paraphernalia nestled precariously in his arms. "I'll never forget this! I promise to pay you back with a whoooooole bouquet of flowers! Nya-ha-ha-ha!"

In he tumbled, paraphernalia and all, right onto Brian T. Globetrotter's desk, knocking an ink pen, two calculators, and his name sign off the table in the process.

"Whoops! Eheh. Sorry! I'll get that for you!" offered the mouse, hastening to clean up his mess, albeit rather haphazardly.

"Wha-... What are you doing here?! I am in the middle of a very important session!" growled Globetrotter.

"Oh, yes, and I'm sure it's a very lovely session, too! But... if you don't mind my asking...," and he got right up to the other's ear and whispered: "Isn't this, ummm, my room?"

"Wha-? Puh... It most certainly is not! This is my classroom and you're intruding!" Globetrotter spluttered, poking a finger into the newcomer's chest for greater emphasis.

Three rows up, a student typed furiously on his phone: New teacher about to get ROASTED by Mr. B.

"Well, how do you figure that one?" the other mouse questioned.

"Maybe you should read the fine print?!"

And with the starkest finality he could muster, he picked up his name sign and slammed it down in front of the other mouse, turning it so that the name BRIAN T. GLOBETROTTER on the front flashed out proud as anything. The new teacher didn't seem at all perturbed by such harsh behavior. Indeed, he put his face right up to the sign, tipped down his own pair of half-moon glasses, and carefully read each word, muttering them to himself softly.

"Oh! Well, that's different then, isn't it?" he declared, straightening up to smile brightly at his fellow colleague. "But, umm, you might want to change the name there, don't you think? I mean, it says "globe trotter", but I don't see you trotting around any globes. No. Not at all. More like globe sitter. Ha-ha-ha!"

Globetrotter stared at the newcomer, mouth agape. It was all he could do at the moment, taken aback by the sheer audacity of this... figure and the pure chaos he had caused. Half the room was already in hysterics, for his buck-toothed make and slight slur, coupled with a lightly pronounced Cockney accent, made his proclamation of "sitter" sound like a different word entirely.

Everything about this mouse was... off. Compared to Globetrotter he was exceptionally tall and lanky, all the more exacerbated by the fact that Brian was quite a short mouse to begin with; he had to crane his neck to look up at him. His laugh was prominent, and his eyes were an astonishing robin's egg blue. Never in his lifetime had Globetrotter ever seen a mouse with eyes that color; he hazarded to guess they were contacts. He wore a lab coat, but only out of necessity, it seemed, for it clashed with the rest of his outfit: a pink polo-style shirt with some band's logo slapped on the front, striped corduroy pants that sported every color of the rainbow, and what looked to be black and white bowling shoes. It was as if a Goofy cartoon had vomited all over him. The heavy cardboard box he'd unceremoniously deposited on Globetrotter's table seemed to carry all assortment of bits and bobs - a globe, several petri dishes, a bag of chips, a baseball cap, some notepads and pens, a small keyboard, a roll of Gouda, some tape, a framed photograph, a book on Regis Philbin, two VHS tapes of The Honeymooners, and not one... but three Bunsen Burners, as if he had packed them in a feeble attempt to complete the look of someone who was supposedly intelligent. Every eye in the room had turned towards him as he entered, and every eye had stayed on him since. Golden-haired girl had actually dropped her pencil, grabbed her brother by the shirt sleeve, and clutched at her heart, a light whisper of, "Oh my gosh, he's hot...," fluttering past her lips. Her brother facepalmed. To complete the effect, he carried under his arm a pad hosting a number of rather childish stickers, which Globetrotter grabbed from him.

"Shut up!" he snapped at his students, who were still chuckling. They all quieted down at once. "Dr. Ronald Pinkus, Professor of Trozology," Globetrotter read aloud, disgust painting every syllable. "What in the bloody hell is 'Trozology'?"

"Oh, well, it's very simple, really. It's-," Ronald began, but at that moment, a wee mouse popped in, her eyes nearly covered by a pudgy blue tam o' shanter.

"Excuse me? Mr. Pinkus?" she squeaked, thick Scottish accent nearly muffled by the gray scarf swathed about her.

"Please, call me Pinky!" Ronald squeaked back.

The girl smiled and giggled.

"Pinky. Mrs. Judson told me to tell you that you're actually in two ten, not three nineteen."

"Hm? Ohhhhhh!" the one named Pinky exclaimed, peeking at the front of Globetrotter's classroom door. A giant number '319' was painted on its front. "That does explain things, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Now, would you kindly disencumber my desk and plant your quixotic accoutrements elsewhere?" Globetrotter fronted, already pushing Pinky's possessions towards him, and would have thrust it clear off the desk had it not been for Pinky's quick reflexes. He grabbed his loaded box, that ridiculous grin still plastered on his face.

"Thank you, Mr. Brain! And thank you, Ms... errrr...?"

"Flaversham. Olivia Flaversham," piped the girl, beaming from head to toe.

"Thank you, Olivia!"

And he waved at her, as best he could anyway, nearly losing the box as Olivia waved back and skipped off. Shifting his grip so as to take better hold of his possessions, Pinky turned to Globetrotter, panting a little.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for barging in on your class, Mr. Brain. It won't happen again!"

"It's Brian. And see to it that you don't," retorted Globetrotter, flicking stray dust off his precious desk. "You may leave at your earliest convenience, which I hope will be immediately."

"Right-o, Brain!" Pinky saluted, and with that... he trotted off, slipping a little under the weight of the box, and doing his best to close the door behind him with his long, pink tail.

For five whole seconds Globetrotter stared at the closed door, as if attempting to retrieve what little bearings he had left. Despite the poisonous nature of their teacher, many of the students couldn't help but exchange excited mutters, babbling in haste about what had just transpired. Already, Globetrotter, with his exceptional hearing, could catch such questions as, "Did you see how many burners he had?", "Do you think he's single?", and, worst of all, "Is his class full?".

In a rare move, no one was punished for such comments. If anything, for the rest of the class, Globetrotter aimed to be a bit more... amiable than usual, which only fueled the chatter. The session was a long one - three hours, to be exact - and it was with great relief that the bell rang, for if there was anything more "exciting" than cellular mitosis, it was gossip.

"Homework is due on the twenty-first. I want a count of three-thousand words at least and no exceptions!" Globetrotter rattled as the entire class practically flew out of the room in a flurry.

Many paired up with friends; some hitched up their bags and backpacks, running in haste to their next class. Three of the girls, two mice and a shrew, banded together, all a-flutter.

"Oh. My gosh. Did you see that guy? Ugh. My heart is still beating a mile a minute," one of them crooned. It was the golden-furred gal, whiskers shining as she licked her fingers and smoothed them out one-by-one.

"Gosh, Maisy, you're so superficial. One minute it's Globetrotter. Now it's this Pinky guy," mused a mouse to her left, a pair of goggles resting atop her blonde hair. "You need to pick a side."

"I am! I'm picking the cuter of the two," Maisy stated, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"He looked like Pee-wee Herman walked into Dexter's Lab or something..."

"Dexter's Lab is more fun," voiced Tillie the shrew, who adjusted the tightness of the little cloth draped over her head. "What did Globetrotter mean by giving us only five pages of homework? Usually it's at least ten..."

"I have a theory for that," said the goggle-adorned mouse, biting her fingernails.

"Would you stop doing that?" Maisy bit, slapping at the other mouse's wrist playfully. "It's so gross."

"What? They get gnarly. You know I don't wear gloves when I work."

"You should."

Goggle-mouse sighed.

"Anyway, you wanna hear my theory?"

"I do," piped the shrew.

"Yeah, sure. Go ahead," droned Maisy, not at all enthused.

"Okay. So... my theory is that he's jealous. He doesn't want this Pinky guy to suddenly snatch up all his students, so he's trying to be extra nice to us to get us to stay."

Maisy snorted at this.

"As if we could leave. It's a required class."

"Yeah, but we could always drop it and take it next semester at a different time with a different teacher."

"But why would anybody go through the trouble of that?" said Tillie. "We'd all rather get it over with sooner than later."

"Exactly," "Goggles" said as they turned a corner, heading for the cafeteria. "Anyway, I'll see you guys later."

"Where are you going?" Maisy asked.

"It's Wednesday. I have Engineering on Wednesdays. Duh. Bye, guys!"

And off she went.

"Bye, Gadget!" Maisy waved, then said, under her breath, "She's so weird."

"Yeah, but we love her," Tillie said.

"Yeah, I know," smiled Maisy, as they walked into the cafeteria together.

Running past them went little tammie-headed girl. She practically flew past the throng of students milling in and trudging down the hallways, deftly weaving in and out of them like a snake in the grass. It was a wonder she didn't bump into anyone even once.

Down the maze of hallways she flew, finally stopping at a dividing lane to peer down a path at a familiar figure.

"Mr. Pinky!" she called out, desperately trying to catch her breath as she sprinted up to him.

Pinky smiled down at her, one paw resting on a handle on a door labeled 'Professor Ronald Pinkus, PhD Trozology, 210", his other arm still balancing the heavy box.

"I forgot to give you this!" Olivia panted, stretching out a sweaty hand to proffer him a little white note.

He took it, not without some difficulty, and tucked it into his box.

"Thank you, Olivia! Here..."

And he extracted from the box the bag of chips and handed it to her. She took it, puzzled.

"Tuppence for your trouble," he said, winking at her.

"Thank you, Sir! Good-bye!" Olivia waved, practically glowing as she ran back down the hallway, ripping open the bag and popping a chip in her mouth in the process.

Grinning sweetly, Dr. Ronald Pinkus opened the door and stepped inside.

It was dark, and it took a moment for him to find the light. When he finally flipped a switch, it revealed to him his new abode. It wasn't the most spacious area. In fact, as compared to Dr. Brain's (or... was it Brian's?) classroom this one was visibly a tad more... cramped. Only twenty seats lay stacked in a corner, their blue paint a little chipped and their legs a mite bent. They looked more like middle-school chairs than the nicer seats found throughout most of the school. The light was dim - perhaps a little too much so. He'd need to fix that. There was a fairly solid-looking desk, at least, as well as a small waste bin, some pencils, a large chalkboard behind the desk, and one of those roll-around televisions in another corner. By all accounts, this room was trash as compared to the rest of the university, but where anyone else would have turned their nose up at it... Pinky beamed.

Setting his box down upon the desk, he hung his lab attire up on a nearby coat hanger and inhaled, breathing in the smell of old glue, old chalk, and a very slight tinge of old bubblegum. The glue smell tickled his nose and he giggled. He rather liked that scent. It reminded him of something. Something sweet...

Quietly, he relieved the poor box of its contents, placing everything in the best places he figured they should go, and set the empty box down in a corner.

"There you go, old box. Sorry for all the trouble!" he apologized. The box said nothing.

He turned back to his desk, smiling at a job well done. The three Bunsen Burners stood proudly on one corner of the desk, looking very professional indeed. The notepads and pens looked quite nice on the desk, along with the roll of tape, and there was even a little shelf under the roll-away tv that he was able to put his Honeymooners tapes on! It was perfect. Well, almost.

From his lab coat, he pulled out a handkerchief, which he carried with him to an empty bathroom across the hall. Wetting it and wringing it out, he stepped back into his classroom, shut the door behind him, and carefully, gently, wiped down the picture frame, a smile kissing his lips as he did so. Four little figures beamed up at him: two older mice, himself as a child, and, curiously, a spool of thread, which he was hugging in the photo. Having cleaned the little glass and frame, Pinky brought it up to his face... and kissed it... before setting it back down on his desk, right there in front, where he could always look at it.

There was only one thing left to attend to: the note that Olivia had given him. He picked it up from the desk, unfolded it, and read:

Mr. Pinky,

My sincere apologies for directing you to the wrong classroom. I hope that old bat didn't give you too much trouble. Please, alert me if you need anything.

- Mrs. Judson

Pinky grinned, chuckling a little as he set the note back down on the table and stepped out from behind the desk.

He sighed happily and looked around the room, gaze glistening.

"I made it, Mum. I made it."

#pinky and the brain #pinky #brain #fan fiction

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call-me-nerdy · 6 years ago

Text

Felix doesn't have "Vacations"

Felinette November Day 4; Vacation

It's late, sorry.

So I had a vague idea of what to do, but it went off the rails real quick. I'm not proud of the ending, but I'll live.

I couldn't finish this yesterday because of well, school. So I'll probably do a double update one of these days to catch up on schedule.

-----

Felix Agreste is endearing.

Semestral break crept up on Felix like a fox stalking an unsuspecting prey; slow and steady before pouncing on him with a hectic onslaught of extracurricular activities on his schedule.

Felix would say he was merely inconvenienced by the numerous 'hobbies' his mother had requested him to partake in, but that didn't mean he wasn't overwhelmed by her overeager plans.

The timetable was light in his hands, though it honestly seemed to weigh him down with every task that was printed on the pristine, white paper. Felix scanned the letters in disdain, a faint throbbing started to grow at the back of his head.

A modeling gig on Monday, followed by a violin recital on Tuesday. Wednesday entails a whole day rehearsal with the local Chamber Orchestra, and we are set to perform on Friday at night. I have to assist with the fencing classes on Thursday, and another modeling event on Friday afternoon before the performance. Add my daily study sessions and the projects I have to finish into the mix, and I'm positive that this is impossible to achieve.

Felix bit back a groan. He knew how awfully ambitious his mother could get, but even he had to admit that this was edging on to overkill at this point. The thought of Monday alone l was enough to drown his mind with poisonous dread– draining Felix of the motivation that he tried desperately to keep. It didn't help that these kinds of events were already preplanned appointments, locking Felix out of any opportunity to just *ditch* them in favor of laying on his bed with an absurd amount of sweets. Felix pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering words of frustration under his breath.

"Grumpy today, aren't we. What's on your mind?" The familiar voice rang clear, the scent of freshly baked bread tickled his nose. Felix looked up to meet cheeky, bluebell eyes staring back. Marinette smiled at him, a tray of freshly baked croissants in her hands.

Felix inhaled the aroma, savoring the phantom taste of croissants on his tongue. He sighed, reaching out for a croissant. "Keen-eyed as ever, Dupain-Cheng." Felix quickly retracted his arm when Marinette slapped it away.

"Not until you tell me why you're grumbling over there." She set the tray on the table, and with a swift movement, plopped down on the seat in front of Felix.

"My mother gave me my schedule for the week today. And because it's semestral break, she took extra care to make my vacation, and I quote, productive." Felix emphasized his point with air quotes, handing the paper to Marinette. "And as much as it is a nuisance, her overeager involvement in my extracurricular activities is barely an uncommon occurence."

Marinette winced, "Wow. This is overkill. Is this even a vacation anymore?"

"It's an eyesore." Felix grumbled, taking a croissant from the tray. The pastry broke easily in his mouth. Flaky and crisp, it melted into raw happiness on his tongue.

Marinette giggled, "Well, best of luck to you. I bet you can't even survive 'til next week without me." she challenged.

Felix clicked his tongue, "Oh, please. I may have a hectic schedule, but it's still a vacation from seeing you tripping on air every five minutes." he rolled his eyes, taking another bite of his croissant.

Marinette stuck out her tongue, "Maybe so. But admit it, you can't live without me for a whole week." she said as she took a croissant for herself

"Keep on dreaming, Dupain-Cheng. I can survive very well without your cheeky comments." Felix scoffed, only to recieve Marinette's smug smirk in return.

"We'll see, Agreste." She giggled, "We'll see."

-----

Marinette didn't like liars. In fact, she openly despised them.

Perhaps her hatred for untruths stemmed from her strong sense of justice; a trait that, although it was already prominent in her life before Ladybug, was carefully nurtured and encouraged by Tikki to the point that it was nearly a fault. Marinette wouldn't have it any other way.

Yes, she may lie on a semi-regular basis, but it was only always when she needed to get away to transform into Paris' superhero, Ladybug. Marinette hated lying almost as she hated liars themselves. And so when she came to the conclusion that she loved teasing Felix Agreste, who was she to deny the truth? Denying it would've made her as bad as Lila Rossi, and Marinette absolutely refused to be likened to that witch.

She couldn't help herself. Felix was the stereotypical 'Ice King' at surface level: cold, reserved, and refused to show any weakness at all costs. So seeing his pale cheeks rapidly color a shade of pink, and him trying so desperately and failing to fight the flush everytime that she jested and poked fun at his little quirks, – It was not only hilarious, but outright endearing.

Felix Agreste is endearing.

Last week was no different.

Felix arrived earlier than usual at the bakery. Hell, she had only woken up about thirty minutes prior to her Papa announcing that a friend was asking for her downstairs. Marinette scrambled to make herself presentable, and went downstairs rather chaotically with a few fresh bruises on her ankles. Armed with a tray of freshly baked croissants, she scurried to their usual table only to see Felix looking awfully grumpy in his seat — well, grumpier than he usually was. Marinette may be a sometimes most of the time, tripping over her feet and bumping into random objects. But make no mistake, that despite all her shortcomings, she was observant. Observant enough to notice the frustration that shaped Felix's frown and his troubled countenance as he bit down on his lip. She had noticed his narrowed eyes, scrunched up nose and the way his fists tightly clenched the paper he glared at so furiously.

And so she greeted him heartily, hiding her concern when she asked why he looked so glum.

Apparently, his mother had filled his whole week with events. A photoshoot here, a rehearsal there, it all seemed so taxing. Felix had claimed that his mother was merely 'overeager', and that he had survived such schedules multiple times in his past. Marinette would've voiced her opinion of his mother expecting too much from him, but she ultimately decided to bite back her assumptions until after she had actually met Ms. Agreste. Instead, she did the best she could to lift his spirits with a few innocent jokes.

When he left, she made sure to give him a bag full of sweet pastries to lighten his mood. She knew how that boy loved sugar.

She continued to send some pastries to him everyday, with little cheeky notes sneakily attached to the inside of the paper bags. Macarons, pain au chocolats, croissants, cookies and even straight up chocolate arrived to his doorstep every morning. Yes, every morning. Marinette had forced herself to wake up every Seven AM just to make the poor boy some sweets. Tikki teased her about it for hours.

Maman and Papa are rubbing off on her.

Nevertheless, she just wished that Felix wouldn't get hospitalized over exhaustion. Actually, Marinette prayed that he would be alive on their next Sunday Afternoon meetup.

Which was today.

Felix entered the bakery with a subtle skip in his step, gray eyes frantically scanning the whole room in search of something.

Of someone.

When Felix finally met her gaze, Marinette could've sworn that *relief* flickered in his eyes.

The boy walked hastily to their table, sitting across Marinette,

"A bit enthusiastic today, are you?Welcome back." Marinette handed him a cup of hot chocolate.

He took the cup, and nodded. Now that was strange, Marinette thought. She was so used to him having witty comebacks for her every bite. Why was Felix acting so bashful?

"Thank you for the pastries." He finally said, his voice was slow and uncertain.

"You're welcome! It's no problem at all!"

"..."

He was silent again.

"Hey, Fé. Is something wrong?" Marinette asked him gently. Her worry grew every second that Felix maintained his averted gaze.

She frowned. Did he have a fever? If he did, then he shouldn't have come here! Marinette reached over the table to put her hand on Felix's forehead.

Felix drew back in surprise, pink started to appear on the skin of his neck up to his cheeks.

"Do you have a fever, Fé?

Felix forced a scoff, "I... am perfectly fine, Dupain-Cheng."

She deadpanned, "It doesn't look like it."

"W-well, I am." Did Felix just stutter?

"Then why weren't you answering me?" Marinette frowned. Felix being unsure of himself was strange.

A guilty look flashed on Felix's expression, "... My apologies, Marinette. I was simply... panicked because of our previous conversation."

Marinette's eyes widened, "Oh my God."

"Yes, I– what?"

"You actually used my name!" She squealed, a grin stretching across her lips.

"I..." He trailed off, the pink on his skin grew a few shades darker.

Marinette gaped. Felix Agreste; Resident Salt King, honor student, overachiever, sharp-tongued, cool and collected Felix Agreste, was right in front of her with no witty comeback, as red as a tomato, avoiding her eyes and pouting? In what world?!

Then it hit her.

Felix was pouting.

She cackled. Uncontrollably cackled.

Oh my gosh, that's adorable.

"Pfft, Ahaha! Y-you should see your f-face!" Marinette wheezed, clutching her stomach in laughter.

Felix sat in front of her, his face was all red.

She gasped for breath, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Marinette wiped a tear. She cleared her throat, "Why were you worried?"

Felix took a deep breath, "Through a number of contemplations, as well as evidence of a few peculiar moments in the week, I have deducted that you were correct in your prediction." Felix sped through his sentence.

"Uhm, what?" Marinette could barely understand his overly convoluted words; he was more verbose than usual, an air of uncharacteristic awkwardness surrounded him.

"AllthroughouttheweekIfeltthattherewasalwayssomethinglackinginmyeverydaylifeIhadnoonetotalktoandgivemewittyremarksandthiscausedmetobescoldedsomanytimesbecauseIkeptspacingoutand—" Marinette's eyes widened.

"Felix, slow down!"

"Idon'tknowwhatI'mfeelingbecauseI'vebeverreallyhadarelationshipwithanyoneaboveacquaintancesandIdon'tevenknowifyouconsidermeafriendand–"

Marinette stood up and pinched his cheek.

"Felix! Calm. Down!" She cried. Felix snapped out of his wordy breakdown.

"Apologies." Felix cleared his throat.

He was worried about a previous conversation they had? She was correct in her predictions? What in the world–

Oh. Marinette thought back on their last meetup.

Ohhh.

"Wait. Are you saying that you missed me?" Marinette couldn't stop the glee that bubbled frantically in her chest.

Felix looked at his hands, "I... If that is the term, t-then I suppose so."

Marinette almost squealed.

"Oh my Kw- that was adorable." She gushed, pinching Felix's cheeks once more.

"Hmmpf–" His face glowed scarlet at this point, Felix his flustered expression behind cupped hands.

Felix Agreste is endearing, and Marinette couldn't understand why anyone would think otherwise.

#Felinette #Felix Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #ml #Miraculous Ladybug #No Creepy Adrien Clone #Felinette Month #Felinette November #Day 4 #Prompt #Vacation #Fluff #So much fluff

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disenchantedhq · 4 years ago

Text

The weeks since Queen Belle‘s Ball and the Princess’s Grand Fête rolled on in a dizzying splendor, April coming to a rapid close. Cool, spring weather gave way to warmer, humid temperatures, the threat of a blistering hot Summer looming on the horizon. It had come as a surprise to the citizens of Auradon that the first full month with their Shadow Realm visitors had gone by without incident. Aside from the festivities at the Queen’s Chateau (with some minor displays here and there) it appeared the season was off to a charming (and irritatingly slow) start, the printers of Lady Chattermore’s Society Papers sighing indignantly at the lack of exciting drama to report on.

While the papers spoke of a heated argument between the Young Genie and the visiting Sehzade Sultan, clandestine dances between Her Royal Highness and the Neverlandian Gentleman, a Sea Captain and his Prydanian Rumored Intended gallivanting by the garden, the Diamond of the Season poked and prodded for conversation from every angle by many a suitor, and a Shadow Realm Vagrant seen sneaking about the halls far after curfew, among other less interesting reporting, it seemed that Princess Emma’s first attempt at merging the fresh arrivals into Auradon’s high society came with little problem. The only genuine attempt at stirring up controversy being the lack of invite for the visiting Faerie Prince and his entourage the evening of the fête.

Despite this fact, all was transpiring beautifully in Auradon City as the season carried on in a satisfying slow haze.

Among those that promenaded through the Ton on a daily basis, seemingly carefree and swept up in the elegant charm of the city, was one Faerilyth Moor. Day by day, the daughter of Maleficent roamed the twisting avenues and cobbled ways, often attended by one of the readily available chaperones or her tall and intimidating brother. At first her presence caused a nervous pause in the Ton, wary glances passed her way as she meandered through the shops on Rue de Magasins, or stopped into the Benbow Inn for a meal. No one had known quite what to expect with the arrival of the Shadowborn, but there was particular nervousness where the children of the Horned Ones were involved. Though they all appeared as normal as the next passerby in Auradon, there was something about their countenance that always caused pause. But as the month strolled by with little incident, and saccharine Faerilyth made her docile self more known to the shop owners and common folk in the Districts, the lingering fear of something sinister hiding behind the charming faces of the trio became less and less a bother until it seemed that it no longer existed.

There were those among the throng, however, that knew better than to assume innocence behind those well glamoured grins. Lurking in dark alleyways, or huddled in the corners of the pubs and inns, they sat with their cloaks on tight. Some were travelers from far and wide, arrived to the big city seeking employment or to peddle their wares at the docks and markets. Others were more established members of the lower crust, shouldering the burdens of day to day life that the lofty nobles could never imagine. And some even were higher up, among those in gilded carriages and most impressive refinery. They covered all types of people one could find in the bustling streets of Auradon City, each one distinguishable from the last save for one thing which linked them.

When given the opportunity, in the presence of either Faerilyth or her companions Nikolai Chernov or Mercedes Reyes, in discreet view where no one could lay witness, they would pull back their sleeves or collars, hike up their hems or trousers just so to reveal the black smudge of ink on their skin. Most were faded after 25 years. Some bore burned marks from when officers of the law attempted to scorch them away, and a fair few were fresh obsidian upon their fleshes. The marking of the followers, an intricate tattoo, flashed swiftly to the children of their masters long gone from this realm. A call of fealty, that when the moment arose they would come marching in on their side. A promise to wreak havoc upon the polite and genteel society of Auradon.

Acknowledgement was minimal. Faerilyth had an intention — to lay low until the time was right. It was so early in their time in Auradon, she had no desire to jeopardize what was decades in the making. Patience, she preached to followers that dared come too close. Just rewards for those who waited. She kept her secrets close, not even allowing her dear Nikolai to know the extent of the plans. Not yet. Not when their positions were still so delicate. But a restlessness gripped their followers, who quickly grew tired of waiting. They demanded answers, demanded some sort of relief from their wondering. Walpurgis Night, she’d said, I will give you clarity on the Witches’ Sabbath. As the night of April 30th loomed before them, the good hearted nobles funneled into Notre Dame for mass, excited for the morning and the May Day festivities to take place in the Enchanted Park. But on the fringes of society, cloaked in shadow and smoke, those loyal followers to the dark rushed through the empty streets of Auradon City, to the docks of Low Town. Fewer guards roamed the streets that night, not privy to the men and women gathering in the shadows.

In the southwestern most point of the district, on the border of the city’s vast and sparse outskirts, lay an abandoned mansion. Decrepit and run down, with full walls blown out and large holes in the decaying roof. The front yard had a broken down gate, patches of dead grass, and a small graveyard where the forgotten family was laid to rest was left forgotten with overgrowth. No eyes were on the mansion, save the groups slowly descending upon it. They snuck in through the openings in the old stone walls, walking through the rotting house and making way to the only still intact place within — the cellar. Climbing down what felt like miles of spiraling stone steps, they eventually found themselves in a large and damp space, looking much like the chapel where the honourable now met on the opposite side of the city. The air was thick and musky with mildew and dust, moist and heavy around them. But not a single one shed their cloaks, not daring to reveal themselves beneath their hoods.

Before them all stood an altar, drenched in a rusted bronze, sitting low before an intricate dais which housed a red velvet bejeweled throne. Flanking either side of the dais stood the son of Chernabog and the daughter of the Horned King, eyes passively scanning the room as swiftly the pews were filled with seated cloaked followers. So many arrived that they filled in all the spaces surrounding, standing along the perimeter and filling in the center aisle. They were packed so close together they could no longer move, none daring to stand so close to the magnificent display at the head of the room. There was a low rumble of whispers among the throng, nervous and excited for what was to come.

At the sound of a heavy door creaking open and then slamming shut, a deaf silence fell upon the crowd, all eyes turning to the far side as a figure descended upon the chapel from a side room. There were silent gasps as the blonde maiden, so small and innocent looking, crossed the path towards the others, vivid blue eyes glowing even there in the dim underground. As she neared the front there was a buzz in the air, a magical release as slowly the glamour around her faded and her true face was revealed. White blonde locks gave way to a gray brown, pink and warm skin going colder and paler than the dead. Her cheek bones more accentuated, her ears more pointed, and curling high and away from her flat forehead were two onyx horns, glimmering in the torchlight. Her robes, flowing and black, trailed behind her as they suspected her wings would have should they not have been taken from her. With a passive face she stopped before the altar, turning her full attention to the silent crowd assembled before her.

“Greetings,” she began in a soft but commanding voice which echoed off the stone walls, “And welcome. Each of you has, over the past month, reached out to myself or my comrades, sharing symbols of fealty and devotion to our beloved parents that came before us. Those who, once upon a time, had desired to take this world, so docile and magical, and turn it on its head. To bring a change and reign in a different era for the people of Auradon. Disappointingly, their vision had never come to fruition. Their stories came to an abrupt end, and even from the redemption of the cauldron they could never see their plan through. I thank you heartily for showing yourselves in a time where our legacy, our great power, is no longer feared or respected. It is because of you that at long last we may see the day where dark overpowers light, night overturns day, and ‘evil’ may have its glory.”

A rumble of agreement, claps and shouts of joy in response to Faerilyth’s words which almost caused a smile to appear on her ruby red lips. She held out a hand, long and clawed, demanding their silence. Her eyes flashed over the crowd. “Twenty Five years ago my mother and father, and their closest comrade the Horned King, had joined their dark magicks together to create so fearsome a curse it took all the might of every noble, faerie and wizard to join together and stomp out their dreams. Their imprisonment was brought on because of an enchantment so fierce and dangerous, the nobles could not allow their resurrection to threaten it back to existence. What they didn’t count on was our parents’ cleverness. Maleficent knew that if she could not finish the task, then another would rise to her place and finally be able to bring all she designed to fruition.

“That is why I am here, why I live and breathe. My purpose is to see my mother’s genius through. To bring about the end of this ‘Happily Ever After’ which the nobles of Auradon claimed for themselves and no one else. Look at you, look at thy neighbor, and ask yourself — who prospered from the unification of this land? Who is it that reaps the spoils of ‘good deeds’? Is it you, my brethren? Or you, my sisters? Do any of you truly live in the blissful peace rewarded to the King and Queen and their coconspirators?” Waves of angry shouts and boos traveled the room, the group becoming riled up. Faerilyth spared a glance to her Nikolai and Mercedes, a delighted smirk on her face, as the throng cursed the royals and aristocracy which lived in decadence and splendor while they squabbled in the sewage. “Be merry, my friends, for the age of princesses and princes, of fairy godmothers and ‘good’, it will all come to an end soon enough and you — you my beloved friends — will finally have your time in the sun. Because I am here now to usher in the new age. The Age of No Happily Ever Afters, not lest it be for all! For those dying in the gutter! For those desperately seeking the help of these passive and kind nobles, who do nothing to end your suffering! No. I will be your champion, and I will uplift you. And my journey will begin here, with this—”

A gasp rang through the room as from within her robes Faerilyth retrieved a broken piece of wood, sawed off a spinning wheel and held aloft for all to see. In the flickering torchlight it was plain to see, the sharpened spindle imbued with dark magic held above them all. “Behold — The Cursed Spindle! The work of my mother, returned to Auradon and it’s purpose. The curse which my mother designed, remnants of its power lingers here in this land. Imbued in items held in the hands of the noble class. Small pieces of the puzzle to who I am and what I was built to do... my beloveds, it is up to us now to scavenge for these items, pillage them from the corrupt ones, and bring them together—” Her words were drowned out as a commotion rang from the front pews, a single dark figure rising to its feet and calling out angrily.

“The only corruption in this land is you, filthy creature!” A man wailed out above Farrilyth’s rambling. She stopped, shooting a hand out to pause the others which moved to silence the nay sayer. “You come here, to our splendid Auradon, and you speak poison into our ears. We, who have nothing but gratitude and thanks for our just rulers. Hard times existed back when you and your cursed lot roamed our lands freely. And now you return, daring to say that you will be our savior?” He spat onto the stone ground between them, his hood falling back to reveal the wrinkled face of an old man. A priest of her demon father, a face she and Nikolai surely recognized from beyond the mirrors when their father told them who to seek out upon their arrival. Faerilyth’s expression stayed cool and blank, not betraying emotion at the outburst, while others shouted for the man’s death. “I’ve made my peace, I’m free of you’s, but I’ll be damned if I allow you to poison more innocent souls with your empty promises and lies. Curse you, and damn you all!”

He’d brandished a silver blade, throwing himself onto the stone between the crowd and Faerilyth, Nikolai and Mercedes. Others clambered forward to grab him, to pull him away from the trio they adored. But the icy gaze of the young Horned ones caused pause. A silence fell in the room again, the only sounds being the ragged breathing of the priest. And then suddenly a melodic laughter filled the space, peeling from the stone cold faerie that had stood passively before them. The laughter rang for a moment, her hand falling dismissively at her side. “Oh, you’ll be damned you say?” She chortled, turning her gaze to Nikolai and Mercedes behind her. A silent message passed between the trio, a glint of something mischievous and sinister in their eyes. Slowly she moved forward, closing the space between herself and the old man. Her stature seemed to grow, a menacing shadow overwhelming her and making her appear almost giant in the room. An illusion, a gift from her demonic father. As her eyes flashed between blue and yellow, her features growing more demonic and frightening, she leaned over the cowering elderly man. When she spoke again, her voice had an echo of a thousand distorted voices laced with her own, as though the creatures of hell spoke simultaneously with her.

“You’ll be damned? Then so be it,” she said, and her eyes turned into endless pools of blackness, obsidian orbs glaring back at him from a white face. He was trapped by her gaze, whimpering and pleading for his life as he involuntarily stood at his full height. Gaze leveled with her demonic one, the man begged to be spared once again, a feeble effort. Faerilyth did not speak, she simply leaned her head inhumanly to the side in a swift motion. The sharp snap that echoed through the room caused a volley of startled gasps and cries, as instantly the man fell to the stone ground, blood leaking from every crevice in his face and his head seemingky unhinged from his neck in an unnatural fashion “Anyone else wish to interrupt?” She called out in that demonic voice, laced in the legions of hell. When she was met with silence, she smirked, returning to her former faerie state. “I thought so.”

Her voice returned to its saccharine state as she carried on, “As I was saying, in order for the task set by our parents to be completed we must gather these objects which are held by the noble houses and bring them together. With the magic that lives within them, myself and the two behind me will finally be able to awaken the curse our parents created. Once they are obtained, we will make a pilgrimage to the Forbidden Mountains and gather upon the summit of Bald Mountain where my father had once slumbered, and we will combine our powers to bring about the end of the nobles’ era and the dawning of our time. We have one piece of the puzzle,” she retrieved the spindle she held earlier, “already in our grasp. We need only fourteen other magically imbued relics to finish the task.”

Faerilyth motioned behind her to Nikolai and Mercedes who unraveled a long tapestry before the dais, colored with imagery depicting the spindle and fourteen other objects. The crowd instantly recognized some of the iconography. Glass Slippers. Enchanted Roses. A Magic Lamp, among many others. They began whispering amongst themselves. Who had the courage to defy not just the nobles but all law and reason to steal items such as these? It seemed an impossible feat which had many crying out in negative. “Don’t worry, my pets, though it appears a big undertaking, we will not fail to gather these items.” She moved to the tapestry and ran a finger over one of the shimmering images. “Tomorrow is May Day, the beginning to the fifth month. And all of Auradon will celebrate. And following the day time festivities there will be another event, one more elite but an opportunity nonetheless. The Faerie Prince has arrived in Auradon for the season, and he will hold a party for the society members and visiting shadowborn. And, more obviously, for his faerie companions.“ She traced the image of pixie dust weaved into the tapestry. “It is at this event that our first chance presents itself — for our first heist we will steal pixie dust, an important necessity for the curse casting. A small and simple task, easy for the unsuspecting beginning. Slowly over time we will gather all these things and hide them here until the day comes to travel north. Following tonight we will meet sparingly until we are ready to begin preparations for the journey.

“‘Tis only the beginning but know this — our plan will not fail. Unlike our fathers before us, we are suspect of nothing. And we will continue to play our parts to earn the respect of our peers.” Her glamour formed again and she stood before them all once more as a docile blonde dressed in white muslin and lace. “They will never see what is coming, and as long as you succeed in assisting us then my darlings you will be blessed in the new age. It is a promise that I make to you now, that you have my word that you will all be justly rewarded for your hard work in the coming months. Let me leave you with this: my full commitment to bring an end to your sorrowful suffering at the hand of those greedy fat cats upon their gilded thrones. You will be exemplified in my eyes. I will raise you to godhood so long as you play your part. Now carry on, my friends, discreetly return to your homes and speak none of this to anyone. Or be warned,” Faerilyth toed the corpse which still lay on the floor between her and her followers. “You will be punished accordingly.”

With that, the meeting of Walpurgis Night came to a swift close. One by one the followers fanned out from the abandoned mansion, running off to their homes in the city and storing their memories of that night away from the prying eyes of outsiders. In the cellar, the trio were cutting up the corpse, laying his remains upon the altar as an offering to Chernabog. Faerilyth silently prayed that he would feel the sacrifice made in his name from behind the mirror world and be satiated. “Listen well, my friends,” she spoke in a low voice to Nikolai and Mercedes, “We’ve secured invitations to the Faerie Prince’s gathering tomorrow evening. I suspect you two will continue to charm the masses into trusting us, but it is far more imperative that we each leave with a handful of pixie dust, concealed in these little bags.” She offered a small burlap sack to each of them. “While it is true that Neverlandian faeries secrete it more, any wing bearing fop at that engagement can give it to us. Whether it be forced or by other coerced means, you mustn’t leave until you have the pixie dust in your hand, understood?” With affirmative declaration the trio cleaned up and disbanded from there, returning undetected to their boarding homes.

A dark and grim silence fell upon the city of Auradon that night, none the wiser to what was brewing in secret, of the dark promises whispered in the night.

—

When the dewy morning had come, the dark atmosphere of the prior night‘s events dissipated, replaced with a light and exciting feeling. The Ton was of course none the wiser to any evil doing afoot and all eyes were turned towards the Enchanted Park where the May Day festivities picked up almost immediately. The manicured greens were outfitted that day with stalls and tents full of savory and sweet foods and confections, holiday themed wares and items to peddle to the attendees with coin to spare. Glittering toy wands with ribbons dangling from the tips for children to wave about, wax wrapped bouquets for gentlemen to present to their sweethearts. Boxes of carefully crafted chocolates, toffees and treats, tied with pastel ribbons, sat upon tables for families to purchase and gift to one another. And of course the May Day Pole was installed in the center of the green, colorful ribbons dancing in the morning wind alerting everyone to its installation. The faeries of Auradon sprinkled their magic in the dawn across the entire park allowing for all bushes, hedges, plants and trees to spontaneously bloom, their colorful glory adding a fresh new glow to the surroundings.

As the Auradonians awoke, they put on their springtime best and migrated to the Enchanted Hills to join in music and merriment. Carriages were deployed to take passengers on guided tours through the flowered archways in the vast park, spectator tents and shaded areas for lounging on cotton blankets and enjoying the seasonably warm weather set out across the green. A wooden plank dance floor set up at the base of a stage where the royal orchestra played merry jogs for line dancing, and stalls for the tenant farmers living on the outskirts of town or the traveled farmers from the other providences to bring their livestock to be judged by the royal family, fishermen to bring in their sea harvests. Then when the sky darkened and night fell upon them, colorful fireworks from the imperial southern lands would be released into the night sky high above the city and a bonfire in the midst of the party would be built to commemorate the end of a dark half of the year and the beginning of long sunny days ahead.

You have more than just these daytime plans lined up. As rumors have persisted, the visiting faerie dignitary has announced a soirée at the prince’s lavish mansion in the Fey Burrough. It’s a rare occasion — faerie homes are for those in need of help, not for socializing, but it appears the visiting royal is interested in partaking in the season and its traditions. And it seems only right as a visiting member to court to host an extravagant event for all to attend. The invitation quite literally flies through your window, sparkling from pixie dust left over from the winged messengers that brought it to you. The iridescent paper has bold script and gold leaf filigree which expressly invite you and your household members to attend that evening’s party at the mansion. From the prince’s back garden and courtyard, and many balconies, he promises the best views of the fire works. There will be an abundance of faerie foods as well as Auradon’s most charming confections, the sweetest wine either realm has ever tasted, and music to dance your hearts to. Every faerie from Auradon will likely be there, which means seeing some of the most dazzling creatures up close.

For reasons you don’t understand, the invitation states that formal Auradonian wear is ‘very much optional’ but the meaning becomes clearer to you when you arrive to the large mint colored mansion at the center of the Fey Burrough. Faeries do make up the majority of the crowd lounging about the lawns and exquisite rooms of the mansion, wearing light and flowing robes made of breezy fabrics you’ve never seen, crowns of ornate flowers, and glittering from the magic flowing in their blood. They look more like the Olympians depicted in paintings than like the stuffy members of society you’d spent most of the day with. It becomes apparent to you why they swapped their refinery for these robes and togas — their shimmery wings now free to stretch out behind them.

The Prince appears before you, wearing black breeches and loose fabric over his torso, his gold iridescent wings beating excitedly behind him. Upon his russet locks he wears a crown made of colorful springtime flowers and greenery, lopsided from how often he has taken it off and replaced it. He greets you with kisses upon both cheeks and shoves a glass of crimson colored wine into your hand. One sip and you swear you’ve never had anything quite as decadent and sweet. You question what it is and he simply says it’s a delicacy from his realm. You question no further. With an arm lazily draped over your shoulders he and courtiers beckon you further into the shimmering haze. You find more foods — squares of confections you’ve never seen before — and you take trepid bites. Each tastes better than the last, and your mouth bursts from the magical flavors. Above and around you lithe faeries hang in rings or suspended on curtains, spinning around and contorting their bodies into impossible knots and positions. The music is odd and different from the elegance you’re used to, played on lyres and sitars by pointy eared faeries with long smoking pipes sticking out of their mouths, a soprano accompanying them in a language you’ve never heard. It’s slow and dizzying, and you feel as though you’re drunk from the wine. But you only had one sip didn’t you?

As you dance lightly, the hot May air attacks your senses and you find yourself shedding off your overcoat and upper layers. Oddly enough you wish to be free of everything, to let the moonlight touch your bare skin. At least that’s what some of the faeries want, and if you’re not careful you may find yourself in such a predicament. Faeries are tricksters by nature and it stands to reason that some of them are planning to play with the prince’s many illustrious guests. Could you fall pray to the truth serum sprinkled in gilded goblets? Or the spelled berries and sweets which cause passionate and fleeting infatuation with the first person you lay your eyes upon? Or will you dance naked and carefree in the back gardens under the watchful eye of a moon high above you?

How magical might your May Day go?

—

And now after all of that I’m proud to announce our Second Group Wide Event: THE MAY DAY FESTIVITIES AND FAERIE BACCHANAL. As highlighted above, this dual event takes place over the course of May 1st, 1825 and in two particular settings: The Enchanted Park where a setting appropriate, charming daytime festival is being held and then at the Faerie Prince’s Mansion in the Fey Burrough, where a potentially more raucous party is to take place. You have the option to participate in either or both festivities for this event. When we get close to the start date of the event, a listing of enchanted faerie foods and beverages at the party and their unique side effects will be posted. This portion of the event is not mandatory but can be used as a fun plot device and is encouraged to generate interesting situations. The party itself is somewhat of a scandalous affair, with the odd and peculiar culture of the faerie people on display. Circus performers and musicians playing unknown instruments provide entertainment, and there’s plenty of odd things on display. While nsfw threads can be a product of the party event and the enchanted foods, please remember the rules on how to handle nsfw material on the dash. Refer to the discord if you need a reminder. Discord may be used to roleplay elements of either festivity and will be determined at a different time.

The event itself will begin Wednesday May 26th, 2021 and carry on for two weeks. We will wrap up the evening of June 9th at 11:59 PST. Shortly afterwards our first officially written Lady Chattermore’s Society Papers will go live, highlighting any dramatic mischief that may occur. If your characters end up in anything you are okay with being reported on, please submit this information to the main by June 13th so it can be accounted for.

As always, should you have any questions about the event or story depicted in this plot drop, don’t hesitate to reach out! More details regarding this event will become available over the next couple days.

Thank you guys and happy roleplaying!

#disenchantedadmin #disenchantedevent

0 notes

taeilm · 5 years ago

Text

mutual jeopardy

crawl inside this body, find me where i am most ruined

johnny. [mafia au]. ref

rated m | 2270w

summary: whim, caprice, violent desire

“Let me get this straight: you’re a criminal, a part-time gambler, and a professional pianist?”

You raise an eyebrow, lingering in the doorway. The sight before you is so incongruous with your intuition that at first you’re convinced the man by the piano is just some musician they hired for entertainment. But Johnny fits into the elegant scene perfectly, so perfectly that you can almost pretend the dark ink of depravity isn’t there, lining every crease of the picture.

He spares you a glance upon your pointed question, eyes sweeping over your bloodstained shirt and the cuts beneath your throat before looking back down at the monochrome keys and his fingers rested between.

“Come here.”

It isn’t so much an order as a light beckon. He’s exceedingly good at this way of talking, as you’ve discovered in the past twenty-four hours. The soft allure of words, the artless pull of his voice; a trap. Yet even when you know the danger is there, you can’t help but hurl yourself right into it.

You leave the doorway, step into his room.

“Sit.” Johnny gestures at the empty space beside him, and shifts over on the leather bench. You inch forward until you’re standing right behind him, heart pounding against your chest in a mix of apprehension and neurotic curiosity.

You can wring his neck right here. choke him a blink to death. You can wrap your arms around his shoulders and kiss the edge of his jawline.

Fuck you.

Johnny turns around at your hesitation, tilts his head back and looks at you with that blank, unmoving gaze. He parts his lips, perhaps to say something, and then… you can’t recall how your fingertips found themselves tracing the contours of his face, weaving into his hair.

He sighs, and the small exhale of breath grazes your wrist for the briefest second before the world tilts beneath you. And then you’re lying flat on your back against the lid of the grand piano, Johnny bending over you with a lethal, prepossessing calm. He takes you in for a moment, eyes roaming over your body like he’s carving into flesh.

“They didn’t give you a new shirt?”

Your breath is caught in your throat. From this angle, he looks as untamed as he is composed, and it’s that same incongruity again—the shifting guise between a gentleman and a killer—that strikes you with a new vigor.

He doesn’t wait for your answer.

“Take it off,” he says, his voice mild as ever. But you hear the shadow of something else this time. A finespun impatience. A carnal desire.

“I’m going to kill you,” you spit, twisting in his hold to bite into his wrist but he’s faster, much faster, and has both your hands pinned above your head in a flash, one hand going to your throat. A smile ghosts over his lips. The effect is so animalistic that you shiver despite yourself, deciding he looks more human with a blank expression after all.

“I’ll let you,” he replies, tilting his head to regard you as a hunter would his prey. “Eventually. But not today.”

He meets your puzzled gaze for a slow, deliberate, and agonizing second. Then without warning, he dives down and kisses you; bites your lower lip, hard.

You gasp at the sudden pain, and Johnny takes the chance to conveniently muffle your cry with his mouth, dissolving the echoes with his tongue. His fingers glide from your throat to the collars of your ruined blouse and begin to unbutton it, before ripping it free of its seams altogether and tossing the fabric onto the floor. Gone is the physical proof of his earlier heist. The dried blood no longer chafes your skin with every movement.

His hand trails over the curve of your waist, claws up your ribcage. Your breasts spring free from the hold of your bra to be kissed by his cold fingers instead. His mouth moves from your lips to your neck, collarbone, shoulder. The cuts on your skin sting momentarily from his tongue before melting against it, losing all sensation.

He’s freeing you, freeing you from the memories of his crimes and the crimson flashes of gunpowder, screams, gurgling pleas. Yet at the same time, he doesn’t forget to remind you of your captivity. that you are his prisoner for as long as it takes to blight your own morality.

“If you think this will change anything—” your words end in a hitch of breath, a swirl of inebriated frenzy when his cold fingers dip into the heat of your folds, a toe-curling clash of temperature. “—y-you’re wrong.”

“This isn’t about you.” Slowly, he loosens his grip on your wrists. “Or me, for that matter.”

You test his hold, then let one hand slither free from his grasp. You allow your fingers to splay across the back of his neck, gingerly drawing him closer as he kisses your jawbone and the soft flesh underneath. Your thumb finds his throat, digs in with imperceptible pressure. He does not react.

And then you realize this is all deliberate on his part; the freedom he accords you is but another jab at your impotence. He exposes his vulnerability to you knowing fully well that you cannot—will not—attack him. You suspect that’s how he always lures in his targets.

So your thumb trails down the ridges of his windpipe to the opening of his white dress shirt, unbuttoning the first, second, third... until the fabric slides off the frame of his shoulders to reveal the tan skin underneath, wintry and marble-smooth in the moonlight. You’re almost surprised by the feverish heat when you push your palm into his chest.

The heartbeat, too; you’re surprised by the heartbeat. To discover he’s human after all and not an android, though he well may have reached that level of mechanic apathy.

“Then what is this about?” Your question ends in an involuntary noise of complaint when his fingers withdraw from the heat between your legs and your arousal is left exposed, pining after his touch.

His fingertips land on your sternum, gliding with ease down the valley between your breasts and you tremble, hand gripping his shoulder as you fight to push him off and pull him in all at once. His hand trails from your ribcage to the small of your back, arching it off of the piano lid and pressing you against his bare front. His other hand finally retracts from your wrist, drags down the length of your arm to curl around your shoulders, holding you in place. His lips never leave your skin.

“A quest,” he exhales the answer into the hollow of your neck, teeth grazing over your throat. You swallow in anticipation, your pulse beating at his mercy.

“For what?”

“Something I’ve lost.”

He brings you down from your perch the tiniest bit, and you swallow back an imminent moan when you feel his hardness dig into the thin fabric of your underwear.

Your sentience hangs by a thread, unraveling by the second as Johnny does the same with your clothes, your body. You want to push him away, claw a labyrinth of nail marks across the expanse of his back, bite his lips till you draw blood, shake him out of that infuriating poise and nonchalance.

And yet, when he pulls back to look down at you, his neat hair escaping its styled hold and his eyes dark with lust and something else you can’t make sense of, your body burns with white-hot desire despite yourself.

This stranger whom you’ve known for less than a day, yet seems so ineffably familiar to you—the thought of him ruining your body is oddly turning you on, alighting all your nerves.

When Johnny pushes into you, you all but stop the moan from fleeing your mouth but he pries your lips open with his own, forcing his way past your teeth-clenching resistance until your strength gives out beneath his and you finally, finally surrender yourself to him.

Like cannonballing into a maelstrom, a sudden release of high-strung energy. Did you lose against him, or yourself? A self-deprecating grin twists its way across your countenance. You close your eyes, willing yourself not to give in even as you already are. He builds up a steady rhythm, searing a path in you, through you, until you feel nothing but him, him, him.

“Look at me.”

This time, it’s a command. His movements do not slow. He is not gentle with you.

You open your eyes, and find his staring right into yours. The dissonance between his austere voice and his softening gaze almost registers to you, but you’re wholly distracted. The pressure point beneath your abdomen blossoms a bit more with Johnny’s every maneuver, and you find yourself clinging onto his shoulders. His muscles are taut beneath your touch, as taut as your own nerves, quivering at the warmth of his breath fanning across you, percolating through you.

You savor the way he fucks you against that pristine glossy surface, the way your body so willingly lets down its guard down for him. It isn’t until much later, retrospectively, that you realize he had let his guard down that time, too, for you. Perhaps involuntarily, perhaps out of necessity.

Your throat unclasps itself. The sounds escaping your body echo in the grand room, filling the cold space. Against your better judgment, you moan out his name.

Johnny fucks you harder, and you feel yourself reeling, capsizing in his bellicose motions.

Then, as suddenly as he had pinned and stripped you down, he leaves you without finishing. The towering presence is gone; the warmth that had been cocooning you fades. The remnants of that mind-numbing pleasure dissipates, and your hazy vision refocuses on the man in front of you, hair messy and eyes downcast, deftly adjusting his belt, re-buttoning his shirt. Long, pale scars marking his torso and chest peer from the interstices of his fingers, disappearing quickly as the shirt covers over them once again. You wonder why you hadn’t felt them when you’d touched him. Is it possible for scars to grow so seamlessly into old skin?

You inch yourself up and gingerly dangle your legs over the edge of the piano, and watch as Johnny slowly lifts his hands towards the piano keys again. He resumes the piece he had been playing when you’d first entered the room. The confidence, the seasoned killer is gone, and you watch the way he throws his body into the melody, the poignant stir of his shoulders with every notes he strikes. You can hardly make out his expression from behind his fringes and bowed head, but he looks like he’s on the verge of crying.

The nocturne slowly settles from its final climax, but Johnny leaves the measure hanging, retreating his hands. He doesn’t lift his head, even long after the incomplete song has faded into oblivion.

Finally, you decide to break the silence, though your voice comes out a whisper.

“You didn’t finish.”

“No,” he admits. “How can I?”

As if suddenly remembering your presence, he looks up at you, your nude body poised like a nymph statue atop the piano, delicate neck cocked in his direction, your hair aglow in the moonlight.

Something like anger flashes across his eyes, and you brace yourself for an attack that never comes. The momentary intensity gives way to weariness, and he reaches for his gun that had been resting on the highest piano keys. He hands it to you by the grip, the barrel pointed at himself. The air freezes over. The palliative melody disappears like a forgotten dream.

“I change my mind,” Johnny says, almost nonchalantly. “Today’s as good as any. So do it, why don’t you? Just like you said you would.”

You don’t take the gun. As if expecting this, he takes your hand instead, his touch uncharacteristically gentle, and lays the gun in your hand, closing your fingers around the grip and the trigger even as you’re shaking your head, backing away. The impulse to struggle is quelled by the heavier fear of accidentally hurting him, so you let him direct you at will, orchestrating his own demise.

“No, I can’t—even though, even though—”

“Even though you saw everything I’ve done? Please,” his voice softens, as if he’s begging, “you know what I am.”

His hands envelop yours against the gun, held together like a prayer.

“You remind me of someone I met a long time ago.” Johnny looks at you and past you at the same time, his hands trembling imperceptibly. “She told me to find what I was willing to die for, and live for it.”

Something stirs in your dusty memory capsule, too faint for you to grasp. You don’t tell him that you find an oddly familiarity to him, too, because whatever he had once been, no longer resembles the man sitting before you. The metamorphosis had taken everything out of him—the humanity, the wonder, the fondness for life. Admittedly, his line of work necessitates it.

“And did you?”

“That’s a ridiculous question for someone like me. My salvation lies in the opposite. It has to.”

You want to purposely misinterpret his words, if only to save him. But deep in your heart, you already know he’s right—that is his only salvation.

“Then did you find what you were willing to live for?”

He smiles, hesitantly, like a newborn practicing a latent behavior. His hands are no longer shaking.

Perhaps it’s better this way, for his sake, and for yours. He closes his eyes.

“Yes.”

#johnny scenarios #johnny fanfic #johnny imagines #johnny au #this was an exercise in conquering the personally impossible

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whenimaunicorn · 6 years ago

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Keep Her Close - Harald & Halfdan Imagine

This was a request, from an Ask that I have lost. Since I can’t find that post, I asked the talented @naaladareia to make a moodboard for the piece so it can have a find-able post again! This is a rare fluffy piece from me, hope you enjoy!

Halfdan/Reader, Harald/Reader. Set at the end of season 4 before the Great Heathen Army breaks apart. Mild angst before a misunderstanding is cleared up, smutty happy ending.

Halfdan the Black kisses like a man savoring his favorite meal. Tonight he had you hidden in a little alley between two tents, had pulled you away just before you went inside and tucked you out of sight so that the evening traffic in the Great Army’s camp wouldn’t disturb you. His tongue explored your mouth slowly, both his hands on your face, pulling you into him. He nipped occasionally at your lips with his teeth. He had his knee propped between your legs; you wanted to press yourself against him and let the passion growing in your belly take flight, but you broke off the kiss instead. You didn’t want to lead him on too much.

He and his brother, King Harald, had both been flirting with you mercilessly every time you drank together lately, and you felt a twinge of shame recalling how you had let Harald wrap his arms around you quite close to this very spot the night before.

Halfdan seemed alright with you pulling away at this moment, though. “My brother is already inside, let us join him,” Halfdan said through the screen of blonde hair already falling down over his face. Both his hands were still cupping your jaw. “He has been moping around all day, and I think that you are the perfect person to help him feel better.”

Your stomach jumped at his words; you would love to comfort Harald but you are always so worried about making his brother feel jealous. You had not yet made up your mind which of the two you preferred.

Halfdan ushered you through the tentflap with one hand on the small of your back. The large structure was getting more permanent and more comfortable every day; a makeshift hall for Harald’s men to gather in and carouse while they awaited the next movement orders for the army. You, a shieldmaiden from a neighboring contingent, had found this place to be far more entertaining than your own Earl’s camp, and you had quickly attracted the attention of King Harald and his loyal brother.

Harald sat in a large chair pilfered from some English farmhouse, brooding into his drinking horn in the place of honor by the fire. There were a dozen or so of his warriors scattered around the tent, deep in their cups, but none were even attempting to engage with him.

“Look who I found skulking around outside,” Halfdan said, clapping Harald on the shoulder and drawing you over to the king’s shoulder.

Harald looked up like you had interrupted some very important thoughts. When he recognized you, his faced broke into a wide smile that crinkled the tattoos beside his eyes. He said your name warmly and stood to embrace you, but then the dark clouds rolled back swiftly over his countenance. “I am afraid you will not find pleasant company in me tonight, y/n,” he said, clutching your hand for one fleeting moment before letting it drop. “You will have to rely on my brother for entertainment this evening. I will be absolutely useless to you.” Then he sank back down into his seat morosely and stared back into the fire.

“You see? He has been like this all day,” Halfdan complained.

You looked back at the blonde for a moment and then shrugged. “Sounds like we’re going to need some more ale.” You walked back to the pile of stolen barrels at the back of the tent. Once you got there, however, you noticed a few stoppered bottles amongst the brothers’ spoils of war. You picked a large green one up and uncorked it, the sweet scent of wine filling your nose. That might turn Harald’s mood.

When you returned to the brothers with your selection, Halfdan had made himself comfortable in his own chair beside Harald’s. They were the only two real chairs in the place; everyone else sat on makeshift benches or logs destined to become firewood later. You considered dragging a log over for yourself, but something about Harald’s refusal of your company irked you, and you suddenly had no problem trying to rouse him with jealousy.

You knew what his black mood was about; everyone knew Harald had just killed an earl in cold blood, and then killed the earl’s wife in hot. And that this woman was the same princess that had falsely set him upon his quest to become the King of all Norway, making promises she had no intention of keeping. How dare he try and ignore you now, in favor of brooding about this woman that had treated him so poorly.

You swung your hips as you minced past Harald’s chair, giving him a chance for a good look at the way your breeches clung to your ass, then turned and draped yourself across Halfdan’s lap. The blonde brother looked confused but also pleasantly surprised. His hands slid around your waist as you brandished the bottle you found. “You two have been holding out on me,” you tease.

Harald looked up long enough to see what you were talking about; if he had a reaction to your choice of seating, he did not show it.

“I saved a few nice things from that big manor before we burned it last week,” Halfdan said, eyes twinkling at you. “Tonight seems as good a night as any to drink it up.”

You took a theatrical swig from the bottle as Halfdan’s thumb played along your flank. You closed your eyes and let the wine swirl over your tongue for a moment before you swallowed; it was tart and crisp and unlike anything they made back home.

“Do you like that, y/n?” Halfdan asked, voice low and closer to your ear than you expected. The wine made your head feel lighter, and the flirtatious tone in Halfdan’s voice had you warm all over.

“Mmmhmm,” you nodded, then giggled and arched your back when Halfdan nipped his lips at your neck. You looked out of the corner of your eye to see if Harald was watching. His eyes were indeed locked on you, and a weight was gathering in his gaze that was exactly what you were hoping to incite. It was a little cruel of you, but you wanted him back in the world of the living.

You looked down at Halfdan and held the bottle to his lips, eyebrow cocked in invitation. The wild-eyed Viking wrapped his large hand over yours on the neck of the bottle and tipped it up, taking a good long pull. You smiled at him as he drank but your thoughts were racing. Now that you had Harald’s attention it was time to play things a little more safely again, find a coy way to get out of his brother’s lap. You had no intention of destroying the close relationship between the two; if only you could force yourself to choose between them before things had a chance to get ugly.

Again, Halfdan gave you an out before you had to push him away. “You know y/n,” he said, releasing the bottle and taking your other hand in his, “my brother is the one who needs a beautiful woman with a flagon of wine in his lap, tonight.” He lifted your hand in Harald’s direction, coaxing you to get up.

You were surprised, but Halfdan loved his brother. Perhaps he was just as loathe to hurt him by playing too much in front of him. You looked back over at the brooding king. Harald was sitting back and leaning on one elbow, drinking horn held idly to his lips as he stared at you from under heavy brows. With perhaps the barest hint of a smile, he lifted his other arm, offering you a seat on his knee.

A nervous thrill flashed through you. Usually Harald was the more charming, and kind, of the pair of them. The fact that he was giving you almost no reassurance tonight made you both tense and strangely excited. There was something deeper brewing in his eyes tonight.

When you stood up, Halfdan surprised you again by pressing a kiss to your fingers before letting you go. Like he was thanking you, like he was happy that you were leaving him for his brother right now?

It took two steps to close the distance to Harald. You felt somehow undressed by the weight of his gaze, and you paused standing just inches from his knee. The corner of the king’s mouth twisted up in a teasing smile, and he spread his hand wide again, as if to say what are you waiting for?

You seated yourself swiftly, bottom on his upper thigh, your bent knees tucked between his legs. His silence was making you feel awkward, and you lost much of the provocative confidence you usually swaggered in here with. You almost looked back at Halfdan for support, but decided that would only make this feel stranger.

You almost jumped when a burst of raucous laughter interrupted from a group of Harald’s men to your right. “Everyone is in good spirits tonight,” you bent your head and said to Harald, finally getting your feet back under you. “Except for you. What is the matter, and more importantly,” you leaned in a little further, dropped your voice a little lower, “how can I make it better?”

Harald chuckled at that, and wrapped his hand snugly around your waist. Your breath caught and you hoped he didn’t notice. You had felt attracted to him for weeks, but something was different tonight. There was a rush that came with his touch, like something terribly important was happening. Something that you couldn’t easily take back. You heard Halfdan shift in his chair behind you, but didn’t dare turn around.

Harald leaned his forehead toward you, and you bent until yours almost touched his. His eyes sparkled as he answered your question. “If I know you, y/n,” he said, voice a low rumble in the back of his throat, “you will think of something.” Then he tugged at you with that strong arm around your waist, pulling your body higher up in his lap until you were pressed against his warm stomach. You were sure he saw your arousal written across your face then, a shock going straight through your core. “But let us start with a taste of that wine.”

Harald lifted his chin and looked at you expectantly. You settled your left arm around his shoulders and leaned in to put the bottle to his lips with your right. With your face close to his you gave Harald a small sip, then gave yourself a larger one. You finally let yourself glance back at Halfdan. He had settled back into his chair and smiled at you like he was having a great time watching you in his brother’s lap. He confused you, but the strangeness of these two was part of what had drawn you to them in the first place. They always seemed to do exactly as they pleased, without shame or regret.

Harald threw his drinking horn, still half-full of ale, over his shoulder dramatically. “Enough of that swill tonight,” he announced, “the wine is far superior. Excellent choice, y/n.” His fingers kneaded your ribs playfully as he grabbed the bottle from your hand and took a deeper drink. When he looked back at you, the lust was writ so plain in his eyes you stopped breathing for a moment. He leaned forward, stretching past you to offer the bottle to Halfdan. When his brother took it, Harald used the moment to steal a kiss from your lips.

It was quick, a mere tickle of beard and brush of petal-soft lips. It wasn’t even the first time Harald had ever kissed you. But the shiver that ran through you then threatened to break all your resolve.

Harald sat back, watching your face for reaction. His fingers came to rest lightly under your chin, beckoning you closer to his face. “I think I know what I need to feel better, now,” he rumbled, staring at your lips.

“Oh, what is that?” You tried to sound coy, but your voice was weak. You already knew what he was going to say next.

“You.”

This was progressing much too quickly. Every fiber of your being wanted to melt into Harald right now, but you could feel Halfdan behind you, the memory of his sweet kisses tugging you away at the same time.

“I do not want your brother to feel left out,” you squeaked, finally naming the unspoken competition they had been waging over you for weeks.

Harald waved his hand in casual dismissal. “He is fine. There are other women about, if he gets bored waiting for us.” You blinked, surprised that Harald wasn’t taking this more seriously. His brother’s feelings should mean more to him than this.

“I don’t mind, y/n,” Halfdan said gently.

You swiveled in Harald’s lap, looking at back at his brother intently. “But I do,” you said to Halfdan, more emotion in your throat than you expected. “I am not… not ready to choose between you.” You let all your anguish show for him in your eyes.

Now it was Halfdan’s turn to look confused. “What is there to choose?” He cocked his head, thinking hard as he stared up at you from under his hair. “Aside from which of us you have first, I suppose that might mean something to you? But Harald needs you tonight more than I do.”

You look down at Harald. Were they saying…?

“It seems we are once again proven to be terrible at understanding women, brother,” Harald said, heaving a sigh and then looking up at you from under his brows. “We had hoped to share you, but I see that is not what you had in mind, dear y/n.”

Something warm and wonderful started swelling in your chest. “I… I had no idea,” you said, looking rapidly between the two of them. “I hadn’t considered that you might want that.” All that guilt and foreboding you had been carrying with you evaporated so quickly you thought you might cry. “I was starting to think I could never choose between you. Are you really saying that I don’t have to?” They were both smiling warmly at you now, like you were a kitten who had just done something adorable.

“No,” Harald said softly, taking your hand and bringing your knuckles to his lips. “You can have us both. We have spoken about it. We will not be happy with any other arrangement.”

When Harald released your fingers you turned and reached out to Halfdan. He leaned forward and caught your hand in both of his, clasped it tightly. “We know we are terrible with women. But after we met you, y/n, we started to think that perhaps the two of us combined might add up to one decent husband.”

You smiled at him, the swelling of your heart making it difficult to breathe. “I… I cannot think of anything I want more.” You could still barely wrap your mind around the idea of being with both of them, nevermind the fact that the possibility of marriage had just been casually laid on the table. But you knew already that this was better than anything you had dared let yourself hope for.

“Well good,” Halfdan said with a sheepish smile. “Then I will forgive the fact that you apparently thought you were kissing me behind my brother’s back.” You ducked your head and grinned in silent apology. “No wonder you have been acting so shy.”

“We thought perhaps you were one of those strange women that needed privacy, or maybe that you were ashamed to be seen with us,” Harald added.

“It was never about that,” you responded quickly. “What woman in the world would be ashamed to be seen with Harald Finehair and Halfdan the Black?”

Harald heaved a heavy sigh in response to those words, and you whipped your head back around to him. “You had better not be thinking about that worthless bitch again. She did not deserve you.”

Harald looked up at you through heavy brows. “Are you going to show me what I do deserve then?”

Your face broke into a huge smile, you were so happy to finally have permission to freely show Harald exactly how you felt about him. You stood up only to climb back into his lap with your legs straddling either side of him. Heat seethed in Harald’s eyes as you settled down onto him, drawing your body close to his and cradling his face in your hands. You dropped your lips to his like a striking predator, and Harald’s mouth opened under yours. His hands ran possessively down your back and over your hips. All of the warmth that had been gathering around your heart dropped straight between your legs and suddenly you couldn’t get close enough to him.

King Harald’s hand found the back of your head and he took control of the kiss, jaw working against yours as he sucked and bit at your lips. You pushed back against him just as eagerly, running your fingers over the back of his neck, playing with the close-shaven stubble at the base of his skull. You pressed your chest into his and buried your face behind his ear, breathing in his rich, woodsy scent before attacking his ear with your teeth.

You got one good groan out of him before Harald was pulling your mouth back to meet his again, unable to do without your kiss for even so short a time. One hand was cradling the back of your neck as the other roamed over your ass. The aching between your legs was only increasing as you pressed yourself against him. You realized you were moving your hips like Harald was already inside you.

A sudden thought for propriety caused you to lift your head for a moment and look around the room. Harald moved his attention to your neck and collarbone and you squirmed as your eyes darted around to see who was still here in the makeshift hall. You were relieved to see that most of the warriors were paying no attention. One knot of Harald’s men simply raised their drinks to you and gave a few whoops of encouragement.

Last, you turned your gaze to Halfdan. He was cradling the green wine bottle and appeared to be perfectly content. Still, perhaps Harald had had a point about you and privacy. You weren’t about to take your clothes off in front of all of these people, and there was nothing left that you wanted to do with Harald that didn’t require at least one of you to be naked.

“Why don’t you take this back to our tent,” Halfdan suggested, catching your embarrassment. “I will wait up for you here, make sure this wine doesn’t go to waste.”

Harald was still sucking behind your ear. You cupped the man’s cheekbones in your hands, trying to pull him off of you far enough to get his attention. “Shall we retire to your chamber, my King?” you asked. He wasn’t actually your king, but you liked to tease him with the title.

“I will take you anywhere you like, y/n,” he said breathily, then grasped under your straddled legs with both hands and heaved himself to his feet, still carrying you against him. You heard a second round of cheers from the men who had been watching as Harald stepped with you toward the tent’s exit.

Halfdan caught your hand as you passed, and Harald paused to let him speak to you. “Promise you will come find me, after,” Halfdan said, eyes gleaming.

*****

You and Harald almost didn’t make it to the bed. As soon as you got inside his tent you were tearing at each others’ clothes, the only thing hampering your undressing being the absolute unwillingness of his mouth to leave yours. You had only a moment to admire his cock as it sprung, long and glorious, from his pants, before he dropped to the floor to strip your breeches off in one rough move from hips to ankles. He remained at your feet, kissing and biting at your bared thighs as he struggled to free you from your boots.

As soon as both your bare feet hit the ground Harald growled and almost threw you toward his bed. You scrambled up on your back, completely naked, as Harald’s heavily scarred body rose over yours. All his hard-won victories over lesser men were written across his skin, and he allowed you a moment to run your hands across the white lines covering the dense muscles of his chest. Then he pressed himself against your body again, pinning you to the bed.

Harald mouthed his way up to your ear as his hand found your breast, kneading and pulling. “How I have been dreaming of getting you like this,” he murmured into your ear. “I wanted to take my time with your body, but I find that I cannot slow myself.” His eager hardness was pressing against your inner thigh.

“We can go slowly next time,” you say, his lust awakening an equally matched hunger in your sex.

Harald’s hand slid in between your legs and you groaned as you felt his fingers press between your folds. You could feel how wet you were for him, then. The king made an approving noise in the back of his throat and began to line himself up. The slide of his cock against you felt so wonderful that you cried out before he even started to press inside.

Harald brought his hands up to your face, coaxing you to look at him as he began pushing into you. The corners of his eyes crinkled with the effort it took to hold himself back, keep to a slow slide so that you both could relish every inch. He seemed to enjoy watching your face react as he staked his claim. He kissed you sweetly once he was fully sheathed, then with a wicked smile and a low groan began pumping into you urgently.

You laid back and let Harald fuck you. You were no longer concerned with impressing him, seducing him, or even whether you were going to get off like this. It just felt so good to feel him crashing into you, his need writ plain across his face and his hard cock penetrating deeply inside you. You wrapped your legs around his hips and urged him on, harder and faster. Harald scooped up your hips and rose to his knees, hitting you impossibly deeper as he drove your shoulders into the bed. Just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, he lost his rhythm and came with a shudder and a moan.

With a satisfied smile, Harald ground himself against you a few last times and then pulled his spent cock from you, laid your hips gently back onto the bed. He collapsed with a sigh beside you and scooped you up in his arms, laying your head on his chest. “That was amazing, y/n,” he breathed, “and next time will be even better, I promise. I am filled with joy, that you finally came to me.”

It did not take long for Harald’s breathing to change into the deep, even pulls of sleep. You might have been annoyed if your night was over as well, but it wasn’t, was it? Halfdan was waiting up for you, ready to seal the other piece of the relationship.

You pulled yourself from Harald’s arms gently, found a pitcher of water and a cloth that you used to cleanse and freshen your body. You had to admit you were aroused again already, just at the thought of receiving two different lovers in the same night. You were absolutely ready to give Halfdan the same passion and attention that you had just given to Harald.

*****

Halfdan the Black locked eyes with you as soon as you crossed the threshold coming back into the main tent. He was on his feet in an instant, dropping the wine bottle and rushing you back out into the crisp night air. A few paces down the lane he paused, his hands clamped down on your upper arms. The moonlight reflecting from his wide eyes as he looked at you like he had five things to say at once and could not decide where to begin.

“Do you still want me, too?” he asked, surprisingly vulnerable.

You took his face in both hands, smoothing his hair away from his eyes. “Yes, Halfdan. I could not bear to go without you,” you reassured, then pulled him in for an eager kiss.

“Then come with me,” Halfdan murmured against your mouth once he could wrest his lips away from yours. He wove your fingers between his own and tugged in the direction of the low hills beside the camp. “I want to have you out on the earth; I want to see your body for the first time bathed in moonlight.”

You shivered at the image and nodded with a smile.

“I know a place,” he said, and whisked you away.

Halfdan brought you to a clearing atop the hills full of thick, soft grass. He spread his cloak across the ground and laid you down upon it, starting to undress you almost immediately. You thanked the gods that it was not too chill of a night; you still gasped when your nipples hit the cool air, curled into Halfdan’s warm and still-clothed body when he laid down next to your naked form to admire you. His palms felt so warm as he dragged them all over your skin.

“You are even more beautiful than I imagined,” he whispered, then he slid his body down and pressed his face between your thighs.

For someone that claimed to know little about women, Halfdan seemed to know an awful lot about making them come. His tongue found all your secrets immediately, and when he sucked at your clit you arced and squirmed in delight. You thought he must have had an excellent teacher at some point, then you found you couldn’t think anymore at all. His hands wrapped around your thighs and held you down as his hot mouth devoured your core, the cold air on the rest of your body contrasting deliciously with the heat of his attentions. You tried to warn him when the pleasure was about to overwhelm you; he paused just long enough to fix you with his wild eyes and say “let it go, I want you screaming for me,” before dropping his head back down and redoubling his efforts.

You were glad he had taken you so far from camp then, as you squealed between your teeth, unable to contain the way he made your whole body come apart under his mouth. When you finished shuddering he finally released you, and the cold air rushed in pleasurably over your wet nether region. Halfdan crawled up onto his cloak beside you with urgent eyes, pupils blown wide with his own lust. “I want you to ride me now, y/n,” he said, settling onto his back and struggling with his pants.

It took you a moment to find the strength to rise over him, your body still twitching with the aftershocks of your orgasm. When Halfdan pushed his pants far enough down to reveal his weeping erection, however, the fire inside you rekindled and you rolled on top of him with ease. Pure warmth spread through you when your belly rubbed against his cock, then you rose up on your knees, straddling his legs.

You ran your fingers along his length and he shuddered. Halfdan looked up at you like you were a goddess in the flesh, reverently gliding his hands up your thighs. You gripped him with an experimental squeeze and your name fell from his lips like a prayer.

Your hair fell over your shoulder as you bent to pull yourself over him, hovered a moment with his tip barely brushing your entrance. “Please…” Halfdan said, and you sank down onto him. His cock felt like pure bliss inside of you, after all of the priming your body had received this night.

Halfdan started cursing under his breath as you tilted your hips back and forth over him. He watched your body move in the moonlight, just as he had wanted, hands roaming over your curves as you found the angle to rock against him that felt best. A pleasant heat spread through your entire body as Halfdan started softly moaning your name. You watched him come completely undone underneath you, grinned triumphantly when he could no longer hold still beneath you. Halfdan threw back his head and started bucking into you, only needing three good thrusts before his body seized and you felt his cock pump his release deep inside of you.

You collapsed your forehead onto his. After a moment, Halfdan opened his eyes and rewarded you with a dazzling smile. “You are an incredible woman, y/n,” he panted, “how did we get so lucky?” Then he pulled you against his chest for an enveloping embrace.

*****

It wasn’t long before you found yourself living in Harald and Halfdan’s tent, acting as a wife to both of them and fighting at their side on the battlefield. Some nights deciding whose bed you would be sleeping in was easy; some nights no one minded if you went straight from one bed to the other. And on other nights the concept of “sharing” stressed the emotional limits of at least one of you. Those nights took more careful negotiating, and always a commitment to honesty and patience. The bonds of love won out every time, and you often felt that you all only grew closer after every successful resolution. Harald and Halfdan were inspiring in their ability to take each others’ feelings into account, and yours as well. Through the years the trust and affection only deepened for everyone.

Formally, you were married only to Harald, as he was the king and you wanted no future disputes about his heirs. Privately, Halfdan was just as much a husband to you, and there was truly no telling who was the technical father of your four children. Besides, that mattered naught to any of you, and gave Halfdan even less reason to ever feel jealous of his brother’s rule or to remove his loyalty. The same children would inherit the kingdom, whichever brother sat on the throne. It wasn’t a life everyone would understand, but it fit you perfectly, and you loved both of the brothers deeply and truly for the rest of your life.

More murderbros here

#halfdan the black #harald finehair #king harald #halfdan imagine #harald finehair imagine #murderbros

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simmeredsalmon · 6 years ago

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❀ it’s a K.O.!

[tokito muichirou/fem!reader || school au]

There was someone you were in love with.

Airheaded and a bit impassive, Muichirou (your classmate) always helped you out with things you couldn’t achieve alone—like perplexing math problems, carrying hefty boxes of reference material to the resource office, and even snatching your favorite bread at lunch faster than anyone else there in order to give it to you.

Whenever he assisted you, his benevolence and softness palpitated your heart with blithe. And you tried your absolute best to remind him about homework, or wake him up during lectures… although, he’d simply gaze out the window and drift away from reality once again.

For a while, you felt fulfilled and content with that sort of friendship; but as the feelings in your chest slowly blossomed, it somehow stopped being enough.

As you ambled through the hallways, you approached your classroom with bursts of anticipation skating over your insides.

’Will he even notice I changed my hair…?’

Your fingers instinctively fretted with the tresses, before you inhaled deeply and swallowed any lingering insecurities. Sliding the classroom door open, you chimed, “Good morning!”

As usual, your classmates greeted you cordially and you simply took your seat. You were situated in the back of the third row, the person to your left and gifted the pleasure of freely looking outside being Muichirou.

You peered over at him shyly, scrutinizing how his cheek rested within the palm of his hand; glossy eyes fixated on the clouds dotting the sky. “Muichirou-kun, are you awake?” you asked in earnest teasing, wondering if your voice was loud enough to break his reverie or not.

Upon hearing you, Muichirou craned himself to look over at you, all while answering, “My eyes are open, aren’t they?” However, when he fully-faced you… he started gaping at you curiously.

Flummox etched itself onto your countenance, before a white-hot flush of embarrassment coursed through your veins—in a flash, Muichirou’s face was mere inches away from yours. His entire being was riveted onto you, and he was so close!

“Wh-What is it?” you stammered out, attempting to keep yourself from crumbling underneath his stare. And to make matters worse, when he finally pulled back, he was smiling.

A benign and adoring smile curved on Muichirou’s lips as his eyelids drooped slightly, and he pointed to his forehead, questioning, “You cut your bangs, didn’t you, [first name]-chan?”

The sight of that affectionate smile was enough to make a further mess of your hammering heart, but hearing him—the boy who forgot things more times than not—paying attention to your subtle shift in appearance made your body tremble with immense rapture.

Yet, even if you felt overwhelmingly happy, you couldn’t handle the equal amount of bashfulness and shamefully obscured him from seeing your face anymore. “I did! I’m so happy you noticed!” you gushed with orotundity.

“I make note of everything about you,” Muichirou languidly confessed, sending another wave of blistering warmth through you. “Hm? Are you okay, [first name]-chan? You look like you’re overheating.”

“I-I think I am…!”

How were you suppose to cope with Muichirou’s angelic-ness? You were never going to recover from this!

#tokito muichirou #reader insert #x reader #kny x reader #my writing #an actual angel #this is rlly quick bc i didn't have a lot of time to write today lol #enjoy!

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spiltscribbles · 6 years ago

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Stay For A While

Notes: I had a really really awful day and this was in my drafts, so here we go.

Ronan’s never really noticed how pungent the scent of hospitals are, the eerily clean surfaces that are masked with the smell of the residue of the alcohol remover Blue uses to clean off her nails once she inevitably gets bored of which ever eccentric color she’d chosen for that week. (Ronan remembers a particularly amusing night at Monmouth when Henry had dared Ronan to drink the bottle whole, to which Blue— pixie sized and never putting up with any amount of shit— cuffed them both on the back of the heads scoldingly, “You can’t drink it asshole, it’s like poisonous.”)

Idly, Ronan thinks that he’d rather chug down ten complete bottles of that shit instead of sitting here in this utter hell hole of a waiting room, the smell of antiseptics clogging his nostrils and glaringly florescent lights pounding down on him and a swarm of strangers trying to catch his eye for polite, if not a bit flirtatious, small talk. All just to wait for some fucking quack to tell him what half a dozen others said before. That Opal’s condition is to severe, to intensive, too unstructured. For this prick to tell Ronan that the technology just isn’t here yet and that they should just give it a rest already.

God fucking damn it, Ronan hates this place, hates all the memories it evokes and the literal hopelessness that’s woven into it. He hates it even more that he fucking let Gansey talk him into meeting with this fucking prick of a doctor, getting his hopes up and making Ronan actually believe this Parrish douche is worth meeting with.

“He’s a class act Ronan, truly,” Gansey had crowed in that uniquely Gansey way of his— all American charm and boyishly enthused smile. “Carruthers had sung his praises to us for so long that I simply insisted he came to Lucy’s christening a bit ago.”

That’s when Ronan had cocked a brow at his oldest friend, unconvinced that Helen of all people would allow any riffraff to puncture her picture perfect soiree for her picture perfect daughter to show off her picture perfect life.

“I bet princess wasn’t to happy with that impromptu invitation?”

“That was until she met the boy,” Gansey had corrected a bit too cheekily for Ronan’s liking, finger waggling in the space between them and it took all Ronan had not to bite it right off. “Carruthers was right on! Parrish is a magnificent specimen, and smart as a whip too!”

“What a dreamboat,” said Ronan, deadpanned and wondering if he’ll ever be over Gansey’s theatrics. (Most likely not on account of his loving the dip-shit like a fourth brother.)

“You know he got his medical degree from Harvard? And his undergraduate at Princeton?”

“Gee Gansey, I’m swooning.”

“Well don’t fall in love with him quite yet,” Gansey had chuckled good naturedly with a patting to Ronan’s shoulder. “I reckon you’ll need him for another, much more important reason.” Ronan just furrowed his brows, not bothering to show any actual interest, and Gansey just flashed him a row of pearly whites in turn. “You’ll never believe his senior year thesis was about? Fibula Hemimelia.”

Ronan’s heart had lodged in his throat and he suddenly, foolishly, felt a surge of pure hope. So Gansey had set up everything. He had scheduled the meeting for a day he knew Opal didn’t have school and Ronan didn’t have work, he had called to send over Opal’s medical history, and on top of it all Gansey had convinced Ronan that continuing to try was better than to give up, and Ronan had agreed. That’s why he’s sitting in this hell hole now, glower securely set on his face and simultaneously watching Opal as she built and destroyed her lego towers, while staving off any too curious onlookers.

Finally— mercifully— A kind faced nurse had called out, “Opal L,” and they were being dashed off behind the doors to get all the preliminary numbers before being lead into the quacks office.

“Don’t break any of his shit,” Ronan tells Opal as she made her way to the corner where some blocks and puzzles were set out, crushes and all.

It’s another ten minutes of waiting until the door swings open and a low, molasses smooth voice greets them good morning while taking a seat in his desk. And well…. He’s all cutting cheekbones and piercing eyes and his hair’s the same color as the caramel cubes that Arora use to set out for guests back in the barns when Ronan was a kid. Ronan feels a instant pulsing of white hot hatred towards Gansey at this exact moment for not giving him the heads up that this Parrish fuck is only moonlighting as a doctor while actually having a career in modeling or some shit.

“G’morning,” he holds out his all too attractive hand, and Ronan pretends his insides aren’t imploding while he gives it one quick, savage shake. “I’m Dr Parrish, and you must be Ronan Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” if Parrish was put off by Ronan’s standoffish demeanor, he doesn’t show it, just continues on speaking in that crisp cadence that Ronan thinks all doctors have mastered in one way or the other, and goes back to flipping through the blindingly yellow binder in his grasp. He doesn’t bother with pleasantries, or puts on a facade with some overly cheerful smile and Ronan appreciates him for it, he’s gone through too many stilted conversations of a blank eyed doctor telling him that there’s no hope with an uncomfortably large smile threatening to split their faces in half.

Ronan much prefers the touch of realism that Parrish is offering up.

“So is it just you for today or are we waiting for Mom?”

“Mom doesn’t exist,” Ronan says, words clipped— He reckons he’ll never not be irritated by that automatic assumption, even when it’s ridiculously pretty doctors making them.

Parrish quirks a brow at him and Ronan relents, just slightly.

“She was an orphan till I adopted her a few years ago, so it’s just me.”

“Oh, I see,” Ronan pretends his chest doesn’t totally contract at the sight of the other man’s small, thin lipped smile that makes his eyes shimmer a thousand splendid shades of blue and green and violet. “My apologies.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m turning seven in three weeks.” Opal, excited for a new audience, announces with a manic grin, her ash blonde hair tugged out it’s ponytail and her big brown eyes gazing at the doctor like he’s one of her dolls.

“No way, really?” Parrish says, and if Ronan thought his small, privately impressed smile was charming, it’s nothing on the one he’s beaming at Opal with right now. It’s beautiful in its unadulterated sincerity, in the way it crinkles the corners of his wide eyes and brightens his countenance ten fold. Ronan inwardly thinks that the grin is one he doesn’t dole out that often, which is a real shame because Dr Parrish’s dimples should probably be declared an eighth wonder of the world by who ever the fuck decides on that sort of shit.

“You must be Opal.”

“Are you my new doctor?” She asks, abrasive if it weren’t coupled with her toothy smile.

“Yes, I think I am, if you’ll have me?”

“Cool,” Opal marvels. “Will you actually help me?”

There’s an instant tautness to the air that Opal, in all her childhood obliviousness, doesn’t notice, but Parrish doesn’t let it linger.

“I certainly hope so.”

Adequately convinced, Opal pivots around and returns to her puzzle.

The next hour is composed of Ronan answering questions he’s been asked a million other times, (“Yes, it’s the left leg. Yes, the bone is completely missing and her foot’s heel is ruptured as well. Yes I know that some doctors have suggested removing the leg completely and replacing it with a prosthetic, but i already told you that they’re all fucking stupid and lazy, and I already said I want to exhaust all options until I consider it.”)

“I hope we don’t have to get to that point,” Parrish says like an oath and Ronan knows it in his bones that Parrish— Adam according to the admittedly impressive array of degrees adorned on his wall, can’t promise anything to him or Opal in so many words, but it doesn’t stop him from believing that Adam could actually do what the others couldn’t.

For the next quarter of an hour Adam examines Opal’s leg and takes notes in a scrawl Ronan doubts anyone could ever actually transcribe, until he’s seemingly satisfied.

They make an appointment for next Tuesday, giving Parrish enough time to examine all the information he’s gathered, and can talk to Ronan about the options on the table for Opal.

“Alright, see you then doc.”

“Adam. You can just call me Adam.”

Ronan just snorts, derisive, before carting Opal out of the room.

“You think he’s cute,” she preens.

“Shut your trap,” Ronan hisses. THat doesn’t stop Opal singing some ridiculous nursery rhymes about trees and kissing and babies all the way home.

Next time they meet is right after Ronan drops Opal off to school, and Adam looks just as competent and put together as the last time. He explains each possibility with no inflection, just straight facts for Ronan to take in and comprehend however he’d like.

“So either way it’s surgery,” Ronan bristles.

“If you want to avoid the prosthetic, yes. You can either continue with the latter which would slow down the growth of her right leg so that the left could catch up, or we can conduct several procedures in the next few years adding to the length of the left to match that of the right.”

“That sounds like mumbo jumbo shit to me,” Ronan bites out, trying his best not to sound as frustrated and frightened as he feels. Though the way Adam’s ordinarily stoic looking expression softens ever so slightly, tells Ronan that he’s doing a pretty shit job at it.

“I know it’s a difficult decision, especially when it’s for your kid,” Adam’s voice ripples right then but it immediately goes back to it’s typical, low timbre. Ronan doesn’t probe. “But I assure you that which ever decision you make it’ll be the right one.”

“How? How do you know that?” Ronan asks, challenging.

“Opal’s young, and healthy. She’s still growing, both procedures are optimal when that’s still a major factor. And besides, it’s clear that you love her. You know what’s best for her because you’ll do your research.”

There’s a different stillness to the air than there was last week, but Ronan doesn’t think it’s any less charged.

“When do you need an answer?”

“As soon as possible. We want to make sure we can get the best feasible results.”

“Fine.” Ronan gets up to leave but is stopped by Adam calling after him.

“I’m always a resource if you need it.”

Ronan doesn’t reply, just purses his lips before snatching the card Adam holds out for him and swaggers out with a thousand different thoughts swarming in his head, ones about Opal. About her leg. About the healing process, the tole it’d have on her. How she’s so small and delicate already, About Dr Adam Parrish and his pretty eyes.

Ronan realizes about half way to work that Adam had written his personal cell number on the back, and pretends that his cheeks aren’t blazing red, chides at himself that he’s only Opal’s doctor. That’s all.

It’s for Opal, that’s it.

“I like Dr Parrish.”

Ronan starts at the non sequitur, eyeing Opal like she’s grown a second head right here in the middle of Nino’s while they wait for their pizzas to take to Gansey’s place. After weeks of paper work and consultations and check ups, Opal’s first official surgery would be taking place tomorrow afternoon and they all agreed it calls for celebration.

“Okay… That was random.”

“Nah-uh,” she peevishly sniffs, lips twisted in irritation— Ronan doesn’t give a fuck about DNA because that’s straight out of his playbook. “Look!”

He follows her insistent finger pointing onto the distance through the window, just making out the sight of none other than Adam fucking Parrish strolling down the street, dying afternoon light dancing golden in his hair and touching the tops of his cheekbones… It’s all very cinematic if Ronan’s being at all honest.

“Imma say hi,” Opal announces, and before Ronan can tell her to sit her ass down she’s dashing off through the doors and stopping him in his tracks.

“Damn it,” Ronan curses under his breath before saddling up behind her.

“Dr Parrish!”

Jolting back, Adam scans his surroundings before finally casting his gaze down to find pipe sized Opal smiling up at him, and by rote, he returns the expression.

“Opal!”

“Daddy didn’t believe me but I saw you all the way from inside,” she tells him pridefully, and Ronan only roles his eyes heavenwards.

“Good eye,” Adam says, crouching down so that they’re level.

“What are you doing at Nino’s?”

“I reckon I’m doing the same thing as you and your pops here.”

“Getting dinner and teasing Aunty Blue for working here when she was little?”

Adam cuts a glance at Ronan, silent question of “What the fuck,” painted all over his features.

“It’s done lovingly.” He says in a monotone and no. Ronan absolutely does not feel the flutterings of butterflies swarming down deep at Adam’s bemused laughter.

“You should come to Uncle Gansey’s house!” Opal crows. “He’s throwing a party for me cuz of my op-op-peratoin tomorrow!”

“Operation,” Ronan softly corrects.

“Oh yeah that!” Opal squawks.

“That’s really cool Opal, I’m glad that they’re doing that for ya.” Adam says, utterly sincere.

“So you’ll come!”

“Yeah doc, come and get boozed up before the surgery,” Ronan says, only partially teasing.

“Sorry Opal darling,” Adam says, lips pouting. “I promised an old friend that I’d actually eat out with them, and I seriously doubt that your Dad or Uncle or whom ever would appreciate me crashing in on your family time.”

Opal looks grief-stricken and Ronan privately thinks he feels the same.

“My birthday then!” Opal proclaims.

“It’s after the surgery and it’s not until next week and could you come please!”

“Ah,” Adam’s eyes surreptitiously flutter over to Ronan, seeking permission.

“There could never be enough guests,” he says, totally flat.

“Alrighty then, I’d be honored to come Opal.”

“Yay!” She tackles into Adam for a quick embrace and then leaps into Ronan’s arms over the excitement.

“Oh Parrish, just heads up, the themes Disney Princesses, and the invitations explicitly dictate that everyone dresses up.”

Adam glares nastily at Ronan but then just tosses Opal a thumbs up, Ronan translates it for the bird he’d rather be tossing him.

Ronan admits that he regrets everything the moment Adam fucking Parrish strolls into his house wearing a shit eating grin, and a full on Prince Philip costume— tights and all.

Everything in the procedure went as wonderfully as anyone could’ve hoped, so Opal— dawning a sparkling pink princess dress— promenaded through the party in the Barns with a huge smile on her face and a sharpie pen so that all her guests would sign her cast, a beaming Blue pushing her along in the tiny wheelchair the hospital provided. But even with how precious she looks, and the excited thrumming in the air, all Ronan could focus on is fucking god damn Adam Parrish.

“Lynch,” he says in greeting, swinging around a large, wrapped box. Ronan jutted his chin to the table carrying the rest of the gifts and Adam dropped it off before returning to his side.

“Lovely place you got here.”

“If that was your attempt at small talk, you’re shit at it.” Is how Ronan chooses to reply.

Something warm and splendid coils somewhere deep in Ronan’s gut at the sound of Adam’s miraculous peals of laughter.

“You’re such a shit.”

Ronan feels charged by that one comment.

“Oh, so Doc’s got a little bite all of a sudden?”

“Always have,” Adam corrects in that detached, ever amused way of his. “Only thing was that you were my client, but everything with Opal went better than expected, so now I can call you out for being a complete prick whenever I please.”

“So you still expect to see me outside of the allotted appointments for my daughter?” Ronan snarks, snide and excited.

Adam just gives him a one armed shrug before leaning close to Ronan’s ear— hot breath skirting against his skin. “You aren’t slick, but my ass appreciates your intense focus.”

At that, Adam swivels around on his heals to grab a drink and to say hello to Opal, and Ronan knows he’s fucked.

***

Five years later, when they’ve got matching bands of gold and Adam’s slumped on the sofa with Ronan’s head propped on his lap— the pair of them watching over Opal tending to her new baby brother— Ronan thinks to when Gansey warned that he shouldn’t fall in love with Adam.

Ronan laughs and Adam flicks him on the temple for being such a freak.

#PYNCH #ADAM PARRISH #RONAN LYNCH #OPAL #THE RAVEN CYCLE #SPILT INK

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et-in-cinerem-reverteris · 5 years ago

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Class of 1953 - Chapter 5 - Nowhere Fast (6.5k)

“So,” Dan begins, “now that I’ve finally got you alone, tell me - how are you?”

“I’m fine - tired - but nevertheless enjoying myself. Thank you for saving me from those girls earlier, I was having a completely rotten time with them.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! It was my pleasure,” he assures, taking a sip of his champagne and leaning in slightly closer. “Anyway, I couldn’t let them at you, could I? You’re mine.”

Here I am with what could possibly be the final installment of Class of 1953! I may add more chapters if I come up with new ideas, because I do love writing this story...but we shall have to see!

The link to Ao3 is here

Or, read under the cut!

Tonight is the night they have all been waiting for - tonight is the night of the Drama Society’s production of Romeo and Juliet. The show marks the last day of term at the University of Oxford, and as lecture halls shut and the libraries close, thousands of students traipse across the town to parties and dinners in celebration of their first, second or third term here at Oxford. The past eight weeks have been academically demanding, mentally challenging and socially exhausting; Phil had taken an entire month not to feel overwhelmed at the imposing professors, the foreign city and the sea of unfamiliar faces. To make matters worse he had struggled to make friends, too nervous to join in with conversations in the lecture halls and dinner halls alike. Thankfully socialite Mary had then come to the rescue; dragging him along to clubs and speeches, competitions and parties, she had set to work sowing the seeds of a social life until Phil was sure there was no student in the city he hadn’t yet been introduced to. Before long several friendships had begun to bud, and then finally after a month of worrying, all was finally calm and relaxed in Phil’s world.

That is, until one of the seeds that Mary had secretly planted unexpectedly grew vines around his entire being, taking root inside of him with a strength he had never experienced the likes of before. Each day the petals grew bigger, the colours brighter and its scent ever sweeter, until eventually it had become so overwhelmingly pretty that it took every atom in Phil’s body not to pluck it lest his caress caused the flower to die. So there he had stood, secateurs in hand, unable to touch what he so badly wanted to cut from the stem and claim as his own.

The room is plunged into darkness. Phil snaps back to reality. A hushed stillness sweeps over the crowd and all eyes are trained on the chancel as the chamber becomes hushed. The clack of high heels ricochets off ancient walls as hree women clad in dark hooded cloaks come into view, gliding across the space and stopping before a threshold of candles as they remove their hoods, look up, and begin to speak in unison.

“Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,

And the continuance of their parents' rage,

Which, but their children's end, naught could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

The three women replace their hoods and glide back to the enclosed space.

Phil fidgets in his seat. The play is about to begin.

Enter Sampson and Gregory of the house of Capulet.

The servants barge onto the stage and chatter amongst themselves before being interrupted by the presence of their rival Montague servingmen. The scene quickly descends into chaos as Abram and Sampson quarrel, sir, and despite having watched, read and studied the scene countless times before Phil finds himself on the edge of his seat, wholly absorbed by the spectacular acting in front of him. In the midst of the madness Benvolio launches onstage, parting the bickering servants and beating down their swords as he begs them to stop. A trio of girls in the front row start to giggle. Phil furrows his brows, glaring daggers at the gaggle from the far side of the room. What about Dan’s acting is there to laugh at? Disgruntled, he turns his eyes back towards the set, before realising what’s causing their tittering.

Ah. The codpiece. Of course. With his cheeks feeling slightly hotter before, Phil switches his attention away from the girls and back towards the performance.

Sixty minutes pass, and as the two hours’ traffic reaches its halfway point the mood inside the chapel is that of intense concentration. There are no breaks in between scenes, no respite in the intensity of the emotion, and as such the air grows heavy and humid. Romeo and Juliet’s relationship explodes into existence, turbulently naive as it teeters like a spinning top, threatening to crash at the slightest wobble. The first tremors arise on a swelteringly hot day as Mercutio and Benvolio run into Tybalt and Romeo. Tensions spark immediately; swords crash, insults are spat, and in a flash Mercutio is left with a wound which damns him to a sudden and early grave. Staggering under Benvolio’s grasp with tears in his eyes he howls a plague o’ both the Capulet and Montague houses, and in a weeping mess, is dragged off stage.

A few seconds later Benvolio re-enters. With a bowed head and anguished countenance, he sinks down to his knees and announces that the brave Mercutio is dead.

“Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo's hand did stay.

Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink

How nice the quarrel was, and urg'd withal

Your high displeasure. All this- uttered

With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd-

Could not take truce with the unruly spleen

Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts

With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast;

Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,

And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats

Cold death aside and with the other sends

It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity

Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud,

'Hold, friends! friends, part!' and swifter than his tongue,

His agile arm beats down their fatal points,

And 'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm

An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life

Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;

But by-and-by comes back to Romeo,

Who had but newly entertain'd revenge,

And to't they go like lightning; for, ere I

Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain;

And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.

This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.”

The hairs on Phil’s arm start to prickle, and an intense rush of passion floods into his breast. It feels as though he has just witnessed the greatest tragedy on earth. Lady Montague speaks and the plot moves on but all he can see is Dan, his Dan, the Dan who he had known was a keen actor but had never expected to be so talented as this.

As the room gets hotter, Phil begins to feel slightly faint. His mind wanders away from the performance and drifts through the air, scattering across the mosaics, twinkling into the lights - only an hour until Dan’s party...

The play draws near to its tragic end. As the bodies of the young couple are uncovered, the quarreling families finally begin to make amends.

“O brother Montague, give me thy hand.

This is my daughter's jointure, for no more

Can I demand.”

“But I can give thee more;

For I will raise her Statue in pure gold,

That whiles Verona by that name is known,

There shall no figure at such rate be set

As that of true and faithful Juliet.”

“As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie-

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!”

The two men stride towards each other and clasp hands, thus ending the feud which took the lives of their innocent children. As they part, Prince Escalus begins his closing speech.

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished;

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

The actors bow their heads, and the chapel is silent.

One person claps, two people clap, and then before long the whole audience explodes into rhapsodic applause accompanied by shouting and cheering and whistling, filling the air with an ecstatic buzz as the heaviness is lifted and transformed into a feeling of triumph. Onstage the actors and actresses break out into wide grins, linking arms and forming a line as they bow towards the audience, smiling and laughing at the roses, hats and handkerchiefs people throw at them.

There’s a tapping on Phil’s arm. As he angles around he sees Mary gesturing towards the door and saying something including the words ‘going to get Beth’ and ‘see you later’. He turns his attention back to the stage. Scanning through the actors and actresses he scours each circle until he locates Dan in a corner exchanging warm embraces with his friends. It’s a joyous sight; for the first time since the pair of them met, Dan looks well and truly relaxed. The boy pats one of his friends on the shoulder before waving goodbye and turning around to examine the audience. Phil perks up. What is he doing? Is he looking for someone? Could he be looking for him? Perhaps he’s looking for someone else. Perhaps there’s another friend Dan’s looking for, perhaps there’s someone else who he-

Their eyes connect, and Dan’s entire face lights up. Phil smiles, unable to stop the warmth bubbling in his chest as he waves.

Then, in a swift and synchronous movement, the pair are on the move.

Leaping up from his seat Phil shuffles down to the end of his pew, apologising for treading on bags and shoes as he darts towards his companion as quickly as possible. He bypasses a flirting couple, crosses two confused parents, avoids a gaggle of staggering drunks and then slowly, excruciatingly forces his way through the backs of some excitable swots who are totally unaware that he’s trying to get past. Through a gap in their necks he manages to catch a glimpse of Dan. Trapped amongst a horde of plump and well-dressed gentlemen the boy stands a few meters away, unable to elude the meaty paws he has become ensnared in. The men eye him hungrily, bombarding him with bawdy and flirtatious comments which Dan graciously rebuffs as he locks eyes with the ginger haired boy, shooting him a wink and a knowing smile. Phil goes limp with infatuation. With a grunt of effort he pushes through the crack in the swots’ backs, inching through their shoulder blades, crawling between their knees, inhaling the stench of the sweat from their skin before finally, finally he is free! He lurches forward, rushing through the open space, skidding as he treads on a wonky stone slab, reaches his arms out and-

The force of their embrace sends them flying backwards, foreheads knocking together as they collide against the back of a pew with a sharp jolt. Dan’s neck feels clammy under Phil’s fingers, hair still moist from the sweat of the performance. There’s a certain roughness in the smell of musk and perspiration exuding from the boy’s damp skin as he’s pushed up against the pew...and then he feels the codpiece digging into his groin.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for tonight.”

They pull themselves apart, legs and arms still intertwined. Dan’s face glows, golden and flushed, glistening as he grins with joy.

“Hey - you should come backstage and meet the cast.”

Phil scrunches his face up.

“No, I’m serious. I want you to meet them, they’re a wonderful bunch.”

Sighing, he bows his head in surrender. Dan beams, turning to walk down the aisle as Phil follows on close behind him, watching the golden lights twinkle as they pass through the excited crowds who-

Knuckles brush against his. Phil flinches. Fingers dance around the back of his hand before scuttling over towards his palm. He smiles. Heart racing, he rotates his hand as his and Dan’s fingers interlace, a secret gesture of affection seen and understood by nobody else but the two of them. He gives the hand a squeeze, and it squeezes back.

Right now, Phil could die happy.

The sea of faces washes on. A circle of students stand near the stage, singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow to a boy who waves his hands arounds in embarrassment. The entourage cheers, causing the boy to hide his head in his hands. Phil smiles at the scene, remembering how he once suffered a similar fate back in secondary school. They approach the stage, hands disentangling as they walk through the cloister which Dan had dressed inside during their visit to the chapel a few weeks prior. Squeezing through the narrow stone entrance Phil is immediately confronted by the stuffiness of the room. Twenty-odd actors and actresses all in various states of undress gossip and laugh as they run around, sharing bags of sweets and throwing roses at each other in giddy revelry.

“Ah, Daniel! Where have you been?”

Phil looks over to see the actor who had played Mercutio, a short Sikh man that Dan has to bend over to hug. After exchanging some brief jokes, the stranger looks over towards Phil.

“Hello my friend! You must be Philip,” he begins, voice imbued with a Punjabi accent. “I am Daljeet Kahlsa, but please, call me Dalji.”

Daljeet’s handshake is firm, and when he smiles Phil notices that his moustache is curled at the ends. When complimented on it, the man only smiles wider.

“Ah, I can tell I am going to be friends with you! Daniel speaks of you often - he says you are a very clever man. What are you studying?”

“Oh,” he laughs nervously, “I’m probably not as clever as Dan says I am. I’m studying Eng-”

“Dalji please, you can interrogate him later! I’ve got to introduce him to everyone else first!” Dan cries.

“Okay, okay, as you wish!”

As Dan pulls him away Phil mouths an apology to Dalji, who replies with a reassuring wink.

Passing through the congested room they walk over to a small crowd standing in front of a box which, every now and then, people unceremoniously fling their costumes into. Dan introduces him to a well-groomed and well-spoken man called Kenneth, who shakes his hand and asks “how do you do” followed by Christopher, a lanky, blond, bespectacled lad who greets Phil with a subtle nod of the head.

“Here, sit down old chap,” Kenneth booms. “We don’t want to have you awkwardly standing up while the rest of us get changed.”

Phil sits down, giving his thanks to the courteous man. Fortunately, before he can be bombarded with questions about who he is and what he’s studying, the group are interrupted by a loud Irish voice shouting the names of Dan and his friends.

“Chris, Ken, Daniel! Where have you bastards been?”

“Owen! Come here you rascal,” Kenneth cries, shouting at a ginger haired boy who skitters towards him. The two begin to play fight, pretending to box as Dan rolls his eyes and Christopher watches on reprovingly. In the middle of the fighting Owen catches Phil’s eye and stops, tapping Kenneth to let him go.

“Hey, who's this?” He asks, lightly punching Phil on the shoulder.

“I’m a friend of Dan.” He reaches out a hand. “Phil, nice to meet you”.

“Ah, great to see you buddy. You enjoy the show?”

“Oh, it was superb!” He beams, looking around at the actors. “You’re all so wonderfully talented.”

Kenneth guffaws. “Well, Philip, I’m terribly glad you think so, but I shall have to correct you there. We’re the talented ones,” he jests, pointing at himself, Christopher and Dan, “but this buffon managed to fuck up one of only five lines. Five lines! How on earth you managed to do it really is beyond me!”

“Too many whiskies,” Christopher mutters drily.

“Oi!” Owen scoffs. “Enough with the Irish stereotypes! I don’t even like whiskey. Now, Guiness however…”

The congregation continue to laugh and joke as they unlace their doublets, shuck their boots and peel off their tights. Out of modesty and embarrassment Phil averts his eyes, occasionally stealing a glimpse at the men in their vests, briefs and boxer shorts; regrettably, when Dan starts to rope him into the conversation, he has no choice but to look their way.

“Say, Christopher, you’re a bit of a photography whizz, aren’t you?”

A smirk flashes across the blond boy’s face as he adjusts his wire glasses. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say that I’m a whizz as such, but um, yes, I suppose I do enjoy taking the camera out for a bit of a spin every now and then.”

Phil’s interest is piqued. “What camera do you have?”

Christopher turns to face Phil with a surprised look on his face, as if not used to being talked to. “Oh, I’m not a serious photographer or anything,” he confesses, “my parents just bought me a Kodak Retina as a gift for my 18th birthday. I haven’t been using it much so far - mostly just taking pictures of wildlife really - but if this beautiful snow keeps up I just might have to start using it again.”

Dan re-enters the conversation, seemingly having engineered for it to go towards this point.

“Phil is part of a photography club, you know. Chris, you should join.”

“Really? Oh how wonderful. Yes, I’d be very interested in joining actually. When do you meet?”

“Thursdays at eight, right here at Keble,” Phil explains. “We’re only a small bunch and none of us are experts, so there’s no pressure to be a photographic prodigy or anything.”

“He says,” Dan jeers, “despite being one himself.”

Phil scoffs. “I am not!”

“You should see his photographs,” Dan continues, putting a leg on Phil's chair and a hand on his shoulder. “Harsh shadows, mesmerising patterns, vivid colours - this chap could make the most mundane of objects look worthy of being in the Ashmolean Museum.”

“Now this is just nonsense - pure flattery,” he assures Christoper. Nonchalantly leaning back in his chair he angles his head towards his flatterer, halting when he sees the look on the boy’s face. The solemnity of Dan’s expression burns through him like hot coals, brows slightly furrowed as he stares into Phil’s grey eyes with a look of unwavering adoration. If the pair of them were alone he might cry at such a gaze, and with an uneasy swallow he turns back to Christopher. “Still, come to the club when it resumes in the New Year, we’d be glad to have you.”

“Fantastic,” he beams. “I shall make a note in my diary!”

The group don their normal clothing and make their way out of the chapel, stopping frequently to say their goodbyes to fellow actors and actresses while picking up various party-goers along the way. As they leave the chapel Phil strikes up a conversation with Christopher, who turns out to be a second year History student with many similar interests to him. Ambling across the Liddon Quad with the rest of the crowd - which has now amassed to a party of twenty-five plus a few stragglers - they talk of studying Latin, trips to the Isle of Man, and how to cultivate rare South American plants in an English greenhouse. Before long they arrive at the corridor leading to Dan’s room, which has now become rammed with people as the boy struggles to unlock his door.

“Urry up then!” An impatient partygoer shouts.

“Alright, alright, be patient!” Dan retorts. The crowd laughs, and then, finally, the door swings open.

The torrent of people carries Phil into the room until it dissipates, dropping him in the middle of and submerging him in his new surroundings.

This is Dan’s room. This is the place where Dan lives.

In Oxford’s typically palatial style the walls are panelled with wood, there’s a fireplace at one end, and in the centre sits a red velvet sofa amongst a few ratty leather armchairs that circle around a dark wooden coffee table. Tucked away into the corner is a small black piano with a jumble of sheets laid on top of it, no doubt Dan’s doing. Feeling relaxed by the homely decor Phil helps himself to a healthy glass of champagne and saunters through the room, searching for someone familiar to talk to.

It doesn’t take long before he’s stopped by Daljeet, and half an hour later, Phil finds himself engrossed in a retelling of the man’s life. Seven years of service in the British Army during World War Two had only rewarded Daljeet and his country with partition, a bitter war that he had escaped by fleeing his country and returning to England. Within a year of his return he met his now-wife and had begun studying for a Medicine degree at Oxford, which he is now in the third year of. Aside from an interest in science Daljeet reveals that he also has a love for contemporary American literature, but just as Phil is about to ask his opinions on The Catcher in the Rye the pair of them are interrupted by the sound of tinkling glass and a loud cough. They look around in confusion, wondering what the noise was, until they see a man standing on the sofa with a glass of whiskey and a silver spoon in his hand, waiting for silence as the chattering grinds to a halt.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We are gathered here today to witness-”

A woman shouts at him from the corner. “This isn’t a bloody wedding, George!”

Several people laugh. “Oh be quiet Olivia! Come on then, come up here. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Miss Juliet!”

As the crowd cheers a tall, elegant woman with long, mousy brown hair bounds up to the sofa and is hoisted up by George, who wraps his arms around her and kisses her cheek.

“Now then, I suppose you would like to do the honours?”

“I think I shall,” she beams. “Hello everyone. I would just like to quickly say an enormous thank you to all of you for coming tonight. You were marvellous. I’d also like to say a big thank you to my wonderful Romeo...”

This immediately sets off whooping and whistling as Olivia giggles.

“Where are you Harry, where are you, ah! Hands off my woman, do you hear?” George cries, raising his fist in mock jealousy.

“Anyway, tonight is a night for celebration. Congratulations to those of you who have just completed their first Michaelmas term here at Oxford - the workload only gets heavier from here on in,” she laughs. “Many thanks to the magnificent Daniel for letting us use his room for our revelry, but remember everyone! Do not go into Terence’s room, or we shall all receive a beating from that brute, do you hear? Now, go off and be merry you depraved bastards, and if you want champagne, form a queue here!”

The chattering resumes, and as Phil turns around to find somebody else to talk to he sees Mary approaching him with Beth on her arm.

“Hello you two! Are you having fun?”

“We certainly are! I’ve just rescued Beth from Bailiol’s drab Christmas party. It looked absolutely horrend-”

“Really, it wasn’t that bad! You just wanted me to leave so you wouldn’t be alone at Daniel’s,” Beth cries.

“Yes alright, alright,” Mary tuts. “Phil, come - you must meet our friends, I’ve told them I’ll introduce you, come.”

Gripping his arm, she drags him across the room until they arrive in front of two American brunettes with coquettish, blushing faces who are introduced to him as Joan and Jean. Their small talk is light and humorous, and as they share anecdotes and funny stories about their time at the university Phil begins to notice that his new acquaintances appear to be quite taken with him. They ask about what he’s studying, what college he’s at, where he comes from and what his hobbies are, and as the conversation progresses he could swear that Joan and Jean are edging closer to him each time they keel over at his jokes.

Finding their flirtations slightly intimidating, he scans the room for a certain familiar face. Their eyes lock immediately. Dan takes a swig of champagne and sends him a reassuring wink, mouthing ‘you okay?’ through the distance. Phil simply indicates towards Joan and Jean, who have taken to clutching onto his arms. Dan explodes into laughter. ‘You’ll be fine,’ comes the response, followed by another bout of mirth. Phil stifles a snicker.

“Hey Phil,” Joan begins, batting the lashes of her big blue eyes. “You say you’re teaching yourself Latin? That’s so neat.”

“Oh I agree, you must be super clever,” Jean adds, pawing at his arm. “I’m taking French as well as English Lit. I can help you out with your lessons, if you’d like.”

The other one tuts. “I’m sure he doesn’t need our help, Jean.”

“But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind! Won-”

“I’m afraid,” Phil interrupts, “that I’ve had to go on a bit of a break with studying Latin, as I’ve had quite a lot of other things to focus on this term.”

“Oooh, like what?” One of them asks. Phil is starting to forget which is which.

“Well, like-”

“Like a girl, perhaps?”

Phil shoots a nervous glance at Mary and Beth, who look as though they’re restraining themselves from laughing.

“Oh Philip, do you have somebody that you’re seeing?”

“Well...not really, but I um...”

Phil now faces the difficulty of trying to explain his situation whilst skirting around the fact that he is openly-but-also-not-openly a homosexual who is probably-almost-definitely falling in love with a boy who is probably-almost-definitely falling in love with him too despite neither of them explicitly talking about it but both of them communicating it through questions and answers and gestures that have been building up to something which Phil sincerely hopes will come to a conclusion tonight, so sorry June or Jane or Joa, or whatever it is, but there’s absolutely no chance whatsoever of anything happening ever in a million years.

Fortunately, before he has to face that problem, the man of his affections swoops across the room and steps towards the group.

“Good evening Mary, Beth, Phil - oh! Who are these lovely ladies I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting?”

“Hi, I’m Joan,” the first one giggles, reaching out her hand for him to kiss with Jean following on in the same fashion. The two women exchange a glance, the meaning of which Phil understands with a feeling of disgust.

Great - one each.

Filled with enough repulsion to last a lifetime, he flashes a panicked looks towards Dan.

“Well ladies, it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to dash off and take Phil with me.”

The girls’ faces fall. “Please say you’ll come back!”

“Ah, I’m afraid he’s mine. See you later ladies.”

“But-”

Phil walks off, returning Mary’s sly smirk with a nod as he breaks away from the circle and catches up to Dan. When they’re halfway across the room Phil releases a long breath, finally free of unwanted attention as they pull up to a side table laden with alcohol.

“Champagne for you, sir?”

“Go on then. I could do with a drink.”

Dan pours one out for both of them and hands a flute to Phil. “Cheers!”

“Cheers.”

The champagne is delightful, washing through his system like a cool, crisp wind on a hot summer’s day. They take their seats on two small chairs that lie parallel to the table, unintentionally mimicking each other’s body language as they rest an elbow against the top rail, prop their heads up against their hands, cross their outermost legs inwards and then lean in to face one another.

“So,” Dan begins, “now that I’ve finally got you alone, tell me - how are you?”

“I’m fine - tired - but nevertheless enjoying myself. Thank you for saving me from those girls earlier, I was having a completely rotten time with them.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! It was my pleasure,” he assures, taking a sip of his drink and leaning in slightly closer. “Anyway, I couldn’t let them at you, could I? You’re mine.”

“Am I now?” Phil quips, taking another swig of champagne and passing over the flute to his other hand as Dan unconsciously does the same. “It got terribly awkward when one of them asked me whether I had a girlfriend.”

Dan guffaws. “You should have told them that you do,” he jests, grabbing Phil’s hand and holding it. “‘Hi, I’m Daniella Howell, pleased to meet you! I’m Phil Lester’s girlfriend, tee hee!’”

Phil laughs at Dan’s ridiculous impression, doubled over with tears in his eyes as his chest heaves. When the act finishes, Dan’s hand stays stationary. Phil’s eyes flit down, admiring the sight of their hands together before he looks up at Dan, who smiles at him fondly. Suddenly Dan’s eyes flit across Phil’s face and over to something in front of him, a small smirk creeping across his face.

“Look, look over there.”

“What?”

“Turn your head around, slowly.”

Careful not to look suspicious, he cranes his neck backwards to see Joan and Jean peering over at their shoulders and gawking them. They spin away, realising that they’ve been noticed. Phil turns back to face his companion, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear indeed. Poor girls, they don’t have a chance in Hell with us.”

“Mmm, quite.” Dan removes his hand, places his glass on the floor, and slaps his knees. “It’s a bit stuffy in here, don’t you think?”

Phil nods, finishing his champagne and putting the glass on the table next to him.

“Come on, let's go and open some windows.”

Dan pulls him out of his seat, bubbles dancing around his head as they cut across the room. Phil thinks he can hear the sound of Joan and Jean trying to get their attention, but he’s too tipsy to tell. They stop in front of a door as Dan fumbles around in his pockets for a key, thrusts it into the lock and turns, opening up the shadowy alcove within.

Stepping forward, Phil crosses the threshold, door closing behind him with a soft click as he’s sealed off from the outside world with a soft click. The hairs on his arm start to prickle. He can hear the sound of Dan’s footsteps treading through the inky blackness, followed by the glide of opening curtains. Blue light pours into the room, dim and obscure. He steps up onto the window seat-cum-window sill that Dan stands upon, catching a glimpse of the city before the panes swing open and cold air sails into the room. The moon shines brightly, illuminating the ivory frosted lawns and red brick fortress that separates them from the rest of Oxford, a sea of gleaming church spires that stretch on for ever and ever like a vast expanse of endless and undiscovered land.

“It’s a breathtaking view.”

“Not as breathtaking as you are.”

Phil’s heart thumps in his breast. He whips his head around. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

His heart beats even faster. He thinks he knows what’s coming next. Dan hooks his fingers around Phil’s belt loops, pulling their hips together while looking him dead in the eye. Phil’s gaze darts to the floor.

“I-I mean, if you think so then I can’t refute you, but in my eyes you are, and always have been, far, far more handsome, a-and-”

“Phil.”

He looks up.

“Just kiss me.”

Time stands still.

Their faces inch closer, breath mingling and eyelashes brushing across each other’s skin before finally, finally, their lips connect with a kiss.

It starts off soft, and slow, and delicate, before growing stronger and rougher until Phil is pressed up against the wall with his hands on Dan’s rear and his tongue slipped into his mouth, touching, feeling and devouring every inch of this gorgeous boy in a starved rapture, their kisses growing deeper and more adventurous until something starts to stir and Phil moves his hand to grab-

*knock knock knock*

They break apart, freezing to the spot.

The door swings open.

“See, Joan, I told you they weren’t in here.”

“But they must be, where else would they-”

The light switches on.

The girls turn their heads.

Their jaws drop.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. I’m so sorry. How do I...oh my- carry on…”

Moving as quickly as they can the intruders shuffle out of the room, turning off the light as the door closes behind them. A few seconds later the sound of Mary’s cackling can be heard. Phil looks over at Dan, who stares back at him. Dan starts to snigger until then they both erupt into laughter, cachinnation soaring out of the window and into the breeze. As they quieten down Phil looks out towards the view below, resting his forearm on the sill as a peaceful stillness settles. Keble’s vast, niveous quadrangle extends before him, glowing with a magical sparkle under the ultramarine wash of moonlight. Beyond the red brick turrets lie a mass of church spires and plane trees and twinkling car headlamps.

Dan sighs. “I can’t believe that that just happened.”

Phil rotates his head around and watches the other boy. “Ridiculous, right? Did they really not get the hint that we weren’t interested in them?”

“I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Hmm?” He blinks. “What were you talking about?”

“About us. I can’t believe it happened.”

“Oh.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that.”

A sheepish smile flickers over Phil’s face as he looks back towards the quad. Out of the corner of his eye, a light turns on. A student opens her curtains, peering out of the glass and staring at the snow-covered grass before pulling up a chair to the window and beginning to read a book. After a few seconds she gives up on reading and stares back out of the window, brushing a strand of hair out of her face as she rests her head in her hands.

Dan clears his throat. “Ever since I first saw you,” he begins, “I have been completely and utterly enamoured by you.”

Phil turns around, resting his head on the window as he watches the boy speak.

“I have always thought of you rather like a secret garden. I imagine myself walking down a tree-laden path, exploring some uncharted territory near a house I have recently moved into when I come across a gate clad with ivy. As I go up to the gate, I see that it is closed. I peer inside. From this side of the gate I can’t see much, but what I can see is stunning - arches and roses and statues and fountains, neatly kept and beautifully decorated, the creation of a person with real elegance and grace. Unable to enter I continue on with my walk, but as I arrive home I find that my thoughts all centre around that mysterious gated oasis. Each day I visit it, and each day there is something new to discover: a babbling brook; a tree bearing fruit; a peacock wandering the grounds; a bridge tucked away in the distance. The more I visit the more my obsession grows, but I am too scared to try the lock or climb the walls lest the owner of the garden doesn’t want me there.” He pauses, shifting in his spot. “One day I arrive at those walls and decide to give the railings a shake; to my surprise, I find that it is open. Tentatively I push the gate, and as I walk in I am greeted by the most heavenly sight that I have ever seen. The sky is blue and warm, the flowers sweet and bright, the brook is clear, the fountain is great, and the fruit is full and ripe. I chide myself for not realising that the gate was unlocked all this time, thus idiotically depriving myself of something that I could have enjoyed for months before. After a short while I think to myself that perhaps it was destined to be this way, for now, after admiring for so long, I can truly appreciate what it is I have to behold.”

Phil takes a slow breath and tries to will his brimming tears back into his eyes. Biting the inside of his mouth he squints and knits his brows together, trying to compose himself.

It’s no use.

He turns to Dan, steps forward, cups his jaw and kisses him, firmly and wholeheartedly. The other boy’s hands clutch him by the waist, pulling him in as their kiss continues. After a few seconds they break apart, still in each other’s embrace and gazing into each other’s eyes as they catch their breath.

“That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

Dan beams. “Well, the inspiration behind it was quite something.

Phil is about to ask what it was, before remembering with a leap of joy that it was himself.

“Oh Dan, how are we going to live apart for the next month? I don’t want to go home, away from you!”

The other man pauses to think. “I know - we shall send each other letters! I’ll write to you about Reading and my music work and you can write back to me about your photography and all the books you’re reading.”

Phil grins. “That sounds great. I’d love that.”

There’s a brief moment of silence spent looking into each other’s eyes. Dan is the first to move, slapping Phil’s back and moving away.

“We had better get back to this party! People must be starting to wonder where we are.”

“Mmmm. We don’t want a repeat incident of Joan and Jean barging in.”

Dan laughs as he steps down from the window ledge, holding Phil by his wrists despite the drop being perfectly safe. They walk through the dark room together, still connected.

“If I catch them looking at you again I shall have to kiss you in front of their prying eyes.”

“No, no, you mustn’t!” Phil giggles, wriggling as Dan nuzzles his face.

“Here, let me get one out the way before we go out there and I can’t kiss you again.”

Pulling Phil in by the wrists he draws him in for one last kiss, slow and sweet. Letting go of his hands he twists the door handle open, and a streak of warm light floods into the room. He turns around, giving Phil one last smile, before the pair of them walk through the doorway and back into the bustling party.

#my writing #Dan and Phil #daniel howell #phil lester #phan #phannie #phanfic

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