#(its called deals with destiny ;3)

[kiwibirdlafayette]

they dont know i wrote the rest of hermits/lifers/empires crew into my osmp AU just so i could write in my head a scene where sonja meets the mounders + the roomies

[ceilidho]

fig. 3. heart in flames; baptism by fire | John Price x Reader

MASTERLIST · AO3

The universe hasn't seen fit to give Price a mate of his own. He'll have to take matters into his own hands.

or: the forced mating omegaverse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Omegaverse, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Stalking, Kidnapping, Heavy Noncon/Dubcon Elements

His appetite is an arsenal all on its own. 

It’s always been bigger than him, barrel-chested. All consuming. It’s the reason that John is where he is today, always chasing down something larger than himself. Greedy for what he can’t have. Ambitious to a fault. Promotions and titles and commendations and accolades; they’re all wrapped up in his psychology, into whatever it is about him that wants without end. Without satisfaction. 

It’s likely why he ends up being referred to an endocrinologist specializing in hormone disorders in alphas when an overproduction of androstenone turns his ruts violent. Over the years, they’ve been steadily getting worse, even with a partner to help see him through the worst of it, the overproduction of hormones making him a little too mindless, a little too frenzied. 

“It’s not especially common for men your age, if I can be frank,” the doctor tells him, flipping through his chart. “Not uncommon, but low enough that I want to send you for a couple tests just to be safe. You’re still unmated?”

John nods. “That’s right.”

It’s not that the option hasn’t ever presented itself, but the timing has never felt right. Even marriage hadn’t sweetened the deal, and maybe that’s why he’s just north of forty-five and already divorced. The fault lies with him alone; he’s man enough to admit that. Maybe if he’d been more attentive, less likely to disappear for months at a time; if he’d swallowed his reluctance and just bit his omega instead of dragging his feet through his marriage like a prisoner marching to his own doom—maybe things might be different. 

“Any plans to change that?”

“‘Fraid not.”

The truth of the matter is that, though he’s waited a lifetime for that special someone to cross his path, no one has ever come close to smelling right. Even his ex-wife had only come so close—good enough to turn his head, but not enough to keep him. Or maybe he hadn’t been enough to keep her. These days, it’s hard to say which feels more like the truth. 

Sometimes John thinks that it’s simply not in the cards for him. That for whatever reason, destiny or God or the universe or whatever force that decides the fate of all things, has deemed him unfit for the other half of his soul. 

It’s just that it’s been—

It’s been a long time without anyone to call his own.

The doctor scribbles something down in John’s chart. “Alright.”

With his rut coming up in just a few days, the timing couldn’t be better. It sizzles like a low grade fever under his skin. He works up a sweat more easily, even a couple flights of stairs leaving the pits of his shirt dark and damp. There’s a little extra padding around his midsection, a bit more bulk on his arms and thighs; his beard a little thicker than usual, forcing him to trim it twice a day to keep it from growing out of control. Even though it happens every year, it sneaks up on him, the added mass making him a bit lethargic in the weeks before his rut. 

“We won’t have the results in time for your next scheduled rut, but I’d recommend asking a trusted partner to help you out. And wear protection. We have extra mouth guards and other paraphernalia if you need anything.”

John holds up a hand when the doctor goes to open a drawer. “I’ve got plenty at home. Appreciate the advice though. Any medication I should be taking?”

“I don’t want to start you on anything this close to your rut, but maybe after. I’ll have the front desk set up a follow up appointment for you for two weeks from now.”

He nods, making a mental note. 

There are a couple girls he could call up on short notice, but the thought sits like a dull weight in his chest. The decades of casual heats and ruts have left him with little appetite for that sort of thing these days. What he wants—craves really, needs really—is something permanent, something meaningful. John’s been around the block enough to know that he’s looking for something more. 

He’s had good ruts and bad ruts. Ruts spent in the warm embrace of another, filling up a soft, wet hole again and again until his spend leaked down their thighs, lost in a daze of pheromones and heat-slick. Ruts spent entombed in his own frustrated lust, mindlessly rutting into a cum-filled fleshlight to slake a thirst that never ebbs, only flows and rushes over the guardrails, dragging him further under. 

This one might end up falling into the latter category.

“Right, well, thanks for stopping by, John. You have a good rest of your day, alright?”

“Same to you.”

His nostrils burn the second he walks back into the main corridor, which is teeming with activity, children climbing over their parents’ laps and people still waiting to see a doctor slumped over in their chairs. Two interns wheel a bed down the hall, forcing everyone to scoot to the side and cling to the wall to get out of the way. There’s always too many people in the hospital. Too many smells. 

This close to his rut, everything reeks. Congealed sweat and antiseptic; plastic chairs that smell simultaneously of sick and Lysol wipes, confusing his nose. Stale body odour from those in the waiting room on their sixth hour of waiting on loved ones or on an available doctor. It’s a bludgeon to the senses, particularly when they’re more sensitive than usual. 

An elevator takes him down to the first floor, which is even more chaotic than the one John was just on somehow. Patients and doctors spilling out of rooms, announcement after announcement blaring over the intercom, and always—always—the sharp scent of isopropyl, astringent against the inside of his nose. 

“I don’t understand—did she leave?” 

The voice catches him like a fish on a hook on his way towards the main entrance, beadhead soaring through the air and slipping under the surface of the water just as he’s angling to leave. 

When John turns around, you’re standing by the front desk with your chin tucked into your chest. You make a pitiful sight like that, with your lips pursed and your eyebrows pinched, and you hold yourself almost delicately, hands gripping the edge of the desk to stabilize yourself. 

He takes a deep inhale. Though admittedly he’s not close enough to get a good whiff, your scent is muted, likely dampened by the effects of several painkillers and the anesthetic still running through your system. The stench of pain is strong too, which accounts for the way you hold your body and move so gingerly, the brace on your arm a good indication. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If she’s not here, she must have left. You could try calling her?” the nurse at the front desk says, almost apologetic. “We can’t let you leave without an escort to take you home.”

“Okay, um…” you whisper, and now your scent is pungent with panic, acerbic. “Let me call her and ask her to come back.”

The sound of your voice is stronger now that it’s had time to travel. Again he feels it pinch him like coming out of a dream.

It’s so unremarkable that John nearly carries on down the hall towards the entrance, nothing about the interaction sticking out. 

Something keeps him rooted in place though. Intuition or a sixth sense or finely honed instincts. So instead of leaving, he turns around and walks right back to the front desk, stopping when he’s within arm’s length of you, eyes soaking up the sight of your tensed shoulders.

He doesn’t know the words are going to come out of his mouth until they do. “Lost your way home?” 

When you turn your eyes up to look at him, he feels the breath get knocked out of him. Prettier than anything he’s ever seen, the lure at the end of a fishing line drawing him in. 

And yet, for as pleasant as you smell, it’s nothing dissimilar to the countless omegas John has come across before. It evokes nothing primal—no deep-seated urge to sink his canines into a plump gland and bind you to him. 

You simply smell nice.

It’s difficult to articulate the devastation that courses through him. He’d hoped against hope that it would happen, that someday he would turn a corner and his fated mate would be there, looking at him like what took you so long? But how long can a man be expected to wait? How many years of disappointment can he be expected to weather by himself, his hopes dashed repeatedly? 

In less than a second, he makes a decision. 

One too many times, he’s hoped for fate to intervene and reward him for his patience. It never has. That responsibility must fall on him. 

There’s nothing new about trying to immanentize the eschaton, but John has faith in himself. If fate won’t do what must be done, then he will instead. 

“Excuse me?” you ask. So polite. 

“Heard you talking to the nurse about your ride home; sounds like you’re in a bit of a fix.”

“Yeah, I…um…” You seem torn on whether or not to keep up the conversation, likely finding his attention a bit intrusive, but gentility prevails in the end. Good. He was just starting to like you. “My friend was supposed to drive me home after surgery, but it looks like she might’ve bailed. She’s not answering my texts, but someone else said they saw her leave.”

“Sorry to hear that. Not fair, putting you in a spot like that.”

“I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but…uh…” You laugh, a touch derisively. “This is kind of screwing me over. I’m trying to get another friend to come pick me up, but it’s short notice and most people can’t just call out of work at the drop of a hat.”

There’s a vulnerable note in your voice almost masked by the touch of annoyance in your laugh but still plain for anyone attentive enough to hear. John is nothing but attentive.

“Don’t let her screw you over and get away with it,” he says, positioning himself on your side. “Short of someone dying, there’s no reason she should’ve left you on your own after an operation.”

“You’re probably right,” you murmur, too tired to put up a fight. “It just sucks. I wish she hadn’t told me yes in the first place—I could’ve asked someone else and given them more notice.”

“If you’re looking for a way home, I’d be happy to give you a lift.” John shrugs a shoulder when your lips open, the polite refusal already bubbling up your throat rebuffed by his next words. “I’m headed out now anyway. Just came to get some bloodwork done, nothing serious. Wouldn’t be an imposition at all.”

Your eyebrows pull together, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. 

“I’m not sure if I should be accepting rides from strangers.”

There’s a teasing lilt there, but also an undercurrent that he’s become familiar with over the years. A tempered kind of caution. One that says the words with a smile but prepares to sprint the other way. 

He smiles and holds out his hand. “I’m John.” When you take it, he knows he’s got you. “Not strangers anymore, are we?”

You answer that with a coy shake of your head, giving your name just as readily.

“So, how about it? Can I take you home?” John asks, repeating the invitation. His blood simmers when you take too long to answer.

“Ma’am,” the nurse suddenly interjects from the front desk, taking your attention away from him. It’s surprising how much that displeases him. “Have you gotten in touch with your friend yet or do we have to put you on the list for the drop-off service?”

John can see you warring with the options in your mind, eyes flitting between him and the nurse. 

“Actually, I found a ride home. Can I sign out?”

“Mind if I ask what you were in for?”

The drive to your house is mostly uneventful. He plugs your address into the GPS and hits save when something outside the window catches your attention. 

“It was just a little procedure.” His ensuing silence must make you nervous because you volunteer the reason for your stay after just a few short seconds. “Carpal tunnel release. My job involves a lot of typing, so I couldn’t keep putting it off; can’t wait to go back to living normally.”

He clocked the splint and the bandage around your hand and wrist when he approached you at the hospital, but it’s good to put a label on it. John makes a mental note to look up the post-op protocol for carpal tunnel surgery when the two of you get home. It’ll help him to better understand and address your needs in the coming days and weeks, and what he’ll need to watch out for when his rut finally sets in. 

He’ll clue you in on all of that later when he’s had a chance to explain himself. 

“Shame that your friend didn’t stick around to get you home. Probably still in a bit of pain, aren’t you?”

“Not yet. The painkillers they’ve got me on are really good.”

“Hm. I bet.”

You’re not that loopy despite being on painkillers though. More tired than anything. 

“I probably could’ve planned this better. I didn’t even get groceries before leaving for surgery.”

“You want me to stop and pick you up a couple things?”

He can see you turn to look at him from the corner of his eye. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve got time. Do you know what you need?”

You rattle off the couple items that you need and John merges into the left lane while listening, heading towards the nearest grocery store. 

He makes you stay in the car while he goes in to pick up a couple things, his number plugged into your phone in case you need him to rush back. The few items you rattle off aren’t sufficient enough for what you’ll need over the coming weeks, so John takes the liberty of purchasing a few extra things. Cured meats, fruit, a box of pastries for breakfast, and a couple frozen microwaveable meals. Baby wipes, lotion, and a multivitamin. All the essentials for a rut. 

There are things back at his place that he’ll need for his rut, but he’ll ask Simon to pick those up whenever he has a chance. It’s why John gave him a spare key after all. 

When he wheels the cart out of the store, he comes around by the back of the car, popping the trunk before you have a chance to see the sheer amount of bags in his cart. There will be a time later to talk you through what’s going to happen. 

“Sorry if my list was complicated,” you apologize when he gets back into the front seat, the cart in the corral. It doesn’t change where things were already heading, but it makes him look at you a bit differently. There’s a sweetness to you, one he hadn’t noticed before. 

He likes it though.

“Wasn’t complicated in the least,” John says, brushing off the apology. “Just took me a while to find everything. Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

Your eyes crinkle when you smile. “I’m not in any hurry.”

John’s always liked docile things. Sweet, simpering things with nervous eyes and gentle demeanours. 

Moreover—

what isn’t already tamed is his to break. 

You’re a cagey thing as well though. At least, you get cagey when John gets out of the car and follows you up the front stairs on your porch instead of hovering a safe distance away. He keeps the subterfuge up by only carrying in the bags with the things you requested, leaving the rest in his car for now.

“I really appreciate all your help; I should be able to take it from here though,” you tell him at the door, the key still tucked in your hand. Your voice is infused with enough gratitude that a duller man might let it stroke their ego while you slipped inside and out of their grasp.

John smiles instead. “Wouldn’t be doing the right thing if I let you go without making sure you got to bed safe and sound. Open the door, sweetheart.”

He can see the hesitation on your face plain as day. Every instinct telling you not to let a man into your house, much less an alpha. 

But inevitably you let him in.

Good girl.

The house is saturated with your scent. He has to take a deep inhale right off the bat, committing your scent to memory. Without the overwhelming stench of antiseptic and sickness from the hospital, your scent is cleaner, richer. Preserved in amber. 

There’s something faint underlying your lived-in scent though. He can’t quite name it, but it sits on the tip of his tongue like a tune he’s heard before. 

“Mind if I put these away for you?” John asks, lifting the grocery bags in his hands. 

“Oh—yes, thank you. The kitchen’s that way.” You point towards the back of the house.

John carries the bags with just your groceries to the kitchen and unloads everything one by one into the fridge. The meager contents of your fridge speak to a frugal, solitary existence, and suddenly the faint smell permeating through your house has a name. Loneliness. 

A man hasn’t been in here in quite some time, if ever. Every single inch of the house has been scrubbed with your scent, not a trace of any former occupant remaining. No roommate or close friend or boyfriend. 

“Nice place you’ve got,” he comments when he walks back into the living room to find you fiddling around with the cushions on the couch, arranging them to make yourself a cozy spot to lie down.

You look up at the sound of his voice and smile, faintly flattered. “Thank you. I’ve only had it a year, but uh…I’ve been doing my best. Also—thanks again for driving me home. And stopping for groceries.” Your lips go round like you’ve remembered something. “I still have to pay you back by the way. Wait right here.”

“Let me go get the rest from the car first,” John says. 

“There’s more?” you ask, surprised. 

He nods. “I got you a couple extra things—on me. I hope that wasn’t too much of an overstep.”

You chew your lip but ultimately the uncertainty melts from your gaze the longer he stands there waiting for your approval. “…No, that’s…that’s fine. You didn’t have to, but thank you.”

His overstep is just a toe over the lip of the door, but it’s still a foot keeping the door from closing. 

On his way back out to the car, John happens to glance down while passing the table in the entryway and finds, much to his delight, your phone resting casually beside the vanity tray. It sits there like you purposefully left it for him to take. 

If not you, then fate. 

With deft fingers practiced at lifting, he pockets your phone, and then heads back to the car for the rest of the groceries, whistling the whole way there and back. 

You start to look at him a bit differently when he brings in the second round of groceries. The number of bags hanging from his forearms must strike you as odd, too many for what you asked him to pick up. John doesn’t bother making any excuses though. 

He can see your trust wavering, pulled out from the water and left belly up in the air, gasping for breath. It wouldn’t be hard to fix it. It wouldn’t be hard to go about this the right way—leave you with your groceries and pain meds, tuck you into bed before seeing himself out, and then waiting a couple days to ask you out for coffee. To leave now would mend your trust entirely. 

He considers it even, never one for turning down a potential strategy without considering its merit. But his alpha digs its heels in when he contemplates leaving, pushing every inch of its weight into rooting him in place. 

It doesn’t want him to leave; and truth be told, John can’t bear the thought either. 

The little trust you extended evaporates more and more as the minutes tick by and he shows no sign of leaving. You dance around it for a while, cautiously hopeful that he might be inadvertently overstaying his welcome, and John watches your descent into hopelessness from the corner of his eyes. 

It’s only when he helps himself to a snack from the fridge and turns the television on that you break, sweat beading on your upper lip. 

“John, I think maybe you s-should leave.”

The confidence you muster up to even just say that impresses him. It takes a lot out of you though, your body sagging when the words come out of your mouth, so much tension building up in your muscles that it literally weighs you down.

The hand with the remote drifts down to his side. “What do you mean, sweetheart?” John asks. 

“Well, I’ve—I’ve got it from here.” You switch to a more diplomatic tone, likely wary of worsening the situation you’ve gotten yourself into. Aware that you’ve invited him into your house, that your safe space now has another resident. “I don’t need any more help.” 

Though not as close to his rut as he will be in the coming days, the sentiment still makes him bristle. You don’t need any more help. Rich considering you let a strange alpha take you home not half an hour ago. 

He places the remote down and advances on you briskly, all of a sudden, quick enough that you only notice when he’s right in front of you, surprise overriding your fight or flight response. 

John cups the back of your neck with a big hand and tilts your head up until he can see the puffy, virgin mating gland sitting in the crook of your neck. Thumbs it too, ignoring the way your eyes go wide and horrified, and the way you try to wriggle out of his grasp until he tightens his hand around the nape of your neck. 

“Of course you do, sweetheart. Can't have you wandering around like this—wrong person might try to take advantage.”

Fear makes your pupils dilate. It stinks too, the stench wafting off you. A bit of initial unpleasantness is expected though, and understandable. It’ll be a lot to help work you through the worst of it, but it’s nothing he hadn’t already internally committed to. 

“You’re—you’re not going to leave?”

John shakes his head and smiles. 

Smart girl that you are, you don’t jump to screaming and shouting. Not that the urge isn’t there building in your chest, but you know the odds are stacked against you. You’ve already let him in. 

Your breathing picks up though, and your lip trembles. An anxious swallow follows, then another, throat too dry for you to speak. 

“Why?”

“C’mere, sweetheart.” John takes you by the hand, careful to avoid the bandaged one, and pulls you to the couch, where he takes a seat. “We can only have a frank conversation about this if you promise to be polite and wait your turn to speak. Clear?”

Your lips twitch with displeasure but you nod. 

“My rut’s coming up in a week.” He catches you before you spring back up to your feet, yanking you back down by your arm. “No, don’t try to run; this is happening, love. My rut’s coming up and I’m staying here for it, okay?”

“I can stay someplace else,” you offer weakly, voice breaking. 

His smile verges on pitying. “No, sweetheart. You’re staying here with me for it.”

Your scent goes sour. Ammonium sulfide and allicin. His nose would wrinkle if he’d been expecting anything less than your reaction, but you conform, as always, beautifully to his expectations. 

“You can’t…make me go through a rut with you.” Your throat constricts around the word rut. 

“Yes, I can,” he says simply because that’s what it is. Simple.

In a world of people riddled with guilt complexes and victim mentalities, he stands alone. He has no qualms about taking what’s owed to him, or with shaping the world according to the version of it that lives in his head. That’s how history is made. 

He can’t judge others for their nature the same way he can’t fault himself for his. 

“I thought you said you were in the army.”

“I did.”

“Isn’t this…—this is against the law then, isn’t it?”

“You’re thinking of American law, sweetheart.” He doesn’t bring up any similar protection against forced billeting enshrined in English law. Best to not get lost in the weeds. 

There’s a tick in your eyes that betrays you. John readies himself for a chase when your eyes glance over his shoulders towards the door, but you discard that plan as quickly as it entered your brain. Weighing the odds and finding them not in your favour. 

“I have friends,” you blurt out. “Family. People check up on me.”

“That’s fine, love. When they do, you’re gonna tell them that you’re taking a week off to rest and you don’t want anyone coming by in the meantime.” When you don’t respond, clearly thinking something different, irritation flickers in his chest. “Wanna know why you’re going to do that?”

“…Why?”

“‘Cause you know this could go one of two ways. We could either have a nice time together and I’ll be on my way afterwards…or I could bite that little mating gland of yours now and we can take that option off the table.”

There’s no point in telling you that he’s already made up his mind about that part. The allure of hope is too tempting; he has to give you something to latch onto. 

“Do we understand each other?” he asks. 

Your initial hesitation tells him all he needs to know. This won’t be an easy conquest or a city handed over to spare its citizens pain—you won’t hesitate to put up a fight. 

“Okay.” 

John makes himself at home like a fox laying claim to a rabbit’s burrow. 

Siege warfare. A lifetime in the military has made him well versed in poliorcetics. He knows of how the Romans once conquered the city of Fidene by launching false attacks from four different directions at four different times before breaching the city through a long tunnel that passed under its walls, and how Alexander captured the city of Tyre by building a kilometer-long causeway and besieging it for seven months.

Your phone was the first thing to go, confiscated lest you got any funny ideas about calling someone to rescue you. Not that you need rescuing; in the end, you’ll see that this was in your best interests too. The next thing to do is your laptop, tucked away out of reach until you’ve proved yourself to be trustworthy. 

He cuts off all trade routes and replaces them with his own, Simon showing up at the door the following morning with supplies. When you spot a man at the door, you must think saviour before foe, because you pound on the window facing the porch. At least John had the foresight to lock you out of the foyer before he opened the front door.

Simon cocks an eyebrow. “Noisy mouse, ain’t she?”

He shrugs. “She’ll learn. You got everything I asked for?”

“Check ‘n tell me if I missed anything. I ‘aven’t got time to get anything else today, but I can come back tomorrow.”

“Good man, Simon. Give me a minute, alright, lad?”

John gives the bag a cursory check, but just as he thought, Simon didn’t miss anything. He never does. 

Simon helps him install an electronic lock on the front door from the inside before heading off to work and John spends the next ten minutes programming it while you stare through the foyer door helplessly. The back door gets the same treatment later on, effectively rendering you a prisoner in your own house.

Then he takes stock of the property. 

You’ve made yourself a perfectly respectable home. It has all the charm of a simple family home, nothing like his ancestral estate on the Welsh border; there’s something real here, something designed with comfort in mind. You’ll have to live with summering there and wintering here in the city, but he won’t ask you to abandon the life you’ve made for yourself here. The stove’s at least thirty years old—one of those old brands made to last, likely passed down from a family member or bought secondhand. 

But John takes stock of the layout of the house because the longer he’s there, the more his instincts tingle. 

As well-decorated and maintained as your house is, it doesn’t feel ready for a rut. Too many hard edges and wide open spaces. Before humans became accustomed to single domiciles, instinct would’ve made them search far and wide for a burrow or cave comfortable enough to ride out their cycle. 

Like nest building for omegas, den making is inherent to alphas. It’s programmed in his DNA. Even out in the wild, he’d know how to make one—know what materials to look for in the absence of soft pillows and sheets—and feel that same urge to make a space suitable for his mate. 

Everything in its right place.

He starts by pulling the mattress off the bed frame and dragging it to the corner of the room. It makes your room feel like more of a den, a place to hunker down in, and that’s only reinforced when John pulls out every blanket and pillow from your linen closet and drapes them over the mattress. You don’t have blackout curtains, but he solves that by pinning a few sheets up on your blinds until barely any light passes through. 

Preparing for a rut is a little like preparing for a storm. One has to batten down the hatches to ready themselves for the worst of it. He installs locks on the cutlery drawers and stows the knife block away in the highest cabinet, locking that as well. He thinks of the worst case scenarios and plans accordingly. 

You don’t seem to appreciate his efforts though.

“Why are you—” you start and then abruptly stop, swallowing. “Please stop rearranging the furniture.” 

John pauses, putting the couch down gently so as not to damage the floorboards or upset you with any sudden noise. 

“Well, love, I’m not about to let you do all the backbreaking work, now am I?”

That response doesn’t seem to satisfy you, expression still twisted into a scowl. “Neither of us has to do any work. Why are you moving things around in the first place?”

“You really don’t get how these things are done, do you?”

Embarrassment makes you snappy. “No, and I don’t have to because it’s my fucking house either way. Stop moving my furniture.”

His eyes go half-lidded. Anger courses through his veins like floating down a lazy river. John has never liked being told what to do—it’s a personality quirk that’s been both a hindrance and a help to his career, but in his love life, he’s never allowed that sort of thing to fly. The dissolution of his first marriage speaks for itself. 

He lumbers around the couch towards you and you flinch, walking backwards in the opposite direction. He’s quick despite his size though, hand reaching up and cupping the back of your neck before you hit the wall behind you, and all you can do is stare up at him towering over you nervously. 

“Careful, sweetheart,” John murmurs, holding you firmly enough by the back of your neck that you whimper, only one hand able to press against his chest in an effort to push him away. The other you cradle limply against your chest. “Keep running your mouth like that and I might need to find a better way to put it to use. Ever had your mouth knotted?”

Nothing headier than the idea of pushing to the back of his omega’s throat and letting his knot expand until it’s trapped behind your teeth, keeping you locked on his cock until it’s softened enough to pull out. 

He stores the idea away for later. It wouldn’t do to knot your mouth for the first time during his rut when he doesn’t have the wherewithal to take it slow and keep you centred, but it’s an idea he’ll have to return to at a later date. When he has time to sit you on his lap and comfort you after something so intense instead of thinking only of his own urges. 

Rut isn’t a completely mindless state of being. Even in the thrall of his rut, John will still have enough cognizance to make somewhat informed decisions. It would be dangerous if alphas were susceptible to any influence during such a vulnerable period. Anyone could take advantage of someone in that state. 

There are some things that he doesn’t have complete control over. The closer John gets to the onset of his rut, the stronger the urge to scent his territory gets. 

It starts off relatively innocuous. He touches things more. Grips the doorframe when he enters a room and brushes against the wall when he turns a corner. Anything to leave a trace of his scent behind. But as the days progress and the urge to mark what’s his grows to monstrous proportions, the manner in which he chooses to do so shifts in kind. 

“Did you piss in the shower?” you seethe, fists clenched when you storm into the living room where John is seated at the couch watching Casablanca in black and white. 

He grunts. Nods. 

“You could’ve turned the water on to rinse it out,” you hiss. “Or used the toilet.”

“Not the point,” John says. 

“There was a point to pissing in my shower?”

“Never spent a rut with anyone, have you?” That pleases the lazy beast inside of him, but he’s not in any mood to explain himself. That’s what books are for. He prefers to teach through example. 

“What does it matter? That still doesn’t mean you can piss in my shower.” 

He takes a swig from the bottle in his hand. “Then you won’t wanna go around the side of the house.”

The screech gets all tangled up at the back of your throat, only the memory from the last time you sassed him staying your tongue. John can only smile to himself as you storm out of the room.

For all your resistance, he knows you’re not entirely immune to his presence, same as how he can’t shake the gnawing need to bury himself in you as deep as he can get. He’s a prime specimen of alpha—all thick muscle and dark tufts of hair, belly spilling over the top of his jeans and new notch on his belt from the mass he’s tacked on the weeks leading up to his rut. He’s been around the block enough to know his appeal. 

It’s why John doesn’t worry when you hiss and spit. Views the fuss you put up akin to foreplay, a little rough-housing before the situation gets serious. 

There are tells after all. It’s the way you look at him when you think he’s not paying attention. Furtive glances from the corners of your eyes. Shifting your hips in your chair when he sits across from you at meal times and spreads his legs wide, knocking his knees against yours. Eyes going hazy and lingering on the bulging muscles of his arms when you watch him move the furniture around in your house. 

He thinks sometimes about dragging you into bed early. Getting it out of the way now and getting you used to his touch before his rut sets in. It would be a kindness, in a way. 

But he relishes getting to see you squirm, the pseudo-heat sinking in day by day and making you more persuasive, less likely to bolt when your hand finally heals. Your instincts will do half the work for him. All he has to do is wait. 

Besides, the greater the effort, the sweeter the reward. 

Midway through the week, when his rut is close enough to be a thorn in his side but not close enough to have earned him the right to refuse to come in, Laswell has him come in for some inane reason. 

John still doesn’t trust you enough to leave you alone though, so he calls Simon and asks him to babysit you for a couple hours. Not a half hour later, the man’s on his doorstep, hands by his sides and expression deadpan. Even out of the service, he’s still a good soldier. 

It’s what makes Simon his favourite sometimes, though he’d never tell a soul. John knows it’s not right to play favourites with his men, but in the privacy of his own mind, he can face reality. 

“I won’t be gone long, sweetheart, but Simon’s gonna watch you while I’m out. You gonna be on your best behaviour for him?”

Your eyes cut to Simon and they look dangerous. Calculating. His lips almost twitch in amusement under his mustache. 

“Sure,” you say instead of arguing. It’s more of a red flag than if you had. 

The five hours he spends away from you are excruciating, and his temper suffers for it. These days, at his own insistence he’s been relegated to something of a desk job, but that still comes with its fair share of responsibility. There are certain strategic meetings that he can’t simply decline to attend, and though the hours pass by fast enough, he can still feel your presence like an itch at the back of his head that he can’t seem to scratch.

When he gets home, the itch finally dissipates.

“How was she?” John asks.

“Biter.” Simon holds up a forearm where your bite mark sits livid red against his pale skin. The imprint is deep, nearly piercing right through flesh near the canines. 

John whistles. “She did a number on you.”

Simon shrugs, unbothered. “Left the door unlocked and she tried to run. Fast on her feet.” Never did have his head on straight, that one. John feels no pity for the omega that’ll be his one day, but he has some sympathy.

He won’t discipline you just yet. That’ll be a project for another day—after you’re mated and hitched—and he can take his time training you. For now it’s enough that you’re still tucked away inside the den, not quick enough to outrun his lieutenant. 

Simon leaves with a few crisp bills folded in his back pocket and John claps his shoulder on the way out. 

The time is coming though. Every day pulls the sun thick off the horizon, the water dragging back from the shore. Soon, there will be a wave.

John knows his rut has started when he wakes up one morning as grumpy as a bear fresh out of hibernation. 

The first thing he hears is the sound of his stomach growling. Food. His first conscious thought. His stomach aches something fierce, like he hasn’t eaten in quite some time, even though John vaguely recalls eating supper the night before (though for the life of him he can’t remember what). 

His mind processes all of the information around him slowly and sluggishly, not in a hurry to make sense of anything. His vision still works perfectly fine, but his brain takes awhile to register what his eyes are seeing. Only base impulses make any sense. He sniffs the air to help guide him towards a food source. 

Something warm-smelling comes slinking out of the bathroom quietly. His head snaps in its direction and it freezes in its tracks. Prey. 

He sniffs again. No, not prey. Something different. 

Standing up feels strange, like he’s out of his body. It’s too big somehow. Heavier than he remembers it being. The thing trembling by the doorway doesn’t move as he lumbers over, smart enough to know not to run. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from chasing it down if it tried to get away, prey or not. 

It flinches when he drops his head, the bridge of his nose brushing against its temple. His scent’s all over this one. He must have come or pissed on it at one point, marking it as his own. His scent clings to its skin, buried deeper than the epidermis. 

It shifts to one foot.

“Don’t…move…” he growls, tensing up. It tenses up too, breathing out short, shaky breaths. 

“J-John?” it says, voice like a bell in his head. It knows his name.

“Hungry,” he says instead of asking how it knows who he is. 

“I…I can make you breakfast.”

He herds it away from the bathroom door instead of answering, staring it down as it walks backwards down the hall and into the room that smells strongest of food. 

The house smells of him only vaguely. It smells mainly of the thing he herds into the kitchen, warm and spicy like cinnamon or cloves. There’s a faint trace of his scent though, as if he’s been here for enough time that it isn’t wholly foreign. His hackles raise at the thought of not being in his own territory though. 

But this must also be his. If you’re his, then your den must, in turn, belong to him. 

You scurry around the kitchen gathering all of the ingredients for breakfast while he stares from his chair, eyes tracking your every move. Part of him waits for you to try and bolt, on edge when you open the fridge and the sound makes his ears twitch. His muscles sit bunched under his skin, ready to pounce and chase. 

When you put the plate down in front of him, you make as if to take a step back, clearly meaning to give him some space. That won’t do. A firm hand on your forearm rectifies that; he pulls you down onto his lap before you’ve had a chance to register what’s happening. 

“Whoa,” you gasp, all turned around. 

The first piece of bacon he tries to pick up slips from his fingers. The next one he manages to pick up goes straight to your lips. “Eat.”

“I’m not—”

“Eat.”

Your cheeks bulge around the mouthful of bacon and eggs when he lifts another bite to your mouth. You chew quickly, swallowing before it’s fully chewed, nervous that his loose hold on his temper might slip. Only after you’ve had a couple filling bites does John allow himself to eat as well.

Some of his sense of self comes back with time. The pieces start coming back together. Your name, where he is, what you’re doing here. It comes back as his belly fills. 

His nature doesn’t allow him to feel pity, but you should at least know what’s ahead of you.

“It’s starting today,” he tells you, breaking the silence. You go stiff in his arms and then swallow the mouthful of food you’d been chewing.

“Today?” you repeat, your voice slightly hoarse. 

“Rut.” 

The word hangs in the air between him and you. John can almost hear your heart start to double in rhythm. 

You nod and whisper, “Okay.” 

The thing behind his eyes stares you down. It watches you chew and swallow your food until there’s nothing left on the plate, until your lips are tacky with grease and you have to suck your teeth to dislodge the trapped bits. 

With his belly full, other needs take precedence. 

It starts with him pressing his nose to the crown of your head, gliding it down to your temple and sucking in lungfuls of your scent the whole way, imbibing your scent. Spicy and musky; still pungent with sweat from the night before since you haven’t had a chance to shower yet, nothing to distract from your true scent. It makes his cock throb against his thigh. 

He drags his nose down your temple to your cheek, nuzzling against the side of your head. Rumbling when you go still, turning your head away from him when he tries to go for your lips, denying him again.

It agitates him. 

“Kiss me,” John growls. Demanding, not asking. 

He pinches your cheeks with his grip and twists your head towards him. The little resistance you offer flickers briefly before being snuffed out when he slots his lips against yours. 

What starts soft turns feverish in a matter of moments. Lips gliding and tongues twisting; the bridge of his nose pressed uncomfortably against yours, the whole kiss a mess of ache and teeth and hungry, greedy need. Spittle drips down your chin and you whine into his mouth when his beard scratches at the sensitive skin around your mouth. 

Need prickles at the base of his spine. For days now, he’s kept his hunger contained when all it wanted was to run rampant. He’s been so good to you—given you days to ready yourself for what was inevitably to come. He never tried to conceal the reason behind his presence in your house.  

And now it’s all coming to a head.

John slides you off his lap and down onto the floor under the table, planting his feet on the ground and lifting his hips to pull his sweats down, letting his cock flop out against his belly, heavy with blood. 

“John, do I have to…?” you whimper, trailing off like even saying it out loud might jinx you. 

“Want your mouth on my knot,” he says bluntly. 

Your eyes are sparkly with tears when he looks down, big and wide and helpless and it somehow just makes him even harder. When you sniffle, a bead of precum dribbles down his shaft. 

“Get it nice and wet,” John grunts, pushing your face into his dick. “It’s going inside you soon enough.”

“Please—” you whisper.

“It can go in dry too,” he warns. 

Your tongue pokes out of your mouth reluctantly, face all scrunched up and petulant, but eventually you do as you’re told. Shy, kittenish licks around the base of his cock, right over his knot. Lazy pleasure ripples up his spine, each drag of your tongue over his soft knot making his vision go blurry and his breath get heavier. Practically panting by the time you kiss a particularly sensitive spot on the underside of his knot.

“My hand’s getting tired, sweetheart—mind taking over?” 

He doesn’t wait for you to answer, letting go of his cock so that it droops, batting your nose on the way down. The affronted look on your face nearly makes him snort. 

Your fingers curl around his cock, lifting it up. It looks brutish in your hand, ruddy and thick, precum leaking from the flushed head and dripping onto your head. If he were a decent man, he’d peel your hand off his cock and replace it with his own, get himself off with a rough, dirty tug instead of leaving that responsibility to you. Spoil you instead with gentle love making, all sweet talk and slow thrusts, decadent, languid kisses pulling your attention away from where it hurts.

But John isn’t a decent man. Not even a good man. 

He lets you lick and kiss it all over until his knot is wet with spit. Every so often your teeth graze his knot, forcing a violent shudder up his spine, and he snarls down at you, teeth bared to get the message across. Don’t push too far. 

He’s indulgent to a point. 

“Suck it too,” he rasps. The hand on the back of your head tightens, angling your face until your lips are stretched around his rapidly filling knot and you have no choice but to gently suck the puffed skin of his knot, your nose pressed against the thatch of hair at the base of his cock. 

His cock aches the longer you kneel there mouthing at his knot. It’d be nice to paint your face with cum—your tongue to start and then your cheeks and chin. A little on your forehead too just to mark you as his. He’s close enough to the edge that it wouldn’t take more than a few well-placed sucks, but his knot is already big enough. Any more and he won’t be able to fit it in you at all, at least not for another hour or so.  

He clamps his hand around the back of your neck and pulls you off, a string of spit still connecting your lips to his knot. “That’s enough.”

You frown, bottom lip jutting out. “You didn’t like it?”

That soothes the tension in his shoulders a little, makes his lips twitch under his mustache. 

“‘Course I liked it, sweetheart.” The weeping tip of his cock is enough evidence of that. 

“Why—why’d you stop me then?”

“I’m gonna come soon, honey, and I’d like the first time to be inside you.”

Your eyes go wide. “Oh.”

It’s a challenge getting you onto your hands and knees after that, divesting you of your clothes too. He very nearly has to wrestle you down to the ground, but exerting even the slightest amount of force makes you instantly acquiesce, likely realizing that you won’t stand a chance fighting him. He shushes you when you choke back a sob, kissing the back of your neck soothingly. 

At least, he hopes it soothes you. 

John runs a hand over your rump and between your legs, finding your center damp and hot to the touch. 

“Well, that’s a bit more inviting,” he says approvingly. “Been wet this whole time, sweetheart?”

You shake your head desperately, shoulders hitching with your quiet sobs. When he dips two fingers into your hole though, it’s soaked. Squelches when he pulls his fingers out and thrusts them back in. 

If he didn’t have more pressing concerns, he’d be tempted to turn over onto his back and tug you down onto his face. That thought lingers for a moment and then takes root. 

“Hold on, love—gotta do this first.”

The mattress springs back when he drops down onto his back. Your back arches when John grabs you by the hips and drags you over his mouth, your knees planted on either side of his head, one higher up than the other from being dragged down the bed. 

“Wait, you never said—” 

The crack across your ass interrupts you. He flexes his hand and then palms that same ass cheek, rubbing over the hurt. If you swear at him, it doesn’t register because his eyes are locked on the slice of heaven between your thighs, transfixed by your dew-slicked lips parting for his gaze.  

“That’s better,” John murmurs, then digs his fingers into your hips and pulls you down onto his face. 

The smell of your sex is drugging, mind-numbing. Musky and warm and fragrant. The hood of your clit is drawn back to expose the swollen bud and it calls to his tongue, a call which he answers in kind, gliding the flat of his tongue over it and smiling to himself when it twitches. 

It satisfies every carnal urge breathing fire and brimstone in the back of his mind. His tongue saws up the seam of your cunt, parting the soft, delicate petals before drawing one into his mouth, humming around the mouthful. The vibrations must feel good because your whole body jolts in his arms. 

When he sucks your clit into his mouth, you nearly wrench yourself right off his face, hands clawing at the bedsheets. Firm hands dig into the flesh of your backside and pull you back down though. 

“Mm…you gonna cum, sweetheart?” he rumbles into your pussy, his words muffled. 

“I—I’m gonna—oh…oh…—” 

Music to his ears. He can tell it’s right around the corner when your breathing goes staccato and your thighs squeeze around his head, forcing him to move one of his hands to keep your legs spread. He can feel your hole clench around his tongue, hips jerking sharply. 

He loves watching a pretty girl come. Loves feeling it on his tongue even more. It doesn’t take much to work you up to it either, likely on a hair trigger since he bolted the doors to your house shut and made himself at home. 

Your upper body collapses onto the bed when you come, hips undulating over his tongue subconsciously, like you can’t help but chase your release. And who is he to deny you when you’ve been such a sweet girl? 

John scoots down the bed to slide out from under you and sits up, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing your juices from his mouth to his cheek, drops clinging to the bristles of his beard. Trapped there, he’ll smell it for days. 

Good. Better for him if he can. 

Taking his place behind you again, he reaches down between his legs and lines his cock up with one hand, the other holding your hip steady before pressing in one inch at a time, a smooth, slow glide to the halfway mark. You squeeze him like a vice, pussy all clenched up like a fist, too wound up and stressed to relax enough to take him to the root. Even coming has barely loosened you up. 

He topples over you until his chest is pressed to your back. The skin on your back is sticky with sweat, a tremor running through you and making you shake. 

“Easy, sweetheart,” John murmurs into the side of your head, planting a kiss there for good measure. The skin over your knuckles pulls tight when you fist the sheet beneath you. “Can you relax for me?”

“N-no?” It’s said like a question, like you’re looking to him for reassurance, like you need your alpha to help you relax, to loosen you up. 

It’s why he feels no guilt for the situation that you’re in. Trapped under your alpha, about to take his dick to the root. What would you have done if he hadn’t been around to take you home? Any matter of tragedy could have befallen you. 

“I’ve got you.” Talking both to you and himself. 

There’s nowhere for you to go but further up the bed when John forces the rest of his cock into you, gaining more ground with every thrust. That’s how soldiers make strides in new land, conquering new territory with every advance. Rigor and momentum. 

The flesh of your ass ripples with every thrust, hips clapping against your cheeks. He drives into you with a single minded intensity, grunting through each thrust. Reason falls to the wayside. All that matters is knotting and breeding the omega under him. 

Your cries echo through the bedroom in bright, clean bursts. 

He feels virile, potent; it’s his alpha running hot in his veins and his body thick with muscle and the way you all but disappear underneath him, just a sweet and soft omega for him to use and breed. Back arched just enough to let him sink in as deep as he can get. 

“John—” you wheeze. “T-too deep. It’s—unf, it’s, ah…it’s too deep.”

“Full, honey?” he grunts. 

“Y-yeah,” you respond, whimpering through the word. 

“I know, baby,” he says consolingly, contradicting his own sympathetic tone when his next stroke nudges against the seal of your womb. “Not very nice of me, is it?”

“Noooo,” you moan.

“Yeah, not very nice.” His laugh is breathless, mean. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Coherency is a luxury that slips from his fingers as quickly as it came. Like a shroud falling over him, it cuts him off from everything but what he touches. Even your mating gland is forgotten in his fervour, its siren song going mute against the backdrop of the blood pounding in his ears. 

His knot pops quick. Half a dozen more thrusts in and he feels it thicken and swell until he suddenly can’t pull out. It punches the breath out of him, making him bear down on you, trapping you both on his knot and under his weight. 

“Oh—oh—oh—” you gasp, overwhelmed. 

He hooks his chin over your shoulder and plants his hands on top of yours, twining your fingers together, an intimacy so staggering that he can feel it thrum through your body, your frame trembling underneath him. 

Knot thoroughly plugged inside of you, he can only grind his hips forward, nudging that same tender spot over and over until your pussy draws up nice and tight around him, dragged unwillingly to another orgasm. He sees stars when your channel squeezes around his cock, milking him for all he’s worth. 

Overwhelmed, your heart rate spikes and your scent intensifies, permeating the room and lodging itself into the deepest recesses of his being. Your hands claw up the mattress, ripping the sheet off the left corner, and you yelp when you realize that you can’t pull off his knot, truly trapped.

John’s hindbrain interprets your squirming as trying to get away and he reacts instinctively, forcing you down to the mattress until your arms collapse under you and pinning you there with his body. 

“Where d’ya think you’re going?” he growls, mouth pressed to your ear. 

You shudder, walls tensing up around his knot and making him spurt another wad of cum into you. 

“Oh god,” you whisper, grunting softly when he forces more of his weight onto you, the mattress depressing under your combined weight. 

Sticky, tacky skin. Laboured breaths. Dark. Tunnel vision. Everything narrows to a single point. In the crook of your neck, your mating gland pulses. He presses his tongue to your neck and drags it through a trail of salty sweat. 

The vice grip around his knot has him swimming in and out of consciousness, vicious instincts clawing up his throat. It thins the barrier between him and his alpha, one no longer distinct from the other. 

“Are you—are you going to bite me?” you ask through panted breaths. 

His alpha considers it. That’s what he is now, at least. Its consciousness has usurped his, or moulded with his, or risen to the ranks of human. It tilts its head through him though, two beasts sharing a body and an appetite. 

It runs its tongue over its lips. He does the same.

“Not yet.”

Voracious. 

No matter how many times he cums or makes you cum, it’s never enough. 

He still has to rest though. Much to his consternation, the body demands it, so he falls asleep with you resting against his chest or under the crook of his arm with your fist curled over his belly, and wakes to the damp clutch of your centre pressed against his thigh from when you rolled over in the middle of the night. Then wakes you up by grinding your hips down against the hard line of his thigh, sweet talking you through an orgasm that leaves you thick-tongued and cross-eyed.  

Days pass that way. Blunt fingers; rake of tongue. Skimming his mouth over the valley of your tits and down the channel between your legs, gorging himself on the slick dripping from your pulsing hole. Scraped a bit raw from his beard, so he’s careful now; spreads your folds with his fingers before thrusting his tongue all the way in. 

He comes back to himself every now and then, some memories easier to recall than others:

Your cheek smushed against the shower wall, hands clawing at the tile while he drives into you from behind, rivulets of water running down your body. 

The feeling of your throat flexing around his shaft, your eyes watering when your nose nearly grazes his pubes. Pulling you off his cock to let you breathe and leaning down to press his forehead to yours. 

Pinching your cheeks to open your mouth after cumming in order to watch it melt on your tongue. 

Indulging in kisses messier than sex itself, lips going swollen and numb, eyes so masted that they’re barely even open. Each glide of your lips liquid and svelte. 

Always wanting more and more and more. 

Heavy footsteps following you into the kitchen as you scurry around looking for something to eat, wary glances thrown over your shoulder to keep track of him. Always keeping him in your line of sight. Smart girl; clever enough to know not to turn your back to a predator. 

Occasionally, he loses track of you as a person again, thinking of you like an extension of himself instead. Your name disappears into the recesses of his mind, replaced by concepts like omega, mine, pup—

You cover his mouth with your hands to muffle his words and he bites your fingers one by one until you pull them away. 

And it keeps—

going and going and going and going

—thoughts shaking loose from his head, one by one; hours disappearing into thin air, nothing real except the omega on the end of his knot. When it whimpers, his chest puffs out and his breathing goes laboured, his only concrete thought to fill it with more of his cum, make sure that it takes. 

It will, if John gets his way. 

And he always does.

Another season over, this one different from the rest. 

You’re still in bed when he surfaces from his rut, low back cracking and popping when he sits up. His muscles will ache for days after this, the aftermath of any good rut lingering in the body longer than the rut itself. 

John scrubs a hand down his face and cracks his jaw open for a good yawn, stretching everything out. When he looks down by his side, he finds you curled into yourself, cheek resting against the back of your hand, sleeping soundly.

You’re so tuckered out that your toes don’t twitch even when he drags his finger down the line of your back, stopping at your sacrum. The slope of your ass underneath the bed sheet is tempting, inviting him to part your legs and settle himself between them again, but he’s put you through enough over the past few days. 

Later, he’ll want to check between your legs and see how much of his cum is still painted between your thighs. Either way, he’ll have to run you a bath with Epsom salt for you to soak in. 

That’ll have to wait until after breakfast though.

Right on cue though, his stomach growls. No amount of preparation for a rut is ever enough—not once has he ever come out of one feeling refreshed. It’s always aching joints and empty stomachs and bruises where bruises usually shouldn’t be. His age only makes it all the more noticeable. 

His future ruts won’t always be this way. Not when his hormones are tempered by his omega’s corresponding heat. In the future, proximity and cohabitation will align your heat and his rut cycles, making the whole ordeal far more pleasant. One to stabilize the other. You’ll put in for leave at the same time and slip into it quietly, like slipping into a gentle, welcoming stream. 

That’s a thought for another time though. For now, John pulls himself out of bed and saunters towards the bathroom, intent on running a quick shower before fixing himself something to eat. 

He takes a brisk shower under cold water, scrubbing his chest and letting the soap run down his legs for no longer than ten minutes before shutting off the water. It’s a shame that it washes your scent off of him, but he’ll rectify that later when you’re up.  

The smell of bacon frying in the pan permeates the kitchen, the sound of it as emblematic of morning time as birds singing in the trees or the soft sound of the radio on in another room. A cool breeze spills in through the cracked open window. 

It’s nearly time, but not quite. 

He waited because he wanted this to be deliberate. Intentional, as everything he does always is. 

It wouldn’t have been as meaningful in the throes of his rut. Easily chalked up to instinct or error, rather than seen as intended from the very beginning. 

An hour or so later, you start to stir. Though his instincts aren’t as sharp as they were in the midst of his rut, he can still hear the bed creak in the other room. 

The bedroom is bathed in light when he returns. In the center of the bed, you’ve turned over onto your back, the light cascading over you making you look almost angelic. His heart throbs in his chest. 

One day, he might even love you. 

“You awake?” John asks, resting his knee against the edge of the bed and slowly climbing over you. When you blink a couple times and nod, he leans down to draw you into a slow, drugging kiss. 

The taste of your mouth is familiar now; he’s tasted it so many times over the past few days that it’s etched into his memory now. 

“Hm? Yeah,” you sigh, then meet his eyes. You must register something there because you pause, squinting up at him. “Are you… Is it over?”

John nods. It’s easier to just say yes than qualify that the rut hormones haven’t fully left his system yet, still present though in much smaller quantities. He’ll still be quick to anger for the next few days, in no shape to return to work just yet, but eventually his system will flush those lingering traces of rut and he’ll be back to his normal self. 

You smile, relieved. “Okay…that's uh, that’s good. Do you…do you mind if I rest a bit longer before I leave?”

“‘Course, sweetheart.”

He palms the side of your face, brushing the wispy baby hairs out of the way. All his life and he’s never seen something prettier than you. 

“In fact,” John murmurs, canines aching when he runs his tongue over them. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”

You must catch the double meaning in his words because your eyes go sharp. “Huh?”

His eyes flicker down to your neck and it hits you like a battering ram. 

It’s too late though. He gathers your wrists in his palm when you try to bat at his face, immediately going into struggle mode, and pins them down over your head with ease. With his other hand, he holds you by the neck and turns your head to one side, exposing the delicate skin of your neck. 

“John—wait, no, no—waitwaitwait, please—you said—”

Legs kicking out, back nearly arching off the bed, you put every last bit of your fight into trying to throw him off, only for him to force you back down, barely a grunt passing his lips. Then he ducks his head into the crook of your neck.

“John—John, please!”

John bites down. 

Under his teeth, your gland splits. 

The moment of connection is just as divine as he imagined. When your gland breaks under his teeth and your blood oxidizes in his mouth, his world reconfigures itself around this new reality, one where you flow through his veins like blood and swim through his mind like thought. 

He sees now what he missed before. All this time, he’s assumed that fate has railed against him, intent on him remaining alone. 

What he understands now is that—

(you whimper under him and arch up into his body, saliva gurgling in your throat)

—fate has always been on his side. 

After Ragnarok, the earth will once again bob out of the saltwater, dregs of ancestral seafoam lapping at the sides.

(he gnaws at the Yggdrasil’s roots)

In this life, nothing has ever been handed to him because he has needed to fight for it. Of course fate would have taken that into consideration when creating his mate. Baptism by fire. He never would’ve been satisfied with simply being handed his intended mate. He needed to leave the imprint of himself like chiselling into stone. Maker of his own fate.  

When he pulls back, teeth unlatching from your shoulder and blood leaking from the wound, you stare up at him through misty, filmy eyes, tears scorching hot lines down your cheeks. 

He can appreciate the shock this must come as. You thought you’d get off scot-free after all—just a few days of being fucked and knotted and then sent on your way—not kept like bounty from a sacked city. You are a prize though. His hard earned prize. 

His moral compass doesn’t allow him to see this as a pillaging. Not when his actions are led by his heart.

You raise a shaky hand to cover the wound on your shoulder, wincing when your fingers brush the raw skin there, coming back saturated in blood. “You—you bit me.” 

John hums. “It’s alright, sweetheart; it’s over now. Nothing to worry about anymore.”

“You said—you promised you wouldn’t,” you bleat. 

He shakes his head, voice still soft when he responds. “Never said I wouldn’t, sweetheart.”

“You said you’d leave. You promised you’d leave.”

“Aw, honey, you wouldn’t do that to an old man, would you?” He lies down beside you, pulling on your heartstrings like a marionette. Plenty have called him a decent soldier, but no one has ever called him a good person. “Why make me leave when you could have someone in your corner instead?”

Tears like diamonds on your cheeks. You’re the most beautiful creature that John has ever laid eyes on; there’s no wonder why he had to make you his. Had he turned around in that hospital and walked out that door after hearing your voice, life would have been less complicated but it would have been dull, colourless. He would have woken up today with his mind at ease, but his heart would have been empty. 

Now though—

“We’ll be good for each other,” John says, moving his hand over your throat, loose fingers simply resting there. Just enough to feel the thrum of your pulse under his palm. “I’ll prove it to you.”

He feels you swallow beneath his palm. It is easy to see why you might doubt his words.

But in the back of his mind, his alpha purrs, satisfied for once in its life, and when he tightens his fingers around your throat, you go still, all of your trust gathering there in the palm of his hand. He can live with that.

So long as he has you, he can live with anything.

[verridaiya]

—Dream Blooms (Sylus' POV)

"I've been waiting here for you."

I started writing this fic at the same time as part 1, because I wasn't sure if MC's point of view had enough angst compared to a Sylus POV. And now after seeing the reactions to part 1... haha, good luck? I apologize in advance and offer tissues as compensation (maybe it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be?)

Synopsis: Sylus contemplates all that has led up to finding you in this life, until the past comes back to haunt him.

Contains: Heavy spoilers for Beyond Cloudfall and Abyssal Blossom, Sylus x MC/reader, gender neutral MC/reader, angst/hurt (comfort in part 3 tho), could technically be read before or separately from part 1, includes some of my theories & headcannons about the BC myth

Word Count: 2.7k

< Part 1 | Part 3 >

Sylus does not consider himself lucky.

There have been many deals gone sideways, misfortunes lining up neatly one after the other and then falling like dominoes. He’s had to claw, rip, and tear his way through dead ends and out of backed corners. And his failures weren’t from the lack of effort; after a third contingency plan goes wayward, he knows it is just fate mocking him yet again, as it has been through all of his long lives.

But he is not the most wanted space criminal and the infamous leader of Onychinus for nothing. What he lacks in luck he compensates in sheer power, skill, persistence. Why rely on random chance when he can ensure that he always gets what he wants? He’s had lifetimes to perfect his skills, to try again and again and again, until he gets the results he desires. Every success he’s had—and they number far more than failures—has been because of him, and him alone.

And right now, looking down at your sleeping form, he considers it his greatest success that you are here, in his arms.

You had come down with a fever recently, the same one that has been making its way through Linkon as of late. With your work as a hunter and with the public, it was almost inevitable that you would catch it, though you tried your best to hide it from those around you. Nothing escapes his—or rather, Mephisto’s—eyes though. Sylus could tell just how bad it was when he showed up unannounced at your door, duffel bag in hand and steaming soup in the other, and you let him in without protest.

He palms his phone absentmindedly in one hand. Sylus intended to get some work done while you napped, so he can focus solely on you when you wake. But right now, with the press of your body against his, your chest rising and falling gently with each faint snore, your face peaceful and relaxed—Sylus can’t help but be pulled into the siren’s call that was your very existence, demanding his attention even while asleep. To appreciate that he was here, in your presence, in the first place.

He has been searching for you through countless years and innumerable lifetimes. He had spent far, far too long alone, seeking you in the farthest reaches of the cosmos. You, the most important missing piece of his soul, an absence that gnawed at his bones and nipped at the gaping hole in his chest.

It seemed like the curse from your first life still lingered. Fate was still determined to drive you apart, to break the defiant bond you forged together and to fulfill the destiny you were doomed to have—that he was your archenemy, that one will inevitably kill the other. If fate could not pit him against you, it will widen the fissure another way and drive you apart physically.

His supposed destiny coiled around his neck like a noose, a rope pulled tighter and tighter every time his search came up empty. But the absence of you is still a presence nonetheless, and he clung onto it like a lifeline. The yearning, the desperation, the grief—he held onto those unusual emotions close and savors what only you can bring out in him. It was the only thing that kept him alive, kept him from going insane from apathy.

The string pulls tighter still, when he finally finds you, his gaze finally where it belongs—on you—and you gaze back at him as if he were a stranger. No, worse yet, as if he were an enemy, with hatred in your beautiful eyes and a snarl on your lips. As if the events of your first shared life never happened. It had taken so much coaxing and far too many miscalculations to convince you that he means you no harm, all the while working through the heart wrenching despair that you don’t remember.

He feels victorious, that he has earned your trust again despite all the odds stacked against his favor. Here you are, tucked safely against him, fully vulnerable in your sleep and relying on him to tend to you while a fever rages through you. His whirlwind mind can finally slow in your presence, the calm in the eye of the storm.

Sylus leans in to press a small kiss on the top of your head, breathing in the warm heady scent of you, savoring your proximity.

He will defy destiny as many times as he needs to, in every lifetime, to find his way back to your side. Weave his own string to connect himself to you, one dyed red with his blood, tied to his heart, his very being, so that it may never untether.

He is pulled from his musings when his keen ears pick up the change in your breathing, ever aware of your presence. You’re awake.

Not long after, your delightful voice reaches his ears. A drowsy murmur of his name, heavenly on your lips.

“Sy?”

Sylus looks down to your precious form as you blink at him sleepily, swaddled in blankets and nestled within his arms. He finds it adorable, that the first thing you seek out when you wake is him. Affection coats his words as he replies, “Awake, darling? You should go back to sleep, it’s not nearly time for you to get up yet.”

“I had a strange dream again.”

“Another one, sweetheart?”

As you hum and nod your answer, the towel on your temple threatens to slip with the movement. He reaches up to remove the cooling cloth, taking the time to mentally prepare himself.

Sylus suspects these dreams are memories of your previous lives, slowly resurfacing. His instincts were correct in that the power of another Aether Core in your body might help you recover your forgotten past. Not that you knew that these were memories; you still talk about them as if they were nothing but wild fantasies.

Something inside him clenches every time you tell him of a new “bizarre dream”. You’ve lived so many lives without him by your side, where he is unable to find you. Each new memory-turned-dream is a reminder of the many times he could not be with you, of the centuries he’s spent looking for you, aching and alone. Yet he wants to hear you talk about them regardless, because they are a part of you, and he longs to know every facet of you so that he may cherish you fully.

You have yet to dream of a life where he is present.

Until now, when your lovely voice tells him, “You were in it this time, Sylus.”

His gaze snaps to you. If he was pretending to be productive before, he makes no effort to do so now.

“Oh? Do tell, kitten.”

He shuts his phone off mid-text, letting his evol drop it onto the coffee table. This protocore shipment can wait another day; there is nothing more important than hearing your dream right now. And if it was really just a dream, a figment of your imagination- well, time is never wasted when he’s spending it with you.

Your heavy-lidded eyes follow his movements as he shifts from underneath you and to his side. You lift your hand up to his head as he settles, deft fingers reaching to pet his hair and caress his face. Tingles erupt where your fingers trail and he fights to lean into the touch like a cat.

You seem to be lost in thought, eyes fixed to the top of his head, when you say, “You had something on your head. Something sharp and twisting. Rough. It was beautiful, though. You were beautiful.”

Sylus freezes. He knows exactly what you’re speaking of. Of all his previous incarnations, he is most intimately familiar with this one. He can almost feel those spiraling horns of his original form again, a phantom weight that settles heavy on his head, the hardened scales that trail down his face.

Can it be? Did you truly dream of his truest form, of your first life with him?

He wants to know more. Needs to know more.

He knows that he’s failing to keep his voice at its usual bored and impassive cadence when he asks, “And? Can you tell me more about this dream of yours, kitten?”

You blink at him slowly, processing his words. He can almost see the gears of your head turning. You look ready to fall asleep at any moment now. On any other given day, Sylus would let you rest and recover, let the conversation lull until you fall into slumber. But this time, just this once, he allows his own wants take priority. He takes your hand in his, coaxing you to stay awake and focus.

You speak softly, a far-away look in your eyes. “We were standing in a lovely field of flowers. They were breathtaking, Sylus. Such a vivid, dazzling red. There was a black spire in the distance, I think.”

You remember. His breath hitches imperceptibly. The valley of datura flowers. He has only been there once with you: on your last flight together, when he was falling to his death, greatsword in chest.

His heart squeezes as if the blade is still lodged there. The first memory that you’ve regained was your last moments with him. A part of him is elated that you are finally beginning to remember him. He will no longer have to carry the weight of these memories alone. That finally, finally, he will be reunited with you, all of you, past and present. The other, smaller part wishes you to never remember, dreading that you have to relive the pain of his parting a second time.

Your first life together held nothing but tragedy. But still, that nothing gave him you, and all the gifts you showered him with and taught him to cherish. He wants you to remember everything, so that he may finally return the favor in full.

He is distracted from his thoughts when a soft red glow emanates from your hand, threaded with gold. Sylus feels the resonance flow through him, your power thrumming like a pulse and your warmth finding its place in his too empty heart, now filled. His own evol rises to answer yours, ever at your beck and call, a soft surge of energy manifesting in the air as familiar ember-and-smoke tendrils. The curtains sway faintly, caught in the hush of energy.

Looking into your sleepy eyes and fever-heated face, Sylus doesn’t think you even realize what you’re doing. He feels the wash of your emotions like a gentle tide. Contentment, warmth, a feeling of loss, a spark of recognition, of déjà vu. A flickering image of a valley covered in gleaming red flowers appears in his mind’s eye, fuzzy around the edges from your sickness.

He cannot stop the burst of hope that flares in his rapid-fire heart, unbidden.

He severs the connection between you, though. He does not want you to feel the pressure and urgency of his emotions, as he struggles to keep them in check. This is the first time you have dreamt about him. He needs to be there for you, a strong and comforting presence beside you as you piece together the tragedy of this memory. The curtains sway once more, then stills.

When you try to apologize, he dismisses it easily. He has no need for your apologies, ever, but what he does need is to know what else you can recollect.

“What else do you remember?” he quietly implores.

You stare up at him for a second longer, brows furrowed, before acquiescing and closing your eyes. Whatever was crossing your mind—most likely his own emotions you felt during the resonance—seemed to be forgotten for now. The sweet melody of your voice fills the air soon after.

“We were up in the air flying, somehow, before we landed in that blossoming valley. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I felt like I was in a whole other world. When I turned around to look at you, I saw you sitting there amongst the flowers. Red, like shining rubies. Red like-”

Red like the jewel of his heart, pierced. Red like the blood upon your greatsword, as he pushed it deeper. He waits with bated breath for the breaking of your heart, ready to piece it back together.

“Red, like rich wine,” you finish softly.

Something tickles him at the back of his mind, an instinct raising its head, leaving him unsettled. Something was wrong. This was not the reaction he was anticipating from you. No, you were too…calm.

What were you remembering?

A coldness trickles into him as you continue on happily, a smile in your voice. “I decorated you with those flowers. We were so carefree, unworried and relaxed. It was just us, no one else, in the valley that was our playground. I think I was teasing you, or maybe you were teasing me. You said something about seeing the other side of things, something taunting. We ended up play-fighting, rolling around and sending petals up in the air.”

No.

Sylus can’t breathe. He clenches his eyes shut, anguish tearing through him.

This…this never happened.

No matter how many times he desperately yearns, how many times he spits at destiny, sinks his claws into fate, battered and bloody, hoping to carve his own desired path, he cannot change the inexorable truth of your first life: that there was never a chance for your love to grow beyond its initial roots.

He was too young and feral to give these things to you when he first met you. He barely had a grasp of what love was, then. And after that fateful day, when he exchanged half his soul for yours, he never had a chance to. You had been taken from him by the Legion, stolen while he was too injured to do anything but watch, broken, from the shadows. There were only stolen moments when your hearts beat in sync and your entwined souls reverberated that he was able to appear before you as a half-apparition, in the Sanctuary that was your cage.

There was never a chance for him to give you this lovely desire of yours. Could this be simply just a dream, a fantasy this current version of you concocted while entangled within intangible memories?

But he remembers how sure you felt of its reality, when you resonated with him. That startling sense of déjà vu coursing through you. Could it have been a dream your previous self had, of what could have been? Something you never found the chance to tell him? Or perhaps he wasn’t there for you to tell him, perhaps it was after he- after he left you, for the last time.

Perhaps dreams were the only source of comfort you had, after he departed.

There is so much he does not know about the twilight years of your first life. Did you go on to survive and thrive, as he told you to? Were you able to fulfill all your desires and live to your lovely, greedy heart’s satisfaction? Or did you die, grief-stricken and alone, surrounded by enemies that he was not there to protect you from? Dreamt of things he could not give you, places he could not take you, because fate tore him from you before he ever had a chance to?

So many answers he desperately yearns to know and the only person who can give them to him cannot recall.

Fate pulls its string tighter around his neck, taunting him. You finally remembered something from your first life together, and he could not be more fucking heartbroken.

“Sylus?”

He opens his eyes at your soft voice, sucking in a sharp breath into his suffocating lungs and exhaling shakily. Worry glimmers in your eyes as you peer up at him, innocent and unaware.

Something in him howls in anguish when you part your lips to say, “It was just a dream, Sylus.”

Air fans softly against his face as you breathe, your chest rising and falling steadily. He focuses on it, clings onto it as if the mechanical motion gives him oxygen, life. You’re here now, he’s here now. There is little he can do but hold you, in this life, and not let go.

[towncritte]

Red Destiny AU Lore Dump

I'm deciding to compile all the lore dumps I did so far on Twitter, into this post.

Stuff is subjected to change in the future, but this post is just to help you guys get bits of the story.

It's still a work in progress AU, and nothing is entirely set in stone but regardless, I do hope this helps.

Here's Dogday's reference sheet and info:

Here is a quick summary of what's going on in this Dimension: The Smiling Critters live in another dimension, which the portal was located in a Toy Factory. The humans entered and started ruling over the place, along with ruling several different towns to have control over the creatures within said dimension.

The story for now mostly focuses on Smiling Valley where the Smiling Critters live.

Due to the humans mostly seeing the Smiling Valley citizens as if they are Zoo Animals or an attraction of sorts, the small town finds it difficult to have supplies and have a tendency to get a shortage.

Most humans visiting aren't aware of the abuse going on done by Scientists that want to study the Critter Citizens as if they are Lab Rats, or the abuse of Soldiers/Guards hungry for a power trip.

That's the summary of the condition of the town so far.

For the most part the story for now will be pretty focused on Dogday and his perspective, as well as the other critters.

Catnap's whereabouts and what he is doing will be a mystery.

I want this AU to feel like an ominous mystery of what's going on.

Here's more lore drop of the pooch:

Declawing Trauma:

Dogday was declawed. Bubba, during Dogday receiving therapy, tried to get as much supplies and knowledge as he can to fix Dogday's hands/paws.

During those 3 years, Dogday couldn't hold things due to how bad the condition of his hands were.

Dogday had to constantly wear bandages and deal with pain for the past 3 years, making his mental recovery difficult, and feeling like a burden to his friends for helping him.

Catnap CONSTANTLY had to reassure Dogday nothing was his fault and would constantly comfort him.

Dogday, despite everything, held onto hope Bubba would restore his claws.

Bubba had to eventually settle for reshaping Dogday's hands to paws so Dogday wouldn't feel so much pain anymore. (He had to use extra bones from Dogday's hands to do this.)

Dogday was depressed about this but overtime did manage to get through therapy without being in so much pain anymore and had to learn to hold things with his newly reshaped paws. (Tho he still has some trauma)

Catnap held a HEAVY grudge against the scientists that hurt Dogday.

These traumatizing events will show how it's affected Day as the story goes.

Dogday does know about The Prototype and what Catnap's been doing. Not fully aware, the Moon is in a cult of sorts hidden outside of town.

Catnap at one point, gave Dogday hope about his claws before he left Smiling Valley as he was called upon by The Prototype:

Catnap wasn't being malicious when he showed them off, he just wanted to give Dogday a reason to support his beliefs. Catnap wasn't declawed, but he was given much deadlier claws.

Speaking of Catnap, here's his beta ref sheet:

In the future, I'll make him a colored reference sheet once I have this AU organized.

Dogday's eyes:

When Day's eyes would be fading back to white, Mini Moon immediately tells Day to go home and sleep. He then administers the red smoke again.

GORE WARNING!

Dogday developing violent tendencies:

At some point, Dogday starts to develop violent urges due to the Plush's manipulation and mind warping.

(Since I DO NOT plan to rip off Dogday's legs EVER! I'm going with this route as a nod to what happened in the game, but its in reverse)

This is so far the lore dump of the AU. I'll look back at this in the future as I continue the story to see how I can tie things together, or what to change or what I like or don't like.

If you don't understand this, it's okay.

Again, this is just a lore dump post to understand the AU so far in it's Work In Progress stage.

And to help me read over stuff and see what I can do with it.

Again, stuff is subjected to change, including designs. So nothing is entirely permanent.

I made the Plush Delivery comic back on Twitter originally as a one off in it's old version. But over time, I liked the concept so much I started forming it into a story and redid Plush Delivery.

I do hope you'll enjoy wherever Red Destiny's story will go.

Who knows what lies ahead for the red path the pooch is following.

" A red destiny awaits you Sunshine….are you ready?" -Catnap

Thank goodness, I'm done writing this all down. xnx

[mirrormaw]

KLAPOLLO FICLIST!

closer to the edge, 1.4k words, 1/1

summary:

Klavier just wanted to do her late night work, but with a tugging in her chest, she decides to check on the open roof door.

tags:

Slow Burn, Pining, Banter & Snark, Emotional Vulnerability, Klavier Gavin Is a Disaster Lesbian, Apollo Justice Has No Idea How to Deal With Feelings, Angst with a Happy Ending, they kiss and it's Messy

this was actually my first ever aa fic! it's femslash klapollo <3 it's definitely rough around the edges but its still holds up!

participation pains, 5.0k words, 2/2

summary:

Apollo and Klavier are the only ones who participate in class discussions, much to Apollo's dismay.

tags:

Alternate Universe - College/University, Law School, German Klavier Gavin, POV Apollo Justice, Autistic Apollo Justice, Humor, Mutual Pining, Banter

i PEAKED with this one... god it's one of my favorite fics ive written... apollo is SO done with klavier LOLL i love writing them they're so fun

theatrics and truths, 1.8k words, 1/1

summary:

Klavier Gavin has spent years perfecting the art of being untouchable—charming, confident, always in control. Apollo Justice, unfortunately, has never been one to take things at face value. When Apollo calls him out on always keeping people at arm’s length, Klavier is forced to confront the fact that maybe—just maybe—he doesn’t want to keep Apollo at a distance.

tags:

Post-Gyakuten Saiban 5 | Dual Destinies, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Klavier Gavin Needs A Hug, Emotional, Mutual Pining

this one is definitely not as polished as participation pains but honestly i just wanted to write a klavier piece, so it's very VERY klavier centric with a dash of apollo... come my klavierlings

somebody wake up my heart (light me up), 6.3k words, 1/3

summary:

Trucy Wright is just another teenage fan of international rockstar Klavier Gavin - until she wins a backstage pass and drags her older brother along. Apollo Justice is tired, unimpressed, and has no patience for glamor. Klavier expects another starstruck encounter. He gets something else entirely. Something he may like entirely more.

tags:

Mutual Pining, Pining, Meet-Cute, First Meetings, Fluff, literally all fluff, A yearner is an earner

CURRENTLY WORKING ON THIS! it's just a klapollo meet cute <3 SHOULD be daily uploads so SHOULD be done by saturday... i missed my klapollo so i came back and forgot how starving we are >_<"

[teecupangel]

Been holding a thought on my brain for too long abt putting Desmond in Situations: have you watched Dimension 20's The Unsleeping City? At least s1. Bc 1) watch it, it's so good & 2) I specifically in this situation think abt Bad Weather being the normal version of the bar in Broadway that Kingston & Misty go to. Pre-canon Desmond seeing past the Umbral Arcana & getting involved in magic shenanigans..... Yeah.

You know his latent Eagle Vision is peeling out & seeing the magic shit happening in New York City. You KNOWWWWW. Please tell me one of your followers has been thinking this too.

I have good news for you, nonny, because I have just started watching Dimension 20 this year but I am a slow watcher so I’ve only gotten as far as the first 3 episodes of Unsleeping City season 2 (atm, I think my fav D20 moment is with the Bad Kids’ “Spring Break, I believe in you!” XD). I’m one of those few people who’s pathway to D&D and TTRPG is Oxventure→No Rolls Barred/Chaotic Neutral→Mystery Quest so I am absolutely late to the party XD

Anyway, for this one, we need to do a bit of housekeeping.

I’m basing this on the title of the opening theme New York 2006 because I think that’s the year Season 1 was set (feel free to correct me though)

This means that Desmond would be 19 at that point and we can push it that he’s already working in Bad Weather.

Now, I like the idea that Bad Weather is the normal version of the bar that Kingston and Misty goes to but, may I suggest an alternative?

An earlier possible way to add Desmond to all these shenanigans is to make Bad Weather one of the bars Sofia and Kugrash go to for their ‘hairy baby free drinks scam’.

Towards the end, maybe the last bar they go to, Desmond walks up to Sofia and requested that they leave because the big rat pet she had would make other customers uncomfortable.

Sofia and Kugrash are already drunk at this moment but they hear Desmond call Kugrash a rat and are like “you can see him???”.

Kugrash immediately remembers Desmond as one of the homeless kids he helped when Desmond first moved into the city and had clocked him as ‘strange’ because there was something about him that felt... not exactly magical but almost magical-adjacent.

This ends with Sofia and Kugrash inviting Desmond to their new party as a recruit (with Sofia thinking both (1) this boy needs someone in his life to take care of him and now I’m trying not to cry because my cheating (as far as she knows) husband and I never had kids and (2) maybe he and Pete can get along as newbies with me)

And that is how our Intrepid Heroes managed to recruit an Assassin Rogue who may or may not multiclass to Gloom Stalker in a different playstyle to Liam Wilhelmina.

.

Unorganized Notes:

This is a Desmond who doesn’t know about his destiny or his ancestors but his training on the Farm is so ingrained into him that it makes him a Rogue.

Because of his lack of knowledge, we can argue that he could turn into a Thief Rogue instead of Assassin in this one because he had never assassinated anyone before.

In terms of playstyle, he’d actually be more a close combat attacker that uses some kind of switchknife with sneak attack being part of 'bonus action: hide -> main action: sneak attack')

Another suggestion I have is for Desmond to subclass as Phantom, more because of ‘Whisper of the Dead’ where every short or long rest, he can gain one skill or tool proficiency and the flavor text describes it as one of the ghostly presence shares its knowledge to the user. Desmond has no idea what this means because this is pre-canon but this is actually his ancestors managing to create a link to him in some form thanks to the Umbral Arcana mixing with his ‘destiny’.

If you want Desmond to be given the illusion of choice and not be a Rogue, we can make him a Warlock ‘worshiping’ an unknown Fathomless. In this setup, they don’t know who Desmond’s patron is and Desmond himself just shrugs because he can do magic so that’s nice. Part of his deal is that he receives messages from his patron in the form of texts on his phone. They all come from an unknown number he can’t call and the texts are always like ‘The Scholar is pleased with your desire to learn about the history of this place’ or ‘The Prophet is worried of your health and asks that you requests your companions for a rest’ or ‘The Hunter suggests you still find a weapon even if you are using magic’ and this is some weird shit even for Kingston because it seems like Desmond has multiple patrons or maybe even an entire pantheon of unknown gods/beings.

Abstergo is going to be so fucked in this one because, by the time they try to kidnap Desmond, he’d probably be around level 10~12 and maybe even living with Pete in his apartment.

And yes. Desmond absolutely knows Ricky as Mister March as well XD

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

♪ I wake up to a call put my frilly outfit on ♪

Genre: Magical Girls!… and mechs… and, Shared consciousness media?

Touchstones: Sailor Moon, Puella Madoka Magica, Diebuster, Visions of Escaflowne, Serial Experiments Lain, Paprika

What is this game?: Girl by Moonlight is primarily, a magical girl game, however its also about mechs, and about the shared consciousness of mankind

Ok so, this game deals in a lot of different genres, for the sake of simplicity, the transformed version of a character shall simply be referred to as a "Magical Girl", they could be a magical boy, or a mecha pilot, or whatever, the in-game term is "Transcendence", but i hate spelling that word

How's the gameplay?: The game uses a fairly simple BITD inspired dice rolling mechanic, characters roll die equal to their stat, can push themselves to roll better at the cost of greater consequences, etc. Characters gain better stats while transformed into their magical girl forms, but transforming can only be done once per mission, and has a limit on how much it can be used before it runs out. Girl by Moonlight's first step of character creation is selecting a series, this will determine the setting, tone, and what the magical girls are, the series are Brink of the Abyss ("normal" magical girl story), Beneath a Rotting Sky (Doomed magical girls fighting against an unfathomable opponent), Sea of Stars (Mech pilots fighting against an eldritch alien threat), and Maze of Dreams (Exploration of mass consciousness and crawling through people's psyche)

What's the setting (If any) like?: Depends on your series! it could be a futuristic crystal city, a modern day cityscape, a sleepy oceanic town, a military space ship colony, it all depends on what series you choose

What's the tone?: Also depends on the series, Brink of the Abyss leans on more optimistic, while Rotting sky is more doomed and pessimistic, while Maze of Dreams is more introspective and subtle, it fully depends

Session length: 3-5 hours should be good

Number of Players: 4-6 players should be plenty!

Malleability: As long as your idea fits within one of the series, you could probably run it in GBM!

Resources: Form fillable character sheets are available, and so are cheat sheets for moves

It's certainly an ambitious game! going for 4 different tones and settings works shockingly well for this, its a game to keep an eye on

[atlas7seo]

Everytime I think I'm free, Voltron comes and grabs me in a choke hold. So I'm dragging yall down with me. Here's season summaries of the Voltron Rewrite I'm working on that has taken over my life. I call it my Bootstrap AU which will make sense later.

Inhales* yes this happening...

Season 1 -Defenders of the Universe

Garrison student(Lance, Hunk, and Pidge), expelled student Keith, and Lieutenant Shirogane suddenly find themselves in an alien castle courtesy of a giant Blue Mechnical Lion. Upon arrival they stumble into a 10,000 year long war against an Alien Race called the Galra. Voltron, an ancient weapon, is the only way to stop them, however, no one knows where it is. Follow the Crew aboard the Altean ship as they attempt to get the ship operational, track down lions, and discover their destiny as fated Paladins of Voltron all in a fight against the Galra. Season 1 ends with the Paladins forming Voltron for the first time and becoming Defenders of the Universe

Season 2 - The Voltron Coalition

Now that Voltron has finally been found and formed, the Paladins and Alteans attempt to form allies and liberate planets. Follow our crew as they free planets, negotiate with rebel forces, and infiltrate Galra occupation. All the while searching for a mysterious Ulaz who rescued Shiro and Ulaz's mysterious organization. Season 2 ends with the Paladins meeting the Blade of Marmora and one of their leaders, Lotor, disgraced Prince of the Galra.

(Let's address the elephant in the room. Lotor. Okay, so when I was planning my rewrite, I realized that Lotor is both so compelling and so flat. So, instead, in my rewrite, Lotor is a disgraced prince (still like the original). He sees how the empire is hurting his people who are just civilians, and when he tries to reason with his father, he is disgraced. Lotor didn't make the Blade, but he allied with them in an attempt to return the Galra to what they once were. Lotor is somewhat selfish because if it was between Galran citizens or another planet, he'd pick his people. He only rebelled because he saw how his father was hurting his people. He doesn’t actually care about the universe, his people are what he values, but that changes with *character growth*)

(Also Pidge has found Matt by the end of this season)

Season 3 - The Galran Empire

Season 3 follows our crew and the Voltron Coalition as they formulate plans to end the war at its head. They will form an alliance and plan with the Blade and Lotor. This will be an all out attack on Zarkon including the allies in the Coalition. Half the season will be the plan in motion with multiple parts in an attempt to finally stem the problem at its root. The season ends with Shiro and Lotor dealing the final blow on Zarkon and a rogue wormhole begins to pull him through, but in Zarkon's rage drags Shiro with him.

Season 4 - A New Era

With the loss of Shiro fresh in their minds, Voltron struggles to find stability in this new era. First they realize that despite Zarkon being defeated, the Galra empire is still a threat so they must be able to form Voltron again. *Cue lion switches no matter how much I hate them... Now the Paladins will be allied with Lotor as he attempts to claim the Galran Throne. Throughout they will face Haggar, Robeasts, and the dying flames of the Galran empire. During this chaotic period, they will searching for Shiro and Sam Holt. The season ends with the Kral Zera where Lotor ascends the throne.

Season 5 - Fires of Purification

After facing defeat during the Kral Zera, one of Zarkon's top generals, Sendak begins to gather the remaining "loyal Galra" including Haggar to form the Fires of Purification. This season will continue the search for Shiro and Sam while also being stuck in a Galran Civil War. Voltron, Lotor, and the Coalition fight to stop Sendak from gaining control of the Universe. The season ends with Sendak offering a trade. Shiro and Sam for Lotor. (Like in the actual season 5 because I liked what it did for the story). Voltron and Lotor form a plan and rescue them as Sendak retreats with his tail between his legs.

Season 6 - Moving Foward

With the win against the Fires and the return of Shiro and Sam, it seems things are looking up, but something isn't quite right. With little fanfare Sam chooses to return to Earth to prepare them for the universe. This season is mostly made up of interpersonal conflicts and "what now". The universe is mostly free save for a few pockets of Galra uprising that the Coalition can handle relatively easily without Voltron. The Paladins face the problem of what they should do now and if they can even go back to how things were before the war. While also worrying about Sendak and the remnants of the Fires of Purification. Throughout this, Shiro is also acting really weird. Cut to the real Shiro, but on a Space Whale. (Yes I'm bringing back the weird time distortion whale) When Zarkon grabbed Shiro they landed on a space Whale. So Shiro is trying to survive and get back to Voltron by himself with only Zarkon's corpse as company. Shiro is the one who discovers the Altean Colony (in my rewrite, Haggar is the one running the colony) and he then discovers Haggar's plan to trick Voltron with a clone of him. It's a mystery thriller season switching between the Paladins and the real Shiro as he desperately attempts to get back to his crew to warn them before its too late. The season ends with Shiro warning them too late and Haggar's plan succeeds. Voltron is torn from their allies and catapulted across the universe along with a lost Romelle.

Season 7 - Dead Sector 73

(Ok before I continue the summary, I'm going to explain what I did with Earth. So Weblums eat dead planets in order to use that quintessence to make new solar systems and planets. In my rewrite, Earth's solar system and the space sector around it was a series of dead planets Weblums ate a long time ago and Earth is the first planet to begin exhibiting life in this previous dead sector. Earth is the first living planet in Dead Sector 73. Okay now onto the season summary.)

Sam returns to Earth and begins preparing them for the Galaxy. Back to the Paladins, Haggar has successfully removed Voltron from the equation and begins to rally allies to the Galra's previous motives and moves to retake the universe. Voltron finds themselves lost in Dead Sector 73, a section of the universe Weblums have already eaten and has begun the process of life. They realize they can't reach their allies through comms or anything. But they notice they are somewhat close to Earth. So they set off to reach Earth in the hopes of communicating with the Coalition. When they reach Earth, however, they find Sendak has taken over Earth as a last ditch attempt to get revenge on the Paladins for destroying the empire. And on top of that, that they have been missing for nearly a year. (Weird time distortion stuff like the space whale because of the dead space). They also discover that Sendak is the reason they can't use their comms as he's jamming all signals that travel outside the solar system. The season ends with them defeating Sendak and finally getting ahold of their allies.

(Now I'm going to do some more world building stuff. This is information previous seasons would originally have already told, but I'm putting it here. So the Blades have the motto "Knowledge or Death" and I want to use that somehow. So in my rewrite, the Blade sort of stole the philosophy from the ORIGINAL Galran empire. The war began not because of quintessence poisoning, but because the Galra believed Knowledge or Death. It was a disagreement on ethics and how far you should go in the pursuit of science and knowledge. This disagreement about how to handle the quintessence plane between Zarkon and Alfor sparked the initial conflict as Zarkon wanted to save his wife no matter what. However, due to millenia of exposure to quintessence it degraded Zarkon's mind to the point that he became the villain the show knows today)

Season 8 - Tomorrow and Yesterday

When Voltron and Earth finally reach the Galatic Stage, they discover Haggar has been reigning terror over the galaxy using the Alteans from the colony. While the Coalition and the Galra of Lotor's empire are holding ground, they are beginning to lose. This is when it's revealed that after Zarkon lost his mind to quintessence, Haggar was the one running the show. She must have progress, and now Alfor and the Alteans are no longer in the way for it. (Haggar is still Honerva and born Altean). This season focuses on defeating Haggar and freeing the Alteans from her brain washing. In the end, Honerva destroys all universes by attacking the quintessence plane in pursuit of "scientific knowledge." The Paladins kill Honerva but realize that everything is gone. This is when the Lions come to them. They reveal that sacrificing themselves can restore their universe. "Restore our universe? But what about all the others?" The Lions tell their Paladins that they in themselves are a Causal Loop. The Lions must be sacrificed to restore their universe, and sacrificing them in the quintessence plane it causes them to appear in the past as the materials that Alfor uses to create the Lions. The Lions are forever in a perpetual loop being created and destroyed to maintain the universe. However, each time they do this, they are sent back to another universe as well. It's a multiplying paradox. They are created and destroyed infinite times to restore everything Honerva destroyed. (I did this because I wanted to include the multiple universes the show had, but also, according to my rewrite, the original Voltron could also technically be canon somewhat. It just that in that universe. Allura sacrificed herself, causing the Lions to no longer go through the loop). When the Paladins return, they realize the quintessence plane is sealed off. No one in their universe can ever reach it again. The universe is saved, and the Paladins walk forward to tomorrow, knowing that yesterday is in good hands.

The End

Okay so that was a lot. I hope that if you reached the end of this, you enjoyed it. Do you think I improved it? Or maybe it's just as convoluted and bad as the original, but I tried my best to take all the ideas from Voltron and fit them coherently. Since these were just season summaries there's a lot of stuff I didn't include that I am including in my in depth rewrite like Keith being half Galra, and shipping and stuff. But this rewrite has been eating at my brain for two weeks so I had to put it somewhere.

The reason it's called the Bootstrap AU is obviously because of the Causal Time Loop. No real reason why I added it, I just thought it was fun and funky and shows how the Lions are things that the characters can never truly understand.

[maskofenigma]

Fallen London's recurring topic of Love is really interesting to me as a sort of throughline between various stories and i want to ramble about discuss that briefly. i dont call it a theme because thematic statements are usually more complex than a single word, at least in my mind, but a lot of Fallen London's storylines incorporate love into their themes.

there's the obvious things ofc; the Manager and the King, the Duchess and the Canigaster, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the Bazaar's whole situation. Love is a common motivator that many people can relate to, so it's no surprise that it appears in this capacity. Even so, these instances also underpin a lot of the setting's character, particularly the latter two examples, explaining why the neath is the way it is. but if we broaden our horizons just a bit, you can start to see it appearing all over the place (though maybe thats just confirmation bias lol).

the youthful naturalist loves discovery and life, and evolution in that context is a story about what one is willing to endure and sacrifice for that love. Love is a constant theme in the Light Fingers storyline, between moon milk and poor Edward, but also shows in Mr Fires's love for London (strange and deleterious though it may be) and the protagonist's love for either the Hybrid they protected or the diamond they'd been after. I don't know as much about the other ambitions (yet), but Nemesis is all about avenging a loved one by any means necessary, and you could see Bag a Legend as a love for the hunt or a love of fame, though even i’ll admit thats a bit of a stretch. Idk about Heart's Desire i’m still working on it but there's probably something. Its literally about what your heart desires but there’s absolutely a deeper connection with the Marvellous and stuff. No spoilers i'm still working on it :3

i dont know a ton about SMEN's story either, but i know from a ludonarrative perspective that it tests the players love for their character, forcing you to ruin this silly victorian who you are presumably quite attached to in the search for knowledge (perhaps another kind of love?) With what little i know of it, i’d honestly be shocked if there wasn’t anything there. if ao3 has taught me anything, there was definitely some kind of love going on between those two space bats, but im not sure if ao3 is a reputable source in this specific instance

The Flukes are literally sick with love for lost Axile, and a lot of the Masters are shown yearning to return to the High Wilderness. Many of the Irem Destinies regard love in this way, love for the sun, for the liberation, for ones partner, for london, for the people of the neath, and on and on. im not very far along with the railway but im 100% certain itll crop up again there, whether with Furnace Ancona or the Efficient Commissioner or the masters or whatever else. same goes for the Exceptional Stories and the myriad tales ive yet to unlock. Weve started to see a glimmer of it in firmament, with the imminent lucifer fire guy, but i wasnt really sure what his deal was. the idea extends to the other Sunless games from what i know, though ive yet to play those. Mask of the Rose is a romance, so thats pretty clear cut; sunless skies seems to have a lot of content relating to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and sunless seas seems to have it present in a few storylines, though i couldnt point to anything specific at this time. even small things, such as the way that the railway steel seems drawn to Hell and the sorrowful properties of sphinxstone, makes for a setting that is inundated with longing and heartbreak in a fascinating way.

viewed through this lens, fallen london's perspective on love is tragically earnest: love is painful and unfair and yet so very necessary. as someone who's aromantic and a hater, i call that an L. but from a thematic perspective its very interesting how often this occurs and how it connects a lot of fallen london. In so many other narratives, love is a conclusion, a reward or climax. In fact, mass media seems allergic to depicting an active and healthy relationship, and instead relegates such matters to a single ceremonious kiss. But for fallen london, a game where kisses are currency and romance is taxed, the concept of love is afforded such an interesting amount of care and reverence. Fitting for a setting wherein the insisting incidents all relate to love in some way or another

it may be comedic and at times quite absurd, but fallen london to me is a game deeply concerned with love and its influence on people. and idk i think thats interesting. if you're looking for the theme or message of a given fallen london story, look to love, always.

does that count as a thesis? i certainly dont know

[strangelittlestories]

In the magical land of Elsewhere, on a throne in a high castle, there sits the Paradox Crown ... waiting for someone to claim it.

Elsewhere is no stranger to visitors. In fact, the world is hungry for them.

It is a place that floats in the outer layers of reality, where the rules are mutable. In Elsewhere, truth is like that cat in a box, in that:

1) it could be anything and will only decide when you look at it.

2) it is mercurial, hungry, duplicitous and has never been fed ever.

So it opens doorways. It opens them far and wide and without discernment. It opens them for the seekers, for the lost, for the yearning, and for the unaware.

It opens them like mouths, swallowing up travellers and digesting their rules, their perspective, their knowledge, then shitting out *stories*.

Oh what, you thought your magical isekai quest was some vital contribution? The stars weren't winking out until you arrived. The talking sword only learned its first words when you stepped through the portal. Did you think that dark lady really couldn't be defeated by the *people who already lived here*?

Look, it's not a bad deal. You get a fantastical, life-altering tale. You get to discover that the magic was within you all along. Maybe you even survive. And Elsewhere gets another tether to keep it from spinning off into the void of unreality for another year.

This is, however, *hell* for the actual people of Elsewhere.

As a harm reduction measure, to keep the influx of protagonists from going *full Chosen One*, they created the crown.

The rules of the Paradox Crown are simple: 1) if you claim it, you will rule Elsewhere with ultimate cosmic power. 2) it can only be claimed by one who is truly humble. 3) anyone with enough gumption to claim it is not humble enough to wear it.

Thus, the world always retains the *potential* to fulfil all of visitors dreams, to remake itself in their image, to turn society on its head and forge a brighter dawn...

...but the secret magic test to unlock their destiny is deprecation-locked.

Visitors can still tread the road of story, of course. They simply have to do it the hard way - laying it brick-by-brick before them, joining it to the spidering paths paved by others, and finding the tale is a rich weaving walked by many feet.

Thus, they take the individuals their world hungers for, and they feed them into community.

Colloquially, the call this process: "turning the crown upside down".

[espressohhh]

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions/misinterpretations about Hedda Gabler?

Thank you for asking! Let me start off by saying that this answer is based on my own personal and academic experience with the play. This little list is by no means comprehensive, and I’m trying to keep it short. Hedda posts are coming as soon as I’ve finished finals.

1. “Hedda is impossible to understand because she doesn’t communicate.” No. Hedda does communicate, just not in a direct or traditionally transparent way. From the beginning, she’s clearly socially intelligent and knows how her words affect people. She also seems surprised when her words have real consequences, probably because she’s not used to people actually listening to her. While Tesman is always asking Hedda if she heard him, he never seems interested in hearing what she has to say in return. When Hedda says something unconventional, people often dismiss her by saying, “People don’t do such things,” or by simply shaking their heads and moving on. Yes, her communication is layered and often coded, but she expresses her needs and ideals. A useful exercise I did years ago when studying the play was to make a list of the things Hedda likes and the things she dislikes. It’s on us, as readers and audiences, to interpret her. That is our task, our job, our responsibility, as soon as we enter the theater or pick up the book. I think that is a large part of what Ibsen was trying to show with this play.

I get frustrated when people say they don’t understand Hedda. It’s totally valid not to relate to her (I don't think many do), but that’s not the same as not understanding her. If we really listen to what she says and meet her on her own terms, I think she reveals a great deal.

2. “It’s a feminist play, like A Doll’s House.” Feminist readings of the play can definitely contribute to a good understanding of it, and they can highlight some important aspects. But I wouldn’t call it a feminist play in the same way as A Doll’s House. It is not a play that is against marriage, it is not about reproductive rights, and it is not mainly about a woman being underestimated because of her gender. Saying Hedda Gabler is about the position of women in society is misleading. It is more about a person (who happens to be a woman) struggling to live in a world that has no place for her. Hedda is someone who has chosen the conventional path in life, even though she hates how mundane and stifling it can be and craves meaning. At its core, the play is existential.

3. “Hedda is ignorant of the world and of herself.” I find the opposite to be true. Hedda is hyper-aware of the fact that her desires, needs, and ideals don’t fit into the world she lives in. She knows she’s not cut out for ordinary life — she says it out loud, admitting she’s not “made for life,” and even calls herself a coward, recognizing her own paralysis. She’s caught between knowing what she wants (beauty, meaning, freedom) and knowing she has no real way to get it within the boundaries of her world. Even if she is often trapped in her own mind, that does not mean she lacks self-awareness.

4. “Hedda has no real motivation, or she’s just jealous or cruel.” This view really flattens her character. Take the burning of the manuscript, which is one of the most shocking things she does. I don’t believe she does it out of jealousy toward Thea or sheer cruelty. She burns it because it symbolizes a deep, creative connection between Thea and Loevborg - a connection that produced something Hedda cannot create. The manuscript represents meaning, connection, legacy, and she cannot bear that someone else has found those things, especially in a way that is completely inaccessible to her. It’s not about wanting Loevborg for herself; it’s about wanting control over human destiny and regaining some power. It’s about reclaiming agency in a world where she has none. There is also a practical angle: Tesman might benefit from Loevborg’s collapse, which means she might benefit too. Her actions are all part of a larger, painful attempt to assert control, preserve dignity, and carve out meaning in a world she believes has none.

5. "Hedda is a cold psychopath." So many contemporary and postmodern productions portray Hedda as an icy, detached manipulator. I find that incredibly reductive. These productions often seem to give up on the idea that we can actually understand her, so instead they go for the "ice queen" or "cynical bully" interpretation. To me, Hedda is warm-blooded. She’s frustrated and terrified, and she’s doing whatever she can to survive until she can’t anymore. She is deeply emotional and craves something deeper, more meaningful, something that feeds her soul. She’s desperately grasping at control because she feels like she’s drowning.

The tragedy of Hedda Gabler isn’t that a sociopath causes destruction for fun. It’s that someone who feels too much, who is terrified of mediocrity, and who is stuck in a life she cannot stand but also cannot escape, lashes out in desperation. A Hedda who is numb or psychopathic obscures the emotional stakes: her fear, her longing for intensity, her need for beauty and meaning in a world that denies her all of it. 

[rachetmath]

Jaune's Last Man

(Hi sorry this has been my head and I completely forgot about this so let me end this with a kicker. A rap you may say. If you need a recap or you don’t know what this is about....he links here.;

Part 1: https://www.tumblr.com/rachetmath/681709097493659648/ilia-blake-i-want-to-come-with-you-blake-ilia?source=share

Part 2: https://www.tumblr.com/rachetmath/683991434179805184/can-we-please-get-a-sequel-to-the-post-about-jaune?source=share

Part 3: https://www.tumblr.com/rachetmath/688883250974916608/so-i-know-ow-you-said-you-dont-normally-do?source=share)

Jaune: Mercury.

Mercury: Vomit Boy. How’s it hanging?

Jaune: I’m doing fine.

Mercury: Really? I mean since you killed your friend. Your girlfriend dead. And Atlas. I would think you be in a site of depression.

Jaune: Yeah. Except I’m in state of rage.

Mercury; Oh.

Jaune: I mean I haven’t seen my family in years to where I can barely remember their faces. I watched thousands of innocent people die. I was betrayed by someone I wanted to call friend. All because of my stupidity.

Mercury: Wow finally admit it. You don’t know what your doing.

Jaune: Still don’t… but I’ll take my chances.

Mercury: So what are you going to do torture me.

Jaune: Haha no. Of course not. Ladies.

Neo and Ilia walks into the room. Neo before she took a seat on the table, she gives Jaune a kiss on cheeks while Ilia a has weapon to Mercury’s neck. Mercury was still shocked with Neo.

Jaune: Alright. Let us begin. I’m here to make a deal.

Mercury: A deal?

Jaune: You bet. I want you on my team.

Ruby: What?

Jaune: Yes.

Mercury: Why?

Jaune: We need someone like you on our side. Guys like you come in very short supply.

Mercury: That doesn’t give me much of a reason. Why should I give you allegiance?

Jaune: I’m willing to give something that can’t refuse.

Mercury: Please, your not even giving me a right to choose.

Jaune: *sigh* Ilia.

Ilia removes her weapon and sits down.

Jaune: Fine, I’ll play by rules. Look, I understand. Your father he was bad man. But brother he’s dead.

Mercury: I know.

Jaune: I know it was by own hands. I get it wasn’t easy but you fail to get-

Mercury: Is?

Jaune: That you can be better. So much clever. Do really want to stay in his shadow forever?

Mercury: Please. Who are you to judge me? If I recall correctly didn’t you cheat. You went to a school filled with talent. With nothing to show but empty promises and values. You talk a big game but you can’t measure up. Face it bud, your only here because of luck.

Jaune: …. ….

Mercury: Got nothing to say. Guess the fun is over. No more debates. I guess I’m done now prison await. Besides Salem offered me world on a plate what’s better than that?

Jaune: Okay, little man, so what’s your plan?

Mecury: What?

Jaune: Yeah, little man, what’s you plan?

Mercury: I mean-

Jaune: What’s your plan? Tell me, little man, what you gone do when you got the world in your hands? You get all money and get some respect. You make yourself sound like you really are a threat. Yes its true, your right about me. I did what it took to follow my dreams. But now look at me. I am all three. Money, Power and respect. A threat guaranteed. I lost many people but yet I still breath. Yet I still believe in what we can achieve.

Mercury: … … …. What are you saying to me?

Jaune: We’re nothing like them.

Mercury: What do you want from me?

Jaune: Show me your bravery. Leave it all BEHIND and make history.

Mercury: But I-

Jaune: You’re nothing like him.

Mercury: I’m-

Jaune: You can still be better.

Emerald: *burst in door* And if your not sure we can explore it together. We’ll have each other.

Jaune: And if you believe-

Mercury: Believe?

Jaune: In yourself.

Emerald: And me.

Jaune and Emerald: There’s nothing you can’t achieve.

Mercury: Really?

Jaune: Right.

Emerald: You can fly. Again. Sore the sky. Again.

Jaune: Away from sun. Together with us. We can make history. Forge our destiny. Our story will be legendary. So-

Jaune: *pulls his hand out* What do you say?

Mercury: Hmm. Well-

Jaune: Yes, you will paid.

Mercury: And?

Jaune: Yes, come man, what do you say?

Mercury: *shakes Jaune’s hand* Alright you got a deal compadre.

RWBY: Dang.

Oscar: They went play by play.

Nora: So Jaune? Tell us, what’s now the team’s name?

Jaune JMNI. What do you all think?

Mercury: I got say, it’s got nice ring to.

Ilia: I accept the team name. No mistake.

Neo: *agrees with smile*

Jaune: Guess we agree. But before we celebrate we have demonstrate, how useful we are, leave no trace to debate. So let’s start on our first case. What do you say?

Mercury, Ilia and Neo(with a sign): Bring it.

Jaune: Oh this will be great.

Nora: Can we stop rhyming.

[lz-didyounotice]

The girl with a thousand faces : Part 1

Hey guys! hum warning, this is my first fanfiction on Doctor Who. I wrote this one with the tenth doctor in mind. English is not my primary language, so please be indulgent. This fic will be in two or three parts depending on what the general reaction will be :0 So hum yeah. Also in the first chapter, you're given a certain name, but it will not be definitive.

Froggit-

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

-------------------------

Your destiny wasn’t what you could call “normal”. For a human at least. 

Playing, studying, going to college, finding a job, having a family, and growing old, could be called a winning ticket. You, on the other hand, had to deal with something else for as long as you could remember. 

Remembering. Here was something you were good at, something you had done for dozens of years without even understanding why it was happening. All those faces, all those lives you had to leave behind you. A single heart that had to grow again and again, without knowing where it would end up next, what language it would speak, what future it would be. 

A miracle some would call it. To you, it was purely a curse. The process of dying, being conceived again, growing up, and remembering your past lives, was getting tiring as the years came by. But here you were once again. And this time, your death had been quite special. Never would you have imagined dying to free a city.

------------------------

Paris was beautiful, it was true. But too many people lived there for it to be breathable. Summer was a pain in the ass, having no air circulating between buildings, and the cramped space of the streets, making the temperature grow higher each passing day. It wasn’t bearable. Breathing wasn’t easy, and there was as much that water could solve. 

Today was one of those days. Waking up to windows covered in craft paper to reduce the heat coming in the house, the rod from your old shutters, still in a corner of your room waiting to be saved. A kitchen, a little too small for even one person, and a pan to heat the water. A simple life in a busy city.

The bus had taken its sweet time to arrive, making you late for work. As soon as you entered the small café, you were in for quite a lot.

“Oh! Louise te voilà enfin! t’as presque une demie heure de retard, Naeva te cherche partout. J’ai mis ton uniforme dans l’arrière boutique 

oh! Louise! here you are, you’re practically Half an hour late, Naeva was searching for you. I put your uniform in the back

-Ah! Merci beaucoup Fély! je ne sais pas ce que je ferais sans toi. Désolée pour le retard, mon bus a encore été dévié.

Ah! Thanks a lot, Fély! I don’t know what I would do without you! Sorry for being late, my bus took another route again.

-C’est pas à moi qui faut dire ça, allez dépêches toi, on ouvre dans 5 minutes.”

I’m not the one you should tell this, and hurry up, we open in 5 min.

With a big smile, you walked by the kitchen to finally get dressed in your work attire.

---------------------------

Working wasn’t a passion. Making drinks had become mechanical long before even entering this café. Made it more of a chore to keep a place to live. 

Even with the knowledge of a thousand years, you had stayed here, certain that something special would happen in this life. This “something special” came with the name of John Smith. A beautiful man in a striped suit, bearing a gorgeous smile. Never would you have guessed that this man could bring so much trouble with him. 

You were happy to have learned how to regain your memory faster. And practicing sports did wonders. But Running from potato-headed soldiers wasn’t how you imagined your Monday to go. Their guns secured in hand while they tried to shoot you and the man beside you. 

Somehow, you managed to get shot in the side. Sure it hurt like a bitch, but it wasn’t your first rodeo with this kind of injury.

Making a new turn, the two of you had entered a small building. As soon as the door was closed, you heard a weird vibrating sound and saw “John” hunched over the door lock.

“It should last us a bit before they can get us.

-Who the heck are you ?! You seem to know an awful lot about what those are.  

-I’m the Doctor.

-The Doctor? What kind of doctor runs from bald potato soldiers?

-I could ask you the same. And you were also shot. Do you think you can still help?

- I might die either way. Let me be useful….”

“ So… what is the plan? “

-----------------------

The Sontarans had tried to sneak a bomb on Earth. Similarly to a mine, someone had to walk on it for it to detonate. In this case, only a human could make it explode. The bomb was still on their ship, and the Doctor had found their teleporter. 

The safe was easy to find, but to take down the fleet, the bomb had to be activated. 

“Doctor, I know it’s not the best option, but I'm the only one here able to make the ship go down. I’m already injured so it wouldn't be a big loss. You'll probably find me again in another life anyway. You, on the other hand, I’m not entirely sure.

-What do you mean another life ?! You're not dying, not on my watch…!”

The brunette seemed stressed. You knew he was trying to hide it, but you had too much time in your life to know what was going on in his head.

“You know what? Can I promise you something?

-I don’t think I quite follow but go ahead.

-I promise you, I'll always come back. No matter what. Might take a few human years but I'll always be back. No matter the life. “

The doctor seemed surprised. Humans surely made shallow promises in the hope of making things better, and to make others less guilty. But the sincerity of your voice made him believe it, and it scared him.

“Who are you, Louise....?”

All you gave him was a small smile before picking yourself up, blood still spreading on your shirt despite having transformed your apron into a temporary bandage. Only three digits were necessary to open the door. Your hand on the lock, the door slides open, and the monstrosity you had before your eyes made you want to throw up. You knew of the pain that was going to go through you. It wasn’t your first death by a bomb, but the last blasted your brain in tranches below the surface.

The bomb looked like a normal sewer lid, it would have been easy for a citizen to mistake it for a normal one. Checking Behind you, you had hoped to see the face of the doctor one last time before taking a step.

His eyes held sorrow, convinced that he had to make something else work. In comparison yours held hope, knowing that it wouldn’t be your end. But as red lights came into existence, he had to run. His eyes turned as he ran away to get to safety.

Once you knew he was far enough, as your foot barely touched the bomb, you felt your skin burn like a thousand suns. It was almost welcoming.

Darkness took over, letting you sink into the unknown.

---------------------

Has you opened your eyes again, all you could see was the face of a beautiful woman. A halo was drawn on top of her head, as she whispered a sweet lullaby.

making gurgling noises, you finally reached for her nose, desperate to touch something again. And all you saw was her smile as she put her head against yours. Your name fell beautifully from her lips. 

“Welcome to the world… Y/N Noble…”

[raisinchallah]

its honestly kind of crazy ides of march is as good as it is like the show has always had a kind of up and down history with trying to do really famous myths or historical events and they just fully call their own shot naming the episode ides of march and spending the entire season building up to it which we already saw them kind of fumble with whatever the hell sacrifice was in season 3 but this time they manage to nail well everything if sacrifice was the warm up ides of march is the real deal and they nail every beat like this time the villain team up and subversion of expectations work as a complete full circle moment for the characters like i dont usually love big finales or event episodes they usually feel like a slog to me but ides of march literally my favorite episode of xena probably forever and ive rewatched it countless times.. it manages to pay off emotional threads that have been going since like the beginning of the show like in letting others kill caesar merely leading them to water xena frees herself from him because hes played this outsized role in her imagination and origin for herself which of course is why caesar and callisto are the perfect villain team up he made xena and xena made callisto so by not personally killing him and choosing gabrielle over personal enactment of revenge this begins to resolve aspects of the rift that have been dangling since the debt but of course even more important is gabrielles choice she has said over and over again xena you cant keep me out of the violence u cant hide things from me and this imbalance begins to be resolved when she chooses to stay with xena in season 4 knowing it would lead to her death and by trying to negotiate her own position in this violent world xena cant choose things for her anymore rome episodes for gabrielle always represent her pushing herself morally and changing what she considers right or ethical in some ways theyre on the same page about revenge for once and of course when it comes down to it gabrielle realizes just how much xena means and xena helplessly can do nothing to stop her violent revenge mowing down roman soldiers for just one more moment with xena and xena incapacitated unable to move her legs a callback to destiny literally its all full circle with caesar and she has to watch gabrielle stare down the barrel of the gun and think about what being xena really means ides of march is just littered with all these ghosts of course callisto and her taunting her picking at these old wounds and trying to tempt xena saying i can keep you safe just do what i tell you to its like finally because xena has started to truly respect gabrielles choices as her own and that they are going to their potential deaths as partners in everything there its no longer tempting for so long xena hoped to shield gabrielle from this i mean just as recently as crusader she was trying to ditch gabrielle for a peaceful life another part of the rift is this lack of communication and respect for each others complex choices here but theyre finally on the same page even tho its brutally painful to xena to watch gabrielle cross that river of blood they are now one and the same truly an episode of all time insane they pulled that off

[guiltiestlove]

Oughh this is similar-ish to ur latest post abt playing with simon's hair but imagine how its like for him to allow u to hold him for the first time .,.,.

walking in a winter wonderland <3

Simon Blackquill x gn!reader, ~1200 words

sfw BUT please still mdni with this blog!

cws/tags: 90% fluff, 10% hurt/comfort, mentions/short descriptions of simon’s prison sentence, crying, happy ending :)

notes: some pacing issues but i didnt plan for it to be this long, i just got really sappy LMAO

When he was first released from prison, Simon shied away from nearly everyone’s touch. Excluding Taka, he didn’t particularly feel the need for anyone else’s constant presence, especially in such close proximity.

At the beginning of his sentence, he would spend hours crying every day, absolutely despondent and unable to fathom how any of this had happened. But as the years went by, he figured out how to hide these feelings more and more. If he could push them down and harden himself to the outside world, he would be more in control of his destiny. It was the only way to survive, or rather, make sure those he cared about survived.

By some miracle he had been saved and justice, insomuch as anyone could call it, had been served. And though he felt vindicated, he had forgotten how to feel, how to let people in.

In the three years that had passed he had made incredible progress, surprisingly himself more than anyone else.

After years of holding back such fierce emotions, after burying everything that could make him feel vulnerable, he finally decided to let people in again. Completely, not just superficially. And for once he truly missed the feeling of someone comforting him. After all, those nights in that cold, empty cell had been so lonely.

Still, he was hesitant to start dating again, but he figured going out for tea barely counted anyway. He could still convince himself it was no big deal.

—

Your first date was simple, getting tea and taking a walk around the park. And it was comfortable. Like settling into your cozy bed at the end of a particularly grueling day.

You had been enamored with Simon Blackquill since the first time you had met the man, unbeknownst to him. Since you were colleagues, you told yourself you had to be professional and stepping out of line would be, well just ridiculous—presumptuous even.

Evidently you hadn’t hid your feelings as well as you thought, because the prosecutor bluntly—and rather confidently—asked you out not long afterwards.

And though you had your eye on him for a while, you honestly couldn’t have expected how well this date would go. Those around the office considered him to be cold and calculating, but you felt a warmth and charm emanating from him, especially as the brisk fall breeze now nipped at your heels.

More and more of Simon’s icy exterior melted off as he quipped back at you, and you found yourself just wanting to know more, to spend more time with the man. To stoke the growing fire within him.

And surely he must have felt the same considering he admitted he hadn’t felt this open talking to someone in years.

With each passing day the two of you found yourselves wanting to be in each other’s company more and more. And to your delight with any free time the two of you had, it was more often than not spent together.

—

It was now the dead of winter, and you were back in the park you had visited months ago for your first date.

The crisp air and bright white snow made it feel like a fairytale, and you couldn’t help but get a little choked up into your hot chocolate as your feet padded into the snow. Here you were again, alongside Simon, sipping a drink that warmed you to your core—it felt overwhelmingly simple but beautiful somehow.

Simon, puzzled by your teary eyes, was worried something had gone wrong, so he spoke up.

”Are you feeling alright? Do you need my coat? The wind has been howling more than expec—“ You placed your hand on his. “No, no, Simon. I’m just…This is really nice. I’m simply…really happy.”

Your eyes sparkled, welling up as you smiled up at Simon, your boyfriend? The man you had been dating? Your really good colleague? It didn’t matter, this was a picture perfect day.

A look came across his face that you hadn’t seen before. One of confusion, then surprise, then understanding mixed with relief.

He took a few steps and sat down on one of the benches beside the little frozen pond. Pausing for a moment, he then turned to you. He was expectantly waiting for you to join him.

And so you did.

When you sat down, he closed the space between the two of you and partially removed his coat so he could drape it over your shoulder. He seemed more relaxed than usual. And somehow more tired. Like he could finally rest.

You adjusted the coat over your shoulder and waited patiently for him to move—after all the most physical contact the two of you had had was the time you had arm wrestled him.

He sighed, “I didn’t want to lose you. I… Frankly, I wasn’t sure that you felt the same.” You lit up at him finally addressing his feelings and again placed your hand on his, gently letting your thumb sweep across his cold skin. He looked to you with such a weary, but relieved face. “Oh, Simon…I wish I would have said something sooner…” You were eager, but still cautious to follow his lead.

He turned away from you and whispered something you couldn’t hear. “Hmm? What did you say?” You gave his hand a little squeeze. He perked up slightly, but still faced away from you. “Can you… Tsk…Nevermind…” he trailed off as he now looked at the ground.

You gave him a little nudge with your head and replied, “Can I what, Simon?” Again, he sighed, but you waited patiently.

“Can you just…hold me?”

Your arms shot up so fast around him it probably should have scared the both of you, but truthfully everything was overshadowed by how safe he finally was beginning to feel.

On that park bench you held him, with your head on his shoulder, and his head rested on yours, and it finally felt like so many of the clouds that had been looming over him were lifting. And you could feel the tightness in his chest slowly begin to release as tears fell onto the top of your head. And in that awkward position you rubbed Simon’s back until his arms were around you too and it began to get dark.

“Simon?”

”Yes?”

”It’s starting to get cold…you know it’s nice and warm at my apartment…”

You finally untangled yourselves from each other, and Simon was looking at you with his usual grin, albeit nose and eyes a bit puffier than usual. “Well, I would hate to catch frostbite. Especially considering you need my coat.”

Rising from the bench, he finished taking off his coat and placed it on your shoulders—it was so warm and completely enveloped your frame, not to mention it smelled heavenly. He reached out his hand as he continued, “What do you say?”

You had to laugh at how he was able to bounce back so quickly. “You’re such a perfect gentleman,” you teased as you grabbed his hand in yours and stood up, dusting the snow off yourself.

It was a perfect day, and the hollow feeling inside Simon’s chest felt a little smaller. And every day it was filled more.

[fangbangerghoul]

The Fallen Knight

3/4 Chapters: A Fallen Knight's Word Read here or AO3 Explicit (everything I write is intended for Mature audiences) Abigor x Player Summary: Abigor, a failed Knight, finds himself certain a statue he sits under will hold his future destiny. He waits unbothered by all that happens around him until one stranger joins him by the fire at night. It is then an answer appears before him, and he is eager to strike a deal of a lifetime.

Abigor’s feet dragged him into the forest. It wasn’t often he needed to come out here in search of a meal but ever since the Keep had gone on a severe lockdown he had been barred from entering to purchase goods. The sun held high in the middle of the sky and its rays bore down on his red heavy armor. He could feel the sweat bead at his hair line and he was tempted to removed his helm.

A snap to his left caught his attention and his hand laid on the hilt of his sword. Chasing deer to slaughter them was not ideal but he was not the best at archery and his stomach was ready to eat itself. He looked over, crouching behind a bush to hear clacking like a wooden windchime. He saw an undead hissing at its opponent. It was rushing towards its masked opponent with untamed aggression and the armed person stood just as relentless.

A grunt from the human as the shield of the undead knocked into their chin. The black bandana hid the bottom half of their face but he felt like the fierce eyes were familiar. Abigor felt his guts sink into themselves but his feet rise as if he was called to action. He raced forth sword out of its helm and his determination set on the now group of undead that surrounded this fellow warrior. They held their own even as they were being pummeled from either side and to his surprise when he closed the distance only three of the six remained.

He swung with a heavy and controlled weight. In one swing he knocked two in half, crushing the skull of one with his boot. His hunger burned his stomach and his step started to falter but he pushed forward determined to aid the fellow. The draw to them was strong enough to push himself further.

“To your back!” The voice cried out but it was too late Abigor felt the sting of a sharp blade pierce his back and he stumbled to hold his ground. “Abigor!”

The bandana was torn off and the face was like a holy revelation that confirmed the thread that yanked him to Nobody’s recue. Even as the fiery hunger turned into a hellish pain in his back he smiled to himself with satisfaction. It must be fate that draws him to this person or else why would the feet of this Fallen Knight drag him this far?

He coughed trying to breath naturally and before he could pull himself out of this predicament his weakened state took over his conscious, fading it all to black.

The way his life unfolded will always be a mystery. How could someone so determined to do right fall so far? To abandon his principals and be casted aside? To lose his Princess, his sworn duty and be stuck on endless dark waves. The crackling awoke his conscious. The soft constant warmness of the sound with the low hum of insects and frogs let him know that he was still alive. Unless hell was also the sound of Horns of the South night.  He felt the sticky air on his face and his hair felt damp against the earth. He opened his eyes to look above and there was a faded twinkle of the stars above that ended with a soft yellow glow from the fire. He looked to his right towards the fire and saw them. Kneeling before the fire, mortal and pestle in hand grinding away herbs and elixirs. The yellow glow sat upon Nobody like it wanted to squeeze them tight and Abigor noted that perhaps the warmth of the fire was because of the small sweat drops that fell from their forehead.

“Isn’t it a bit uncouth to undress a knight?” His smokey voice murmured. Abigor was amused at the liberties Nobody did take going as far as undressing him down to his pant linens. The air felt refreshing on his skin so he wasn’t necessarily willing to complain but perhaps tease for his own amusement.

“A fallen knight if I am mistaken.” They had a curl on the edge of their lips while they put more of their weight into mixing the ingredients. “While normally I prefer to ask before undressing a stranger it seemed I had limited options considering the state you were in.”

“Oh?” He sucked his teeth. “We are strangers? Here I thought the exchange of names last time settled that. Not to mention this.” He waved his hand down to his bare torso that only had bandages covering his skin.

He did take pleasure in the fact that there were furs beneath him it was softer than some of the plushest grass he had slept on in the past. The care to have dragged him here and set all of this up was more than he expected from anyone let alone someone who still thought of him as a stranger.  

“Hmm.” Nobody’s light chuckle seemed to make the fire dance and Abigor’s eyes glued to their mouth and throat. “Suppose we aren’t. Asking someone to a duel only to have them save you at a later date must mean something.”

Nobody brushed their wild curls behind their shoulder before reaching to the pot above the fire. Abigor hadn’t noticed the strew that had been simmering, but now that he did every herb, vegetable, and cooked meat filled his nostrils. He breathed it in while sitting himself up on his elbow. Nobody without question filled a bowl with the stew and sprinkled the mixed herbs they were grinding on top before handing it to Abigor.

“Eat. It will replenish you. You will need it with the blood you have lost and with the way your travels seem to erode your stamina.” Nobody didn’t take no for an answer and forced the bowl and spoon in his hand. They stood, brushing themselves of the dirt and excess ingredients. “Take this as well.”

Abigor missed the canteen of water that was thrown at him and it hit his stomach. The stew sloshed in his hands but he managed to not lose a drop however a cruel grunt left his lips from the impact. They didn’t seem to think it was necessary to hold back even now in his sorry state.

“What should I do to repay the generosity?” Abigor asked sniffing the aroma of the strew closely. He could almost identify everything and some of the vegetables were not native to the area. He wondered how far had Nobody traveled since their last meeting.

“Eat it all before I return.” Nobody threw a bag of quills and a long bow across their back. They did not spare a glance at Abigor as they tied the laces of their leather boots or fixed their leather cuffs. “That will be payment enough.”

“Truly?” Abigor questioned his favorite stranger. He seemed to be constantly surprised by them and as he watched them fix themself, he felt a heavy joy rest on his chest.

They were heavenly in his eyes. He could finally admit that to himself. The ease they moved with, the sureness that had entered in their melodic voice, they did not question, did not judge, they just were and accepted him as he were. It made him even more eager to have a knights’ duel with them. To be able to feel Nobody’s blade clash against his own, breathes panting, and their feet dancing in rhythm of each other. He was more eager to eat his fill of the stew and its healing properties Nobody had given it. Maybe this time Nobody would stick around long enough to accept his offer.

Nobody began to walk off into the solid fog that blanketed the land at night. The Wyrdness out and about as it is every night. Abigor felt a tiny string pull in his chest and in an impulse, he called out to them.

“Wait.” Abigor knew it sounded like a command but he had hoped they’d listen. Hear the silently plea in his voice. Nobody did stop on the edge of the ring of light the fire had casted. “Will you be returning?”

“Are you worried about me, Abigor?” Nobody twisted to face him with a sardonic grin.

“Wont you miss these furs that you are letting me bleed all over?” He gestured his hand across him and the furs beneath him. He hoped the teasing gesture was enough.

“I said to eat your portion before I return, didn’t I?” Nobody’s hand was on their hip. Their mesh top underneath the corset of leather rose from their hips with the motion. The sight of their exposed midriff caught his eyes and he traced the small pinkish scars that seemed iridescent against the light of the fire. There was more than just fire burning within their safe circle in this moment.

“As you wish.” He forced himself to sit up. The bowl of strew held up and his head bowed. He kept his head bowed until he heard their boots fade completely into the mist. His cheeks had burned and the only saving grace he had was the bow and curtain of hair that fell from his head.

Abigor looked out into the opaque fog and finally took a sip of the strew. For all its delicious looking ingredients and smells the stew itself was garbage. He choked from the taste and from laughter. However, a fallen knight like him still tried to keep his word and so he drank it down with fervor and resolve. Abigor knew if nobody offered seconds no matter what he would down that as well. Something inside him was changing and he knew Nobody was the source.