#Maybe long enough to no longer be a ficlet...

[erisenyo]

Anon do I ever remember. A follow up to Part 1, here. I recommend viewing the St. Sebastian Sculpture here for the full Vibe lol

NSFW ahead - Zutara, bloodbending, D/s vibes, consensual but not sane or safe, I think we can see where this is going, handwaving anatomy and why Katara would know the latin names for things

The next time it happens, it’s not Katara who puts him on his knees.

She’s already hot with annoyance as she tromps through the forest, irritated to even be chasing after Zuko in the first place when he was just supposed to be foraging, irritated that no one else seems particularly concerned with his whereabouts, irritated that she couldn’t even lose herself in the familiar motions of laundry, the rhythms of pressure and rushing water and pulsing agitation abruptly no longer soothing to sink herself into when all she can seem to think about is—

“Fuck!” A man—broad but lean, clothes rough except for a very fine vest, mismatched swords at his waist, definitely a bandit then—shouts as he and Katara burst into a clearing at the same time.

“Another one?” another man grunts as he steps out of the tree line, eyes assessing as he unloops a coil of rope from his shoulder.

“We don’t have time for this,” a third bandit scowls, a familiar sack in her hand. “Let’s make quick work of this one, too.”

“I’ll show you quick,” Katara growls, staring at the bag she would know backward and forward with how many times she’s mended it, her waterbending surging out as her anger suddenly finds a target.

She rips water from the nearby stream, from the inexplicably soaked clothing all bandits are wearing. She barely touches what’s contained in her waterskin, and it’s only after all three of them are unconscious, her bag back in hand, that Katara considers that ‘another one’ means she wasn’t the first.

Katara hesitates, eyeing the rope still tangled in a lasso in the second bandit’s grip. Her adrenaline is still roiling through her, her bending pulsing water-ice-water-ice as she tries to regain her composure. This bag unquestionably went out with Zuko. She could go back to get the others, Toph’s seismic sense would be helpful.

But she’s been watching Sokka narrate his tracking for years. And Zuko probably just followed the shoreline. She doesn’t need Toph. Besides, what if the bandits wake up and go back for Zuko? What if he’s unconscious, or hurt? Or tied up somewhere, awake and waiting and—

When Katara finds him, he isn’t unconscious. She hears his tight, harsh grunt before she sees him. 

But he is undeniably roughed up, already-worn clothing ripped and even more wet than the bandits were, like maybe he got jumped in the stream, which maybe he did if he couldn’t bend his way out of the fight. Maybe he even was unconscious at some point, to end up tied up like that. She doesn’t know how else they would have gotten him on his knees with the broad tree flush against his back like that, the trunk between his shins and rope looped around his waist and the strain of his shoulders and arch of his back saying his hands are tied behind the tree, too.

He probably can’t bend without burning himself, she contemplates as she watches, feeling oddly, clinically abstracted. But he’s clearly trying to change that fact with the way he’s squirming, coming up off his knees as he strains forward, cords of muscle and tendon stark—triceps brachii, her mind helpfully supplies, brachioradialis, extensor carpi radialis longus, and the rotator cuff must be screaming—his body suspended against the rope with effort and face twisted into a furious scowl that spasms as he collapses heavily to his knees again.

“You’re hurt?” Katara doesn’t think as she steps out of the tree line, Zuko’s head jerking up in alarm.

“Katara! There are bandi—”

“I took care of them,” she interrupts, her chi feeling oddly shivery with readiness as she reaches for the flow of the stream, just in case.

Zuko stares, chest heaving. “All of them?” he finally asks, the words hoarser than usual as his gaze hunts between her and the trees.

She dangles the bag in demonstration, like it was easy. “Three? I took care of it.”

Another beat of staring. Then Zuko exhales, sharp and unsteady, and slowly leans back again. Not settling, though, she notes in that distant way. Not with the way his body stays tight and coiled, his chest still fast as if with urgency.

Katara can hear her heartbeat in her ears, pounding with adrenaline, the tugging awareness of her own blood.

“You’re hurt?” she asks again, glancing over him for injury. It’s easy enough to look for. His tunic has been ripped through to the collar on one side, falling half off his chest and barely hanging on the other. His pants are in equally rough shape, like someone grabbed fistfuls of them to try to contain him, or maybe to drag him to this tree.

That would have been humiliating for someone to put him on his knees that way, she considers as something not-at-all-abstractly lurches inside her, in her bending.

“Katar—”

“What happened,” she interrupts, coming to a stop standing over him. He likes to be there, she remembers like it’s something she needs to recall. He likes to be put there.

“It’s not—”

“Tell me.”

Zuko cuts his eyes away, panting harshly, swallowing hard. Then he licks his lips—stress response, that voice like Yugoda’s whispers, which can presage fear, fight, or arou—and glances up at her from beneath his lashes, lips pressed together and the air suddenly thick with awareness, thick enough that she can barely breathe it, that she almost feels like she could bend it as a single shiver runs through him before he tightly controls it.

“You’re covered in water, Zuko,” she says low, like it’s an observation, and Zuko makes a tight, thin noise in the back of his throat and tells her.

She imagines it, how it must have unfolded. The three bandits seeing Zuko vulnerable and exposed that way, knee-deep in the river and poking at the reeds. The coordinated rush to take him down. The struggle and strain for mastery, the water suffocating and impeding them all so that it took three of them to pin him down and contain him, apparently.

Her bending slides syrupy and thick through her veins, her chi, with the memory of having done that to him, too. He’d folded at the first press. Gone limp. Gave in to whatever she wanted to do to him. “You fought it.”

Zuko swallows hard and tilts his chin. Defiance, or brazening through the obvious blush of embarrassment. “Yeah.” He likes that, too, and Katara can’t even pretend at having to remember that. Not when the knowledge has had her off-kilter and sharp-tongued with him ever since she realized.

She can see the pulse in the hollow of his neck, like this. And the way his lips part, his eyes dark. He knows that she knows, and neither of them can pretend otherwise, even if she hasn’t wanted to admit it, acknowledge it, look at it in anything other than the thick, sticky dark of night.

Katara wants to wrap her bending into the stream, wants to make it a raging rush to match the feeling inside her, wants to feel the pressure of it rising to match— “You’re injured?” she asks thickly.

Zuko’s eyes immediately cut away. “It’s fine.”

“Where.” He can’t hunch forward over himself or pull his knees up, this time, even if she let him.

“It’s nothing.”

“Where.” Not with the rope around him.

“It doesn’t matt—”

“You think I can’t find out myself?” she snaps, her bending rolling out to cling to the water still in his clothes, pressing, making him feel the pressure of the water on him, all around him.

She breathes hard as he gasps and sags, squeezing until the droplets are on the verge of snapping to ice and her waterbending to something sharp and jagged and tight, squeezing until a familiar whine chokes out of him. Then sucks in air and forces her chi to ebb, waiting with a throbbing kind of adrenaline-anticipation—the adrenaline of the stress response, which can presage—for Zuko to pry his eyes back open.

“Do you think you can?” he rasps, body tight again, and Katara doesn’t need the memory of his tone from to hear the invitation in it now.

She curls her hands into fists, looking at the way his tunic is barely clinging to his shoulder. And looking at the taut way he’s holding himself, watching her sidelong, the shiver of his stomach entirely visible.

Then she grips the water in his tunic again and jerks it to her, sharp. Zuko lets out a ragged noise as the last seams rip from the force, Katara watching the now-dry fabric slithering down to catch on the rope. She reflexively forms the water into a small ball, slowly pressing her bending into that instead, distantly aware as her chi flexes and throbs that she can only build the pressure for so long before it needs release.

“Your back?” she asks, trying to focus on the rhythm of her waterbending and not the sharp-edged pulse calling to her.

Zuko’s shoulders flex like he’s twisting his hands against their bindings, his bare stomach pressing against the rope with the force of his breaths, over and over. “You can’t find out yourself?”

Katara feels heady from the beat of her own pulse. Then she exhales hard and swirls the globe of water into a ribbon over his arms, feeling the smooth slide of water over skin skin skin rope there and slicing it up frozen and serrated through the ropes binding his wrists.

She throws the still pressure-tight water aside as Zuko falls forward with a surprised cry, his weight catching on the rope still around his waist—and the bare line of his back exposed to show bark-scuffed skin and a few bruises, but nothing more than what they’ve all had from training.

Katara flexes thighs, her stomach, feels how strongly she’s braced as she looks down at him half-bent over before her. “I can find out whatever I want.”

Zuko breathes heavily a moment, sagged forward, his scapula shifting as he tests the movement of his shoulders. “Yeah?” he finally says, leaning back against the tree again, still kneeling up as if he has to. It’s not much of a response. But he’s bared to the waist now, no real injuries to be seen, and Katara feels like she’s looking down over the edge of a cliff as he licks his lips again, watching her back, feels like she’s jumping and momentarily weightless above the water as she lets her bending surge out for those droplets of water again and yanks.

The sound of cloth and seams tearing is loud, but not as loud as Zuko. A raw noise chokes in his throat ass his pants flutter down to leave him in just the rope around his waist and a wet, transparent fundoshi that does nothing to hide the shape of him—ateriolar dilation and increased blood flow to the erectile tissue—or the puncture wounds sluggishly bleeding down his thigh.

“Rocks?” Katara says unevenly as the sharp claws of her bloodbending twist through her chi. There was an earthbender in that bunch, nothing compared to sparring with Toph. The punctures are on the front of his thigh like he got hit with projectiles, a few inches below where his—his penis is tangled in the wet fabric, halfway erect and twisted to the side.

It looks uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Zuko says thickly.

She doesn’t think he cares.

“I’m going to need to flush out any debris, before healing.” She barely recognizes her own voice, or the heavy throb of her bending as she forcefully pushes back the hungry tug of bloodbending.

“Yeah,” Zuko says unsteadily, swallowing hard, his bare body betraying the flush working down his chest, the flex of his hips—abductor muscles contracting, she forces herself to note, and—and—and the twitch of his penis. “For healing.”

Katara doesn’t say it back again, isn’t sure she could. She just takes a moment to try to control her own wild pulse, crouching down and separating the strands of water and healing and blood that have never been so tangled before. 

Then she flushes the first wound with water.  A careful, controlled stream rather than a fast, hard rush. Feeling the pressure as the water slips into him, just a bit, the wounds aren’t that deep really.

Seeing his reflexive jerk against the intrusion and pain, and she can fix her gaze on the first puncture, can assess it and let her bending stream out again, just to be thorough. But it’s impossible not to also see the shove of his hips into it, with the wounds so close to his groin. Impossible not to also note the pull of wet fabric, the further displacement, the cloth tugged even more off-center. Sliding half-off the scrotum, the twisted fabric still pressing the hardening shaft downward but if he squirms enough then maybe it will drag entirely—

“Be still,” Katara warns as she pulls her water abruptly back, breathing far harder than the bending warrants.

Zuko makes a high, tight noise and slumps back, eyes closed, gasping and nodding even as his hips continue to work against the air.

Spinal reflex in response to stimuli, she thinks even as she orders, “Still.”

She doesn’t wait for an invitation this time, knows she already has one as she lashes out with bloodbending this time, seizing veins and arteries and pressing him motionless. Zuko moans, head kicking back, and she can feel the way his hips try to buck and then again when he realizes he can’t. Another of those moans slips out, loud like he’s taking advantage of having his mouth free, or maybe is trying to goad her, but she’s too focused on following the rush of his blood, celiac trunk to internal and external iliac, tibial to femoral, feeling where the blood is slipping out of him but also where it’s flushing the surface of his skin, filling his penis, pathways dilating and pulse throbbing and she can feel the beat in her own veins, too.

Katara jerks her bloodbending back into her own skin and calls up the torrent of her waterbending. She breathes hard from the effort of fighting the hungry tug, gasping at the dizzying feel of that clawing edge along her water, like its trying to sink into that, too. Tui and La, to use both at the same time—to feel him from the inside out as his body does that—her chi throbs, fingertips tingling like maybe if she just tried…

Katara shoves that away. “Like that,” she snaps, apprehension shivering through her. Would she ever be able to get the bloodbending out, if it breached into her water that way? She scowls when Zuko just gasps at her, eyes hazy and mouth slack like he has no idea what she’s saying. “Still.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Zuko rasps after a moment, sucking in air and then bracing himself, basically naked so see the tightening of chest—of pectoralis major and rectus abdominus and—the inguinal ligament taut and flexed--

She flushes the second wound hard and fast and Zuko barely lasts a second before a high noise chokes out of him, his teeth sinking into his lips and his hips rising up and it’s not from the pain, not at all.

Katra pulls the water back. “I can hold you still, or I can clean out the last one.” Her chi lurches with the temptation to try both even though she’s never—even though she can’t, the pathways of chi are so—and if they go tangled, if she couldn’t separate them—

Zuko looks back at her flushed and embarrassed and so openly aroused that it doesn’t feel real. She’s never felt more aware of her own skin and blood than the moment when he nods unsteadily and reaches up above himself to grab onto the tree. To anchor himself, obviously, the motion canting his hips forward as if offering his injured thigh, his dark-flushed glans, the fundoshi fabric slid down to the place where his engorged shaft meets—

“Is that it?” Katara asks when she’s done. Zuko just pants up at her, ragged, flushed. Erection is a reflex response to visual, olfactory, physical, or imaginative stimuli, she wildly remembers Yugoda lecturing. She wonders which this qualifies as, her bloodbending throbbing in answer. “Should I check for more?”

“If you want to be sure,” Zuko says raggedly, re-gripping to the tree, and Katara presses her tongue to the dry roof of her mouth and fills him with her bending.

Bloodbending bursts through her chi, bursts through him, and she clenches her own body against it as Zuko moans and arches like he never even dreamed of fighting it. She sets a hand against the ground to steady herself, staring hypnotized at the way he moves between the restraints and the tree, the way he bucks, the way he shudders even as she freezes parts of him with her bending one by one.

Lips, which she knows he likes, can feel in the leap of his blood. Shoulders back to the tree, so he can’t cover himself, a whimper choking past his frozen tongue. Arching his back until it’s the rope fighting her. Pressing his arms into place, so the rest of him can squirm and betray every bit of his reaction, the tiny jerks of his muscles like he can’t stop himself from trying to feel her grip in his veins.

She leaves his hips for last so that he can feel it, really feel it, when she forces them to freeze just as the reflexive to buck rolls them him. And she can feel that ripple through him, testing muscle and rushing blood and surging pulse, the fruitless strain against her hold that matches the gasping, moaning sounds he makes.

She same wild pulse is in her bending, too, a throbbing rhythm that lurches through her chi, tugs her forward until she’s feeling it in every part of him trying to find more, pushing into every capillary and venule until he’s crying out, muffled, from the sensitivity, and the way he’s looking at her down the spread-out expanse of his body—

Katara shoves to her feet, forces Zuko’s head to tilt to follow her, forces his eyes to stay open, and locks every muscle except the ones he needs to thrust his hips. She releases him when she needs to gasp in her own air, watches him sag between his outstretched arms, locks him again, again, rhythmic, Zuko groaning as he realizes. There’s no way for him to hide like this, knees wide, gripping the tree and still tied so that even if she did release him, he’d be exposed, that scrap of barely-there cloth doing nothing. It barely coverst he curve of his testicle—he cries out as her bloodbending rushes down to feel it drawn up tight—the line of his erection fully free as he rocks against the air, desperate, and the fact that she can do that just by standing, just by making him look up at her—

She steps forward until her boots are just inches from his knees, feeling heady with the way he cranes even more up at her without even needing to be forces, his eyes blown wide. And then the rush as his gaze skips down over her breasts, her stomach, her hands, lower, his mouth parting and his tongue sliding out to lick his lips, and if she leaned him forward like she can feel him straining to do then he’d be pressing his face to—

Katara shoves her healing into him with a gasp. She slices through the last rope with a blade of ice, gouging wood and whirling around ass Zuko cries, suddenly unbalanced without the restraining tension. The suddenly-free trust of his hips is burning into her mind’s eye, blazing over the back of her eyelids as she squeezes them shut and forces the flood of her bending into the clean flow of the stream, letting the current pull it away and trying not to hear the thump of his fists hitting the earth, or the strained grunt he lets out, then another.

“We should head back,” Katara finally says, chest aching with the force of keep her breathing even. “Warn the others. About the bandits.”

A heavy, panting silence, then, “Yeah. Yeah,” he says, ragged and breathless and wanting in a way that she doesn’t want to feel in her blood. She knows without needing to check that he’s still on his knees behind her.

“There’s needle and thread in the bag.” She can’t make herself say why he’d need them. “Don’t take too long.” She strides away before she can let herself think too much about it, or wonder if firebenders can feel the heat in someone’s veins, before notice that she didn’t hear him rise to his feet until she told him too. 

[unintentionalseductress]

First of all, you just gained a new follower bb, love your stuff 😍. Secondly, I have a request..(if you don't mind and it's no rush at all), but today is Father's day and I'm a firm believer that Zayne IS a family man. So could you write a small fiction of y/n taking hc zayne out on a date and at the end of it..telling him that she's pregnant (he's the father ofc and they're already married)? Tysm if you decide to do this, and again..it's no rush. (You can add smutt if you want 😉)

Hello there! Thank you for the follow and I'm sorry this is late, I usually don't answer asks unless I know what I'm writing for them. Zayne is absolutely a family man and he'd be an amazing dad. Here's a ficlet based on your ask (oneshots are on hiatus atm). I hope you like it! Warnings: none needed I think, pure fluff, mention of pregnancy

There's a flutter in your heart as you take your seat at the little table in your usual cafe. Trying to calm your nerves, you look out the window at the balmy June evening, trying not to fidget in your chair.

"Is everything all right?"

You nearly jump out of your chair as Zayne takes his spot opposite you, a tray bearing assorted pastries and 2 cups of hot chocolate laden on it. You smile reassuringly and nod, accepting the cake slice Zayne offers and poke at the creamy frosting with a fork.

Zayne knows you're dying to tell him something. Your cheeks are colored and you keep trying not to smile, although you're failing spectacularly at it, the corners of your lips curving and uncurving every few seconds. It was endearing to watch, and his curiosity is piqued, but he waits politely for you to share.

He picks up his cup of hot chocolate and blows on the warm liquid and sips, his wedding band glinting under the lights. For a moment, you allow yourself to simply bask in the perfectness; of how wonderful Zayne is, and what a beautiful life you've built with him. You reach a hand across the table, palm up and look at him expectantly.

Without missing a beat, Zayne takes your hand in his, setting down the cup with a soft clink as his fingers intertwine with yours. The warmth of his palm against yours is the final thing you needed to stop pretending you were smiling, lips quirking into a happy expression as you fix your eyes on your husband.

"What is it?" Zayne is amused, albeit a little vexed. You fight down the urge to burst out your news.

"I was just thinking if our house has enough room for a guest."

"A guest?" Zayne nibbles on a macaroon. "We have an extra bedroom. How long are they staying?"

"Hmm 18 years. Maybe longer. Who knows?"

"18 years? Who are we inviting?"

You look directly at him, eyes bright and face glowing, then giggle as you see comprehension dawning on his face. There's disbelief which melts away into joy.

"Are you sure?" At your nod, his gaze softens, and he brings your hands to his lips, kissing them devotedly.

"We'll figure out a nursery theme when we get back." He pushes the other cake slice towards you.

"Eat."

© unintentionalseductress original work | no copying, plagiarizing or translating

[liminalmemories21]

Epiphanies on a bathroom floor (911 ficlet - post episode 8x17)

@cecilyv and I took a crack at another version of what could have happened post 8x17. (entertainingly, I still haven't seen the episode - @cecilyv has though, so slightly more informed vibes this time around)

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

Buck gets back from the scene, from the building falling to pieces around them, and locks himself in Eddie’s bathroom. Doesn’t feel like his house. Again. He stands, staring at himself in the mirror, rocking forward on his toes. His heart pounding in his chest, hammering against his breast bone like it's trying to escape. 

He barely recognizes the person looking back. 

Eddie knocks, asks if he’s okay. Buck’s not sure exactly what to say, what he should say, what Eddie wants to hear. Whatever he ends up saying must have been good enough because Eddie tells him that he and Chris are going to Pepa’s. 

Good, that’s good. More people Buck doesn’t have to put a brave face on for, any longer.  He listens to them leave.  In theory the house is empty now. He could unlock the door, go sit somewhere more comfortable for his breakdown. Go back to the church, double the number of times he’s gone in a decade in a weekend.

Doesn’t move.

Doesn’t know if the earthquake was a sign from God that he was blaspheming, but he can’t tempt fate again. Doesn’t have another earthquake or lightning strike in him right now. Bobby, God, whomever is watching over him and letting him royally fuck up.

There’s a noise, someone opening the front door, footsteps.  He wonders what Eddie forgot. Then a knock on the door and, “Evan?”

He feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes and squeezes them shut. Grips the edge of the counter until he feels it digging into his palms. Can’t start crying now.  Not sure he’d ever stop.  Breathes through it until he thinks his voice will be steady.

“Tommy?”

“Hen called me.  Said she was worried about you after that last call.”

And she’d called Tommy?  Has no idea what to do with that.

“She thought Eddie would be here, but apparently he’s at his aunt’s?”  Tommy sounds baffled. He doesn’t have the energy to explain.  He’s not sure what to think about the idea that Tommy was Hen’s first call after Eddie.

Just says, “Yeah.”  And then out of some kind of loyalty, or something, adds, “I, uh, I said it was okay.” It’s not Eddie’s fault that he was made wrong. 

Tommy makes a non-committal noise.  “Do you want to come out?”  He doesn’t think he makes a noise, but he must, because Tommy’s instantly backtracking, “Or I can sit here and wait until you’re ready.”

It takes him a second to place that tone of voice, and then he wants to cringe his way into a corner, because that’s the ‘talk the crazy person off the ledge’ voice. The first responder, ‘calm the victim down’ voice. He knows that voice; he uses that voice. 

Ma’am, I’m not Satan, my name is Buck. He really was begging to get smited, wasn’t he?

Slides down the wall instead, down down down, until he’s sitting on the floor. Wraps his arms around his legs, thinks he’s as small as he can be. Tilts his head against the door with a thunk. He’s sure that Tommy has better places to be, things he should be doing. He sits, for a second, a minute, expecting him to go. He should go. But then he hears Tommy moving, swearing softly, grunting when he hits the ground. His hip must be hurting him again, it does sometimes -- had always enjoyed getting his hands on him when it had, before, rubbing muscle cream into it, finding the knots and pushing until they loosened, making it better. 

Now, he thinks he should get back up, open the door -- keeping Tommy down here, with him -- he’s doing exactly what Eddie said he always did. Worries his lip between his teeth. Maybe he’d never made it better; maybe he’d always made it worse.

Can’t bring himself to move.  If he’s quiet, he thinks he can hear Tommy breathing and that has to be enough. 

He’s silent too long, because Tommy says, "Evan, I need you to keep talking to me.”

He's foggy enough that it takes a minute to figure out why. "You think I have a concussion?"

"Well, Hen thinks it’s a possibility, and I make it a policy not to argue with Hen." He snorts wetly.  Gets an amused hum in response, and then, “Since I can't get in there and check, I'm going to need you to talk to me until I can. Okay?"

Concussion protocols.  He can do that.  Could do it in his sleep.  "Um, my name is Evan Buckley." Pauses. "Do you know you and Maddie are the only people who call me Evan. Well, my parents. But I don't like it when they do it. You and Maddie are the only people who do it and I like it."

Hears Tommy make an indistinct noise he can't parse. Keeps going.

"President is, uh, Trump. Fuck all our lives." He hadn’t cared the first time, Washington was so far away, had so little impact on his day to day until fire season rolled around. He thinks about Tommy, Hen and Karen and Josh and all the other people who dealt with the fear and anxiety every single day. He should have cared. It should have mattered. It’s just another way he failed them without knowing; another way he could have, should have been better.

"Umm, what else. Oh right, what day of the week is it." That stumps him. Thinks backwards, flips through the shift calendar in his head. Still nothing. "Okay, I don't know that. But, to be fair, I don't think I knew what day of the week it was before the earthquake, so it shouldn't count."

He can tell you how many days it's been since Bobby died though. How many days he's been trying to hold everything and everyone together with tape and string and he's not Bobby, he's not enough. He can't do it.  Eddie made that very clear. 

“Two out of three,” Tommy says.  “Good enough for government work.” He waits for Tommy to leave.  He’s done his duty. Checked on him. One more way he’s making himself the problem - pulling Tommy away from whatever he’d been doing, making him drive out of his way to come check on him. Hears Tommy shift to find a different position on the other side of the door instead, jeans rustling when his legs rub together.  “Now that’s out of the way, how’ve you been doing?”

Pepa told him to accept change and Bobby told him to be there for people, that they’d need him, that he’d be alright — and he whispers, soft enough that Tommy shouldn’t be able to hear him, even back to back against the same door, “I’m not okay, Bobby said, but I’m not — and Eddie said--“ and trails off.

Closes his eyes.  Swallows it down.  Waits until he’s sure his voice won’t give him away. “I’m okay. You don’t need to stay.”

Tommy makes a hmming noise. “But I just got myself settled. I’m not as young as I used to be, I think I’ll stay for a minute if that’s okay with you.”

He wants to ask why Tommy’s here. Why Tommy came when Hen called. Why he keeps coming when Buck calls, when all Buck ever is is mean to him. Thinks he should tell Tommy he’s not worth it, that whatever Tommy thinks he sees, it’s not real.

Hears Tommy shifting again.  There are blankets and pillows in the bedroom. He should tell Tommy to grab some if he’s planning on staying.  Floor’s not going to get any softer. 

Thinks about asking what he’d have to do to make Tommy want to stay. With him, not just here on this floor. Reminds himself not to make it about him, what he wants.  

He doesn’t want any of this. Wants a do-over.  

There’s a stretch of silence, then Tommy breaks it. “I watched the new Blue Planet the other day. Or well, I guess it’s not new, but I missed it when it came out, so new to me.”

He appreciates what Tommy’s trying to do. It’s still a little bit -- talk the crazy guy off the ledge, but well, he feels a little bit like he’s balancing on a ledge, so maybe Tommy knows something he doesn’t.

“Proof of life,” Tommy asks him, and oh, yea, didn’t respond. Out loud, anyway. Guesses that’s the only response that really matters. 

“Did you like it?” his voice sounds rusty, like it’s been scrapped over the shards of his throat. He wipes his eyes. Doesn’t know when he started crying. Must have been for a while. 

“It lacked commentary,” is all Tommy says, which is weird because it has a good narrator, and he-- oh. 

“You mean, uh, me?” 

It’s an old house, Eddie’s, his, whoever's it is right now. There’s a gap under the door — he watches Tommy’s fingers slide under, like a cat’s paw.  He hooks his finger with Tommy’s.

“I mean, you.” Buck lets that settle inside him, feels his lips quirk upward. “Think you’re ready to let me in?”

Could be talking about the bathroom. Could be about something bigger.  Either way. “I’ll only hurt you, I’m no good for anyone I love.”

And Tommy’s quiet again for a long time and when he speaks, his voice is funny -- not talk the crazy person down, more like he’s trying to talk around a lump in his throat. “I’m someone you love?” 

“Yes,” he says, affronted, before he can stop himself.  Because that’s never been up for debate.  “But that doesn’t matter, it’s not about me — what I want.”

“It matters a lot to me,” Tommy points out.  “And, I think it’s a little bit about what you want.”

Buck puts his other hand on the door, presses until his knuckles whiten. It’s what he wants, but he never gets what he wants.

He can’t believe they’re having this conversation while he’s locked in a bathroom, sitting on cold tiles, staring at the toilet. The lights are harsh, because he never bothered to change them from the cheap fluorescents Eddie put in. They expose every flaw for anyone who can see — God. Bobby. Himself. Maybe Tommy. 

“Think you can open the door now?”

He looks down at their fingers, still wrapped around each other. “I’ll have to let go.” Doesn’t want to let go, never did; right now it feels like the only thing tethering him, making him feel safe, wanted.

“Just for a second,” Tommy concedes. “I’ve got you.”

[navybrat817]

It's Cold Outside

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Summary: Bucky reflects while standing out in the snow and meets an angel... you.

Word Count: Over 700

Warnings: Slight angst, Bucky remembering the past, instacrush of sorts, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?)

A/N: For @the-slumberparty's December Daze Challenge: the first day of snow. May do a few more ficlets for them ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

Bucky couldn’t remember the last time he was happy to see snow. It reminded him too much of that fateful day on the train. The snowflakes falling from the sky was as if he was falling again, this time in slow motion. The crystals were beautiful, but fragile. They could easily break or spell doom for people who weren’t careful. And it was cold. Very cold.

He rubbed his metal arm absentmindedly under his coat. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine warm flesh instead of an instrument of destruction. Maybe he would’ve gotten a tattoo to honor his unit or family. The needle piercing his skin would’ve been pain he welcomed instead of the pain he didn’t ask for others to inflict on him. He didn’t just lose his arm when he fell. He lost himself.

The life of Sergeant Barnes ended, and the Winter Soldier began.

Tilting his head toward the sky, he couldn’t remember why he went outside to begin with. Maybe the bitter cold would freeze over the gaping mental hole in his heart long enough that he’d stop bleeding. Or maybe he wanted to feel the sharp wind blowing in his face to prove that he was still alive and standing. That no matter how many times the world knocked him down, he’d get up again.

But, God, why did it have to be so cold?

And why did he have to face it alone?

“Hi!”

Snowflakes gently fell around you and made you shine like the brightest star in the sky. So did your smile. It was so blinding he almost looked away, but he was afraid if he did so that you’d disappear.

A beautiful voice drifted to his ears and he was certain his heart stopped, but not in a way that made him afraid. Turning toward the source of that sound, he found himself staring at you. And his heart never beat faster.

Where did you come from? Were you an angel who landed safely from heaven? Did angels exist? He was ready to become a believer.

And it was the first time he felt warm all day.

He grudgingly tore his gaze away to make sure you weren’t looking at someone else, but he was the only one on the sidewalk. “Hi,” he croaked.

“Do you live here? I’m moving in,” you said, nodding to the building behind him. “Figures the day I do would be the day it snows and no one can make it out here to help,” you added teasingly when he didn’t answer right away.

He was too captivated by you to speak.

Blinking and telling himself not to gawk at you like a creep, he then noticed the box in your hands. “Yeah, I do,” he said, his feet moving on their own accord. “Can I help?” he asked, offering to take the box. Any excuse to continue to be close to you.

“Oh, thanks,” you smiled, making him lose his breath. “I really appreciate it, um…”

“Bucky. I’m Bucky,” he said, wishing he could shake your hand.

You gave him your name as a snowflake touched the corner of your mouth and melted. He no longer wanted frost over his heart. He wanted your warmth to fill his heart instead. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” he smiled back, spotting the small truck nearby. He understood why the weather might keep people away, but having to move by yourself? He didn’t want you to freeze or risk you falling with the many trips. “And, listen, if you need help with more of your stuff, I have time.”

“Really?” The next smile you gave him was a bit shyer than the previous, but was just as beautiful. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” he promised.

You briefly touched his left hand, and he could blame the gasp on the chill in the air if you asked. He didn’t have to close his eyes to imagine the warmth. It moved from his fingertips to his shoulder and he wondered if you really were an angel.

“That would be amazing. Thank you.” You turned around to get another box. “I’ll have to find a way to repay you.”

Maybe you’d join him for dinner one night. That would be repayment enough for him. And seeing you smile over your shoulder, for the first time since he could remember, he didn’t mind the cold. Or the snow.

Lovelies, I think Bucky deserves some love for Christmas. Love and thanks for reading! ❤️

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[starlight-and-whiskey]

Under Your Skin: Teaser

Teaser: Arthur daddy fic. For @heron-feathers First part of what was meant to be a ficlet, but has run away with me once again into a multi chapter monstrosity. Please have this portion of CH1 as a token offering. I wholeheartedly promise there is whump daddy Arthur to come (maybe a couple times).

It was never meant to be more than it was. In truth, it was never even meant to be that. For months now, the steady glances that you and Arthur had exchanged over the glow of a fire had grown longer. Despite the gruff exterior he upheld so well and the stubborn defiance you clung to; the subtle digs you barbed at each other had grown softer. Sly comments had come with less bite, accompanied by barely-there grazes of a broad palm against the dip of your back. Your teasing came with less bitterness, instead delivered with a tight lipped smirk and a slight nudge of your hip against his. The first time it had happened, neither of you could quite remember how you’d wound up waking in each other’s arms in the stark daylight of a saloon hotel room, though the pounding in your skull and a tongue too thick for your mouth told you too much whiskey must have had a hand in it. With flushed glances and the heart stopping realisation that you were both as naked as the day you were born, you’d both sheepishly dressed in tense silence. Leaving town separately, you’d staggered your rides back to camp, stomach’s churning with a mix of sickening hangover and crippling anxiety at a line crossed, a boundary blurred. You avoided each other for nearly a week after that.

The second time was different. Not because it was planned, because it wasn’t. Not because it made more sense, because it didn’t. The second time had been comfort during a drowning of sorrows after a job gone south. Both aching for comfort, yearning for touch. It had come with a calloused thumb brushing a tear from your cheek, with a hitching breath and eyes drifting to plump lips. It had come with a familiarity of having been here before, even if neither of you could quite remember it straight.

The third time had been weeks later, caught in a storm on a hunting trip, huddled in a tent barely big enough to fit Arthur’s broad frame. The rain had pounded against the ground, the wind whipping the canvas like the world was ending. Together you’d laid with shoulders brushing, feeling the thunder rumble through the earth, both soaked to the bone and shuddering so hard your teeth rattled. “Jesus”, he’d chattered with brows knitted at the way you trembled, a hand finding your hip. “C’mere.”

He’d wrapped his arms around you like it was instinct, pulling you into the fractional warmth of his chest. Broad, calloused hands began to move in a vain attempt to rub heat into your arms, your shoulders, down your spine. What started as shared warmth shifted slowly, inevitably, until your trembling lips were gasping his name against the hollow of this throat.

The fourth time – the fifth, the sixth – came intentional. Now, it came in the seeking out of each other beneath the cover of stars, in the blue hush just before dawn, in the silence between campmate’s creaking bedrolls and the crackle of dying campfires.

It came quieter, in something never spoken aloud. No grand declarations of love were whispered, no promises passed between soft kisses. It would spark in the way your eyes searched for his across the fire, in the way his hand would brush your waist as he passed, lingering just long enough to ask, ‘later’?

Always culminating in a press of lips against a pulse, in a gasping murmur of your name against the dark, in lingering fingertips reluctantly slipping through a hand just as dawn threatened to crest. And like clockwork, any anxiety either of you held would simply melt away beneath a knowing soft smile and a brush of fingers over a mug of coffee handed over in the morning.

*

Bent over at the edge of camp, just far enough for people not to notice, you retched against the foot of a gnarled old oak tree. Again. It had been eight mornings in a row by your reckoning. At first, you’d told yourself it had been some bad stew. Then maybe the flu. Even when you’d been late with your bleed, you’d somehow not put two and two together. But now, bend double in the dawn breeze against a glowing sunrise with the acrid taste of bile lingering on your tongue, you couldn’t lie to yourself anymore. You knew exactly what this was. And you know how it happened. Who it happened with.

Goddamn it. Goddamn him. Goddamn you.

It was never meant to be more than it was.

Spitting into the underbrush, you pressed your trembling palm to your belly, as if you might feel something. But there was nothing. Not yet. Just the soft rise and fall of your breath and the cold, churning dread coiling tighter and tighter in your gut. Shit.

You couldn’t be pregnant. Not here. Not now. No one even knew about you and Arthur. Hell, was there even a ‘you and Arthur’?

Lovers? Maybe. Friends? Certainly. But not a couple. Not really. Not in any way that made this easier.

You stood slowly, head still spinning, mouth dry. You felt raw, like your skin didn’t fit quite right, like your body had turned against you. Grimacing at a smear of dirt on your dress, you brushed it off with trembling fingers you couldn’t quite stop from shaking.

Abigail had only just had her baby boy, all pudgy cheeked and cute as a button – and what had John done? Run a goddamn mile.

Arthur wasn’t John, you knew that much for certain. But that did little to ease the anxiety bubbling in your gut. You could tell him - if there was one person you wanted to tell, it would be him - but if he left you, well then there would be no going back.

Shit.

You pressed the heel of your hand to your eyes, willing the sting behind them to fade. A baby wasn’t something you could tuck away in the shadows. A baby wasn’t fleeting.

So, what the hell we you supposed to do now?

*

Four more days had passed, and if you weren’t certain before, you were now. You recognised the same symptoms Abigail had first been terrified about when she’d fallen pregnant with Jack. Your chest had become tender.  A mere whiff of Pearson’s stew would send your stomach rolling. Your bleed, late before, had now become far too late to keep praying it might still show up.

You were pregnant. There was no question anymore.

When Tilly found you that morning, your body trying to expel what little remained in your stomach, you had assumed the jig was up. Instead, she had put you to bed with little comment or question. In the dull light and humid heat of the tent, you’d curled your knees to your chest and tried to fathom a way out of this goddamn mess. In the middle of this fathoming, sometime around mid-afternoon, came the most unwelcome of visitors. Arthur.

With a hesitant call of “decent in there?”, he cleared his throat gently before pulling the flap aside, ducking in with his hat in hand. Sat on the edge of the cot, you watched as his eyes washed over you, brow furrowed, jaw already tight with a worry he was trying not to show.

“You alright?” he asked, presumably nervous at the distance you’d tried to put between you in the last couple weeks - at the lack of those midnight visits, at the way you’d shoved his hand away when he’d reached for you. “Tilly said you were sick.”

You looked away, eyes fixed on a loose thread in the blanket. “I’m fine.”

Arthur nodded and hummed a little, eyes flickering around the tent as though he could sense he wasn’t quite welcome.

“You need the doctor?” he asked, voice quieter this time. “I could take you into town.”

“I told you, I’m fine.” The words came sharper than you meant, and you winced at your own tone. “I ain’t sick.”

“Well, if you need-“

“Well, I don’t need!”

Arthur nodded through a frown, chewing on his cheek. “You’re quiet,” he said, hesitantly. “Been quiet for days.”

His gaze lingered on you, unreadable as he tilted his head. “If you ain’t sick… are you, I don’t know, you mad at me or something?”

You shook your head, clenching you jaw. “No.”

“Was it what I said… ‘bout you finally lookin’ like a lady in that dress? ‘Cause… I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Just thought you looked nice is all -”

“No”, you whispered, rubbing at your aching temples.

Arthur rubbed the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at you. “You’re just… actin’ like you don’t want nothin’ to do with me all of a sudden. I don’t know what I did, but if…”

“Arthur…”

And yet he continued, like he hadn’t quite heard you, licking his bottom lip, thumb hooked in his gun belt. “If I messed up somehow, I’d like to fix it.”

You sighed, fingers pressing at your forehead, wishing he’d just stop talking.

 “I just - what the hell happened? It’s like you can’t stand being around me. Couple weeks ago, we were…” He trailed off, his mouth twisting, searching for the right words that wouldn’t come. “…close.”

“Jesus Christ, Arthur, I told you I’m fine!”, you yelled, slapping your hand against the cot. “Why can’t you just back off!”

For a moment, his face slackened like you’d just slapped him, eyes flicking away, jaw twitching before his expression hardened with something close to hurt.

“Fine,” he sighed, throwing his hands up with a dry huff. “Suit yourself.”

With a harsh exhale through his nose, Arthur shook his head and stalked back out to camp, boots stomping against the damp dirt with a gruff, under-his-breath mutter of “Goddamn, women”.

Your heart ached, stomach twisting in that all-too-familiar way. Regret came hot on your heels.

“Arthur…” you called after him, but he was already gone.

[esther-dot]

when long night falls 6k

Appearances can be deceiving, and Jon is not yet used to discerning truths from lies. Her hair is brown enough, even in the candlelight, where Sansa’s was red. Ygritte was kissed by fire, as was Sansa. Neither had been lucky.

All That We Forgot 16k by @rumaan

The Wall has fallen, the North has fled south, and Stannis Baratheon sends a delegation to the Vale of Arryn, the last untouched region of Westeros to seek their aid against the Others. A delegation that includes Lord Commander Snow. What will this mean for Alayne Stone?

The Thawing of Winter 100k by @jade-masquerade

Sansa knew Jon married her—married Alayne—for the Vale, or maybe, because of his past, he saw her as a fellow bastard and meant to raise her up the same as his people did for him, how they chose Lord Eddard’s sole surviving son as King in the North. But when she looked at him, she saw nothing of the sort in his eyes, only a flash of desire, the way a man ought to look at his wife, before he steadied his gaze. If this was truly wrong, she wondered, then why did the gods let it feel so right? corresponding moodboard by @the-lords-kiss corresponding moodboard by @sunbeamsandmoonrays corresponding gif by @readingisloving

Came Down the Mountain 12k by @darkmagyk

Alayne Stone makes a name for herself during the Long Night by feeding the troops of the army of the living. But after the Dawn Breaks, her father takes to back up to the Eyrie, even as she hears that a new Stark has taken Winterfell, a young Lord named Brandon. But whatever Petyr Baelish had planned for her must change with Daenerys Targrayen flies up to them on dragon back with a offer the woman who is Sansa Stark is desperate to refuse. corresponding moodboard by @the-lords-kiss

maybe everything that dies, some day comes back 1k orphaned

Following his resurrection, Jon leads a retinue of men to gather supplies and new recruits where they can find them. He doesn’t expect to find anything else along the way — that is, until they reach the Vale, where the echoes of harp strings can be heard in the middle of the night, and a bastard girl in the Eyrie strikes a chord within Jon he thought to be long vanished.

You lied to me ficlet by @justadram

“You lied to me,” Jon pants, swinging his legs over the side of her narrow bed and sinking his head into his hands.

Stone and Snow 1k by @jonsastan

“My daughter, Alayne Stone.” Petyr Baelish’s voice exuded charm and submission. The Dragon Queen did not seem impressed. Alayne dipped into a low curtsy, focusing her eyes on the Queen’s small feet. Such mighty ambition walked through the world on such tiny feet. “Your grace.” She murmured. The Queen looked at her for a long moment, longer than royalty looked at a bastard. “You’re a pretty little bird.” Still a bird. Alayne thought before scolding herself. Not before, only now. You were never a little bird in a gilded cage. You are bastard born and bastard brave.

cover your eyes (do i feel right, darling?) 12k @majicmarker

Jon Snow’s arrival at the Vale is met with trepidation and intrigue; after all, what could this bastard-come-prince want in this far-off corner of his kingdom? But Jon has heard the whispers that the Eyrie’s prized beauty is not a bastard of Littlefinger’s at all, but the daughter of Winterfell—and Jon means to steal her away.

Underneath, All Along ficlet by @myrish-lace-love

Jon steals Sansa from the Vale, but for reasons of her own, she'd like to stay Alayne a little longer. Alayne, after all, can wish for the company of her handsome traveling companion at night.

Alayne AU 4k by @sunbeamsandmoonrays

A girl in grey on a dying horse the stranger may be, but she was not his sister. The Red Woman gave him a false prophecy…and false hope, it seemed. So why was he still transfixed? corresponding moodboard

frostfire ficlet by @zoyaalinas

jon and alayne at the eyrie. vale au. post parentage reveal.

Who am I darling, to you? ficlets 1, 2 by @blackholeofprocrastination

When Jon’s is sent to treat with the Lords of the Vale, he finds someone unexpected on the weirwood throne.

as i stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge 12k

Jon travels to the Vale to find allies in the fight against the army of the dead.

godless 3k by @charmtion

Alayne. He tastes the word. Lets it roll on his tongue like a plum-stone, the scraps of flesh still sweet on it.

Lies/Luck 1k by @phosphorescent-naidheachd

“Have we met before?” he asked, the words leaving his lips before he could think them through.

My Maid of Stone 11k WIP by @cappymightwrite

It was a near windless half-hour of waiting. Of only her cloak and hair occasionally moving, her body as rooted as a tree. Later she would remember this day mostly as metals. Silver of the valley. Iron of the rocks and the clouds. Zinc of the evening storm in its full fury. Rare gold of the sky as it chose now to break open. Her silence matched her stillness, until at last, there, out of the mist: marching men. * Or, a newly crowned King in the North comes to the Gates of the Moon, unaware of what he will find there…

if i can't relate to you anymore, then who am i related to? 13k by @jonsaslove

Alayne watches him. She knows. In her bones she knows. But her mouth doesn’t let her form the words. Her mind doesn’t let her consciously acknowledge it. Because it cannot be, it can never be. If she lets herself accept the startling truth she can't unknow it, and then every carefully crafted facade will come crashing down. Because the man is Jon Snow. And Jon Snow can’t know that she is Sansa Stark. (Because she’s not. She’s Alayne Stone. And somehow that’s more dangerous). -- Or; Jon comes to the Eyrie. Alayne remembers.

Stone and Snow 1k by @alemoncakelife

Jon Snow meets Alayne Stone corresponding edit

Family Ties 2k by @framboise-fics

Her husband had her father thrown out of the Moon Door. Her husband is her brother. Her brother is her cousin. Daughter, sister, cousin, wife. Who is she supposed to be? She will let her husband tell her, she supposes.

what one finds in the snow 1k by @amymel86

The Eyrie is perhaps the most peculiar castle Jon has visited as Lord Commander, nestled high in the Mountains of the Moon, surrounded by nothing but air, craggy rocks and soaring birds.

I Remember (I Remember) 1k by @hilarychuff

“That’s pretty,” Jon says, and her heart thumps hard in her chest.

What Lies Beneath Her Skin 100k by @chispas-and-broken-bindings

Sansa Stark returns to a fractured North for the first time since traveling south as a young child to be fostered by her Aunt Lysa in King's Landing. Stannis Baratheon's troops have broken against the walls of Winterfell, starved and weakened by the relentless northern storms - their King's fate unknown. Roose Bolton lies dead within Winterfell's walls as his bastard, Ramsey Snow dances a bloody minuet with Jon Snow, the half-brother whom she has never met, and his rag-tag band of wildlings in the northern woods. Petyr promises that it's time for a true Stark to return and bring these mongrels to heel, with the might of the Vale behind her. Yet, the girl does not feel like a true Stark, nor does she know how to break free from Littlefinger's claws. A chance encounter sets her on course to Jon Snow's war camp, where disguised as Alayne, she helps the resurrected King-in-the-North unite the North and become Sansa Stark once again.

Rosemary (For Remembrance) 7k by @orangeflavoryawp

“’My daughter, Alayne Stone,’ Baelish repeats, motioning toward her, almost daring in his tone. Jon’s eyes slip back to Sansa’s.” - Jon and Sansa. What winter means in a world that teaches them to forget.

King Jon & Alayne ficlets 1, 2 by @vivilove-jonsa

“Jon would never harm me.” “How can you know that, sweetling?  Years have passed since you last saw one another.  You’re not the girl you were when you left Winterfell no more than he is the boy you knew…and I wasn’t aware you were ever that close to begin with.”

Buried under with my desires 2k by @captainbee89

Post resurrected Jon is sent to the vale to get an allegiance on Stannis' behalf. While there, he discovers a long lost part of his past, and maybe his future.

Art: Have we met before?, A familiar face, More beautiful than me? by @leulahart, Reflections of Aemon and Naerys, Should two bastards hookup or what? by @jonsawilldanceanon, The Bastard and the Lord Commander by @palominojacoby ,The Lord Commander and the bastard of the Vale, Alayne and Jon by @amunetmana, Alayne and Jon by @melinaillustrations, Alayne by @songofaurora If he calls me his daughter one more time... by @asoiastarks , Alayne Stone by knightmarescape

Edits: Charm Him. Entrance Him. Bewitch Him. Stone & Snow by @theirwinterfell, Stone was a bastard's name i'm alayne, i must remain alayne because she's stronger by @countessmaryarostova, Jon x Alayne by @paloma-nevada, Jon rides to the Vale by @lunaathorne , Oh it would be so sweet to see him by @whiteraven0001

Gifsets: May I wear your favor? by @alaynestcnes, The Brooding Bastards by @jonstarks, Jon x Alayne, Sansa loved to dance..., A Ghost wolf... by @thewindsofwolves, She had not thought of Jon in ages by @akarena, Oh it would be so sweet, Sansa Stark went up the mountain by @kitnjon, Alayne & Jon by @paloma-nevada , I am a bastard now just like him... But of course that could never be by @bericdondarrion , It sounds like a wolf by @fromtheboundlesssea , A ghost wolf by @kummittelemaanninja , Alayne Stone and Jon Snow parallels by @jonsansasource

Shout out to the post where the Jon x Alayne ship name was declared to be Jolayne (And I suppose that makes this medieval version of Jolene pertinent!)

PRE CANON - WESTERN - FAIRYTALE - REGENCY - LITTLE WOMEN - HOLIDAY - SEASON SIX - ANNE OF GREEN GABLES - THE GIRL IN GREY - FREE CITIES - FAIRYTALE PART II - POLITICAL MARRIAGE -SALTY TEENS - POST CANON - RICKON LIVES - EDWARDIAN - VICTORIAN - OUTSIDER POV - FIGURE SKATING

[gatorbites-imagines]

Uhhh maybe something something with werewolf!mreader and count orlok?🥰

Count Byron Orlok x Werewolf male reader

Ficlet

I spent way too long reading about old werewolf mythos to write this. Reader’s kind of a mix of the different myths I found, and my own cooking. I took mild inspo from the Neuri people, and the myth of Lycaon, and what I could find about Mount Lykaion.

Lil bit of Thomas x reader, but its not really important.

Nosferatu 2024 spoilers ig?

For many years you have wandered and existed, whether you could claim to be alive or not was something you had dismissed many years ago. You remembered being born to a nomadic people who wandered from one place to another, passing their tales verbally and through song, never staying in one place for long. You remember the older men leaving for days at a time, only to return to your people, battered, bruised and exhausted, but the usual hunger in their eyes sated.

Memories of your first transformation were blurry at best, only weak memories of pain, blood, hunger, hopelessness. There wasn’t much need to remember your younger years, just that your father had been a beast amongst beasts, and so had you. When you came too after the first shift, you awoke naked and bloody, the camp of the people that were yours, destroyed.

Mixtures of flesh, fur and gore lay scattered, the tents and makeshift homes torn apart, from what looked like a wild animal trying to break in to devour whoever was inside. The taste of blood in your mouth and meat stuck between your teeth, was all you needed to know. You were that beast, and you had devoured them all. Man, woman, child and wolf, all torn apart by your hunger.

You remember stumbling away from what remained of your family, friends and near, naked as the day you were born. The cold feeling of falling into a stream, of all the blood washing off your body, washing away your sins. Memories of stumbling along, uncaring of your naked nature, so full of regret and horror of yourself and what you were.

Not much could be remembered from that time, only flashes of pain as you transformed once more, and devoured, be it human or animal. Everything only became clear in a mountain, where a cult worshipping wolves and those who could transform had found you. You learned that they were cursed by a god to be what they were, but you? You were born this way, gifted.

Their chants and magic taught you control of your inner beast. Where before there had been two beings inside you, wolf and man, there now was one. In the end you wandered from this group, leaving them to their whims of cannibalism and human sacrifice.

With control of your inner hunger, of your lack of humanity and beastly desires, you wandered. You slept when you needed to, and ate when you were hungry. You could even take part in humanity at times, joining celebrations, or sleeping in a real bed every now and then. Where raw flesh and blood tasted divine, their dishes and spices were enough to keep you sated for longer.

You never kept track of your age, but you watched as the old gods fell, and was replaced by another. A pantheon of gods, with so many duties and whims, replaced by one who became three, yet were still one. You watched as their influence grew, as their one god became the one most worshipped.

You watched as many were killed in cold blood for not worshipping their one god, or were tortured for going against the word of their holy book. It was during this holy period that you discovered your weakness to silver as well, but you being naturally born this way, let you survive it, unlike those cursed to be like you.

Your long wandering took you to somewhere in the Romanian mountains, where superstition and beliefs were as strong as ever, where a count ruled over the land, a count who yearned for immortality. Maybe it was the way you dressed when he saw you for the first time that caught his interest. He wore a cape of sheepskin, where yours was that of a wolf, the head thrown over your own almost like a mask or a hood.

Byron Orlok was his name. And he was handsome, as handsome as the men of this era could be, even if his eyes were dark and hungered for something beyond mortality, even as he buried himself in the occult to seek it. The tales of your own long life, what little you told him, only fueled him. If you could live from before the very creation of Christianity, then he too could become immortal. Unageing.

Your wolf form lingered around his home, a large building far beyond anything you could have ever seen in your youth. The sounds of his transformation, the reek of sulfur and acid, like the bile of a stomach, was so powerful that you felt that even the wandering natives would smell it. and yet as he screamed and wailed, you lay still, your massive wolf head resting on top of your paws. It was not your duty to save him or stop him, his demons and gods were not connected to you.

In his death, Byron Orlok did not cease moving. His corpse and body still moved and spoke during the night, before the sun rose and the first rooster’s crow. and you, you stayed. Over your many years of life you had met many beasts and monsters like yourself, or warlocks and alchemists who were bound to the otherworld, even priests and priestesses who could communicate with their gods of choice. But none intrigued you like Byron.

As something beyond human, the idea that only a man and a woman could bond was beyond you. It was a belief that had never existed in you, as the people you had been around in your youth never carried it, but for Byron it was new and strange. Even as his body changed and altered, looking more like a corpse than a man, his passion persisted.

The locals built temples or stands to keep him away, filling them with crosses and hunting others like him, Nosferatu. You, they feared, less than Byron, but feared, nonetheless. Where Byron devoured human flesh and blood to keep moving, you had persisted on nothing but will for many years, and only devoured when you needed too.

Byron was not the most physically affectionate, you had a feeling he simply couldn’t be. But his possessive nature and yearning for you, spoke of his innermost feelings. His kisses would have made any normal human vomit from the taste of blood, gore, and corpse, but you were no human. Anyone else would have died from being fed on by him, but you lived. Your heart beat and would beat on, for how long you did not know.

Your inhuman blood and flesh, which regenerated like the leaves of a tree, kept Byron fed when the human flesh could not. It wasn’t what he was meant to eat, that much was clear, as you were not human and that was what he needed, but it changed him. He still was death itself, but your wolflike insides made him at least a little more pleasant to look at.

What you two were, was not a married couple, but he was yours and you were his, though he yours more than you his. Being older, stronger, able to go where and when you pleased, made you the more dangerous of you two. The most powerful, but you had no need to use this against him.

Until he bonded with that human, one you would learn was named Ellen who begged for company from anything, anyone. You were tempted to tear Byrons head off his body when you learned of this, having only been gone for two years which was nothing in your shared centuries, and here he went, finding another.

After this betrayal, you left once more, after tearing apart the wolves you had given him as servants. He would not thrive off your gifts and flesh if he could not respect you. It was not that he had bonded with a human girl, but more the dismissal of you and disregard of what you wanted. What if you had wanted a little human plaything as well?

When you returned once more, years later, you observed a man on his way towards Byron Orloks home, which looked as decrepit as you were used too. He was almost adorable, in his modern clothing and satchel bag. So intriguing was he, that you followed him from the shadows in your wolf form, observed as he rested with the locals, saw their execution of a Nosferatu, and how the locals left him behind.

Byron must have felt your presence, as the carriage that picked the human man up had the motif of a wolf on the side. You could feel his magic reach for you, but yours was stronger, and still being mad at him, you turned it away.

Your lover, partner, other being, was enraged, you could tell, when he smelled your interest in this man, Thomas Hutter, but he could not say anything, as he was drawn to this Thomas Hutters wife. Thomas Hutter was tormented and haunted as he slept and was awake in the old castle, he almost passed out when he saw you in your wolf form for the first time.

Maybe it was more that you wanted to make Byron feel what you felt, when he bonded to that girl, and it didn’t hurt that Thomas Hutter was as adorable as a rabbit, with his frightened eyes and heady scent. The lack of sleep drove him mad enough to sleep curled up against your furry side, and your hairy chest when you transformed back into a man.

It was enough to make Byron gnash his teeth and growl, his magic attempting to squeeze the very life out of Thomas only to be blocked by your own. There was no reason for you to stop his plans, you were much too old to involve yourself in such things, but you did make sure Thomas survived long enough to be found by the nun and for him to return to Wisborg.

Your massive paws dragged groves in the first as you followed the scent of Thomas, as Byron you could sense was across the sea where you could not follow without spending unnecessary magic.

Your maw salivated at the sight of Ellen, not from the same desire that Thomas or Byron carried for her which was carnal in the way animals in spring desired, but from a long-forgotten hunger for human flesh. To rip and tear, to destroy and break. You wanted to kill her, for taking your Orlok’s attention, the same hate Byron felt for Thomas, even if your attention was nothing more than a mild interest.

Time would tell, as the first night fell and the rats invaded the city. When Byron would end up tricked by these mortals, you would step in and scold him. He was so young compared to you, centuries compared to your millennia. Punish him, you must, make him weep and beg for your forgiveness for betraying you so. But for now, you would gobble up the corpses of the citizens as they piled up, to satisfy your growing hunger for Ellen and her putrid flesh.

[sordidmusings]

How to Break Rules (Sir Crocodile x Reader)

Art by xuchuan25 on x!

TUMBLR ATE THE FUCKING ASK WHEN I SAVED IT AS A DRAFT 🙃 luckily I had it saved in my doc and it was anon so they wouldn't have been notified anyway

Anon Ask: Crocodile doesn't seem like the type to kiss during sex unless he's down bad. Maybe he starts a casual relationship with a strict "no kissing on the lips" rule but anywhere else is fair game. It's fun to think of the different ways a possible "first kiss" could happen when he's already rawed you lol and the different reactions if he initiates it or you do and whether it's spur of the moment or calculated.

A/N: OOOOOOOOOO love this and have actually come across this in my own travails haha as someone who loves service, there is such a rush in being told “you can kiss me anywhere but my lips; you have to earn that” 😩 Like it’s just dangling that fruit of how much of a rush it’ll be when you earn the right, when you’re told you’ve been so good for so long. It is also kind of a wild and intense dynamic to be in to have done So Much Stuff but not a simple kiss 💀💀💀

I will also say that I have a WIP smut request in this vein that has been FIGHTING ME FOR MONTHS 🥲 except it’s reader who has put down the rule of “no kissing” and the reason is because love is a requirement for it. Hoping this exercise helps get more flowing for continuing that beloved behemoth 🙏🏻 Ficlets and thoughts in bulleted form below! They get longer as they go because that’s what tends to happen for me lol

Word Count: ~3k total over a few scenarios and such

Warnings: brief allusions to sex but nothing nsfw, gn!reader, not actually unrequited love, a few flavors of reader personality, from very bratty to docile, for dynamic variety 🤌🏻, jealousy/possessiveness

Goodies below the cut - dig in (‘∀’●)♡

~ ~ ~ ••• ✦✦✦ ••• ~ ~ ~

At first I was a bit clinical in my brainstorming of this, more stuck on the grid of who does it to who 

He kisses you

Involuntarily

Poor croc is finally at his limit in keeping his lips from yours and being so deep in indulging in all the rest of you is his undoing. Every piece of you feels so good even though every moment with you is agony - agony from having you but not all of you, being with each other but not belonging to each other. He was Tantalus and you were his fruit and drink, always slipping just past his fingertips. If he could taste you, share your breaths, feel your voice, then maybe he’d finally stop wasting away. 

On purpose

You’ve been vexing him with your teasing, always gifting him the touch of your soft lips everywhere but his own. He didn’t want to be the one to fold on his own rule, but no matter how loose he got your mind, how far you were from forming words, how pliant and placating, you’d kiss him and kiss him and kiss him but never his lips. It didn’t matter if he hovered his own over yours close enough to taste your voice on the air, you’d never push forward. It was maddening. 

One day he finally barks at you after you turn your face away, “Why do you always run?” 

You answer, confused and honest, “You told me I wasn’t allowed.” 

The response is a hook at your neck, pulling you closer; a hand in your hair, cradling you; a mouth on your own, consuming you.

A promise to you that you’re truly his

This Sir Croc warms more to the idea of you being his with no qualms stemming from his own pride. 

It took a long while, but your home in Croc’s life was built brick by brick, sure and steady and obvious. He noticed it and kept an eye on it like he did with everything, but he did not reject nor rush it. No, it was inevitable beyond his will, the way you slipped into his head and chest and nested there. No stubbornness would stop the way it warmed him. No clinging would allow you deeper into a space that was always meant to be yours. As he first noticed the foundation you’d set, saw the promise of his future in your care and vision, he knew he was meant to exist next to you. 

He waited for this understanding to sink in you too. It never did. 

No matter his well-thought gifts, steadfast support, or opulent compliments, you never pressed to take more promises from him than he offered himself, never set to make claim to him outside of closed doors. He knew he had to change that. 

The thought possesses him the next time he brings you around with him and someone has the gaul to approach you. They ask about why Croc keeps you so close to see if they had a chance to stick to your side instead. That won’t do. 

Croc stalks over quickly, seeping dominance but not quite aggression. When he gets to you, he places a weighty hand on your right shoulder and leans over the left, fully encasing you in his presence. 

All the other man sees is the threat leaning over your shoulder and he scatters before you can finish saying “-my boss.”

Much happier with Croc surrounding you, you lean back into his warm chest. A low chuckle plays with the hair around your ear, causing you to shiver in delight.

“A boss? Is that all I am to you?” There’s a teasing lilt to his deep voice, one steeped in deep fondness.

“Of course not,” you assure. He guides you to turn with his hook under your chin, letting his fingers tickle the back of your neck to your other shoulder as you spin to face him. The smile on your lips is easy and familiar and softens Croc into clay, ready and happy to be molded into whatever you want. Yet you always just ease him back into his own shape, each time with fewer cracks and dents, waiting for him to be as solid as he’d like for when he enters the kiln.

“Then tell me, dear,” his voice is as warm and rich as the purple of his eyes. He pulls his cigar from his lips with two fingers. You watch his lips as he speaks. “What am I?”

Before the falter in your smile can fully steal it away, Croc slips forward to taste it on your lips. You freeze and Croc snakes his hook behind your neck to pull you forward, but by the time it gets there you’re already pressing into him. You’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t savor the feeling of finally belonging fully to each other.

You kiss him

Power Move

Sir Croc never seemed able to control you and he loved and loathed it in equal parts. It’s one of the reasons he sought you in the first place. You knew exactly when to push and when to follow, when to challenge and when to submit. It was a very rare day when you genuinely got on his nerves.

Today is a very rare day.

You’re clearly upset with Sir Croc - not leaning into his affection, barely answering his attempts at conversation, unwilling to look at his face for more than a second. More than anything you refuse to tell him what’s wrong.

Now, you’re not doing it just to piss him off; you don’t feel quite allowed to be upset about the issue so you don’t want to share. You don’t want to have an attitude but every time you see him it reminds you of the realization that you’d do anything for him. Worse than that, that thought was immediately followed by the Knowing that you aren’t his and the uncertainty that you ever will be.

Right now, you feel like you’re not his to have, but his to use.

Though, he does give you special treatment. He lets you closer to him than any others, treats you with gentleness except when you corner him into using a firm hand. He’s never even used his power over you when it’s not for play and pleasure. Except for one little rule.

No kissing on the lips. 

You thought you’d earn it months ago. You’ve earned everything else, every sweet treatment and treasure you could think of will be yours if you ask it of him. He’s come to spoil you even more rotten than a queen with her fat lap dog, and yet you’ve not gotten a single kiss to the lips.

It’s begun to feel like he’s keeping it from you to let you know he’ll never fully give himself to you because he never fully intended to keep you. And it hurts.

And now he’s mad because you’re mad but you can’t tell him why you’re mad and the whole thing is maddening.

You watch him knock the ash off his dwindling cigar into the ornate ceramic tray on his desk. The heavy sigh accompanying it annoys you. Why is he the one sighing?

Oh, now he’s rubbing at his temple. He thinks he’s frustrated? You’ll show him frustration.

“Should I go?” You ask, peeking at him from the corner of your narrowed eyes.

“Do you want to go?” Croc rebuts, sounding confounded and at the end of his rope.

You eye him unhappily. 

Instead of responding, you stand up from the leather sofa across from his grand desk. It’s a decent distance, two chairs to its sides are placed closer, but of course you chose to sit away from him today. It’s to your advantage now; you need space for your next move.

You make your way to him slowly, swerving your hips smoothly the way he likes and adding a teeny bit of weight to each step - both to be closer to stomping and to have the motion give a slight bounce to all the soft parts of you for him to watch.

And watch he does - his face melts into the hungry admiration he saves for you, albeit still a bit guarded. 

When you get to his desk, instead of addressing him you gracefully gather the papers spread across it into your hands. You take a moment to pretend to scan through and consider them, only to frisbee them onto one of the chairs.

Croc’s eyes turn sharp and burning.

“Brat-” he cuts himself off, looking at your face and picking up that you’re having even less fun than he is. He sucks in a tense breath and hisses it back out. Let’s try that again.

“Am I working too much and you need more attention? Is that why you’re having a fit?”

Good enough.

“If I was having a fit, the whole base would know,” you bite back at him.

Instead of arguing or redirecting, Sir Croc settles on watching you. Nothing’s worked, so he’ll just allow you to take this wherever it’s headed.

You plant your palms on his desk and let the quiet linger. He lets you lean into his space and stare him down. He’s unsure what you’re looking for and honestly so are you. You’re unsure if you find it but you do find some fortitude in the settling air. You finally speak up.

“Do you remember the rule you set when we started this…” your eyes flit around, searching for the right word, “agreement?”

“No kissing on the lips unti-”

Your hand is fisted in his shirt, your lips are warm and insistent against his.

You expect anger, pulling back, or even shoving hands. Instead, Croc is scrambling out of his seat, careful to keep your lips locked, and helping you to clamber over the desk towards him with a greedy grip. You won’t be free from his taste or hold the whole night through. Now that they’ve had you, they’ll haunt you all your days, keeping him alive with each time they possess you.

You sneak your way into it

Sir Crocodile doesn’t get to enjoy late risings often. That’s why he makes sure to wring them of all they’re worth, and that’s only become better with you there. 

Knowing that the morning lacked a rude awakening, you both indulged in a night of the senses - seeing the sights, hearing live music, eating and drinking with abandon before coming home to get your fill of each other in all five senses, especially touch.

As Sir Croc comes back to his body, floating from the abyss of sleep one breath at a time, he finds his sense of touch being coaxed and teased. Gentle fingers brush across his skin along familiar trails made to map and admire his large form. They round over muscles, press into places of softness, tickle at the sensitive skin of his wrist, his blunted forearm, his hips, his neck.

The touches all feel so full of adoration and something else he’s felt more and more from you. He’s finding it harder and harder to ignore, especially because he’s used to adoration and there’s something different in yours - something softer, gentler, surer. Something he is sure by now is genuine love.

Each time it comes out he lets it wash over him as best he can without solidifying its bond. After all, this was never meant to be love.

But feeling your affection made it impossible to ignore how much better life would be if he always woke up with you.

Sir Croc encourages more of your touches, following them where he could and bedding his cheek into the top of your head. You happily snuggle deeper against him and his heart leaps.

Knowing he’s awake, you begin placing sweet kisses against his skin, teasing at the edge of his trimmed chest hair. He lets out a long breath with the undertone of a content groan rumbling through it. You smile against the plush of his pec, happy he’s still fuzzy from sleep and primed for your plot

Your lips trail and massage higher, over clavicle and to neck. He tilts his jaw away to give you free reign of the sensitive skin from his throat to his ear. Your thigh mimics the rising of your lips, trailing slow and tender over Croc’s front until it brushes from his thigh to his stomach. The rise and fall with his breathing is calming under you and the steadiness made it easier to notice when his breathing hitched and his muscles twitched against you.

His hand returned your affection mindlessly, simply following whatever instinct compelled him. Mostly it trailed from the nape of your neck to your hip and back, taking small moments to press you closer when he didn’t want one of your kisses to move quite yet.

Everything was deep breaths echoing against skin, the comforting pressure of bodies melding wherever you touched, the dance of give and take with affection. Each place you pushed your love, Croc opened himself to feel more of it, even when you left his shoulder chest and neck to explore his scarred cheek

He doesn’t even hesitate to let you near when you first trail the tip of your nose over the strong angle cut by his jaw. The barely there stubble blended to a moment of pure softness before being interrupted by the ridges of his scar

Croc is fully and willingly enchanted by your soft and smooth actions. He couldn’t bear to make you stop, couldn’t care for any pretense or boundary of his it would break so long as you don’t stop touching him so sweetly. His whole body feels light and alive and he’s struck with the realization that he’s as in deep as you are.

You place your first kiss to his face on his scar where it cuts across his cheekbone. He presses just a millimeter deeper into the plush of your lips

You follow the path of the scar, feeling his lashes tickle the tip of your nose on your way. All the while Croc keeps his languid caresses going on your skin, still lulled by recent sleep and the comfort of your touch and warmth and the want for more.

When you get to the bridge of his nose, you break contact to press your foreheads together. His hand slips up your back to rest at the back of your neck, holding you to him. You bump your nose on his and he bumps back. You tilt to leave a kiss on his cheek. His finger tail up to softly scratch at the base of your skull. You smile against him and feel his own cheek rise momentarily against you.

Sir Crocodile feels more free of thought and obligation than he has in years. Your slow acts of worship have brought out a peace in him that he’s rarely known. There is no rush or push, just a calmness and sureness that this is where he should be and how he should feel. That you both belong here.

And then something changes when you kiss right outside the corner of his lip.

He is left wanting.

You linger at the spot before moving just barely away and coming back just a hair closer to his own lips.

Each near miss felt unnatural and unsatiating, quickening his heart and breath in his discomfort and discontent. The hand at your head goes from caressing to holding, urging you to stop fleeing and teasing.

You smile again against him and this time there’s no mirrored grin from him; he’s falling too quickly into a pit of need, one he didn’t notice you digging with every caress and kiss.

You tease  your lips to the corner of his, planning to press more firmly directly on target, but his hand grips you firmly and he’s turning and insistent lips slot hungrily against yours.

You gasp in delight while he shudders out a breath he’s been holding since he met you.

Then I had a better angle come to me by remembering a basic writing preference, that the circumstances around the kiss - the ‘why’ not just the ‘what’ are much better for generating a scene, luckily in the above I think I amended that mistake when I went into more detail! (keeping these more to the stream I originally wrote them in cuz I fear I went on too long above LOL)

He kisses you after fearing for your safety

He kisses you for fear you’ll leave

You kiss him in anger, wanting to prove you’re worthy

He kisses you while you sleep, too afraid for you to know the hold you’ve had on him all along

He kisses you to soothe you, pull you from your fears and sorrows to just float with him in your little bubble away from all the hurts of the world, held aloft by sensation and need and affection

He kisses you to possess you, someone else coming too close and needing the message

You kiss him in joy, ignoring all the dirt and grime that came back with him from Impel Down

You kiss him with a sorrowful heart, needing to comfort the man who was larger than life now sat sadly before you bare of all, even his golden hook and ego

You kiss each other, your lips had sweetly made their way up his neck and across that strong jaw, coming to rest unsure right at the corner of his lips, your shaky breathes puff sweetly across his cheek as he tilts his head to rest temple to forehead, the turn to face you fully is slow and caressing, his own breath coming to mingle with yours, your noses bushing gently. The barest tilt of his head has your lax lips tentatively brush his, just the faintest tickle of skin on skin. A shaky exhale - his or yours you’re not sure - and your lips press more surely, first easing in like the first step into dark waters before you both succumb to diving under. A fierce grip slips to the nape of your neck, endlessly dragging you closer

~ ~ ~ ••• ✦✦✦ ••• ~ ~ ~

Thank you for reading and thank you anon for your ask 💜 I'm gonna be better at getting back to the others (life was being life lol) and up next I have some comfort fics and x marine reader! And perhaps a little filth 👌🏻

Masterlist

[cha-melodius]

Oh hi, I'm here to submit a hug prompt 🙂

Firstprince, #19 please

(also for @thesleepyskipper. Pls have a little grad students? postdocs? idk some vague academia AU. hug ficlet prompts; read all the hug ficlets)

19. The “good fucking God, I’m so excited to see you” hug.

Seven months. That’s how long it’s been.

Henry hadn’t believed him when Alex announced that he was taking a research position overwintering at McMurdo Station. In bloody Antarctica. Alex, who complains every time it gets below 5°C in New York. Alex, who hates being cooped up. Alex, who adores the sun. Yes, it was a highly selective position, and one that would certainly solidify Alex’s place in the field, but it had been hard not to feel like Alex was doing it to get away from him. Especially after—

Well.

After that rooftop party when they’d gotten drunk and Henry had kissed him, then run away when he realized what he’d done. They’d both pretended not to remember the next day, but Henry was certain Alex had just been trying to spare his feelings. The Antarctica announcement had come shortly after that, the timing too suspicious to be coincidental. But Alex had also made Henry promise to video call with him regularly—“to keep him from losing his mind,” in his words—and surprisingly enough, they had done just that. Alex’s time and access to the internet were limited, so whenever he called, Henry dropped whatever he was doing to talk for as long as Alex could spare. He’d listen to Alex complain about the cold and wax lyrical about his research in equal measure, then dutifully report on departmental gossip and David’s latest antics, and it was wonderfully, beautifully easy between them.

Henry wouldn’t have believed it were possible, but he’d fallen even more in love with Alex over that pixelated video feed and a flurry of back-and-forth emails, one week at a time. By the end of seven months, there was no question that his feelings were reciprocated. Not with the way Alex’s face would light up every time the video connected. Not with the way that their conversations became more intimate, sharing their deepest hopes and fears. Maybe they hadn’t said the words, but Henry could feel them, all the way from the other side of the globe.

Flying down to Chile to meet Alex’s ship at the end of the season was probably a little overboard, especially since Alex doesn’t know he’s here, but Henry can’t wait any longer. His nervousness sizzles under his skin and buzzes in his ears, but it all falls away the moment Alex turns the corner and walks into the area where a smattering of others are waiting for the overwinterers to disembark. He’s thinner than he was when he left New York, his usually warm bronze skin oddly sallow after half a year without the sun, but even so, somehow he’s even more gorgeous than when he left, and Henry’s breath catches in his throat.

Alex’s eyes sweep idly across the gathered crowd. He’s not expecting anyone. Then they land on Henry, and he stops dead, ignoring the dirty looks he gets from the people walking behind him. His face is slack in shock, mouth hanging open. Henry hasn’t taken a breath in what feels like several minutes.

Then Alex drops his duffle bag on the floor and takes off at a sprint toward him, and Henry catches him, nearly lifting Alex off the ground as Alex throws his arms around his neck and buries his face in Henry’s shoulder. It takes Henry a moment to realize he’s shaking, his gasping breaths shuddering through his body as he holds on for dear life.

“You asshole,” Alex nearly sobs into his chest, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming. I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I had to,” Henry says helplessly. “I had to see you, love.”

Finally, Alex pulls his head back. His long eyelashes are suspiciously wet. “I’m so fucking glad you’re here.”

And this time, when Henry kisses him, he knows neither of them will ever forget it.

[kings-highway]

haikyuu ships but its really soft fluffy kiss edition. basically tooth-rottingly sweet ficlets.

daisuga: it is the peak of summer, and theyve been at the beach all day and there's sand everywhere, and they're sunburnt and exhausted. Half the team has gone off to find a place for dinner, the other half is asleep under umbrellas. Suga and Daichi are sitting a ways away, toes in the water, popsicles melting rapidly. Suga has been laying his cheek on Daichi's shoulder for a while - he's sleepy and he never wants this day to end. So he turns his head, lazy and giggly and kisses a soft line across his shoulder, up to his neck. And Daichi smiles and laughs and asks what he's doing but Suga just shrugs and tells him its nothing, he's just really, really happy.

iwaoi: they work really hard and everyone knows it but Oikawa is always going to take losing really hard. Some days harder than others. On a particularly bad day, Oikawa is crying and curled up on his bed and he's been ranting about how mad he is but Iwa knows that anger is mostly directed at himself. So when Oikawa finally takes a breath, and Iwa stands up to go get something for dinner, because he knows Oikawa will forget until real late otherwise, he stops before the door, and turns back, and takes Oikawa's head in his hands, holding him delicately, and leans down to kiss his forehead, letting it linger far longer than he had planned. And Oikawa is still crying but Iwaizumi mumbles that it'll all be okay, and he can't help but nod along with him, and maybe he even starts to believe it.

ushiten: tendou takes pride in his position on the team, and always commits to his blocks, which means during practice it's not uncommon for him to get his fingers jammed trying to block Ushiwaka. It hurts more than usual this time, the nail having torn up a bit at a bad angle. Ushijima feels terrible, and excuses himself to help, apologizing over and over and over again as they sit on the bench, and he helps him wrap the tip of his finger to keep it protected. Then, when he's finished with the tape, holding Tendou's hand oh-so-delicately, he lifts it up to press the softest, most careful kiss to his finger. Tendou absolutely melts, incoherantly stumbling over trying to say he accepts his apology with the most pathetic, lovestruck expression.

arankita: its over spring break, they've been out a lot with the twins and Suna and each other, really making the most of their last year of high school, and they keep promising to make time to just hang out together, and it just does not work, but the spring is so lively and fun they cant be mad. They go with the team to a theme park, and Aran really wants a chance to get Kita alone and maybe tell him how he feels. The whole day passes, though, and they never do, and eventually theyre saying goodbye. And Aran thinks all is lost, but Kita pulls him back, and pulls him down, and kisses him just an inch from his lips, soft and warm and lingering, and he pulls back slowly but keeps a hand on his jacket, and thanks him for always being there. And they definitely shouldnt invite the team next time.

kagehina: they spend their free day out in a grassy field in a park, tossing a volleyball around because neither of them can ever get enough. But they do need to take breaks, to catch their breath and drink water. Kageyama sits down on the grass and sips from his bottle and watches the bugs that are flitting about. One thing turns to another, and what was just a water break turns into a long rest, laying in the sun together and laughing over every stupid thing. When Kageyama catches Hinata staring at him, he tries to act annoyed and wave him off, but Hinata is fast, and leans forward to kiss the tip of Kageyama's nose before laughing and bouncing back to his feet to say that its time to get back to the game. Kageyama turns pink, grabbing at his nose as if offended, but he cannot help but smile back.

[starkenobi]

amnesia + tony please? love your writing!

masterlist

thank you for your lovely support! hope you enjoy this ficlet! 💜

pairing: tony stark x reader

warnings: angst, hopeful ending.

"She's going to be fine, Tony," Steve whispered, coming closer to where he was standing by the window to the medbay room. "She's stronger than she looks."

Tony didn't say anything, again.

Tony haven’t said a word since Y/N woke up and asked who he was.

He couldn't move past the fact that her eyes didn't hold any recognition.

She didn't remember him.

A possible temporary amnesia, doctor Cho had said.

But it's been three months and nothing.

They've put her through a lot of exams and tests, but nothing that'd give the answers he needed.

"She remembered Natasha and Clint this morning." Tony informed, incapable of hiding the hurt in his voice.

Steve sighed. "Makes sense. She's known them longer."

"Memories of their time at SHIELD," Tony said bitter.

Steve looked at his friend, really looked. And Tony was a mess. He wasn't sleeping and eating well, pulled away from missions. At least, this time, he wasn't drowning himself in alcohol. But he was drinking toonmuch caffeine. His focus only on Y/N.

"Wanda will talk with Y/N today," Steve said. The best he could do was give him hope. "Convince her to do some sessions, Wanda's positive she can help."

Tony nodded, back to silence. At least, he said a few words.

The next couple of days were the same. Tony forgetting for a brief moment and acting like he used to. But then recoiling when facing Y/N's confused and uncomfortable expression. The team always tried to play along and help to deescalate the tension, but it was in vain.

Tony started to avoid Y/N, no more direct interaction. He kept paying attention for everything she wanted or needed. Staying on the sidelines.

Then, after one longer session, Wanda and Y/N appeared at the common room with big smiles.

"Hello, dorks!" Y/N said in greeting.

Tony perked up at that, but soon enough, his hopes were crushed.

"We managed to find and unlock some memories. All that's left are the memories from the last four years, we hope to get them next month." Wanda informed the team, her eyes going to Tony, that shook his head.

"Glad you're back, doll," Steve declared, after noticing Tony's silence. "We'll restart your training, maybe it'll help you."

"Alright for me, Cap." Y/N affirmed with a salut. Her eyes went to Tony, a tiny smile on her lips. "Can we talk in private , C3P0?"

Tony could feel everyone hold their breath. With her memories, she now could see Tony wasn't an uncomfortable stranger but a friend. If Clint and Natasha were like family, Tony was closest to the status of best friend. Y/N felt a bit guilty for her behavior on the past months.

They went to his lab, away from prying eyes and ears.

Y/N looked around, cataloging what she remembered and what's different. And Tony admired her in silence, his heart hurting. So close yet so far.

"We're not friends like we used to be anymore," she stated, stopping on the other side of the lab, her eyes searching his. "What are we, Tony? Because Clint and Tasha make a sad face every time I mention your name."

Tony smiled sadly, shrugging a shoulder. "It doesn't matter right now, sweetheart. Focus on getting back to your feet."

"There, right there!" Y/N pointed at him, with a determined expression. "You didn't use to call me that. What. Are. We."

Tony looked away, shaking his head. Trying in vain to hold his tears.

"Tony," Y/N pleaded, finally coming closer. She stopped in front of him, then gently held one of Tony's hands. "You're sad because of me. Please, let me fix it."

"You can't fix what you can't remember, sweetheart." Tony whispered. A tight smile on his lips as he tried to take his hand from her. "I don't want to pressure you to do something you don't want to."

"How long have we been together?" Y/N asked bluntly.

"What?"

"Stark, I'm with amnesia, not dumb." She narrowed her eyes, holding his hand tightly and getting closer, their noses almost touching. "What are we?"

Tony sighed, his shoulders dropping dejectedly. "We were engaged. Been together for four years."

"Were?" she arched a brow, a hand cupping his face to make him look at her. "Are you breaking up with me?"

"Sweetheart, I won't force you to be with me when you remember us only as friends." Tony said with sorrow. He loved her too much to be that type of guy. He wanted her to be happy and live freely.

"But what if I told you that I always liked you, before the four years that I don't remember?" Y/N's voice was hopeful, her face open with all her feelings. "Would you give me a chance?"

"Are you proposing again, sweetheart?" Tony choked up a laugh, a smile reaching his eyes.

"Let's do our version of 50 First Dates. What do you say?"

[qwanderer]

closet argument from The Case of the Very Long Stairway as a gift for @shaylogic for the dgd anniversary exchange!

I wrote a little dialog-only ficlet to go with it, which you can read under the cut!

"Fuck, I can't get this door open. Charles. Do you wanna, you know, do the ghost thing and then let me out?"

"Right. Bad news."

"Oh my God, we're stuck? Is that what you're telling me? Are we stuck in this stupid little closet in the Cat King's tacky little boudoir?"

"Might be."

"Ugh, I can't believe you got us both stuck in here."

"Oi, you weren't much help, Crystal!"

"Well you said you had a plan and then didn't tell me about it! How was I supposed to know how to help you make it work?"

"I didn't know we could get trapped like this!"

"How are we even trapped? I mean I get it, I'm a regular person, I can't walk through walls, but you're a ghost. …It's not iron, is it?"

"Nah, it doesn't burn, it's just… I can't seem to do the whole ghost thing right now."

"What does that even mean? You are a ghost."

"I guess ghosts are solid here?"

"Yeah, real helpful arcane knowledge."

"Dunno what to tell you, it's the best I've got!"

"God, is arguing in closets gonna be, like, a whole thing with us?"

"I hope not."

"How long do you think it's gonna be?"

"If it's longer than a couple of hours, Edwin will find us."

"I dunno, he seemed pretty far down the research hole when we left. Not sure he even knows we're gone."

"I'm pretty sure Edwin will find us. Eventually."

"Right. So, tell me about this plan you had."

"It's stupid."

"I think we can all agree on that at this point."

"I wanna make, like, a present for Edwin, and I want it to be a surprise, so I can't ask him for help making it, can I?"

"Okay, but why the Cat King? And why the catnip? And why am I here?"

"Well, if I go off somewhere with you, Edwin's not gonna think it's weird, will he?"

"Which is great, by the way, if we're relying on him to rescue us and meanwhile he doesn't wanna interrupt our date."

"Yeah, yeah, I didn't think it through. Thought the Cat King was a friendly now, or at least close enough. And he got annoyed at us in the first place 'cause Edwin was mean to his cats, so I thought, well, I'll do something nice for 'em instead, won't I?"

"I mean, they did seem to be enjoying it, I'll give you that."

"I hoped it would maybe distract his cats a little, stop 'em from listening in, but I had no idea it would distract him!"

"Yeah, he is fully baked right now."

"Definitely not the plan."

"Where did you even get potted catnip?"

"Grew it."

"You grew that?"

"Yeah, we have kind of a little garden up on the roof of the Agency. Herbs for spells and stuff. Some things we use enough that it's easier to grow our own than trade for it."

"That's really cool, actually."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I always kill plants. Anyone who can keep them alive is pretty impressive to me."

"So, uh…"

"What. What is that look."

"Have you ever played seven minutes in heaven?"

"Yeah, a few times."

"Oh, is it a favorite pastime?"

"I wouldn't say that. I regret most of what I've done while playing that game."

"Tell me."

"You didn't bring it up because you wanted to hear about shitty things that happened to me before."

"Maybe not, but if you wanna talk about it…"

"All you really need to know is despite everything that kinda sucks about tonight, I'm enjoying it a lot more than any of those nights."

"Yeah?"

"And despite everything you did to help get us into this mess, I still like you a hell of a lot better than anyone I shared a closet with back then."

"That so?"

"Sweetie. Stop fishing for compliments and kiss me."

[navybrat817]

Pencil You In

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader Summary: Bucky thinks you've been working too hard and need a break. Word Count: Over 1.3k Warnings: Fluff, crying, reader is tired, slight insecurities, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?). A/N: Partially inspired by an image the beautiful @bucksangel sent me and life stretching me a bit thin, here's a little ficlet. Lovelies, take breaks. You deserve them and you are more than enough! ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

You slumped in your chair of your home office as you reread the sentence on the screen for what felt like the hundredth time. Weariness had already settled deep in your bones long before you looked over the document, the words blurring together the longer you stared. Blinking a few times didn’t help as you reached for your mug, only to remember that you had finished your extra helping of caffeine an hour ago. Begrudgingly, you set it down and huffed as if it was somehow the fault of the cup that it didn’t automatically fill itself.

“Almost done,” you whispered to yourself, straightening up so you could do one last readthrough.

It was a long week in what felt like a series of long weeks. Almost every minute of your schedule was accounted for lately and all you wanted to do was relax. People were depending on you though and you could relax over the weekend.

Hopefully.

“You should take a break.”

You didn’t turn around immediately at the sound of Bucky’s gentle voice, but you did manage a smile when you glanced over your shoulder a moment later. He didn’t return the smile, concern swirling in his blue irises. You were afraid to stare into the pool of his eyes for too long out of fear of drowning.

And, god, you were drowning. It would be so easy to reach out and take the lifeline that was his hand. To just admit that you need some time to rest because you were tired. Hadn’t you earned it? Didn’t you deserve a break after the hard work you put in?

But maybe you didn’t deserve it. What you did wasn’t as important as someone like Bucky. You firmly shut the door on that thought before the words could make their way out of your mouth. If he could’ve read your mind and known you thought that, it would’ve disappointed him. Not in you, but whoever made you decide that what you did wasn’t enough.

Because you were always expected to do and be more.

“I will in a few minutes,” you said.

He let out a heavy sigh as he crossed his arms, making you tear your gaze away. You didn’t comment on his disheveled hair, like he kept running a hand through it. Likely because he worried about you stretching yourself too thin. “That was what you said a few minutes ago,” he reminded you, his voice light instead of accusatory.

You shut your eyes in the hopes that the tears wouldn’t come and took a breath. “I really will this time,” you promised, giving the document one last readthrough once you got your emotions under control.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

If you wouldn’t take a break for your own sake, you had to do it for Bucky.

“Okay. I think that’s at a good stopping point,” you said, making you saved it before you closed it out. If you lost all of that after everything you put into it so far, you would’ve lost it. Before you could move to the next task on your list though, an alert popped up on your screen. Your heart dropped to your stomach because you didn’t remember scheduling anything else today. You didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity for more. “What is this?” You mumbled before you opened it.

Reading the subject line, you did a double take.

CUDDLE WITH BUCKY

You covered your mouth to smother your giggles. “I don’t remember scheduling this meeting.”

“It’s a good thing I remembered, baby,” he said as you spun around in your chair, sauntering over to you with a smirk as you tried not to laugh again. “It’s a mandatory meeting in our bed. No rescheduling. And I expect it to go the full hour. Maybe longer.”

“How did you manage to set up an alert on my computer?” You asked as he grasped your hands and helped you to your feet, having to steady yourself a bit when your head spun.

At least you remembered to eat. Well, that wasn’t technically true. Bucky brought you your meal earlier because he was the best boyfriend you could ask for.

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” he winked before he brought a palm to your cheek, his gaze shifting to something more serious. “But it seemed to get your attention.”

Your cheeks burned as you averted your gaze. “I wasn’t…” you trailed off, an apology on the tip of your tongue. Had you neglected him this past week? Or the ones before that?

Did he think you were a bad girlfriend?

Bucky slid his hand to your chin so you’d look at him again. “Hey,” he whispered when your lower lip trembled. “I didn’t mean anything by that and I’m not upset with you. I don’t think I could ever be upset with you. But, baby, you’ve been working your ass off even more than usual. I’m so fucking proud of you, but you need to take a real break.”

Your eyes burned, but no tears surfaced as he searched your gaze. “But-”

“What is it you always tell me about work?”

“That it’ll be there tomorrow, but we may not be” you answered, sighing. He was right. You couldn’t let work and expectations others set for you take control of your life. “I told you that the last time you ran yourself ragged with missions.”

He brought his mouth to your forehead to kiss it, his scruff tickling your skin. “And now I’m returning the favor,” he said against your skin. “So, come to bed. Lay with me. Just…”

“Be present,” you finished.

No phones. No work. No outside forces interfering. Just the pleasure of being with each other.

“Exactly,” he said, tugging you by the hand. “C’mon. We’re both late for our meeting.”

“Yes, Sir,” you teased, smiling when he groaned.

“This is a cuddle meeting, but it’ll turn into gently fucking you to sleep if you keep talking like that,” he warned you, pulling you to bed a bit faster.

“You say that like that’s a bad thing,” you smiled, gasping as he gently pushed you onto the mattress.

He braced a hand on each side of your head as he leaned down, his breath fanning your face when you whimpered. “Sex after we cuddle,” he breathed, sending a shiver down your spine. “Then we can cuddle again.”

You leaned up to brush your lips against his. “Deal,” you agreed.

Once he maneuvered you to the middle of the bed, his large body spooning yours, you couldn’t stop the tears that came. You bit your lip so he wouldn’t hear your soft sobs, but he must’ve sensed them as he grazed his nose along your neck affectionately and pulled you closer in his arms. You didn’t realize just how much you needed to be held until then.

It was as if all the stress faded away.

“I really am proud of you. Hardest working woman I know and always taking care of me,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to your pulse as more tears hit the pillow.

“Because I love you, Bucky,” you whispered. Who wouldn’t want to take care of someone as amazing as James Buchanan Barnes?

“And I love you, too. So much,” he swore to you, turning you in his arms so he could kiss the tears away. The first kiss lingered on your cheek as he let out a shuddering breath. The sight of you crying likely broke his heart, but he didn’t say anything about it for your sake. “So let me be your personal hero today, okay? Let me take care of you and show that you’re more than enough.”

The words were so heartfelt and touching that you were surprised you didn’t melt on the spot. “You already are,” you promised before his lips met yours.

And he could pencil himself in for cuddles and more whenever he wanted.

I'll say it again, lovelies, you deserve breaks and you are more than enough. Love and thanks for reading! ❤️

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[airas-story]

https://www.tumblr.com/airas-story/770904004268048384/httpswwwtumblrcomairas-story7591035972974673?source=share

I would absolutely read anything you write about this trio. Maybe random ficlets from this universe but they don't have to be related? Since you are not sure of the long form content.

Maybe something slightly angsty-fluffy where Morgan falls sick or gets kidnapped

From the same AU as drabbles one and two. I played around with your two suggestions... but I just couldn't get either to work right now. So I instead did some of the earlier moments, since it's still in universe. No Pepper or Morgan in this one, though, just some setup.

“Here, to the left is the lake,” Tony said, tone officious. “Of significance is the time Morgan threw herself off the pier without floaties while she and Pepper were swimming. I was going to a meeting… Didn’t happen. My suit didn’t survive the rescue.”

“A fair exchange,” Stephen pointed out, amusement drowning out his anxiety. He and Tony had been dating for several months, but this was his first time at the cabin, ‘meeting’ Pepper and Morgan as Tony’s partner—not just a friend. “Did she learn from the incident?”

“She learned I’ll always jump in after her,” Tony said, laughter in his voice. “Not so much to stop doing it. She’s good enough at swimming it’s no longer heart-attack inducing.” He moved on. “Now, if you turn your attention to the right, you’ll see the alpaca pen where Gerald eats all our goji berries.”

Stephen snorted. “Never been a fan. Let Gerald eat them.”

“Don’t let Pepper hear you say that,” Tony said. “She loves them.” Tony glanced at the cabin then back to Stephen. “Speaking of Pepper... Ready to meet them or do you want to continue our tour?”

Stephen’s heart jumped. “I’ve met them before,” he pointed out.

“Then why are you nervous?” Tony retorted. He leaned in for a kiss. “There’s no reason to be.”

In theory. Stephen knew Tony wouldn’t be dating him if Pepper wasn’t okay with it. Stephen and Pepper got along and while he’d only met Morgan twice, Morgan had seemed to like him. Why was he nervous?

“What if…”

“I wouldn’t be bringing you home if you weren’t welcome,” Tony said quietly. “You fit Stephen. And as long as that’s something you want…”

“I do,” Stephen whispered. “I just—”

“Then don’t stress,” Tony said. “They’ll love you. I do, after all.”

[fourstarsoutofnine]

Where are we going?

Impromptu joke ficlet for the beautiful wonderful @beyondtheglowingstars because it’s funny. This is… half modern? Idk. Whatever. It’s a joke fic it doesn’t have to make sense.

The Smith was in a bind. He was head over heels for you but had no idea where he wanted to take you out on a date. He didn’t even know how to ask you. So, he split. He was going to spread out across town to find ideas then reconvene and talk it over.

The colors had been in town for hours, occasionally bumping into one another, but after getting what he deemed enough ideas, Green messaged the others.

~in a group chat somewhere~

G:okay guys I got some ideas. The little restaurant by the lake is really nice, and pretty popular but I’m not sure because I don’t want to have to wait super long to get a spot. There’s also the idea of walking through the woods a ways and going to that really nice clearing we like. We could do a picnic there. I was also thinking about bringing them something, maybe we weld a necklace. What do you guys think?

B:👍

G:blue how many times have we been over this, you can’t just send a thumbs up to everything, I need actual genuine help.

V:lol

G:vio that is NOT helpful either.

R:☹️guys cmon… I’ll help. I think the picnic is a great idea, we could make little daisy chains :). And the necklace is a great idea.

G:THANK YOU Red. Goddesses…. Okay. Go time. Let’s meet back at the forge and we’ll merge and get to work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The colors met back at the forge and the smith merged again. He got to work on making the little necklace for you. It wasn’t perfect by any means, as he didn’t specialize in jewelry… but it came from the heart. He hoped you’d cherish it. With sooty hands and hair sticking to his face from sweat, he couldn’t wait any longer. Couldn’t even stop to make sure he looked nice. He rushed over to your house and knocked on the door. His heart pounded in his ears while he waited on you to answer.

“Hello..?” You looked down at him with a confused face, but smiled when you realized who it was. “Hi, Smithy. What’s up? Everything okay..?”

“Yeah.. uhm—I, uh….” He handed you a sooty towel. “There’s something in there… it’s for you…”

You looked at it confusedly and unfolded the towel, revealing the welded necklace. You smiled. “Oh, wow, Link. You made this..?”

“Yeah, I uh-…I know it’s kind of bad. I don’t make jewelry, I make weapons—but um… yeah I wanted to make you something and….” He took a pause, taking a breath to ready himself. “I wanted to ask if you might want to join me for a picnic or something tonight… I know a really nice clearing not far from here…”

“I’d love to.” You smiled. You didn’t understand why he was so worried. Your affection for him was very clear—or in your eyes it was, anyway.

“Really??” He lit up. He huffed a surprised laugh. “Okay! Yeah..! Great! I’ll uh—go get ready. And get the things.. I’ll meet you back here later!” He said and took off. You laughed and waved.

“See you soon, sweetheart..” this would be fun…

[conundrumoftime]

My Sauron x Celeborn fics and Galadriel x Sauron x Celeborn fics

Celeborn x Sauron:

The rhetoric and treason of saying that I'll miss you (TROP, 1500 words, rated M): One ficlet that's part of a Five Things fic: a what-if in which Adar was Celeborn all along.

There once was a prince who was loved in a hell of iron and war where love should have been unthinkable. Yet love still existed here in its own form; as did pleasure, as did song, as did tapestries and books and comfort. 

Rarer gifts than gold (Silmarillion, 2000 words, rated T): while Celebrimbor and Galadriel argue yet again over whether Annatar should get to stay in Ost-in-Edhil, Celeborn goes to discuss with Annatar himself.

“You taste of summer,” Celeborn says. He doesn’t mean summer, itself. He means the last days of it, the last glories of the fading sun, when the long grasses are already turning to seed, the thistles to white fuzz of cotton. He means the nights coming earlier and the summer birds gathering to leave. “I could make it always summer.” Both of his hands are on Celeborn’s face now, framing it as if it were some trophy, some prey. “But not for you, silver prince. For you I’d give you forests.”

To hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark (TROP, 1600 words, rated T): wrote enough half-Maia Celebrían, moved on to half-Maia Amroth son of Celeborn and Sauron.

“What is -” Her own voice fails her then, and she can only gesture towards what he holds in his arms: an infant, small and sweet and sleeping. “This?” he finishes for her, looking down at the child himself. “My son. A gift, I’m told.”

And there will come soft rains (TROP, 1400 words, M): After Sauron's defeat, Galadriel sails west.

“You knew she showed me that, hmm?” “I liked it.” “Did you.” A growl in the words. “You realise I can still hurt you here if I want to.” “You won’t.” Celeborn turns his head into the hand on his face, kisses the wrist beneath his lips. “Be calm,” he says, “be easy” - and feels his enemy gasp, and then fold into his touch like a lost thing yearning for shelter.

OT3 fics with all three of them:

Always coming home the same castaway (TROP, rated T, 1200 words) - s1 canon divergence, in which Sauron is trying to stall Galadriel from learning who he is for as long as possible by whatever means he can think of, including retrieving her lost husband.

But it doesn’t matter. He is here now. He need no longer wish for that ephemeral existence, his breath mingled with mountain winds and his heartbeat the pulse of water drawn up from a forest’s roots, his edges dissolving as melting ice and his voice turned to birdsong.  He laces his fingers through Galadriel’s, alive and warm and real. He rests his head against Halbrand’s shoulder. 

As certain dark things are loved (Silmarillion, rated E, 8k words) - 2nd-age Ost-in-Edhil, Annatar trying a divide-and-conquer approach:

Annatar gets to his feet and her husband steps back. (A problem, maybe – a complication, certainly – but no effort can be spared for him just now.) Galadriel does not rise from her chair and only tilts her head as she watches. She is, perhaps, expecting Annatar to kiss her; she is certainly expecting him to do something; and he takes a certain delight in seeing the dart of surprise in her as he kneels at her feet. 

All the kinds of alive you can be (TROP, rated E, 13k words) - post-s1 fic, Sauron shapeshifting into Galadriel to seduce Celeborn as a kind of revenge/obsession thing and then getting more involved than he meant to.

“If you have harmed him I will make you pay for it every single day of your miserable existence. Concern yourself with that.” “He isn’t harmed. I’ve kept him very well pleased.” She goes to stab him again and he turns the blade to water, running between her fingers. She stares down at it in stillness with an expression he can’t read. “Come back and let me make amends to both of you,” he says.

And my current TROP WIP The names of our wounds - is not there yet but will get there eventually :)