#the thought is there in his origin ascended ending

[bhaalsdeepbat]

Astarion: Finally, we're catching up on our puppet master. And the hunt ends at Moonrise Towers.

screaming crying throwing up over this line with durge and romanced astarion on my duo run. they both start as puppets, then are free enough of their former masters to make their own choices, then they both have a choice: chain themself to their master or be free.

with durge that's either resist or become bhaal's chosen. If they resist, they're marking to certain death. To be free of Bhaal is to die, and I think they're acutely aware of that. To become his Chosen is to extend the amount of time they live, but they know it won't truly be living, if they live their life in service to another.

with astarion it's to break the cycle of abuse and be more than what nearly 200 years of empathy-breaking hell - Sisyphus pushing up the boulder but make it seducing people, eating rats and insects, night after night, knowing everyone you touch is doomed to die - made him OR unchain himself to everything Cazador did by killing Cazador without ascending, allowing him the safety of his abuser being gone so he can finally start feeling and healing without the ever-present threat of becoming a slave to Cazador again.

Their romanced "bad" endings all require someone to become the other's puppet. If Durge becomes Bhaal's Chosen, they force Astarion back into servitude and make him no more than a puppet after taking over the Absolute to start slaughtering the world in Bhaal's name. If Astarion Ascends, Durge either agrees to the loss of their independence and personhood by becoming a spawn OR the relationship falls apart.

I don't have anything else to say I'm just screaming about this lmao

[dandelion-wings]

My favorite headcanon about Kaeya’s mother is that he watched her succumb to the curse of Khaenri’ah and turn into a monster when he was young. I play with a lot of different variations of this, but... this is one of my favorites, purely for the later Diluc-and-Crepus parallels.

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Edit: now archived on AO3.

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Something is wrong with Kaeya's mother.

He's known for a while, and he thinks so has she. She's been tense, inattentive, distracted. At first Kaeya had thought it was because she was worrying for his father. She always worries for his father, off on his trips to the world above, where any god-touched child of Celestia would feel no censure if they killed him. But the past few weeks she's been moving wrong, too, jerky and twitching. She's always been graceful, standing tall, head high, a true descendant of King Deshret. Now she hunches her shoulders and walks too heavily and flinches at every wrong movement.

When he awakens today, it's even more obvious. His mother is sitting by the fire, just as she had when he'd gone to sleep, polishing the long knife she always carries. The patterned red-and-brown scarf she always wears is pushed down around her shoulders. She looks up at him and he can't help but whimper.

There are black lines running across the skin of her face, the brown around them gone bloodless and ashy. Her eyes are going black, too, darkness pooling in them as if the black of her pupils was spilling outward. It's starting to seep into the whites, as the black lines are starting to seep into the brown-turned grey, as the despair is starting to seep into her expression.

"Kaeya," she says, setting the knife across her knees to beckon him to her. Her voice is as soft and as gentle as ever.

Despite that, it's a struggle to make himself move. He looks at the black spreading over her face, into her eyes, and shudders. But his mother's requests, however gently voiced, are not to be disobeyed, no more than are his father's. Kaeya pushes himself free of his blankets and goes to crouch down beside her.

She reaches out to stroke his cheek, and Kaeya tries and fails not to flinch from her hand, also black-veined and ashy. For all the darkness clouding them, there's pain in her eyes as she pulls back from the aborted caress.

"What's happening?" he whispers. He's all too aware of what's happening, now that the signs are visible. But he wants her to tell him differently. Wants desperately for his mother to tell him that everything is all right and there's nothing for him to be frightened of.

His father would chide him for the flimsy attempt at self-deception. An Alberich should face the reality of things squarely, head-on, with firmness and conviction. His mother only smiles sadly at him and starts to raise her hand before settling it firmly in her lap again without even trying to touch him.

"The curse, I imagine," she says, and he could almost take the resignation in her voice for calm. "Your father did tell me that by joining with his people, I took on the weight of their sins."

Kaeya swallows against the choking lump in his throat and blinks back the tears that he knows she'd be ashamed of if she saw. Tears are a waste of water. He clenches his hands into fists at his side.

"Father is coming back soon. Maybe he'll know a- a cure, or a way to-"

He trails off there, because he knows better. If there was a cure, they wouldn't have to be constantly on guard for their own people, transformed into monsters and roaming the depths of Khaenri'ah-that-was. If there was a way to stop it, he would still have a grandfather in his life, and an aunt and uncle, and maybe the cousins they never got to have for him to play with. At best, *maybe* Father knows a way to slow it down, and Kaeya knows they can't count on that, either.

But at least if it doesn't happen until Father is here, Kaeya won't have to deal with it. That's an awful, selfish thought, but one he can't help thinking. This is the sort of problem his parents are supposed to deal with for him. Even his father wouldn't expect him to survive by himself, and that's... that's what this is going to mean.

Kaeya blinks again, hard.

"He won't be back soon enough," his mother says, softly, gently. She reaches down for the sheath of her knife and slides it back in. Then, instead of fastening it onto her belt, she holds it out to him. "I am going into the lower tunnels, while you carry on upwards to meet your father. Take this with you."

He stares at it blankly. "But you'll need it."

"Not as much as you will. Take it, Kaeya. Carry it as your reminder of me. You should run before you fight, but use it to defend yourself if you have to. I don't want you to be in the tunnels unarmed as well as alone."

After another moment's hesitation, Kaeya reaches out, slow and reluctant, to take the knife from her. It's nearly a small sword in his hands; when he fastens it onto his belt, still crouching, he has to do it at an angle. The end of the sheath still scrapes the floor. He waits for his mother to scold him for that, but she only looks at him with anxious sorrow.

"You know the right path upward?"

"As far as the meeting-place," Kaeya assures her. She's taken him on that long walk nine times now, every year since he was born, to meet his father coming home. He can walk it easily.

"Good. Be careful, Kaeya. Walk quietly, watch the path, and run or hide if you have to. It's important that you be brave, but it's more important that you be safe."

His mother starts to reach for him again, then lowers her hands before he can flinch.

Grief and terror sweep through Kaeya in a wave. It's enough to propel him forward, and he throws his arms around her shoulders, pressing his cheek against hers despite the black lines on her skin and the strange, feverish warmth emenating from them when their cheeks touch. He clutches at the soft silky fabric of her shawl. His mother makes a soft sound, not quite a sob, and wraps her arms around him, too. She squeezes him so tightly it almost hurts.

Then she makes another noise and shoves him back so quickly he almost stumbles. Before he can recover, she's up on her feet.

"If I come back, Kaeya... do whatever you must to protect yourself. Be *safe*," she tells him again, her voice breaking on the word, and turns and walks away, out of the camp, out of the circle of firelight, into the darkness of the tunnel leading off below.

Kaeya turns to watch her go, blinking back his tears in case she looks back, wrapping his arms around himself as if by doing that he can preserve the warmth of her a moment longer. He opens his mouth to call after her, to ask if she wants her blankets, or some of their food. Then he closes it again. He knows better. She won't need any of that soon.

Well, she might need food. But those monsters who do prefer to hunt their own. On that thought, Kaeya turns to start breaking down the camp. He doesn't know how far she'll get before- before she starts hunting. He needs to be as far from here as he can be by then.

***

Kaeya has been helping carry parts of the camp since he was four, and helping break it down since he was six, but he's never before done either of them alone. The full camp is heavy beyond his ability to carry. Eventually he wraps what he can't heft in his mother's blankets and drags the bundle behind him. It's difficult, especially along the winding passages uphill, but it's better than leaving it all behind. It's a bad idea to leave too many traces on a commonly-used path.

Once he's alone in the dark, well away from the campsite where his mother left him, Kaeya lets himself cry as silently as he can manage.

It takes two days to get to the place where they were supposed to meet his father. Who isn't there yet, as he sometimes is. Kaeya feels his heart sink when he sees the little cavern empty. He wants his father desperately, to hold him and take the burden of his grief and promise him that they'll survive this, they'll get through. That they'll endure, as Alberichs do, and continue to burn instead of falling into embers. Telling it to himself just isn't enough.

He cries himself out for the last time after he sets up his camp. There can be no trace of tears tomorrow, or any time after, when his father might arrive any time day. An Alberich never cries for less than lost Khaenri'ah, and the clan has long since shed all its tears for that. His father is even more severe on that point than his mother is on the wasting of water.

There's a little underground stream here that bubbles up in this cavern, which is why they'd chosen it as a meeting-place for his father's returns from the surface. His mother had told him when he was younger that his father wanted her to stay further below, in the secret bastions where the last remnants of Khaenri'ah's people await the results of generations' slow machinations. But she had raised her chin and told him that she had been born on the surface, and she did not fear the sun. Until Kaeya had been born, she had gone with father on his every secret mission.

Kaeya wonders if she ever wished she could have seen the sun again, just one more time, and finds he has a few more tears left in him.

With the stream nearby and the food his mother had brought for the both of them, he can hold out in this cave for weeks if he has to. The only danger is that the water here is a lure to monsters, so he'll have to keep an eye out and be attentive. They'll most likely be hilichurls, which he knows how to handle, but sometimes samachurls or mitachurls come along, and those he'll have to hide from. Or Abyss Mages, who do have to accede to their servants' needs now and then, and he's not sure he *can* hide from them well enough to escape their magical senses. If any of those come, he'll simply have to run. Kaeya huddles in his blankets and tries very hard not to think about what his father has warned him an Abyss Mage will do with an Alberich.

Fortunately, there are, over the next few days, no Abyss Mages. Barely any hilichurls, either. A pair comes to drink on the second day, but they don't even notice his camp, fire hastily doused and Kaeya and his packs hidden behind a pile of rocks. They're too busy looking anxiously over their shoulders, jumping at every little noise and shadow. Kaeya considers what could have them that spooked and decides not to relight his fire.

The next day passes in silence, with Kaeya able to do very little but eat and sleep in the darkness. Nothing else comes along to the stream, though, and he hears nothing alarming from the nearest tunnels. He starts to relax, no longer listening out for monsters quite so closely. By the day after that, he's starting to feel safe enough again that he considers relighting the fire.

It's while he's starting to assemble it that the mitachurl attacks him.

An axe mitachurl, he determines later, but at the moment all he's aware of is the scrape of a clawed foot against stone just behind him. It's the only warning he gets before an axe comes whistling down towards his head. Kaeya flings himself sideways, rolls, and comes up, squinting his eyes to keep the bright glow of the Pyro slime the mitachurl has just wrenched from the earth from completely blinding him. The axe's glow once the slime has been squelched isn't as terrible, and in fact makes it easier to dodge as the mitachurl comes at him again.

He ducks the axe, darts behind the mitachurl the way his father has been teaching him, and draws his mother's knife. He's been practicing swinging it since he was five years old; it's nearly a sword in his hands, but it's not as if his father isn't going to teach him the sword eventually. It's his mother's training, though, that allows him to swing it up and through the mitachurl's hamstring as it turns.

The mitachurl bellows in pain and topples. Immediately Kaeya scrambles up over its arm towards its neck. He has to cut its throat, and fast; no other part of such a massive body is vulnerable to someone as small and weak as he is, and he can only reach it while it's on the ground. If it gets up, it won't be so easily toppled again. His mouth is dry and his heart pounding, hands shaking with excitement and fear and a strange triumph. This scenario had only ever been theoretical before, but his mother has run it through him often enough that he has to do her proud.

Reaching for its mane to wrench its head around, Kaeya feels his hand touch soft, silky fabric, and freezes. In the dim light of the glowing axe, flung off to the side where the mitachurl had dropped it, he can't quite make out whether the shawl draped around the mitachurl's shoulders is the red-and-brown of his mother's, but he can still make out the familiar pattern. The mitachurl turns its head, looking up at him with the blank eyes of the horned mask. He can't see any features beneath it. But the great creature turns its head on its own, the way he would have, baring its throat.

Does it--does *she*--recognize him as her son, despite all the evidence of generations saying that she shouldn't? Or is she simply responding as the lesser monsters (and he hates, suddenly, fiercely, that he's been taught to call them called them 'lesser') sometimes do now and then to the blood of an Alberich? Or, worse yet, does she understand her new existence just well enough to want to die so badly?

"Mama," Kaeya whispers. He's shaking again, and it's no longer with adrenaline or triumph.

She turns her head a little further, massive shoulder twitching to shrug the shawl aside.

"I can't," Kaeya tells her, his voice trembling.

With the mask, she should be impossible to read, but she lays there, throat bared to his blade, and he thinks he can read expectation in her still silence nonetheless. Kaeya swallows hard and lowers the knife down until it brushes against the fur. His hand is shaking even harder, but he'll have to push to get through the skin, never mind the hide. He takes a deep breath, steels himself, starts to push, until dark ichor wells up along one edge. His nerve fails him, and he jerks the knife back. It slips from his shaking hand, skittering away across the stone, and Kaeya kicks it away.

"I can't!"

His mother sighs heavily, a great animal gust of sound. Then her head turns further, so that she's looking up, past him. Kaeya feels a chill down his back. He goes tense, suddenly aware that he's just thrown his only weapon away.

A heavy hand grabs him by the back of his shirt and yanks him up and away from his mother.

"*Mama!*"

Kaeya screams in fear, and again in panicked anger as he sees the blade flash down, the spray of ichor, before the Pyro glow goes abruptly out of the dissolving axe and leaves him again in the dark.

Readjusting his grip, Kaeya's father tries to pull him close against his chest. Kaeya fights him, kicking and flailing, trying his best to wriggle out of his father's powerful arms. He screams out his grief and fury, all the worse for his father's silence, holding Kaeya inexorably against him until he winds down, finally, and stops hammering his fists against his father's chest and shoulders and jaw. He buries his face in the ruff of fur at his father's neck and gasps until his breath comes back.

His father adjusts his grip again, no longer clinging to him against his tantrum but gently holding him close, the way that's always made Kaeya feel protected. He rests his chin against the top of Kaeya's head, and Kaeya wants to lean into him just as badly as he wants to squirm away. He can't quite give in to either impulse.

"That was *Mama*," he hisses.

"I know," his father says, his voice hard. "And she wanted mercy from you. I expected better of you, Kaeya. I should not have had to do that myself."

There's an anger in there that Kaeya only halfway understands. But the chastisement itself makes his stomach sink, because he does understand that. No monster that once was a person of Khaenri'ah wants to be what they are, except perhaps the deluded who join the Abyss Order. It is the duty of an Alberich to give them their release. Kaeya has done it for hilichurls before. He should have been able to do it for his own mother.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. There's something hard and painful lodged in his throat that he can't seem to swallow down.

"So am I," his father says, some of the hardness going out of his voice. "You shouldn't have had to do that yourself, either. But an Alberich cannot falter when they are asked for such a mercy. No matter who it is."

Kaeya takes a deep breath, then another, and is finally to get out around the blockage in his throat, in a stronger voice, "I understand."

"Good." His father sets him down, and then there's the click of a firestarter, and Kaeya automatically shields his eyes from the sudden light. His father surveys the cavern in the lantern-light. There's the briefest flicker in his eye at the crumpled shawl on the ground, ichor-stained, and then his face smoothes out and goes hard again. "We will have to burn that, and then leave before anything that might have been drawn by all your noise reaches us. And it's time, I think, that you hear about what I've been putting into train above."

The shawl burns quickly, and less than an hour later Kaeya and his father are heading downward. They leave the ashes of the fire scattered behind them. Kaeya doesn't dare snatch up even one of the scorched fragments as his father kicks them across the floor. He knows his father will only remind him that an Alberich doesn't wallow in the grief of what they've left behind.

[shizunitis]

Ghostfire Shen Yuan loyally following the lonely, undying, forgotten Luo Binghe from the original outline.

They never even met.

Shen Yuan had died long before Luo Binghe’s story was set to start. Abandoned by his System, he was left wandering the realms, searching for anything to latch onto, anything to stave off the darkness encroaching on his consciousness whenever he stopped. He keeps himself entertained with little jokes and references that will never reach anyone. At least back home, there were other people on the opposite side of his screen reacting, seeing. Paying attention.

He never would have thought he’d miss the times he was perceived by others. He’d give anything, though. Anything.

He stumbles upon the protagonist as he’s ascending the stairs of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect for the first time. Dressed in rags and heaving with the effort, Luo Binghe is exactly as Shen Yuan had pictured: a little bun, soft and kind and so very brave.

The excitement wears off soon enough. When the tea ceremony is held, Shen Yuan watches, hopelessly trying to stop the cup from hitting Binghe’s head. He lunges at Shen Jiu; let him be identified and exorcised, at least he would have done something with himself, however useless. It doesn’t work. Of course not—nothing can come between Luo Binghe and his fate.

Shen Yuan thinks about leaving. Many times. But every time he considers the possibility of going back to wandering the world, or just passing on… Well. There’s still a lot to see, isn’t there? It will get better. It will.

Only, it doesn’t. Not really.

There’s no harem; there’s no warm comfort offered to Luo Binghe by a sympathetic beauty, no wedding celebrations, no moments of gentle companionship, however brief, however superficial. There’s no camaraderie with the demons underlings, his generals, his allies; it’s all casual cruelty and dismissals, before it’s violence and subjugation.

There’s no joy. There’s no hope. There’s no ‘better’.

Something is wrong, that’s clear. Something is wrong, and Shen Yuan has no one to blame.

This is clearly not the Proud Immortal Demon Way he knows.

Centuries later, when Luo Binghe begs for the heavens to allow him to die, Shen Yuan hears. When Luo Binghe rages against the passage of time, alone in the wreckage of his palace, left behind by everyone he’d ever known, Shen Yuan accompanies him. When Luo Binghe lies down in the Holy Mausoleum and refuses to get up, Shen Yuan waits until he opens his eyes again and leaves the palace.

They end up in a hidden realm so filled with Yin Energy that Shen Yuan can channel it to manipulate his form into that of his former body. It’s not detectable by the living, but it’s there. He feels stronger, too. He can walk, float, fly, interact with what few other ghosts they encounter.

Still, Luo Binghe cannot see him.

Luo Binghe doesn’t talk much. Well, that makes sense, he was never in the habit of talking to himself, but still. It’s lonely.

They end up in a town where a diviner takes one look at Luo Binghe and offers him a free reading. Shen Yuan can’t enter her tent, so he waits outside.

She tells Luo Binghe of the little hanger-on he’s got. A powerful one, too, though he’s still getting used to his powers. He’s been here for a long time, she says. Since he was a child. He comes from far away—farther than even the most distant star.

Luo Binghe begins talking to him. Shen Yuan isn’t sure why, but he’s not complaining!

Luo Binghe also begins meditating again, trying to soothe the damage done by Xin Mo over the centuries. For every meal, he places a few fruits across from him on a plate he’d made himself, which he eats only after finishing his own dish. He makes space by his side whenever he walks on a narrow road. He stops at every landmark and tells stories about them, always starting the same way.

“Do you remember when…” becomes Shen Yuan’s favourite phrase.

One night, Luo Binghe sighs and looks across the table. Shen Yuan places himself so that he’s in Luo Binghe’s focus.

“What is it, Binghe?”

Luo Binghe doesn’t answer him, of course. Still, it feels like a conversation, when he says:

“I wish I knew your name.”

Shen Yuan frets. He’s been trying to manipulate the physical world, but he never got the hang of it. He’d tried drawing in sand, with water, just pushing things off shelves. And yet, nothing.

“I’m sorry, I wish—” he tries, but Luo Binghe is already talking again.

“I wonder if we ever crossed paths when you were alive.” He’s expressed this thought more than once. Shen Yuan never likes to think about how they’ve missed each other, how they’d been set up for failure from the start. “I wonder if we would have been friends.”

Shen Yuan scoffs. Of course not. Him and the protagonist? No way.

But—those cold star eyes, blindly searching for him, trying to land on him… They make him want to say, I would have liked that.

He reaches a hand out to touch Luo Binghe’s forhead. He’s taken to doing it whenever Luo Binghe broods, or makes a silly joke Shen Yuan wishes he didn’t find funny. It’s soothing.

He wishes Binghe could feel it.

When his finger touches the demon mark, it blazes. Luo Binghe gasps, that heavy gaze settling on Shen Yuan’s face.

Shen Yuan startles, and jumps away.

“No! Wait!”

Shen Yuan hesitates. Luo Binghe is looking around himself, eyes begging for even a wisp of Shen Yuan’s shadow.

He can’t deny Luo Binghe this.

He can’t deny himself this.

He reaches out again. This time, he cups Luo Binghe’s cheeks. When those eyes clear of panic and widen in awe, he whispers, softly, “Shen Yuan. My name is Shen Yuan.”

Luo Binghe looks like he’s been handed a treasure so precious he’s afraid to touch it. He hesitates, raising his hands in careful starts and stops, before taking Shen Yuan’s face in them, gently caressing the soft, cold skin of his face. His eyes dance with the haste he takes in memorising Shen Yuan’s features.

Then, he smiles. Helpless and weak and so, so precious. Shen Yuan has not seen hope so bright in Luo Binghe’s face since that fateful day on Cang Qiong Mountain.

“Hello, Shen Yuan.”

[baldursgate3tempobsessed]

Soft Astarion Jealousy

Now with part 2!

I love Ascended Astarion because he's horrible but the sweetness of the other end of the spectrum is impossible to deny. He's just so in love and grateful I can't 🥺🥺

So here's some jealousy that isn't psychotic. Well it is but not as bad:

Astarion never expected to be the jealous type. He always thought...well. In all honesty he never thought about the reality of having a relationship. He didn't even think it was possible for him, let alone the idea that he would actually want it. Even with you, even after he admitted a fraction of his own feelings to himself, he never thought that he would be so... possessive. Though admittedly, he had very good cause for it.

Because you were frustrating. So, so frustrating. For some idiotic reason, you simply didn't understand how alluring to others you really were. You were a pretty little thing, yes but that wasn't the problem. It was so much more than that. And he knew that the others wanted you. Every last one of them. Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Wyll, Karlach, Gale, Halsin. All of them like moths to a flame. And that wasn't even counting all of the strangers you had met on your journey, the extras that thought they had a shot with your greatness. They all wanted you in ways that made Astarion seethe. And the desire from others wasn't even the kind that he was used to, the kind he understood like the back of his hand. Because you didn't need to seduce to cultivate desire. All you needed to stoke the flames was merely your presence. Experiencing you was all that was required for people to know they wanted more.

Astarion knew that the others weren't just looking for a bedmate, they wanted you for the same reasons he had grown to. Your empathy, your desire to understand those around you. Your fearlessness, your infuriating habit of always trying to do the right thing. They wanted you for your laugh, the way your eyes would crinkle in the corners when your smile was too wide. Your silly jokes, your endless hopefulness for a future. It felt as though everyone around saw you for the gem that you were and it was... concerning. Extremely concerning.

Astarion hated thinking about things like this. He loathed admitting the truth to himself even more. But he was...terrified of losing you to someone else. Especially since it could so easily be done. He was so very lucky that you weren't the brightest, or at least not when it came to matters of the heart. You could do so much better than him, a fact that was incredibly obvious to everyone around you. Everyone but you, a luck that Astarion did not take lightly. But how much time did he have before it ran out? Would it ever?

Perhaps it was delusional, but he was starting to think when all of this was over, assuming neither of you perished anyway, that...it could just be the two of you. Living together, exploring the world, even if it had to be under the cloak of night. Maybe... maybe the two of you could even find a cure for his unsavory condition. The thought itself was incredibly stupid, but then again, it was just as idiotic to believe that there was a cure to the Mind Flayer parasite. But here they were, closer then ever. And if that was such an impossibility turned into reality, perhaps a vampiric cure wasn't so impossible. Or maybe even finding an alternative method for immortality for you, without the downsides of his own. Anything that could just keep you both together, for as long as possible. It was an unrealistic dream, that would never come into fruition. If anything it was dangerous, so very dangerous to even entertain the thought of forever. Especially when your connection was so tenuous.

Astarion would never be stupid enough to thank Cazador for anything but...he'd be lying if he said he wasn't appreciative for his own lack of subtly when it came to seducing you. Even if it originally was for distasteful reasons, it still got him ahead of the pack. If he had been less calculating, less astute, there was a sincere chance that you would be warming someone else's bed at night. Callousness would never be without it's uses, even if it led to uncomfortable situations like his current infatuation.

What would he do when you inevitably wanted to leave? How could he survive after having something so...good. Someone so caring, someone who for some very horrifying reason liked being around him. And the sex... it was fabulous. He was a massive fan of your intimacy, when he was capable of participating in it. He adored it, he adored you, your beauty, the sweet noises he could coax from your mouth, the europhia of being inside of you. Then there was the fact that you could be intimate without any traces of it devolving into lovemaking. He had never been gifted with the ability to say no before, so often and so freely without a single fear of punishment. If anything, it felt like he was rewarded when he was honest with you, when he would share his sudden fits of discomfort in his own body, the memories that plagued him and doomed him to staying stubbornly soft. You would never get angry, never even disappointed. You would just listen and smile, always adorable when you would ask, "But I can stay for a cuddle, can't I?"

An extremely silly question, considering the two of you hadn't spent a night apart from each other since you'd made it to the Shadowlands. Yet it never failed to make him melt.

It was getting worse, these feelings. He just wanted you around, by his side, constantly. Constant enough for him to get the ridiculous urge to hiss at anyone else who dared to come near you. He felt an intense need to protect the closeness the both of you had cultivated, the kind that he had never been allowed before. He had no interest in sharing you with your own friends when it came down to it, let alone another lover.

Which is precisely why his original, mild distaste for Halsin turned into a full-blown hatred the night he had the gall to proposition you.

It had felt like a shard of ice going through his chest when you bounded over to him, laughing about one of his greatest fears coming much too close to reality, "You won't believe the conversation Halsin and I just had-"

"Ah, I was wondering when you were going to ask me about that," Astarion laughed, purposefully interrupting you. He had no desire to hear the specifics of that conversation. He didn't even want to be having this conversation, where you were inevitably going to ask if it was okay to explore someone else.

The answer was no. Never would he be okay with it, allowing someone else to be close to what should have been his. But he needed to think strategically here. To say no could be disasterous. If it became a game of choice between him and Halsin... he's almost certain he would lose. Halsin was everything he wasn't; caring, giving, sharing in your worldviews in a way that Astarion never could. He couldn't risk it, he wouldn't. Having you at all was better than nothing.

"But I'd never even consider something like that-"

"It's fine," Astarion interrupts again, the fakest smile he can muster plastered on his face. The pain was worth the risk mitigation, he was sure of that. But... he still had to ask, "But is this because we haven't...y'know, in awhile?"

A sick part of him prays that you'll say yes. Because if that's the reason, he could do something about it. He could force himself if need be to always tend to your needs. Especially if it meant keeping you to himself. It was such a small sacrifice in comparison to the rest of his life. He would do it in a heartbeat if you demanded, anything to just make you stay.

But that was not the answer he received. Instead you frowned, looking him up and down, "What? No, I-Astarion no. Please don't think that. What we have together is so special to me. The physical part of it is lovely, perfect even. But...it's not what we are."

It's almost comforting to hear you say that. But then why did that make the situation feel so much worse? If it wasn't sex you were after then that certainly meant you wanted more with Halsin as well, did it not? But it was too late to rescind it now.

Astarion nodded, a confused mixture of hurt and gratefulness swirling through him, "I just needed to know. But if you're satisfied with me and just want to explore, go right ahead. I'll be here when you're done."

You nodded slowly, brow furrowed when you asked, "So...we aren't exclusive then?"

"No, of course not," Astarion confirmed, ignoring everything inside of him that was screaming for him to take it all back, "We can be as open as you'd like."

"I see..." You said, trailing off with a frown. You coughed into your hand, looking up at him sharply. Sharp enough for him to be sincerely confused, "Does this mean that you'll be speaking to me before you explore your other options?"

"I-yes? If you want?" Astarion answered, a new type of unease settling in his chest. You didn't seem very happy with this conversation, despite his best attempts to give you what you wanted. Where had he gone wrong? Was he already working to throw you into the arm's of another man, without even trying?

You were still frowning at him, your look cold in a way that made him feel particularly ill, "Please do. I'd like to know everything. I'm going to speak to Halsin, get this all sorted. We can talk later."

And then you were spinning on your heel and marching away, like Astarion was the offensive party here. It made no sense. He had done it all right, hadn't he? Agreed to it immediately, didn't make you feel guilty, had tried to be what you wanted. How had he failed?

He didn't wait around to see you go to Halsin. Instead he went straight back to his tent, closing the flap as he laid down. Great. Fantastic. Now he would have to be aware, perhaps even hear you being with another, while simultaneously reliving that horrid conversation in his head for the entire night. The hurt and worry was making his mind wander to uncomfortable places. Perhaps...Halsin could be dealt with in another way if things became too serious between the two of you.

Would poisoning the man be too extreme?

But before Astarion had the time to start thinking of a more detailed plan he was interrupted. Suddnely, moonlight was filling his tent, with your silleoute shining in the darkness.

He blinked up at you, confused, "What are you doing here?"

You frowned at him, looking hesitant in the entry way, "Should I not be? I thought-I can go if you'd like."

"No!" Astarion blurted out, loud and desperate enough to make him cringe. He cleared his throat, trying again, his voice still a touch too pitiful for his liking, "No, no, come here darling. Of course you're always welcome. I just assumed you would be busy."

To his relief you listened, crawling into the bedroll next to him. Astarion didn't waste any time in wrapping his arms around you, relieved to humiliating degrees that you had chosen to come back after the deed. Though...you didn't quite smell as he had thought you would. There were no traces of the floral, woodsy smell of the druid on your skin. Just the sweet, pleasant scent that he had grown so fond of.

You sighed as he tucked you against him, the warmth of you enough to make him relax for the first time that night. You laid together in a pleasant quiet, one that Astarion was actually scared to disturb. Despite the fact that he desperately wanted to know what happened between the two of you.

But you broke the silence for him, muttering into his chest after the two of you were settled, "I'm...sorry for being snappish earlier. I shouldn't have been. You didn't do anything wrong, and I know I don't own you. I shouldn't have assumed."

Astarion frowned, pulling back to get a proper look at your face. You looked hurt, sad even. Like you were the one who had gotten their heart broken. He could feel a curl of distaste settling in his stomach, annoyed that this felt as though the situation was being placed back to him. He had played his part, perfectly. What more could you ask for? What was there to assume?

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean," Astarion carefully said, his eyes fixed on every micro expression on your face, "What did I do that could have been construed as incorrect?"

"Nothing!" You rushed to say, shame coloring your cheeks, "I was being stupid. You never promised me anything. I just...assumed. Wrongly that we were something we aren't."

That didn't-he-what? Astarion frowned at her, his confusion evident on his face, "What did you think we were?"

You looked uncomfortable, avoiding his gaze when you answered, "I thought that we were...together. Alone. Just us. But if that's not what you want I understand. It's fine-"

"What in the hells are you talking about?" Astarion blurted out, his anger and pain bubbling to the surface, "I haven't done a thing. And we were just us before you decided to galivant off with a bear of a man!"

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. So much for playing things safely. No, he couldn't even have the self-control to stay quiet. He always had to ruin everything.

But surprisingly, you didn't look angry. If anything you seemed just as confused as he felt, "What? I didn't-we didn't do anything! When did I say I wanted to do anything with Halsin? You were the one saying you didn't care!"

You weren't making any damn sense, "Well why else would you ask me about it?"

"I didn't!" You huffed, glaring at him, "All I was going to say was that he asked me. And I wanted your help on how to best turn him down! And then you jumped at the chance to push me onto someone else-"

"I did nothing of the sort!" Astarion seethed back, "If it was up to me you would never look at another man again! Or woman for that matter!"

It was an odd feeling, to be arguing while holding each other so closely. But Astarion had no intention of letting you go anytime soon, even if he could feel you squirming against his ironclad grip when you fumed at him, "Then why would you say it was okay?!"

"Because I don't want you to leave me!" He shouted back, loud enough to snap him out of his own anger. All of his fury was instantly replaced with fear. Gods, why had he felt the need to say that? To lay his biggest insecurity out on the line. Why not just hand you a stake while he was at it, since he was so eager to give you the tools to destroy him.

But you were still seething, hissing back at him, "Why praytell, would I leave the man I've been in love with for months? Hm? Please, explain it to me!"

Astarion couldn't. He was too busy being shell-shocked at the confession, feeling too many emotions at once. Joy, relief, somehow even more fear than before. You so freely said the words that he had done his damndest to bury, to ignore. But now they were out there, filling him with a horrifying joy.

He wanted to say it back. He did. But he couldn't get the wrecthed words out. Instead he was just staring at you like an imbeicle, his mouth hanging opening at the confession.

But his silence didn't make you falter. Instead you looked determined, near fierce as you grasped his face into your warm hands, "I love you Astarion. You don't have to say it back. That's not what this is about. But I want you. And only you. If you want the same of me then you must tell me. Now."

Astarion let his hands flutter over your wrists, humiliating tears prickling at his eyes. But at least his vocal chords allowed him to answer you this time, "I do. So much more than you know. I want us. Just us. No one else."

The words were flowing out of him, too fast and sincere for him to make the appropriate edits in his head. He was saying too much, feeling too much, giving too much. But the way your eyes brightened at his words, the way you grinned at him before pulling him in for a sweet kiss made it suddenly feel like he wasn't giving anything up at all.

As much as he loathed to admit it, Astarion was exceedingly grateful for Halsin's existence after that night. He would never have had the gall to demand you to himself without a trigger, without the anger you both shared at being misunderstood. Because now, you were his. His alone, the proclamation coming from your own lips. And he was free to stop hiding how much he had wanted it. How willing he was to do anything to keep it. He let himself off his own leash after that, leaning completely into the mutual ownership you had of each other. No more would he silently sit back and seethe as a stranger flirted with you. No, now he'd be upfront and center, with a possessive hand around your waist as he glared them down, more than prepared with a confidence-shattering quip on his tongue.

He started to let all of his urges seep through, taking full advantage of your willingness. If Wyll looked at you for too long at the fire, with a touch of something that Astarion didn't like in his eyes, he'd effortlessly pull you into his lap onlookers be damned as breathed you in. If Gale suddenly had a suspect offer to teach you some new magic in a secluded location, Astarion would invite himself, impervious to any glares sent his way. And when he felt as though all of them were being a bit too flirtaious, he was more than happy to put them in their places at night. Spending hours upon hours making you scream his name in bed from pleasure, loud enough for everyone to hear and know exactly who you belonged to.

He couldn't care less if it added to his own unpopularity amongst their merry-band of rejects. Their opinions didn't matter. Not when you were eating all of the sudden attention up.

You let him do it all because you understood him, in ways that no one else had bothered to before. You knew who he was, what he wanted, the extent to how much he craved your attention. And you let it all happened, reveled in it even. The intense shows of affection. Because you loved him. And he loved you. And one of these days he'd allow himself to admit the obvious.

But for now, he had what he wanted. What he needed. And in the first time in his life, even with disgusting tadpoles squirming his his brain, Astarion was actually...happy.

[afewfantasies]

🗡️ꜰᴇʏᴅ'ꜱ ʙʟᴀᴅᴇ 🗡️ - I - Nightmares

MASTERLIST

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 2.8K

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: Feyd-Rautha X Reader

ᴘʟᴏᴛ: "Feyd-Rautha he's psychotic", at least thats what people say. Only, people forgot to add that your father's decided you were to marry. It's been over a decade and Feyd's committed to have the marriage and you with him as he ascends as heir and na-Baron of Geidi Prime.

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: abduction, masterbation, voyeurism

🗡️ꜰᴇʏᴅ'ꜱ ʙʟᴀᴅᴇ 🗡️

“Another one?” Your best friend and fellow Bene Gesserit sister asks as you wake in another cold sweat. Nodding you sit up in bed blinking through the darkness. Leia lights the lamp and a yellow glow shines into both of your faces. The first vision was a decade ago, you had been sleeping under the stars. Pale skin and a bald head. A large brute of a ban killed another. Then there was a boy clearly terrified but shaking with anger too. Black eyes, black teeth, pale skin, a temper. Year after year the visions became angrier, more psychopathic. Handing you materials Leia climbs into bed beside you and you begin your account of the vision.

“Will you tell the reverend mother?” She asks.

“Not yet” you confess ordering your thoughts and placing the coded message on the scroll. Leia watches in silence. This vision was in a black room probably on Geidi Prime. You were asleep on a larger black bed with four posts. You were asleep only to wake up to the black eyes looking down at you. He’d never spoken before but he’d said two words in the strangest grittiest words before. “You’re mine” unlike all the other dreams you felt him in the bed, felt the friction of him coming closer, felt his breath on your skin, the heat coming from his body.

“Are you alright?” Leia asks, handing me a glass of water.

“No” you confess as the two words haunt you. There’ve been all kinds of visions. Brutal murders, sick torture, murderous games with concubines, moments of tyrannical rage and now. Now he’d come for you. Stepping out of the bed you find solace in the coolness of the stone on your feet. Leia follows and you search your things for the herbs that dull your senses. It’s a necessity for sleep and reprieve. Since childhood you’d been careful not to share but as you’ve grown it’s only become clearer and clearer the subject of your dreams. He was tall, strong, angry, well off, psychotic and some would say handsome. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the na-Baron and your original betrothed.

“What is it?” Leia asks.

“He’s coming for me mother must teach me the way” you say against your training with fear and foreboding.

——-

Feyd’s earliest memories were of you, he’d been with his father on your home planet looking into your cradle. Your mother was beautiful and your father kind. You were peaceful and little and he’d held you in his arms. He felt protective and during the commitment ceremony he’d meant every word. As a second son your world was promised to him. Even as a child the differences between your two cultures were glaring to him. The freedom to play and be a child, the kindness of the people and you was something to look forward to. But then Rabanne had murdered his father, and his mother had been indifferent and after a few years it enraged him to no end. In a fit of anger he’d killed her. Even with all of his concubines he’d never felt as peaceful as he had with you in his arms as a child. He’d stopped a genocide in your home world looking for you only to find your mother’s kind eyes fearing for her life. He’d done right by sending her to a peaceful planet instead of taking her life. He learned you had been taken by the Bene Gesserit sisters which meant you could be anywhere. No matter where,  he intended to find you.His heart felt like a displaced magnet. Angrier still was the fact that he imagined you living a full life without him. Unbothered, not tortured by the distance as he was, happy and serene. Still he could not disclose his search to anyone in fear for your life. He would have to move carefully to keep his commitment to you.

 Another planet, stepping off the ship he’s given respect by the procession awaiting his arrival. His heart races; he knows your close. Sticking earplugs into his ears he applies the fasteners having his guards to the same. No one would use the voice on him today. He moves quickly spilling no blood. He can feel you. He’s getting warmer. He can feel it. Moving quickly he heads down into the belly of the academy moving quickly through the bunkers. His heart pulls as he passes an entryway stopping when he has a familiar sensation. Heart racing violently against his chest he stops Turing to face the steel door, he stops breathing allowing the violence of his heartbeat to reverberate through him like a war drum. Feyd-Rautha signals for his men to wait outside. Using the code scrambler he gets into the door. Hiding you hold your breath ducking down into the thick of your clothes, the sound of the alarms system’s failure are blaring. Fear racks through you as you try to keep calm remembering the Bene Gesserit mantras. Fear is the mind killer. The noise stops and you relax a little waiting for an announcement. Heavy boots hit the floor forcing you to freeze, the steps come closer stopping in front of the closet. Leis screeches and its muffled, trembling you contemplate your next move. The steps come closer and you see the door open, light filters in. You cover your mouth hoping for safety until a black eye meets yours.  Familiarity and horror paralyze you. Pale skin and a bald head. The face from your nightmares. Feed-Rautha Harkonnen. Pinching yourself you discover he’s finally free’d himself from your dreams and is now material. He steps in separating the close from around you leaving you crouched against the wall with no cover before sitting on your bed and watching you like he has all the time in the world.. His smirk is unsettling and it takes a moment before you stand feeling silly and all too vulnerable crouched in the deep closet.

“Get dressed” he croaks but you’re shaking like a leaf. Snarling he procures robes from the closet placing one over your head. The trembling intensifies. And he steps back feeling rejected. Leaving he has his men pack up your things and then there’s a barrage of people asking you all sorts of questions from what you like to wear and eat and do and it’s all so much. You’re loaded onto a Harkonnen ship and placed in a room alone. Looking through the window you gaze into space. When a few hours have passed you hear the door open and know it’s him before it closes. He takes a seat in his leather robes. You turn to face the man who moves like a snake. He’s more terrifying in person than in your dreams. His eyes watch your every move drinking you in. Parting his lips and showing his black teeth.

“Are you comfortable?” His words come as a surprise. It’s the thing you’ve least expected. It takes a moment before you nod, trying not to be rude as you look around the room.

“Yes, thank you” you respond.

“We are heading to my home world. I understand you have different needs. The Mentats are sourcing food and clothes if there’s anything you need let them know” he explains sanely.

“Ok” you respond, your hands begin to shake again. You sit on them trying to hide the true fear you feel. House Harkonnen is known for many atrocities. 

“I’m sorry” you apologize, terrified and embarrassed.

“Do you know who I am?” He asks.

“A Harkonnen” you confess and his snake-like eyes look displeased.

“Do you know who I am to you?” He asks, forcing you to frown.

“Nothing” you respond only to regret it instantly. Feyd-Rautha takes a breath inflating his chest as he trembles with rage, the paleness of his skin flushing as searing anger bubbles to the forefront. He stands stepping back from you in fear of hurting you.

“My father and yours promised us to each other” his fierce voice cracks as he struggles for control. His terrifying blackened teeth make your eyes shut. He’d done terrible things to people, slight and then slash that's how it went. He was one with his knives and happy to use them. You wait for life to end, your breath to hutch and everything to fade into darkness but it doesn't happen. You hear boots hit the floor three times. Bravery, curiosity? Perhaps it was so quick and painless that this is purgatory? You open your eyes and see Feyd has given you more distance. He’s recalled his anger and he stands stoic, fierce and regal.

“Do you not remember?” He asks because that day had been so monumental to him.

“I had heard heard whispers but …” you trail considering the realities and the odds. Your visions, how you’ve been in hiding. Out of all the things they call him; liar isn’t one of them.You consider the possibilities and it comes to you. Your heart begins to race, you feel stinging in your thumb, like a pinprick. A commitment ceremony was held. The realization is dizzying. “You wish to be married?” You ask and he nods. “To me?” You specify and he nods again. “But I’m nobody from an extinct world. I’m not even a high ranking member of my order” you declare in truth.

“No, you will be na-Baroness Harkonnen” Feyd says, taking a step in your direction. He watches you try to make sense of it. He’d never considered your reaction to being found, he hadn't expected fear or reluctance. He expected your inherent trust in him for you to cling to him for support and comfort as you once did, for you to relish his touch and be most comfortable in his arms.

“na-Baroness” you whisper, looking up at him. Pride fills Feyd at the sound of the words coming from your lips, utter perfection.

“My wife” he rasps and somehow your fear seems unfounded. “I made a vow that I do not intend to break” Feyd says recalling you in his arms as a babe. Your eyes looking up at him without fear in your swaddling helpless, innocent, true and his. A knock at the door causes him to withdraw, he turns standing in front of you. The guard tries looking around to you until Feyd stomps a foot. The man averts his gaze telling Feyd your landing is imminent. Nodding he straightens his gown as he stands tall. Feyd-Rautha holds out a hand. You take it with a deep breath and it seems to amuse him. The heat of him feels familiar. “There will be a crowd, I will send you along in a pod” 

“With who?” You ask standing with him.

“My men” he specifies and it's unsatisfactory. Grabbing your head dress you place it on your head and move forward that way. You hold his hand he secures yours warmly walking at your side. You keep up with him and as the door descends you start to tremble. He stands in front of you as you try to overcome your fear. His eyes are reassuring, his strong hands gripping yours in solidarity. There's no weakness in him. He’s all strength, cunning, volatility, rage and psychopathy. His eyes urge you to get a grip but the roar of the welcome party is unnerving. Your fathers reign ended to a crowd. Soldiers came and there was shouting, there was cheering and you had no time to say goodbye before your mother put you into an escape pod with a scroll. You arrived at an outer planet to find out your father had been beheaded. It’s why you hate crowds to this day.

“Not today” he whispers motioning for someone to come get you. The roaring is violent and you follow them into a pod lighting up at the sight of Leia. The two of you embrace each other warmly. In moments you’ve deemed each other okay. The guards watch the two of you closely. Sitting beside her you take a moment to check the beauty mark on the inside of your thumb. It had been there as long as you could remember. You should be terrified by your current predicament, inadequate training, no  preparation, playing a part of an unsanctioned plot of sisterhood, at the mercy of perhaps the galaxy’s most unbalanced man. But he’d been nothing but reasonable thus far outside of your abduction. 

The cheers from the people are thunderous, they celebrate his return with conviction. Once outside the pods you become acquainted with the sprawling palace halls. Uneasiness fills you and your hand clasps Leia’s for comfort, something your guards eyes settle on. Saying nothing you follow behind him seeing a Mentat among your escort. You’re brought into a grand hall with a stately black stone table. Fresh colourful food is on one side while rare organic meat is on another, the sight of the bloody dishes and iron rich aroma sickens you and Leia.

“I wish to retire, I am exhausted” you declare unable to sit. The silent guard turns to you nodding. He motions for a Mentat to guide you and Leia to your quarters. You're separated from her after a long hug. Your room is far grander than your quarters at the academy. It has a familiar quality of the ones from your home world. The colours are less sterile, the hues less grey. Pulling open the drawers you find lush vibrant fabrics, the sort of robes you remember your mother wearing before the fall of your house. It's a strange thing. Turning you lean against the dresser puzzled by the days events and not nearly as scared as you should be.

Finished and energized by his warm reception Feyd-Rautha heads to the dining hall. He waits against the door when he hears no chatter. Bracing himself for anything he pushes open the doors to find the room empty with the exception of the Mentat and a few guards charged with your care.

“She wished to retire” the Mentat explains.

“Did she eat?” Fey’d asks.

“No” The Mentat responds. Feyd’s mood sours, settling into a rage, if it were anyone else he would have dragged them back out of the room, placed a collar around her neck and forced her to do as he pleased but it wasn't anyone, it was you. 

“Set the table in my quarters” he demands heading into his rooms. Undressing he removes his armour until all he has on are slacks and a tunic. Feyd dismisses his staff sitting at the table and pressing a button. A screen emerges from the wall with a wide panoramic view of your quarters on display. He watches you as he eats, watches you let your hair down from the ornate style of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. He watches the sway of your hips as you go from room to room. He watches you admire the artwork that's been placed there. Feyd-Rautha watches you with pride and admiration, you weren't trying to run as far as he could see. He watches as you return to the sleeping chambers. He feels himself stiffen as he watches you undress, standing he drops the rare meat drawn to the screen with a crooked grin as you make your way to the cleansing chambers. The bounce of your breast, the softness of your skin, everything has him solid as stone. He watches you step in and the misting of water commence, the beads of water glisten on your skin, he zooms in to get a better view of you unguarded. The surprise in your expression as the automatic system goes through the washing ritual.

His thoughts are heinous and depraved, his need for dominance, ownership, acceptance and submission are more than he can take. Releasing his manhood from his plants he begins stroking it roughly. For the first time he doesn’t call his concubines to satisfy him. They would all fail miserably, no one but you would ever again, but this night he would have to do. He needed you so bad he felt desperate. Stroking himself faster he’s practically salivating as the chamber begins drying you, the way your hair blows, the surprise in your eyes, the suppleness of your skin. It takes everything in him to contain his hunger for you, control his passion, his need. He wanted to be inside you marking you, claiming you with his seed. Watching your expressions change as he takes you further and further into the pleasures of passion. You would be his wife soon enough. His hands would never leave your warm flesh. He would keep his manhood sheathed inside you training you well. Coming hard from his own fantasies Fed’s shallow breaths bring him to a stark realization. He would do anything to have you stop trembling at the sight of him, he’d try to be as patient as possible. He needed your submission, your acceptance of him, and he needed it to be real, to want to share his bed. Looking up at the screen he watches you dress in sheer bed robes. Climbing into the large bed he watches you find comfort in it. 

“You’re mine” he says to the screen as a promise.

🖤

Thank you so much for reading 🩶 let me know if you enjoyed, want to be added to the taglist or anything else on your mind 🩶 comment, like & reblog for more Feyd. xx

TAGS: @elf-punk @dvmb4ssbiatch @thegabbyh @fanfiction-addict22

[blindmagdalena]

All That Glitters

18+ 15.7k words. Dragon!Homelander x F!Reader fantasy au, messy world building, referenced cannibalism, handfeeding, super dubious consent, sexual coercion, monster anatomy, size difference, cunnilingus, breeding kink, dirty talk, marathon sex, mating bond/bite, knotting, tongue baths, virgins, scent kink, overstimulation, body betrayal, fairy tale schmoop. AO3 Link!

Summary: In a world where the only currencies that matter are gold and blood, the gods are lavished with both. Your regions god is a fearsome beast said to reign hellfire from the skies should his appetite not be satiated. When the demand for human sacrifices increases, you make the choice to volunteer yourself, determined to bring an end to the bloodshed, and ascend into the jaws that await you in the old stone tower deep in the woods.

illustration by the ever incredible @anon-nee, who was instrumental to the writing of this fic. see the full piece here! originally written for Monsterlander Mania, but obviously spiraled wildly out of control.

For as long as you can remember, there have always been sacrifices.

Such a thing is not unique to your village. Gods–and the creatures worshiped as such–throughout the world demand all manner of recompense for protecting the lands of those who idolize them. If the slaughter of a single lamb ensures green pastures in which the herd may thrive, few ever think twice before they lift the blade.

Not all townships worship for benevolence, however. Yours has always worshiped for mercy.

For generations, stories of hellfire raining from the sky have been passed by your people. A great, terrible beast with wings as wide as ten men were tall once patrolled the skies above you, wielding power so devastating that not even ballistae firing bolts the size of tree trunks could fell it.

It had a hundred names, each more terrible than the last. Scourge of the Skies, the Red Death, Flame’s Maw, and perhaps most unfortunately, the Devourer. Named as such for the countless lives it began to claim when treasures were deemed an insufficient tribute. Sacrifices were initially sparse, required only every dozen or so seasons. As time went on, the Devourer grew greedier and greedier, with the timespan between sacrifices shortening.

By the time you offer yourself to the council, there has been a sacrifice every month for over a year.

The wagon hardly jostles on this well-trodden road. You imagine it used to be a rougher ride, but with the increase in frequency of travel, it has smoothed. The thought worsens the feeling of icy weight in your stomach. One might think the exquisite fabrics you’re dressed in would bring some measure of comfort–softer than anything you’ve worn before–but the extravagance of them only serves to further alienate you from yourself.

You have become a thing. A finely adorned offering, and the fabric makes your skin crawl for it.

The tree cover breaks, revealing a monolithic stone tower that stands so tall, it splits the sky in two.

The Tower of the Seven. It’s been generations since anyone knew exactly what it was named for, but legend speaks of mythic creatures that were once held in such reverence, this tower was built in their honor. It served as both a temple and home to these venerated beings.

The years have not been kind to it. The stone pillars have become wild with overgrowth, and the air about this place reeks of stale, old death.

It stands now as a graveyard.

Even the horses refuse to venture much further than the threshold of the treeline, forcing you and your attendants out of the wagon to tread the remainder of the trek on foot. The men who walk with you carry short swords, but they serve no practical purpose, their edges having long since dulled. They are not here to protect you, they are as much a part of the ceremony as your fine clothes.

You shield your eyes as you look up at the staggering height of the tower, but swiftly drop your gaze. Best not to think of what awaits you.

On paper, sacrifice seems a simple thing. Slitting one’s throat upon an altar, floating a burning pyre across the river, or feeding the tribute a concoction of sleeping death and burying them into eternal slumber. Murder can be a righteous thing in the hands of a believer, or so they say.

For you, and those who have come before you, martyrdom is not as effortless as lying down and dying for the cause. The tower presents a trial to you. You must willingly climb the hundreds upon hundreds of large stone steps in order to prove yourself a worthy tribute.

Why you must prove your flesh worthy of consumption is beyond you. You’ve never heard of a farmer who sends his cattle to run laps before the slaughter. It seems a petty thing to demand. Perhaps the Devourer has grown indolent and slovenly in its feasting.

It’s easy to dream up nightmarish images of such an awful creature. A legless winged wyrm with a ribbed body, fat and slimy like an oversized earthworm. It would have an enormous maw with hundreds upon hundreds of jagged teeth, its breath reeking of charred flesh and sulfur. Such a wicked beast would stink like the layers of hell. 

Somehow, tormenting yourself like this is an oddly calming distraction. The more nightmarish it becomes in your mind, the less real all of this feels. It’s just a bad dream.

No one speaks as you reach the base of the tower. There’s nothing left to say. You’re one of a dozen in the last year alone these men have ferried to their death. It almost seems cruel to expect eye contact, let alone sympathy. For that reason, it catches you off guard when one of the older of the three, a man named Hector with a thick set of troubled brows furrowed above kind but bloodshot, watery eyes puts his hand on your shoulder, offering a light squeeze.

The last sacrifice had been his own daughter.

In his gaze you find grief and gratitude in equal measure. Neither brings comfort. You return a small nod and move your eyes back to the ordeal that awaits you. 

The tower is like an optical illusion: the proportions make it seem a reasonable size at a distance, but the closer you walk to it, the more mythical a thing it becomes. The archways curve high above your head, sized for creatures of legend, and the head of the building disappears completely into the sky.

In the center of it, a spiraling stone staircase beckons you. The masonry is exquisitely smooth despite the age of it, carved in an era when magic was a hundred times more prolific than it is now. It’s wide and open, the steps so large that you’ll be taking them one at a time. Worse than that, however, is the complete absence of any kind of protective railing.

If you sway, you very well may fall to your death.

At the center of the spiral stands a pile of debris. As you approach, a rustling catches your attention and you freeze, eying the pile warily. The head of a creature suddenly pops up, startling your heart into a thunder, but after a beat you recognize it for what it is: a small fox, its muzzle dirty. The two of you stare at one another for a long moment before one of the men behind you calls out, “Shoo, shoo now.”

Everyone keeps hushed, as if terrified of disturbing what is yet unseen.

Moving closer, you anticipate you might see a dead rabbit, or perhaps a chicken. Anything would have been a more welcome sight than the gnarled half-eaten body of a woman dressed just like you piled amongst the debris. You gasp, both hands flying over your mouth as you stumble a few steps backwards.

For a horrifying moment, you swear you see your own face in the rotten remnants staring back at you with black, empty eye sockets. It’s the hair that gives away the delusion, however, and with a chill down your spine you recognize the sacrifice who came before you; Hector’s daughter.

“Nadja,” the man groans morosely, the weight of grief in his voice palpable. You move away, towards the stairs, and watch with a morbid sort of fascination as the man weeps over the corpse of his daughter, touching her hair and her clothes, the only parts of her not twisted and rotted with death, the body left for maggots and scavengers. It’s sick, nothing like the beautiful and noble gesture sacrifice is always said to be. You look up at the dizzying height of the spiral staircase, following the line of it until the stone disappears into darkness. Did she fall, or was she cast away, having somehow proven herself unworthy?

In a strange sense, watching the men wrap her body in cloth to be carried home feels very much like playing the part of voyeur to your own demise. You stand at a distance, hand braced upon the stone, unable to shake the dread that you’re witnessing a vision of the future. Your future.

No. You will not be left for the insects and carrion-feeders. You turn your back to the sound of Hector’s weeping and, without another world, determinedly begin your ascent one large stone step at a time. Although you feel the men’s eyes heavily upon you, they remain silent, as if already grieving you.

Do not, you think brazenly, skin flushed with unexpected fires that bring your blood to a boil. Do not dare mourn what isn’t dead.

Those flames burn hot enough to carry you easily up the first several floors, indignantly stomping your way. You’ve heard stories of this tower all your life, but nothing could have prepared you for the true scale of it. Most of it is in a terrible state of decay, full of overgrowth and rot that, centuries ago, may have been wood and cloth.

You stop for a breath beneath the remains of what looks to have once been a vibrant mural. You can see trace evidence of beautiful paints, but whatever it depicts has been brutally clawed from the stonework. You lift a hand up high to trace one of the deep gouges in the stone; the marks are spread too far apart for your fingers to reach, but you can make out five distinct patterns nonetheless, like drag marks from a hand three or four times the size of your own.

Beyond the ruined mural, there are statues, too. You pass a grand monument of a woman who stands over seven heads tall wielding a sword of equal might, the statue adorned with steel bracers. You think she might have been beautiful in the same way a frightening storm is, but the head of the statue is long since gone.

On the next floor, you see upon the ground the ruins of a statue of a mermaid–at least, you thought it was. Upon further inspection, however, you see that the statue depicts a man. He has the lower body of a fish and strange indentations along his ribs, just beneath his bare carved chest. He, too, is headless, torso split horizontally, stone strewn across the floor.

This temple must have belonged to these lost figures, their monuments as desecrated as the rest of the tower. Whoever the Seven was, the world has since forgotten.

You wonder if the Devourer did this, defiled this temple to erase whatever history of heroes came before its tyranny.

Ultimately, you only find six statues. None of them have managed to keep their heads, and some are in worse shape than others. You imagine the seventh might have been destroyed entirely. It’s easier to imagine how or why these things might be than it is to focus on how badly your body aches, how you started this venture with the morning sun barely upon you, and yet you barely feel any closer to your destination as the darkness of night encroaches.

Every limb screams for rest. You stop occasionally, but you feel you must not sleep. Was poor Nadja pitched to her death for sleeping through her trial? You’d rather not find out. You’re not even sure if you would wake with the same angry conviction that drives you forward now, climbing step after unforgiving step. It’s gotten colder the higher you’ve gone, too. There’s a chance if you slept amidst the stone, you would turn to it yourself.

“Grant me strength,” you whisper to whomever may be listening. Be they fae or devil, benevolent or malevolent, it would be a boon to know there was some manner of being on your side.

You lean on the wall far from the edge as you ascend the spiral, too nervous of a fall to look over the edge and gauge your progress. A brisk wind chill has begun howling through the tower, whipping your clothing about and biting at your skin. You hug one arm tightly across your chest, bracing against the cold. At this rate, you’ll make for a crunchy meal not just for your bones, but for the frost you arrive covered in.

Your foot slides on something on the step that shifts and clatters. You nearly fall, heart hammering in your chest as you manage to catch yourself. Looking down, you’re shocked to see a pile of shining gold coins spilling down the steps amongst the debris. There is enough wealth discarded on these steps to see a dozen families fed for years and years to come.

You must be getting close. Carefully, despite the tremble running through your body, you shuffle your way through the mess, kicking it aside when you need to clear more of a path. The sound of rubble and gold and the like falling off the edge of the steps makes you flinch, the prolonged clattering of it serving as a reminder of just how agonizingly high you’ve managed to climb.

The familiar flicker of fire light draws a gasp of relief from you, tears gathered in your eyes from the sheer pain of moving your body forward. You can see shadows dancing across the walls, beckoning you from the cold with the barest hint of a warm draft. You’re practically crawling up the steps now, every part of you aching horribly. The tremble in your body is so severe, you worry you would fall to your death if you continued trying to walk through the hoard of treasures that have spilled down the steps.

You practically sob with relief when you reach the final step, limbs quaking beneath you as you haul yourself up onto the top floor and away from the awful railless edge of the spiraling stairs. You bury your face in the fold of your arms. The mixture of relief and exhaustion is so intense, the rest of the world falls away briefly, and the only thing that matters is catching your breath while you all but dry heave on the floor.

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you were going to make it,” purrs a resonant, honied voice, snapping you immediately back to reality. You shoot into an upright position so suddenly your head spins, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear your blurry vision.

Before you rests an enormous circular hall lit with dozens upon dozens of torches. The walls are lined with beautiful arched windows, and the interior is piled nearly to the vaulted ceiling with obscene amounts of coin, weapons, artifacts and similar treasure. Your gaze drifts towards the center of it all, where the source of the voice awaits you.

As it turns out, The Devourer is no oversized earthworm.

Reclined upon a magnificently carved marble throne, you behold a creature made of equal parts man and beast. Even sitting, his stature easily brings him heads taller than you. He is adorned exquisitely in gold embellishments–jewelry and piercings alike–and rich navy slacks, serving as a fine centerpiece to the lavish, untidy wealth that surrounds him. He wears a crown fit for a king, the jewel of it a radiant blue that matches his sharp predatory gaze. His lips spread into a wolfish grin. You’re utterly bewitched by the flash of his fangs.

“Rise,” he orders you, gesturing with a clawed hand that’s easily the size of your head. His rings shine beautifully in the firelight. “And speak.”

Shakily, you fight to climb to your feet. Worm or not, this man–this creature has been preying upon your people for generations. You remind yourself of the countless lives lost, of the mourning families, of Nadja’s desecrated corpse and the sound of her father weeping over the rotten remains of her. You steel yourself. 

“You who the people know as Scourge of the Skies, Red Death,” you begin, blinking rapidly. Your head began swimming the second you stood. You’ve never been so worn out in your life, and though there are flames here that offer a slight degree of warmth, the cold has sunk deep into your bones. As you speak, your vision gradually begins to tunnel. “Flame’s… Maw… and the Devourer,” you address, fighting desperately to stay focused even as he fades in and out of clarity. “I’ve come to pay my village tribute, and to… to…”

The darkness at the edges of your vision thickens. Your words feel heavy and slurred on your tongue. You sway, feeling your own head slosh like a bucket of water, and before you know it, you’re pitching forward, and the world goes black.

That was anticlimactic.

There was a time he would have been met with awe. Reverence. He didn’t expect you to simply black out.

Scourge, Red Death, Flame’s Maw… Maw. He’s always despised that word in particular, and the ugly imagery it evokes. Just a handful out of hundreds of names he’s been called over the years–if you can call them that. Many border on insults, if not are so outright. The most tolerable name he can remember is Homelander.

They called him that in celebration, he recalls. Those were the last of the days he had any care left for them.

He blows a smoky little raspberry as he stands, hands clasping behind his back beneath his wings. His tail sways idly as he approaches, tentatively intrigued by your splayed form. It’s rare that a sacrifice makes it all the way to the top at all, let alone in a single day. The last one only made it halfway before she decided falling to her death was a kinder fate than him.

Truth be told, he should have reigned hell upon their little village for her insolence. Fortunately for them, her display filled him with far more apathy than it did fury. He crouches down near enough to touch, though he hesitates, hand ghosting just over your body. He tilts his head to the side. Your breaths are shallow in your sleep, a slight wheeze to each one. Your body is clearly overexerted.

Delicately, he slips his hand under your cheek to turn your face to him, examining your features. You’re prettier like this, the tension drained from your expression and replaced with peace. Certainly not the worst tribute he’s been offered. You were at least determined to reach him.

The corner of his mouth twitches.

He won’t kill you. Not yet.

Homelander lifts you up into his arms, supporting your comparatively slight form with ease. You feel as frail as any mortal might, but the weight of you in his arms strikes him with a peculiar sense of melancholy. He takes pause, more closely observing the shape of you cradled in his arms, head lolled against his chest. You fit there nicely, small as you are. He can almost pretend you’ve simply fallen asleep in the crook of his arm; somewhere you’ve always belonged.

It’s an intriguing little fantasy. He hasn’t felt the need to indulge in one of those in a long while. He keeps his eyes on you as he walks you to the collection of pelts gathered on the far side of the room, where he lays you down atop them.

What had you been intending to say before you passed out? Your departing words spin round and round in his mind while he looks you over, lowering himself until he’s on his hands and knees above you. Tributes used to come richly adorned in jewelry and glittering things, but such pageantry has long since vanished. He’s surrounded by enough of it that the absence doesn’t bother him anymore.

The glitter of gold hardly catches his eye these days. He doesn’t call for sacrifices to add to his wealth. He only seeks to quell his boredom. Perhaps you will prove useful for this, at least for a time.

Pressing his clawed thumb lightly to your chin, he tilts your head away and leans in, nosing up the line of your throat, lips barely ghosting your soft flesh. He inhales the salt-sweet smell of you, a mixture of sweat, the dusty stone steps you’ve scaled, and the sweet herbal oil bath your kind always receives before you’re sent to him. The blend is strangely intoxicating on you.

It makes him wonder if you taste as good as you smell. Parting his lips, his split tongue spills past them and drags a slow serpentine pattern from your neck to your jaw. Mmm, fuck. You taste better than you smell, the rich oil you were bathed in still clinging to your skin beneath the salty tang of your sweat.

It would be too easy to devour you. He groans quietly at the thought, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. He’s known few things more intimate than sinking his sharp teeth into warm, pliant flesh. The feel of a pulse slowing against his tongue. The metallic rush of blood down the back of his throat. He hasn’t craved human flesh the way he does right now in years, yet something in the scent of you has ignited that primal aspect of him. Salivating already, he swallows it away and draws back.

Not yet. He still wants to hear what you were going to say.

It makes him smile to see the goosebumps that have erupted on every inch of your exposed skin. He cocks his head to the side and trails his index claw down the center of your chest, dragging down the pretty white fabric of your sacrificial dress, stopping just shy of the swell of your breasts. More goosebumps there, too.

None of it compares to the sound that you make. In your sleep, your brows furrow, and you exhale a noise somewhere between pain and sheer exhaustion, your small hand brushing his as you adjust against the pile of plush fur pelts. His gaze drops sharply, hand lifting tentatively. After a beat, he sets it down lightly atop yours. Captivated, he watches your whole body respond to his touch, turning and curling in towards him like a flora bending to the light of the sun.

Fascinated by your innate reactivity to him, Homelander lowers himself onto his side next to you. After a beat of hesitation, he encircles your wrist with his thumb and index finger and brings your palm flat to the warmth of his bare chest. A tantalizing shiver rolls through your unconscious form. Just as he had anticipated–hoped?–you follow the feel of him, moving completely onto your side and into him, breathing out a shuddering little exhale while the fire that runs through his veins warms you.

It isn’t enough to stop you shivering, though. Shifting, he spreads out his wing and curls that over you, blocking the draft that spills in from the surrounding windows. Only then does the tension in your body begin to ease, warmth chasing out the chill from your bones.

Homelander smirks, feeling inexplicably accomplished over this mundane little feat. He’s never particularly cared for the comfort of his tributes before; they’ve never served as anything more than playthings and meals. You should be no different. He knows you would be a delectable thing on his tongue, warm and wet down his throat, yet the thought of you in pieces–cold and unmoving–instantly vanishes his appetite.

He wants you in a new way entirely. Against him, with him. He wants to taste more of you, drag his tongue along the plains of your body and see how else you’ll react to him. He wants to find the places that quicken your breath. Would you sing your pleasure for him? He’s barely heard your voice, but already he can imagine it vividly.

You would. You will.

He’s begun to pant at the thought alone, smoke wafting from his mouth, his eyes softly aglow with crimson light. The smell of you has filled his senses so thoroughly he feels intoxicated by it, and between his thighs, his cock has begun to throb. He leans closer and nestles into your hair, inhaling deeply, a rumble leaving him on a warm exhale.

His entire body has taken on the heavy pulse of his heart, alight with the most visceral feeling he’s had in centuries. This is more than hunger, more than carnality–you mean something. Never before has he felt compelled to find pleasure in the frail body of a human, yet his blood sings it voicelessly in the back of his mind, his every instinct screaming one word again and again and again.

Mate.

Homelander had given up on the concept of a mate a long time ago, given that he’s… abnormal. Sterile. As an unnatural creature, there could not be a natural match for him. Someone who would call to his very blood and set it aflame. Yet here you are, seeking him as desperately as he once sought you. Is that why you were able to accomplish what so few before you had, pushing your body so clearly beyond your limits?

A low, possessive rumble leaves him. Reckless.

He pets your hair, testing the texture with his fingers awhile before letting his hand roam down the back of your neck, between your shoulders, up over your hip, down your leg. You’re no longer cool to the touch or shivering. He flattens his palm to your back and closes his eyes briefly. He’s never heard of a dragon bonding to a human before. He wonders if you’ll feel it too, recognize it for what it is, or if your mortality will make you oblivious to the depths of it.

It takes every ounce of his restraint not to shake you awake to find out. 

Instead, he patiently learns the cadence of your heart. He commits your scent to memory, weeding out the natural musk of your skin beneath the herbs and oils you’ve been lathered in. Soon enough he’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd by the thump of your pulse alone, track you down from miles away with nothing but the barest whiff of you. 

Not that he’d ever let you get so far from him now that he has you.

All you’re missing now is his scent. Leaning down, he licks a line adjacent to the one he had prior, and then another, mindful of his horns. The sweet taste of you makes him moan. He spends hours with you tucked in against him, idling away the time by learning your body as well as teaching you his. He nuzzles his cheek lightly against yours just so that he can turn and taste that same spot, something deep and primal in him appeased by tasting himself on your skin. 

“My mate,” he half sighs, half growls. 

He can’t wait to meet you.

Consciousness comes back to you in a gradual slew of sensation. Your fingers twitch, flexing in what feels like a lush, thick pelt of fur beneath you. Your whole body is pleasantly warm, as if you’ve fallen asleep in front of a crackling hearth, the cold of those awful stone stairs a distant memory.

The stairs…

Your eyes snap wide open, your spine going stiff. You’re laying on your back. Something wet and hot is dragging along the exposed skin of your shoulder–your dress pulled askew–in repetitive swipes. Looking down, all you can see is a mess of flaxen colored hair and one long, angular horn, the tip of it adorned in gold. The press of what you can only imagine to be a tongue is unnaturally smooth, as hot as settled coal against your skin. The beast gives a growl, and sharp teeth graze your skin. Your throat feels tight, the scream that bubbles up locked behind the tension of your jaw.

Oh gods, you think, beginning to shake. He’s eating me! 

“Good morning,” purrs a familiar voice, the words vibrating against your skin. He lifts his head from your shoulder, though he doesn’t go far. You half expect to see his maw bloodied with your entrails from all the horror stories you’ve been told, but his grin is as clean as it was the first moment you beheld him. Up close, he’s even larger than you had initially realized. His face is well defined, with strong cheekbones decorated with smooth red scales that ascend into his hairline, where a golden crown sits neatly behind his horns. “Mmm, someone got their beauty sleep,” he says, the words a low, pleased rumble. You’re speechless, watching in bewilderment as he cups your face, hand so large it covers most of your neck, too. “You were out for hours.”

Your eyes dart to your shoulder, where your dress has been tugged down, but your skin appears unmarred. Around you, one of his enormous wings is curved over, shielding you both from the light and the cold beyond. You can’t move your legs, and with a glance, you understand why: his enormous tail is draped across both of them, pinning you in place. You look back at him, eyes wide in fear and confusion. You wonder if he’s been with you like this through the entire night. “You’re… You’re not eating me?”

The broad smile he flashes makes your heart skip a beat. His eyes, though sharp and a shade of blue you’ve only ever seen in the sky, are disarmingly human. Beautiful, even. They crinkle at the corners with what almost looks like fondness.

“No.”

“Why not?” You ask instantly, adrenaline making your voice sharp. “Not that I wish for you to eat me,” you say just as quickly. “But do you not–were you not–” He cuts you off with a noise that you belatedly realize is a laugh, the resonance in his chest so unearthly it gives every sound he makes an inhuman quality. “No, I was not eating you,” he says, sounding far too amused for your liking. “Tasting you, yes. And you do taste divine,” he says, leaning in again. You push your head back into the furs as much as you can, but he moves to the side, bringing his lips to your ear. “I knew my mate would.” Mate?!

Your hands fly up to his chest–gods, he’s as warm as hearth stones–as if to push him back, but you may as well attempt to push an oak tree aside. “What?”

He draws back, glancing down at your hands pressed to the bare skin of his chest before his gaze returns to yours, eyes narrowed in distinct pleasure. “Mate,” he says again, deliberately drawing the word out. “Dragons bond only once in a lifetime. Usually to another dragon. Clearly exceptions can be made, and you, precious little thing that you are… appear to be mine.”

His eyes fall shut, he leans in, and with a lurch of your stomach you realize he means to kiss you, his lips pursed and rapidly approaching. Your own lips part and a noise wholly outside of your control escapes you; a scream so shrill and sudden that it knocks even him back in surprise. 

Blinking several times, he gives you a quick once over, visibly expecting to see you wounded and bloody somewhere. He looks back to your face when he finds nothing amiss. “What?”

“I can’t–I don’t know you,” you blurt out, equal parts flustered and alarmed. You can feel yourself burning up, and it isn’t just from the heat of him against you.

“So?” He dismisses, smiling with an array of sharp pearly teeth. “I’m your mate.”

“Humans don’t have those,” you counter, squirming under the weight of his tail. It’s like he’s draped several sacks of grain across your legs. “My lord Devourer, I–”

He scoffs, tail lifting as he shifts, bringing himself up onto his hands and knees over you, his wing unfurling and allowing the sun to spill in, washing you both in its light. “Homelander. If you must use one of those silly names, use Homelander. I’d prefer beloved, though,” he says with a sly lilt to his mouth.

A shiver rolls down your spine. Along with light, brisk morning air has slipped in between your bodies. 

“Homelander,” you repeat, a name you’ve never heard before. It’s a great deal less menacing than the others, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has been eating your townsman for as long as anyone can remember. “I–”

He takes hold of your jaw with just his index finger and thumb, the rest of his fingers curling lightly over your throat. “You talk too much,” he tells you, eyes hooded and hungry. “Are you going to scream every time I try to kiss you?”

“Maybe,” you choke out, fists clenched tightly in the furs beneath you. He leans closer, tilting his head, his nose barely brushing the tip of yours. “I’ve never been kissed by a dragon before. Like I said, we don’t have m-mmm!”

It happens so swiftly you don’t have time to gather the air to scream. He presses his lips firmly to yours, making a noise so close to a moan that, despite the relative chasteness of the kiss itself, you flush with the indecency of it. It feels… hot. The heat of him is nearly too much to handle, like touching your lips to a hot mug of tea, but there is something intoxicating about it. He uses that heat to mold you to him, pulling you closer, his body sinking down against yours.

You’re too dumbstruck by the whole of the situation to struggle–not that it would accomplish much–which leaves you to simply experience it. His lips are tentative against yours, not harsh or demanding. He coaxes yours with his as if to dance, luring you into something that almost feels good.

Your heart hammers in your chest, his warmth pooling in your belly and spreading slowly through the rest of your body like boiled water poured into a lukewarm tub. He’s immovable, inescapable, and to your dismay, not entirely awful.

 “I want to claim you,” he all but growls against your lips, his other hand clawing slowly down your side, tugging at your dress. 

Your heart leaps painfully against your ribs. “Homelander,” you say, though he’s hardly paying you any mind, kissing your cheek now, your jaw, carving a wicked trail with his lips while his hand dips lower and lower, seeking the bottom hem of your dress. Heart racing, you breathlessly cry, “Beloved!”

That gives him pause. He rears back to look down at you, head slightly cocked, eyes bright and attentive. Your breaths are shallow, pulse pounding in your throat. You swallow dryly. “I’m thirsty,” you tell him, which is no lie. Your throat is so dry it almost hurts to speak. “Horribly. And hungry, I’ve not eaten since yesterday’s breakfast. You mean for me to survive, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he says, expression twisting like he finds offense in your words. “You’ll want for nothing.”

“Then please. Water?” You push, praying that he is more man than beast.

He regards you quietly, eyes subtly darting back and forth. There’s a petulant kind of impatience to his gaze that catches you off-guard, like a boy who’s been told he has to wait before he gets to play with his new favorite toy. “Water,” he echoes eventually. You nod. He startles you when he exhales a little plume of smoke from his nose, reluctantly lifting himself off of you. The chill of his absence is immediate. “Don’t move,” he says, suddenly looking displaced. You’ve caught him by surprise. Perhaps you’ll survive this yet.

You watch him rise to his full height, standing easily eight feet tall. You sit up, pulling the furs over your legs to combat the cold seeping in. The muscles of his back give a mesmerizing flex as he stretches his wings out, the span of them just as jaw-dropping as his height. He wears furs over his shoulders held in place with thick leather straps that cross over his back and chest, emphasizing his musculature as well as the crimson plating that covers his body. Spines run down the length of his back, transitioning down into a tail that’s even longer than he is tall. It moves along the ground in zigzags, almost like a serpent. You don’t realize how intensely you’re staring until you look back up and realize he’s looking at you over his shoulder, those piercing blue eyes keenly set on yours.

The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smirk. Something about his expression makes you feel like you’ve been caught doing something naughty. You drop your gaze. “Back in a jiffy,” he says. You look up just in time to see him step off the ledge, those brilliant red wings fanning out behind him. He disappears so suddenly that you can’t help but gasp, sitting up on your knees. You hear the beat of wings against the air, and then a second later see him lift back up into the skyline, twisting in the air before gliding back down out of sight. 

You sit in stunned silence, listening to the fading thrum of his wings. It doesn’t feel real. You don’t know if this is some kind of twisted game he pulls with every sacrifice, or if you’re truly somehow different. You weren’t entirely expecting him to listen to you, but he did. He’s gone, presumably to fetch you food and water. You don’t know how, but you just commanded the Devourer to not only let you go, but bring you a meal.

In hindsight, you’re a little concerned that it was never specified what kind of meal. As far as you’re aware, he primarily eats people.

Adjusting your gown, you haul yourself up to your feet, crossing your arms in a vain attempt to protect the heat of his body lingering on your skin. When that doesn’t work, you pick up one of the several fur pelts strewn on the floor and drape it over your shoulders, sighing in relief. The pelt still holds some residual warmth; a boon over the lovely but ineffective fabric of your ceremonial gown.

In the light of day, you can make out a great deal more detail throughout the lair. The floor to ceiling archways deter you from venturing too far beyond the center, but still there is plenty to investigate. For example, the throne catches your eye immediately. The size of it makes you feel like a child again, navigating a world not built for you. The masonry of it is exceptionally smooth beneath your fingers, save for a handful of deep, jagged gouges that marr the arm rest. Tilting your head, you realize that you recognize these marks: they match those that you’d seen on the ruined murals.

You trace them with your fingers, connecting them now to the draconic claws that, just moments ago, had so delicately followed the curve of your body. He could so easily tear you apart, and yet in that moment you had never known a gentler touch. You pull your hand back beneath the pelt, feeling a shiver roll through you that has little to do with the morning chill.

Mate. That word sticks in your brain like a wad of gummy tree sap.

Circling the throne, you carefully step around the glimmering mess of gold, silver and jewels that litter the stone floor. There’s so much of it that it doesn’t even look real, stacked over itself like forgotten hay bales left to rot. There is more wealth here than you’ve seen in your life. A single satchel of it would keep you comfortable for the rest of your life, and yet here it serves as little more than clutter. As far as you can tell, it means nothing here.

The Devourer stopped seeking material treasure generations ago.

As you explore, part of you expects to find the corpses of all those who have come before you. Dozens upon dozens of bodies stacked up in varying states of consumption or decay, or maybe a monument built of their bones. You find no such construct, though. In fact, nothing about this place seems put together. You can’t imagine the madness that living like this for a week would induce in you, let alone decades.

To the east, movement catches your attention, startling your heart into your throat. It looks like a silhouetted figure at first, but your brain catches up quickly, and you approach the gently billowing fabric. It’s draped over a statue, giving it the illusion of a person, and your curiosity gets the best of you as you tug the drape down off of it.

You suck in a sharp breath. Once again, you find yourself faced with a legend given form– a painstakingly and intricately carved statue in the Devourer’s perfect likeness. It comes as no surprise that this is the only in-tact statue you’ve seen, but what you don’t understand is why it’s even here. If the Devourer was a usurper, some vicious interloper, why would there be a monument to him in the same vein as all the others?

The plaque beneath it reads: Homelander. Son of the Skies, Protector of the Earth.

Devourer, Scourge, Flame’s Maw–these names are all you have ever known, and yet this is the name carved in stone. He was once worshiped not out of fear, but reverence that you can see in every gentle curve of stone.

What happened?

Shuffling closer to the statue, the discarded fabric gathers at your feet. It’s not quite to scale, but it’s a handsome likeness nonetheless. It’s certainly been cared for more than anything else in this place. You wonder if it’s just vanity or if it’s something less obvious. You trace the smooth stonework, letting yourself get a better look at this version of him that’s less likely to eat you.

Objectively speaking, it’s a handsome visage. The resemblance is uncanny, clearly the work of an intensely skilled mason. His jaw is strong, eyes set forward in unerring determination. Tentatively, you touch the lips of the statue. He’d been so certain that he wanted to kiss you. Just the thought of his closeness and heat makes your stomach erupt in a flutter of butterflies.

Mate.

“I thought I told you not to move.”

You barely hear the full sentence, your own scream ringing loudly in your ears. You move to spin around, but your foot catches on the pile of fabric you had dropped to the ground and suddenly your whole body is pitching backwards, the back of your skull destined for the smooth, unyielding stone behind you. Fortunately for your brain matter, your descent is halted just shy of contact, one familiar clawed hand cupping the back of your neck while the other lands at your back, steadying you.

Homelander stands over you, a curious quirk to his brow. With his hand at the small of your back, his claws press lightly through the fabric, effortlessly upholding your weight. He holds you as if you’ve been caught mid dip in a dance.

“Gods, you scared me,” you say, eyes wide. “I didn’t hear you.” You had been so certain you would hear his return based on the sound of his wings when he’d left, but his approach had been terrifyingly silent.

“Yes, I know. It makes me a very effective hunter,” he says, dipping down to nuzzle at your neck, taking advantage of how the pelt has slipped off of your shoulder. He inhales the smell of you, prickling goosebumps all over your body. “I missed you.”

“You’ve barely been gone,” you reply impulsively, awkwardly trying to adjust yourself out of this arch he has you in. No use. His size makes him impossible to maneuver around, and your foot is still tangled up in the fabric that he’s currently standing on.

He gives another one of those rumbling sighs, drawing back to look at you. “You’re supposed to say that you missed me, too,” he chastises you, and though his tone seems light, you’re sure you see a flicker of impatience or irritation in his gaze. Maybe both. Despite how fearsome the sum total of his features make him, you’re once again caught off guard by his eyes. Though the color of them is icy, there’s a distinctly human warmth to them that grounds you in his gaze.

Still, the last thing you want to do is make him angry.

“Oh,” you croak quietly, realizing he’s actually waiting for you to say it, staring down expectantly while he holds you. “I… missed you, too,” you return stiltedly, unsure your hesitant delivery will be satisfactory. Shockingly, his expression lightens, lips curving into a smile. He lifts you off of your feet, untangling you from the mess beneath you and turning around to set you back down on relatively clear flooring. 

“Good,” he purrs, stroking his hand down the back of your head like he’s petting an animal. He seems determined to touch you, but entirely unaware of how to. He cups the base of your skull and tightens the gap between your bodies, enticing you with his warmth as much as he terrifies you with the hunger in his eyes.

You put your hands to his chest, soaking up the heat of him as you vainly try to maintain an ounce of personal space. “Ah, the–the statue, it’s beautiful. Why do you cover it up?” You ask, the words leaving you in a flustered tumble.

He pauses, glancing over his shoulder, looking at the statue like he’s only just remembered it exists. “Oh, that. Mmm. Don’t always like what he has to say,” he replies, fitting his hand over top of yours, pressing it to his chest. You blink. What in the world does that mean? “You humans chill so quickly. I’ll have to light the hearth next time I leave you,” he says, earning a yelp from you as he abruptly lifts you up into his arms, tail slithering audibly along the floor as he carries you back to what you suppose for all intents and purposes is his nest. His touch instantly warms you to your core, making the fur you wrapped yourself in seem like a thin sheet in comparison. Despite your apprehension, you can’t help the way the tension in your body naturally eases with his warmth. Upon returning to the collection of pelts, you see the fruits of his labor.

Literal fruits, in fact.

Homelander has returned with a small bounty consisting of apples, two melons, and even a handful of peaches, all of it held in a beautiful–albeit aged–woven basket. You don’t get the chance to eat those often; the trees they fall from grow high on the surrounding mountains, and the farmers in your village are content enough with the established agriculture that no one bothers to grow them.

In addition, a tall golden pitcher stands filled to the brim with water. You’re once again hyper aware of just how incredibly thirsty you are, lips dry, throat parched. It’s the only thing you care about, clambering towards it the second Homelander sets you back on your feet.

The pitcher is heavy. It appears made of solid gold and it’s three times the size of any you’ve ever seen before. You don’t lift it so much as you just tip it back slightly, sighing loudly as you drink back the crisp, clear water.  You sputter as the flow abruptly increases, water spilling from the corners of your mouth. Homelander has lifted the pitcher to help you drink, holding it one handed as if it’s no more than a drinking cup, his other hand settled upon your waist. He looks thoroughly pleased with himself, eyes half-lidded, lips gently curved upwards. Once you’ve drunk your fill, you push against his hold and he relents quickly, unnerving you with just how attentive he really is. He sets the pitcher back down and watches you wipe your chin dry.

“Thank the gods,” you sigh habitually, finally not feeling as though there’s grit in your throat with every word.

“I’d prefer you thanked me,” he says coyly, his gaze drifting down to where the water has wet your gown. The fabric clings to your skin, sheer where liquid has touched it.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Thank you, Homelander,” you correct. It’s taking every ounce of your fortitude to speak in full sentences with the way he’s staring at you, let alone the idle way his thumb is stroking your hip. No one has ever touched you with this mixture of ease and clear intent, the weight of his hand practically thrumming against you. The magnitude of him is a difficult thing to parse both in terms of his sheer size and the legend he represents. You don’t know how to reconcile him with the monster you grew up dreading.

No one warned you that monsters could be warm and handle you gently.

“Time to eat,” he says, setting the pitcher back down. He takes hold of both of your hips and pulls you down with him as he sits cross-legged on the pelts, the circle of his legs large enough that you fit perfectly inside it, your own legs hanging out over his crossed calves. His tail loops around as well, encircling him and draping over your legs. The underside of his tail is not unlike the belly of a snake, with large overlapping scales that layer down the length of it. It’s just as warm as the rest of him, and feels like an unnaturally soft stone that’s been baking in the sun.

Reaching over, Homelander plucks one of the peaches from the assortment. It looked perfectly average in the basket, but between his fingers it looks almost comically small. With a deftness that you wouldn’t expect from a creature of his size, he begins to slice through the peach with his blackened claws, delicately cutting out a wedge that he does not hand you, but he instead brings it directly to your lips. 

You stare for a moment, struck by the rich red center of the fruit, how the juice of it drips onto his hand in sweet smelling rivulets. You turn to look at him over your shoulder, and he quirks a brow, nodding towards the slice of fruit. You decide that of all the potential battles you have in front of you, this one in particular isn’t worth fighting, and you part your lips, watching him as you do.

His own lips mimic yours, falling apart in quiet entrancement. He slides the wedge between your teeth and watches with rapt fascination as you bite down on it, holding his gaze in an exchange that feels so unexpectedly raw and intimate, your pulse ticks up a notch. You swear he notices it by the way his head tilts ever so slightly, almost as if he’s listening.

“Good?” He asks, voice little more than a rumble.

Gods above and below, it is good. Despite the preternatural heat of his hand, the succulent flesh of the peach retains the morning chill, sweet and cool on your tongue. It’s perfectly ripe, yielding easily to the cut of your teeth and flooding richly across your tongue as you chew. He feeds it to you until it disappears, pressing the last of it in with his thumb, which then follows the line of your bottom lip, smearing the sweet juice on it. You nod and lick your lips, tongue narrowly missing his thumb, and what that does to his expression makes your stomach flip. 

He’s quick to cut another slice to offer you. You repeat this process in silence, the air thick with tension that feels so palpable you’re sure you could swim through it. The sounds of the world have narrowed entirely to the sound of his claw cutting through the delicate flesh of the fruit and the tip lightly scraping the pit inside it. His hands have a sticky shine to them by the time he’s tossing the pit back into the basket, stripped as clean as a bone. 

You chew your final bite, jaw slowing as you watch him take his fingers into his own mouth. He’s unabashed in the way he slurps the nectar off his digits, tongue slipping between them. That’s when you realize that his tongue splits down the middle, dexterously sliding over his fingers to lap up every drop of juice. Not only that, but you spot a flash of gold; the same kind of piercing he has on his ears. Watching him stirs something hot in you, a radiating heat that lights a flickering pulse between your thighs. You audibly gulp the last of your bite, tensing subtly when Homelander looks at you.

Slowly, his lips curl into a devious smile. “See something you like?”

You flush, fighting the urge to look away. Don’t play into it. Change the subject. “What happened to your last mate?”

His expression shifts to something slightly more incredulous. “There wasn’t one. You’re my first, my last, my only. Dragons only bond once,” he says, that split tongue rolling along his sharp teeth, that gold tongue piercing clicking against them. You wonder where else he’s decorated himself with gold.

Wait, what did he say? Your gaze snaps back up from his mouth to his eyes, which are once more set into that self-satisfied slant. He’s closer to you now, and nearing by the second.

My first, my last, my only.

“But I am no dragon,” you say, leaning away subtly, though there isn’t far to go. He’s got you trapped nicely in place, like a butterfly beneath pins. “How could such a bond form?”

“I’m as mystified as you are,” he says, his hand sliding up the small of your back. “I didn’t think a bond was even possible for me. Apparently there’s something different about you,” he says, and you notice a brief twitch of his lip, a flicker that looks just a touch like disdain. It disappears as quickly as it had appeared. “Something special,” he murmurs, close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath on your cheek. 

Your heart races, your capacity for thought slowly disappearing the closer to you he gets. New subject, new subject! You think, frazzled by the warm spiced smell of him. His hand flexes on your hip, claws prickling your skin through your dress. “Aren’t you hungry?” You ask, eyes darting to the basket full of fruit just to his side.

“Yeah,” he rasps, voice so low you feel it reverberate. His nose brushes your cheek, trailing down from your jaw to your neck. You shiver, and the pulse between your thighs grows into a steady throb. He inhales deeply. “I’m famished.”

The world around you spins and the next thing you know, you’re on your back staring up at the aged banners draped along the stone ceiling, the fur pelts warm and plush beneath you. Homelander pins your arms down at your sides, once more poised on his hands and knees over you. His tongue draws a wet molten line from the collar of your dress to your throat, and you let out a soft, nervous cry as his teeth graze your skin.

Perhaps he’s going to devour you after all. 

Oh gods! Gods, gods, gods, please no!

“Wait, wait! Don’t–please don’t eat me,” you plead in a panic, pushing up against his hands with all of your might. He doesn’t yield at all. You may as well be pushing against the stone walls of the tower itself.

He does laugh, however. It’s that same rumble of amusement that travels through your skin and into the core of you. “For the last time, I’m not eating you. I can smell your arousal, though. Practically taste it in the fucking air,” he says, trailing lower down your chest with every word, brazenly nuzzling the space between your breasts before continuing down. A wave of humiliation rolls through you at his words, and you look away. He releases your arms in favor of sliding his hands up your bare legs, pushing your dress up with them. “I’m just going to have a little lick.”

Frantically, you try to grab at him as soon as your hands are free. “Hold on, stop–”

“Enough!” He snarls suddenly, startling you quiet. You swear for just a moment that his eyes flash crimson. You clutch your hands to your chest. “You’ll not be harmed. Understand? Just… let me,” he says tersely, gaze hard before gradually softening as you silence yourself, watching him with wide, uncertain eyes. Satisfied, he lowers back down.

His sharp claws kiss harmless welts all the way up your legs, up to your hips, where he catches the band of your undergarments. He hooks his fingers over the waistband and drags them down, seeming to enjoy the way you pant and writhe under him, your heart racing.

“Have mercy,” you slip in quietly, squirming beneath the hot press of his hands, though you’re no longer struggling against him. “I’ve never–no one’s ever–I’m inexperienced,” you desperately explain, your mind running wild with what his size will mean for you if he decides he wants more than to taste you–to claim you, as he’d said before.

“Good,” he replies simply, pushing your knees up into a bend on either side of his head. “As you should be. As am I,” he says, turning his head to drag his split tongue in swirling patterns on your inner thigh, moaning at the taste of you.

You grip the pelts beneath you, brows furrowing. You stare down at the top of his head in confusion. “You are?”

“I told you. I’ve never had a mate. I’ve never felt the need to put my cock into what I intended to eat,” he says against your skin, erupting goosebumps all over your thighs. That should horrify you, but you’re instantly distracted by the sheer burning heat of his breath wafting over your wet cunt, a gasp slipping from your lips when he eagerly presses his tongue to it.

His tongue feels as smooth as glass, like liquid in the way it contours to your every curve. The split of it rubs on either side of your clit, massaging it between the two sides in a way that makes your knees shake. “Ffffuck,” he groans, immediately pushing his tongue into you, licking up the wetness of you twice as eagerly as he had that ripe peach.

You buck against him, a moan escaping you. The sound only encourages him to plunge his tongue deeper, that golden stud on his tongue brushing hotly against your inner walls. He drags it up and pushes it flush, half inside you and half grinding against your clit before pushing back in deep. It feels unlike anything you’ve ever known, so much better than your own curious, clumsy fingers. He laves attention on you like he’s starved for it, drinking just as thirstily as you had from the pitcher.

There’s no rhythm to the way he moves, no sense of consistency. He slips his hands under your ass and tugs you forward with ease, lifting you to push his thick split tongue even further inside you, plunging it in and out, growing greedier with every dive. He growls low in the back of his throat, tail thudding repeatedly against the floor. Instead of the little lick he claimed he was after, he’s working himself into an obvious frenzy feasting on you.

“H-Homelander, please,” you keen, his relentlessness rapidly building an unfamiliar pressure within you. He’s as sloppy as he is voracious, the wet sound of him obscene and loud in the enormous lair. His claws bite into your ass where he holds it firmly to his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to hear you. If he does, he’s taking it only as encouragement. 

His tongue touches something inside you that makes your whole body jolt. You grab hold of both of his horns, your back arching as you desperately cling to them. You’re certain you meant to shove him back, to struggle. Instead, your body is ablaze as you yank hard on his horns, hitching your leg over his shoulder and riding his tongue with a shaking gasp.

The pressure bursts, and the wave of euphoria that crashes down on you is unlike anything you’ve ever known. You convulse against his mouth, walls tightening around the intrusion. You don’t recognize your own voice in the sounds you make as he continues to ruthlessly fuck you soaked and open with his tongue, his breaths so hot they nearly burn. The waves of your climax feel like they’ll never end, spurred on by every deep, wet thrust.

“Homelander! It’s too much, Homelander, too much, please, please–beloved, please, I can’t, I can’t,” you beg, desperate to get his attention. You’re on the verge of sobs when he finally withdraws his long molten tongue from you. You suck in a shuddering breath, releasing his horns and collapsing back against the pelts, sweat prickling along your hairline.

However, your shallow breaths are nothing compared to the sound of Homelander’s ragged panting. He looks entirely wild, smoke billowing from his mouth and nose, his cheeks flushed a dark red, the lower half of his face shiny with a mixture of your slick and his own drool. He takes his hands from under you and yanks the sash around his waist loose, dropping it to the side. Reaching behind him, he unfastens his pants.

Your mind is still a haze, but even through the delirium, you’re shocked by what you see when that rich navy fabric falls from his waist: his cock is as large as the rest of him, thick and dripping. The underside of it is strangely ribbed, a feature you’re certain is to be attributed to his draconic nature. Not only that, but he’s adorned in gold here, too, with a ring pierced into the head of his cock and studs between each ridge. Your eyes widen.

It’ll never fit.

Nevertheless, he looks entirely undeterred. Homelander adjusts himself between your legs, eyes thoroughly glazed over with lust, and presses his nearly scalding palms to your inner thighs, pushing them into a wide spread and down to the ground. Arousal and fear lance through you like a twin bolt of lightning.

“H-hold on,” you stutter, lifting a trembling hand. “I–” Bending over you, he silences you with a firm kiss. You press your hands to his chest and feel it thrumming beneath your palms, the heat of him more intense than ever. You can’t help but moan softly into it, overtaken by the smell of sex and something akin to burning incense. His tongue slips as deftly into your mouth as it did your cunt. Even after having felt it inside you, it’s thicker in your mouth than you’re prepared for, sliding in deeper, like he means to fuck you with it here, too.

It wholly distracts you until you feel a heavy, blunt press to your wet cunt. You make a half-hearted noise of protest, but his only answer is a low rumbling growl, claws biting into the meat of your thighs as he holds you still, effectively gagging you on his tongue.

His cock is as hot as the rest of him, but a great deal more solid than his malleable tongue. The thickness of it slowly spreads you wide, an aching pressure. You’re not sure if the burn of it is from the stretch or the heat, but either way it’s driving you insane. It’s hot and painful and good, frictionless with how thoroughly he soaked you, and despite your nerves, your cunt is loose with orgasm. It’s as if your body, independent of your mind, is eager to welcome him in.

You make a keening noise, the sound of it muffled in this devouring kiss. You grab hold of the leather straps across his chest and yank on them, twisting at them, but nothing takes your mind from how intense it feels to be split apart on the fat head of his cock.

The sounds Homelander makes in response are downright bestial, low and rumbling from his chest. Your only relief is when the widest swell of his cockhead finally breaches you, just the tip of it settling perfectly inside you. You cry out when he gives an exploratory backwards pull, and then shivers as he begins to rock gently, breathing heavily from his nose as he fucks you with nothing more than the head of his cock.

You’re starting to feel lightheaded, pitchy little noises leaving you with every exhale. Homelander sharpens his pace, breaking the kiss with a loud, carnal moan as he tips his head back. He’s barely even inside you and yet the girth of him is overwhelming, the ridges of his cock stimulating you in ways you didn’t know possible, the fat curved head rubbing against that same spot inside you that his tongue had previously made you see stars with.

Thoroughly overwhelmed by the incomprehensible assault of sensations, tears gather in your eyes. That pressure is building back up in you once more, starting at the base of your spine and slowly crawling up it. Desperate to tether yourself, to feel connected, you move your hand from the strap at his chest and touch his face. To your surprise, that instantly snaps his attention down to you, his beautiful blue eyes lost in a crimson glow.

Homelander meets your gaze, some level of cognizance returning to him, and whimpers, something hidden and vulnerable escaping in that exchange. He bends down, his nose brushing yours, and rests his forehead against yours while his thrusts grow more and more erratic, but never deeper. He fucks you in shallow, jagged snaps until finally that mounting pressure overwhelms you and you come again, simultaneously squeezing him into his own sudden release. 

The flood of him inside you is burning hot, spilling into your core even from here, and he practically roars with it, burying that loud primal cry into the crook of your neck while his body stills, releasing pulse after pulse of thick, hot seed into you.

His breath billows hotly across your neck, the burning scent of him thick in the air. Your mind is so addled by your own euphoria that it takes you time to realize he’s speaking, fervent murmurings against your skin. “M’sorry, still, be still, I’m–don’t move,” he rasps, fractured little noises leaving him in between his words. You choke on your own breath when he sinks in, working you open slowly, shivers pitching up and down your spine. Gods above, he isn’t done.

Surely he doesn’t mean for you to take all of it… Does he?

You moan weakly, pushing your hand up into his hair and grabbing hold, which elicits a rumbling sigh from him in return. It’s silkier than you expected it to be. “Too big, it’s too much, it’s not–it’s not going to fit,” you pant out, screwing your eyes shut tight. While his release had initially softened him some, you can already feel his cock filling back out. Every bit he slips in further, you feel the mess of his release being forced out of you, come dripping down your thighs, slicking the way for the rest of him.

“It will,” he says at your ear, kissing the spot just below your earlobe, then your neck, his tongue slipping out to taste the sweat there before he kisses that same spot. He’s set upon you like an animal, lost to the drive of instinct, determined to fulfill his promise to claim what is his. “It will because it must. Because it’s yours. Because you’re mine.”

Homelander releases a breathy whine, sounding just as overstimulated as you are, nuzzling at your throat while he slowly works his way deeper, practically vibrating with restraint. He sounds as overwhelmed as you feel, but he refuses to stop, to lose. He holds you in place, growling whenever you squirm or struggle against him. The feel of it is dizzying, unbelievably hot and heavy, like fire given form, filling you in ways you didn’t know were possible. You’re feeling it again, the slow rise of that carnal pleasure building to an inevitable climax, and your whole body trembles with it.

You make a desperate keening noise, and Homelander hushes you, kissing your shoulder. “Sshhh, good, you’re doing so well for me. Don’t move yet, it’s almost over. You were made for this, for me. You feel it, don’t you? How easily your cunt opens to me. Nnngh, hah… Fuck, you fit me. You fit me. You do, and you always will,” he pants, voice hitching.

He slides his hands from your thighs to your waist, the press of his claws just shy of painful. With one final move, he lets out a quaking moan as he pulls you down onto the last of it, finally burying himself completely in your snug, come-soaked cunt. 

The fullness of it breaks you–snapping the last tether that was holding you in place–and you come again, your velvety walls seizing up around him impossibly tight before spasming your pleasure around every vein, ridge and piercing he has. You can feel the shape of him so viscerally that you’re sure your body will remember it, carved out in the shape of his cock forevermore.

He cries out with your release, a reverberating sound that you feel all the way down to the marrow of your bones. You don’t know if he’s more in pleasure or pain, but he makes no move to retreat. Instead, he brings you that tiny bit closer, pressing every inch of your body to his. He rides out your pleasure, panting a wet spot into the crook of your neck.

Tears roll from your eyes to your temple, disappearing into your hairline as you breathe roughly. You’re overwhelmingly hot, oversensitized and raw, but as the aftershocks of your orgasm fade, your body steadily loses that quiver. You feel as if you’re melting down into the furs, struggling to even keep your eyes open as a gentle ecstasy sweeps over you.

Once he recovers enough, he lifts himself up onto his hands, and then sits  back onto his legs, his hands on your hips to lift you partially into his lap to keep himself buried deep, hitching your legs around his waist. His eyes are completely glazed over, lips parted around heavy, hungry breaths. He doesn’t look at all sated. If anything, the look of his desire has only intensified, despite his obvious sensitivity. Sliding his hands up your body, he pushes your pretty white dress all the way up over your head, tossing it to the side so that he may finally see all of you.

“Look at you,” he breathes, voice utterly frayed. He stares at you as though you’re a vision sent from the gods, a nymph plucked from the heavens and nestled snugly upon his cock. His hand sweeps down your stomach, settling low on it, where he lightly presses down. You both moan with the pressure, with how keenly you both feel it. “Told you it would fit,” he says, but his voice is not smug. There’s a breathless wonder to it, like he’s awestruck by the look of your body against his.

His tongue rolls out to sweep along his lips. He opens his mouth, and you can see threads of saliva snapping between his sharp teeth, his mouth wet with hunger. He continues to reverently stroke your stomach, his large splayed hand easily covering the expanse of it. “You’ll make a beautiful mother,” he says, a concept you don’t even know how to begin to unravel, but the way he says it makes you feel worshiped. “Perfect. So fucking perfect for me,” he says, a shudder in his voice. His crimson wings spread and curve in on either side of you, the hooked tips of them bracing on the stone floor.

“Mother?” You slur belatedly. You feel dizzy, your body as warm as burning coals and tingling all over. He lifts your legs one at a time, bringing each one up parallel to his chest. They hook over his shoulders as he leans forward, wasting no before time kissing you. His wings support his weight while he grips your thighs, squeezing possessively.

“Mother,” he confirms between kisses, bending you practically in half as he begins to rut against you. He’s not thrusting so much as he’s grinding into you, wringing a low moan from you. “You want that, don’t you? I’ll keep you safe. Feed you. Fuck you. I’ll take care of you, be yours, and you’ll be mine, won’t you? Sweet little thing, fucked happy and heavy with my children. Tell me. Tell me you want that.”

“Yes,” you moan, kneading the furs on either side of you. He paints a beautiful picture in your mind of fresh fruit, crisp water, and this dreamlike pleasure for the rest of your days. Beneath him, any thoughts of the world outside this moment melt away. There’s only the two of you, resplendently warm and living amongst the clouds. “I want it. I want–I want you,” you say, touching either side of his face. He leans heavily into your touch, his eyes falling shut. A soft noise that sounds like relief escapes him as you kiss him, coaxing that long, clever tongue out to meet yours.

The eagerness with which he reciprocates nearly chokes you, his tongue slipping over yours and halfway down your throat before pulling back, practically devouring you in this kiss. In your fever, this consuming passion feels so much like love it makes your head spin, makes you forget where, when and who you are.  He breaks the kiss to moan unabashedly,  shifting to put his lips to your throat, mouthing at your skin like he’s trying desperately not to sink his teeth in. The thought thrills you. You almost want him to.

“Again,” he pants, grip tightening on your thighs. “Say it again, please.”

“I want you,” you say again, more certain now. The desperation in him is disarming, and despite the animalism of him, you can clearly see the man in him now, hear it in the way he pleads for you to indulge him. That and the euphoric spill of pleasure electrifying your every nerve imbues you with some kind of sense of power, and however misplaced it may be, you immediately feel drunk on it. You can feel your body beginning to build back towards that ultimate swell of euphoria again. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine.”

He groans, dipping lower to suck a mark at the junction between your neck and shoulder. This time, when you feel the brush of his teeth, you don’t shy away. You cup the back of his head and drag your nails down his scalp. Homelander thrusts his hips jaggedly, wringing a throaty gasp out of you. “Keep talking,” he demands, but you hear the plea for what it is.

“You feel good. Y-you fit,” you say, echoing his own words, though it’s getting harder to speak with the way he’s starting to fuck you in earnest, just barely withdrawing before he drives back in, as if he can’t bare to be more than an inch outside of you.  You moan for him, chasing the bliss swelling rapidly between your legs.

Wait… Something really is swelling.

“What is that?” You ask, voice reedy. You whimper. Somehow, it feels as though he’s getting bigger. “What’s h-nnngh, what’s happening?” Your words are starting to slur together again, your mind split down the middle between your mounting orgasm, and the surreal feeling of the base of his cock growing inside you.

“Knot,” he explains between swipes of his tongue. “Keeps every drop of me inside you,” he says, giving a shuddering moan as that swell catches on the rim of your cunt when he tries to draw back. Just when you thought you had adjusted, that swell makes you ache, has you whimpering and squirming under him.

He could have told you it would get bigger!

“Oh gods, it–mmm, I’m–it feels–” You stop and start again and again, writhing, but he keeps you firmly in place, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh loud in your ears as he fucks you harder and faster, spurred on by the quiver of your cunt as your own climax nears.

“Come for me again. Show me that you want it. I want to feel your pretty little cunt squeeze my cock for my come,” he urges, voice reduced to a rough growl in your ear. He sounds like he’s barely holding himself together, every word more strained than the last. “Give it to me. Give yourself to me.”

The tug of his swollen knot bouncing off of your rim and the feel of his thick ridged cock massaging your walls completely overwhelms you. “Y-yes, okay, I’m–oh gods, gods, I’m–I’m coming, Homelander, Homelander!” You call, lips falling open on a silent scream as your throat locks up, a third orgasm crashing down on you with a force that knocks the air out of your lungs.

Homelander muffles his own cry into the crook of your neck, stilling halfway through your orgasm with one final slam. This time, the rush of his release is pressed tightly against your cervix, pooling inside you with nowhere to go, his knot doing precisely what he said it would. The heat of it fills you in hot, rushing spurts, his cock jerking against your spasming walls with every load he empties into you.

A sudden stinging pain makes you gasp, confusion seeping into the euphoria that has thoroughly addled your brain. Fuck, you realize he’s biting you. His teeth sink in as smoothly as a knife through fresh butter, the sting giving way to the sheer heat of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue, and the inexplicable way it intensifies your orgasm.

The room falls deafeningly quiet save for the pound of your own heart in your ears and the heavy way you’re each catching your respective breath. Your arms fall bonelessly to your sides as you pant, your vision slightly blurry. Homelander begins lapping at your shoulder, soothing the spot he’d bitten. Your whole body feels heavy, stuffed fuller than you ever could have conceived possible. All you can do is whine as he adjusts you, gingerly bringing your legs down to settle on either side of him.

You’re not sure how you’ll ever get off of his cock now that you’re on it. His knot feels like a permanent part of you, fitted so snugly that, just as promised, you don’t feel a single drop spill.

Homelander doesn’t stop at your neck. He drags his tongue down to the dip of your clavicle, where it splits apart slightly anywhere it moves over bone. It feels surreal, but somehow different from the first time you woke to him licking you. For starters, you’re not terrified he’s going to eat you. That has an entirely new connotation now.

He moves down further, slinking down into the valley between your breasts, sighing as he pushes them together to lave his tongue between. He’s languid, practically purring with each breath as he savors the feel and the taste of you. You don’t have it in you to feel much more than exhausted, your limbs as heavy as stone, but it does feel good. Your breath catches when he opens his lips around one of your nipples, sucking almost half of your breast into his preternaturally hot mouth. His pierced tongue swirls over your nipple while his teeth flex precariously against the tender flesh. You lurch, letting out a breathy noise.

“Careful, please,,” you exhale, earning a glance up from him. His eyes are completely glazed over, soft and dark in a way that takes your breath away. He hums quietly in some weak acknowledgement before his eyes flutter closed, his throat bobbing with every swallow as he sucks your breast with unexpected gentility.

Watching him stirs a wash of strange feelings in you. With what little strength you have, you bring your hand up to touch his horn, contemplating the texture of it beneath your fingers. You follow the line of it down to his skull, tracing his hairline just beneath the crown that adorns his head, slipping behind his sharply pointed ear. He’s truly incredible to behold up close like this, beautiful without the lens of terror you had been viewing him through.

On some level, you know you should still be afraid, but it’s a difficult feeling to muster when he’s warm and lax on your chest with his cock buried inside you, suckling on your breast as you’re still riding the high of three consecutive climaxes.

You push your fingers into his flaxen hair. You’ve never seen hair this color before except in very young children. In your experience, age always darkens it away to a sandy color, but his is as bright and warm as sunshine. There doesn’t seem to be any part of him that isn’t golden. He exhales a deep sigh as you run your nails along his scalp, nuzzling sweetly against you. You smile despite yourself.

Who would have thought that a dragon might be so very much like an overgrown house cat?

When Homelander lifts his head, his tongue is the last to leave, returning to his mouth with a wet slide across his lips. He’s left your skin shiny with saliva, but he isn’t finished. He immediately lowers himself to your other breast, taking it into his mouth in precisely the same way. You bring your other hand up into his hair and continue to massage his scalp, earning yourself an appreciative little moan from low in his throat, his tail sliding audibly back and forth on the stone floor.

The two of you lay like that for an indeterminate amount of time. You drift in and out of consciousness, worn thin and soothed by the heat of his body seeping into your muscles, fairly certain you’ll never be able to sit up on your own again. Homelander eventually releases your breast with a soft pop and settles his head on your sternum, narrowly avoiding taking one of your eyes out with his horn. You continue to stroke through his hair as your strength gradually returns.

The swell of his knot, too, lessens, but even soft his cock fits snugly inside you. It isn’t until Homelander gingerly lifts himself off of you that it slides out, coming free with a significant gush that soaks your thighs and puddles beneath you. You flush, making a strained little noise. You feel carved out and left hollow by the sheer size of him. His wings withdraw and tuck in behind him while he sits back on his legs to admire the splay of you beneath him. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says, smoothing his hands up and down your thighs. You’ve never felt as exposed as you do in this moment, laid bare under his gaze. Even now, visibly drunk on pleasure and thoroughly satiated, there is an undeniable lingering famine in his stare. He sinks down and slowly spreads your legs apart, leaning in to run his tongue up the crease of your inner thigh. He laps languidly at your skin, earning hitched little breaths and sounds from you as his tongue deftly cleans the mess he’s made of you. He’s much more tame now than he had been, focusing not on overstimulating you, but simply washing you. It’s a strange and animalistic thing to do, but it’s intimate, too. Sweet, even.

Gods, he’s really done a number on your psyche.

Once he’s satisfied with the state of you, he climbs back up and settles on his side, looking at you with his hand poised over you, hovering like he isn’t sure what to do with it. His expression starts to shift, concern seeping into it. “You’re quiet. Did I hurt you?”

You huff a little breath. You’re quiet because you’ve just been fucked within an inch of your life by a dragon’s cock, but aside from that, of course he had. “You bit me, for starters.”

He turns somewhat sheepish at that. “Instinct. I wanted to mark you.”

“You succeeded,” you say, touching your shoulder tentatively.The skin is still raw, but it isn’t bleeding. It doesn’t even feel like it’s going to scab. 

You must wear your confusion plainly, because Homelander is quick to explain: “I sealed the wound. It should be fully healed by sundown.”

“How did you seal it?” You ask, bolder now with how you touch it. It feels like simple indentations, a perfect mold of his teeth.

“My saliva has particular properties. There was a method to my debauchery,” he says, pointedly licking his lips.

You suppose that’s far from the most miraculous thing about him. “That’s convenient,” you say, to which he smiles. It’s bizarre how easily this comes now. You’ve heard of breaking the tension before, but this is certainly the most intense way you’ve ever broken through that initial barrier to more casual conversation. 

Seeing that his hand is still hovering over you, you make a choice and take it, pulling it down to settle on your hip. Relief and excitement flash in his eyes in equal measure, and he takes that as permission to tuck you the rest of the way against him, settling on his side. He rests his head in his palm, propped up on his elbow. You curiously explore the plains of his chest with your fingertips, testing where flesh meets scales. They feel almost like bone, crimson colored protrusions that catch the light as prettily as rubies. They’re smattered along his body in the same way a human might have moles or birthmarks, incidental and seemingly without rhyme or reason.

His ribs are guarded by stiff plates that aren’t as solid as the scales, but look to serve as hardy protection. You let your fingers swoop down the ridges of them, comparing the textures along different parts of his body. It’s fascinating.

“I’ve never seen anything like–” you begin to pull your hand away as you speak, but Homelander takes hold of your wrist, bringing it back to his chest.

“Don’t stop.” You look up at him. His expression catches you off guard. He looks wounded, those fiercely blue and ever human eyes of his intensely focused on you. Swallowing, you nod. He lets go, and you begin to traipse your fingers along his chest again, following the line of the leather straps that cross over it. He lets out a heavy breath. “No one’s ever touched me like this,” he tells you after a long few beats of silence. “Not that I can remember.”

You glance up at him, but he’s staring down at your small hand tracing patterns on his chest. “What happened to this place?” You ask, because that seems politer than asking what happened to him.

“Guess it’s been too long for anyone else to remember. They’re all dead,” he says, the mood of his words difficult to discern. He inhales a contemplative breath, clicking his tongue at the end of it. “Time happened. I used to be something else to my people. I was… war. I brought fire down on their enemies, and they loved me for it. I won them their home. Homelander. There were others like me, but I was the best of them,” he says with conviction, though you sense bitterness in his voice, too. “When all the wars were won, they built this tower. They built monuments to their gods, and they placed us here with them as though we ourselves were relics.”

The end of his tail has begun to slap lightly against the ground. You can feel a slight uptick in the heat of him beneath your palm. 

“They placated me with gold. Adorned me in it. At times they would summon me to festivals. Use my strength to build their stone cities, but they didn’t celebrate me. They had forgotten their love. They treated me as you would any other tool. Something to be taken off the shelf for work and put away when the task is done.”

The seething resentment is more clear in his voice than ever. While you didn’t ask it, it seems he understood what you really wanted to know. You’ve never heard this story before; The Devourer had only ever been a tyrant upon the people. No one ever spoke of a Homelander. No one ever spoke of a hero.

“When treasure failed to keep me impotent and obedient, they tried meat instead. They sent me livestock, as if the simple act of killing a cow would satiate me,” he snarls through his teeth, smoke wafting between them. He sucks it back, tipping his head up slightly in a bit to regain his composure.  “They thought they could control me indefinitely. Out of sight, out of mind. It worked for too long, but only because I allowed it. Because I thought things would change. They never did. So I took their gold and their cattle and their crops and demanded more still. I demanded until they couldn’t ignore me any longer. When they failed to provide, I reigned fire down on them as I did their enemies two hundred years ago, and I gave them no choice but to look at the monster they made.”

His tail cracks like a whip against the stone floor. His anger is so visceral it makes your heart race, but there is more in his gaze than just fury. You feel as though you’re watching him rip apart the stitching over a wound that has been festering for far too long. “After that, they sent people. Simpering peasants who had no fucking idea who or what I really am. They bathed them in oils like slaughtered lambs basted for roast,” he growls, the blue of his eyes fading into an eerie crimson glow. “So I did. I devoured them, and I spat their own blood in their faces. If they wouldn’t have me as a man, they would have a beast instead.”

The Devourer.

You sit in stunned silence, watching as the glow of his eyes gradually fades, though his temperature remains the same. He looks at you, his expression braced, as if he anticipates a specific reaction. Rejection, you suppose. It seems to be the only thing he’s known for centuries. Within his gaze, you recognize a profound need to connect, to feel you, to hear that there might be a single soul in this gods damned world that wants him.

What does one say to such a story? The anger in his voice strikes such a wounded chord, you can practically smell the blood. The rawness of it alone makes your eyes prickle with tears, a lump gathering in your throat. How warped he has become not for the absence of love, but the deprivation of it. It’s clear in the way he speaks of them how desperately he wanted them to still love him.

“I’m sorry,” you say so quietly it’s a wonder he hears you. His expression flips completely, morphing into bewildered surprise.

“What?” His voice sounds small.

“I’m sorry that they abandoned you.”

If his own words are a knife in the wound, yours twist it deeper. He flinches like he’s been struck, staring at you with such bruised incomprehension. He opens his mouth to speak, but it’s as though he doesn’t even believe what you’re saying enough to formulate a response. He kisses you instead, holding your jaw in his claws. “I was good once,” he says against your lips, voice hushed as if he’s confessing a far graver sin. “I’ll be good for you. Let me be good for you.”

The desperation in his voice sets loose your tears. You nod, kissing him just as fervently. Centuries of bloodshed on the back of willful neglect is difficult to stomach, but you believe him. You believe the love that went into this tower–this beautiful prison–that they made for him, and you believe the love that you saw in his face carved in stone. You have no doubt that the wonder of him once inspired all those who beheld them, and that they were fickle enough to grow weary of him. Desensitized and disinterested.

When he rejected their apathy, they rejected his humanity.

Homelander lifts you up into his arms, sitting up, kissing you properly with a hand cupping the back of your head, his arm around your middle. His wings curve in around you, and he kisses you until your lips turn sore and you have to protest, your words melting into muffled laughter. He draws back with a brilliant grin. It’s different from the others you’ve seen; it’s the kind of smile that brings deep warmth to his eyes, crinkling them at the corners. He lingers close to you, stroking your cheek with his thumb.

“I stopped believing a long time ago that you could be real,” he murmurs, unable to stop himself from stealing another quick kiss, his nose purposefully brushing yours. He’s thoroughly starved for every little touch.

“I am. So are you. Not the Devourer, the Scourge, nor the Red Death,” you say, tucking back the stray locks of hair that have fallen over his crown. This, too, had been carved for him. He had been loved once, and as he said, he had been good. There is love in you enough to help him find that goodness again. There’s no reason you cannot live for the being you intended to die for. “Just you. Just Homelander.”

He kisses you, and suddenly you feel as if you’re free falling. From this point on, your life is something new. Something inexplicable and unpredictable. It’s yours, but it’s also his.

All that glitters is not gold, and sometimes the monster in the dark is just your reflection.

phew. thank you SO much for reading. this fic took me almost a full month to write, and it often felt like it was never going to end. that said, i'm already kind of chomping at the bit to write more in this universe. i feel like these two have a ton of potential, and there's just so much more that i want to do with them now that we have the groundwork done. once again, a huge shoutout to the amazing artist @anon-nee, who not only illustrated our dragon boy himself, but these awesome environment sketches as well. please be sure to go give them some love! The Tower of the Seven

The Dragon's Lair

[commander-rahrah]

Firsts

Pairing: Astarion (non-ascended) x GN!Reader Word Count: ~1200 archiveofourown: here

masterlist: here

Summary: Post ending of BG3, established relationship. GN!Tav/Reader having a bit of self doubt and worrying that Astarion fell for the very first person he met once he realized he was free from Cazador and that they would understand if he someday decides that he wants to go explore or meet new people or fall in love more then once. Astarion’s reacts to this worry.

Note: I haven't posted any BG3 fics yet, but I just couldn't resist writing this little scene that's been bouncing around in my head this past week! I wrote it originally for my Tav named Olympia, a tiefling bard, but I changed it to second perspective for this post.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·..·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·..·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·..·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·..·:*¨༺ ༻¨*

Astarion’s eyes were trained on your fidgety movements. You were picking at the blanket as you sat on the edge of the bed, your hand shifting anxiously back and forth as your brow was crumpled in thought.

Something was eating away at you. He just wasn’t sure what. You two had a seemingly normal day, not starting until well past sunset (your new adopted routine just for him). The both of you had done some research and shopping before returning to the tiny rooms you were calling home for the time being to relax for the remainder of the night.

But now that he thought about it, you had barely touched your meal tonight. And were much quieter than usual, not as optimistic or positive during the research that had once again been futile. Perhaps you were being plagued by nightmares again — images of the horrors the party had faced just a couple months ago were resurfacing.

A flash of anger coursed through him at himself for not noticing sooner. Taking a breath he didn’t really need, he strode over to you and joined you on the edge of the bed — the mattress sinking slightly with his added weight.

“Copper for your thoughts, my sweet?” He asked with a tilt of his head, before tucking a piece of your hair behind your ear.

“I— I was thinking…,” You were quiet, and stumbled as you opened your mouth. He’d very rarely seen you like this — you always had a way with your words. You could be more poetic and flowery than even him. “And— and I understand if you do end up feeling this way.”

Confusion spread across all of Astarion’s features, “What in the hells are you talking about?”

You finally looked up at him, your eyes big and crinkled with worry, “I was the first person you met when you realized you were free… from him.” The pair of you had silently agreed to never mention that name again. “The first person you’ve been with. If you… if you decide you want to go see the world, experience new things, new people… I would understand.”

His jaw clenched together, “What?”

“I feel selfish keeping you all to myself. When there’s so much of the world you’ve not seen, so many other people you could be with that I—“

His red eyes blinked at you, before his lips turned downward, “You’re being serious.”

“I—“

He cut you off abruptly, waving his hand dramatically and pressing it into his chest, “Do you think that’s what I want? Have I told you that’s what I want?”

You shook your head, lips creasing, “No, I just want you to know that it’s ok if—“

“What, if I want to leave?” He stood up from the bed, looming in front of you as he spoke, “If I want to go galivant around to meet mysterious strangers, have a tryst or some torrid affair? I know that I am capable of making my own decisions. I know that darling, and I chose you. I choose you. And you reciprocated that.”

“I did. I do, I choose you. But I’ve—“

He interrupted you again, “Let me ask you something. Do you love me?”

“Of course. With all my heart.”

His heart still swelled with your answer. It did every time you admitted it to him. To hear it put out into the universe. That a tiny corner of it was indeed intended for him and you.

He pursed his lips before asking, “Have you loved people before me?”

“I—yes.” You admitted, looking down to your fingers that had become a twisted knot on your lap now.

“And did it feel the same? The love you shared for those other people.” He asked quietly, stepping closer and leaning down to undo the knot of your fingers. Instead threading them through his own pale, cold ones. “Did your love for them feel the same way you love me?”

Your throat bobbed as you swallowed, squeezing his hand in confirmation. “No. Not even close.”

“Exactly. You explored and experienced… and it still led you here, to me now. To your version of a first, yes?”

You nodded, the bottoms of your beautiful eyes starting to form with water as you tried to keep your tears at bay.

“I don’t need anybody else, or anywhere else.” Astarion sank to his knees in front of you, keeping his hands intertwined with your own. He dipped his head so he was looking up at you, his red eyes soft and tender. “Look… yes, you may have been the first person I stumbled upon after that damn ship. The first person I met once I realized I was free from his grasp. But you are also the first person to treat me with kindness and compassion. Respect. You’ve fought for me, protected me, fed me, been patient with me. You were the first person whose touch doesn’t make me feel ill, the first person who’s brought me to a blissful euphoria. You’ve given me peace. Autonomy. Safety. And love. No one has ever done that for me, not in my whole existence.”

His half dead heart was thundering in his chest. He had already declared himself to you once before, yet his whole body was shaking with emotion right now.

“And how dare you think so little of yourself. You aren’t just some notch in my belt, not a stepping stone in my life. You are everything.” Astarion used his thumb and finger to push your chin up, forcing your eyes to stare up into his. “I love you. No on else. And there will be no one else.”

The tears that were welling in your eyes finally broke free, rolling down your freckled cheeks. “I love you too. Irrevocably so.” Your voice was a raspy whisper.

“Oh my lovely moon, I wish you could see yourself how I see you.” Astarion’s voice was a gentle whisper.

He pressed a soft kiss onto your lips, both of his hands moving to grab the sides of your face. His pale thumbs wiped away the tears. “I surely hope these are somewhat happy tears now?”

You nodded profusely in his hands, a breathy laugh escaping you. “Happy, relieved.”

“Good. Now, no more of this talk alright? There is only room for one person to be filled with self doubt in this relationship and that position is currently filled by me.”

You frowned, “Starry, don’t jest about things like that.”

“Old habit.” His smirk pulled up enough that his fangs poked out. “No more stewing with your anxious thoughts. You’re going to come and join me on the balcony. Come on,” He stood up and held out his pale hand for you before he gently tugged you to the small balcony attached to your rooms.

The pair of you looked up at the inky black sky, glittering with the sprinkling of stars you could still see in Baldur’s Gate. They were blinking and swirling around the glowing, full moon. A sigh of contentment left you both as you stood in comfortable silence and basked in the light.

“What would the stars be without their moon?” He whispered in your hair, wrapping his arms around your waist as he gathered you into him.

[dekariosclan]

Having watched Gale’s ‘Evil Ending’, read a few spicy takes, and thought about it for a bit, I just want to point something out: every time Gale has any interactions with the Heavens/Elysium/The Gods, be it in-game or as an alternate ending, it’s not good for him, and he’s never truly happy.

Of course the Evil ending is the most extreme version with him straight up hating the Gods and waging war, but in addition, there’s also:

Gale having suffered during his time in Elysium as Mystra’s plaything Chosen

Gale becoming God of Ambition, but losing his family/ Tav

Gale becoming God of Ambition and ascending Tav, but him still being insecure/unsatisfied with himself, and possibly destroying the Pantheon

Gale dying from attempting to be a God and failing to dethrone Mystra

Gale dying after following Mystra’s orders to detonate the orb (causing many to suffer if done in Act 2, the very thing Gale NEVER wanted to happen)

Gale becoming Illithid and then being taken to Elysium with Mystra, in a scene which has which has chemistry lower than the Mariana trench and is possibly the unsexiest thing I have ever seen

So, when people say that Gale should forgive Mystra, become her Chosen again (which is spoken about on the docks in the ending where he returns the Crown to Mystra), and that the Evil Ending shows this is a ‘good’ thing…I’m not seeing it.

In contrast, I could talk about the ending where he leaves the Crown in the river, the orb remains in his chest, and how that works out great—he’s not beholden to Mystra, he’s happy and satisfied with himself/Tav/his life which results in the orb being dormant, then later Mystra cures the damn thing permanently anyway, AND he gets to have a cool scar that keeps his students in check, and also definitely lights up when he’s horny for Tav, etc. etc.

But I’m gonna go one step further and talk about what happens when Gale goes to Hell. Yes, Hell. Literal, actual Hell, the farthest place from Heaven, which is what happens when he is romanced by origin Karlach and he goes with her to Avernus.

Remember how every iteration of Gale in Heaven results in him being unhappy in some way? Here’s Gale in Hell with his beloved Karlach:

He is happy as a clam!

Tara visits them frequently!

There’s even a f*cking bookstore!

In Conclusion:

If you want Gale to be truly happy, KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THE GODS.

[jayke0]

Bunk Up

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x fem reader

Summary: Arthur invites you on a hunting trip, but you foolishly forget your tent. No harm done, you can bunk up with him, right?

Rating: nsfw, smut

Warnings/Content: a deer gets killed (camp's gotta eat), female masturbation, dry humping, fingering, p in v, breeding kink if you squint, unprotected sex, lmk if there's anything else I should add :).

Word count: 3,132

Credit: @automnepoet for proofreading ily.

…………......................………………………………….

Why in god's green earth had you agreed to go on this hunting trip again?

Oh yeah, because you have a hard-on for Arthur Morgan… figuratively, that is.

It'd be alright if you could just tell him your feelings, but you'd prided yourself on liking more respectable, more rich men in the past; that's the easiest way to make a living, at the end of the day. You'd originally intended to go for the gang leader, but that man is oblivious and stubborn as hell, not to mention not actually rich, much to your displeasure.

Then Arthur had introduced himself to you. His stupid snarky remarks and silly outfits and disgustingly beautiful eyes all seemed to merge together into this gorgeous man that loomed in front of you and had your knees almost buckling.

Even worse, he'd noticed the way your demeanour changed and how your body seemed to crumble under the weight of his soft eyes.

“Hey! Are you even listenin’ to me?” His gruff voice breaks you from your trance.

“ ‘course I am, I always listen to your wise words, Mr Morgan.” You remark, looking up at him from the position you'd had your eyes trained on seconds ago. “Yeah, sure.” You feel his rough fingertips turn your chin back towards the deer in front of you, a gesture that makes heat rise in your cheeks all the way to the tips of your ears.

“Take the shot, you got a perfect shot there, can't miss it.”

The cold varnished wood cools your warm cheeks as you bring it close to your face and grit your teeth.

“Always shoot on empty lungs.” His whisper sends shivers down your spine before you take the shot, a loud crack echoing through the trees as a clatter of birds ascends into the sky.

“You did good! That was perfect.” A soft grunt leaves his throat as he gets up and checks the prey. “Think Pearson will make a good meal outta this,” his eyes then meet yours. “Good girl.” he tips his hat to you.

Damn Arthur Morgan, with that shit eating grin that makes your stomach flutter.

“You know I ain't one for pickin’ on people–” Arthur starts, shoveling chunks of peaches in his mouth, “but I don't think I've ever seen someone forget their tent on a huntin’ trip.”

“Ok, for one, you're always picking on people, ‘specially if you don't like ‘em. And for two… just– shut the hell up.” You pull your coat tighter around your body to shield yourself from the cold rain drizzling down your neck, the soft fur bringing you some warmth and comfort to your otherwise shaking body.

“Easy girl, don't be gettin’ mad at me now. Besides, it means you get to share a tent with me, ain't that a dream?” A simple grumble from you makes the man chuckle lowly. “I won't take that personally.”

It was a dream, and you hated admitting that.

Luckily, you'd remembered your bed roll, so at least you didn't have to snuggle up under the cotton sheets with your rugged partner… but, admittedly, a small part of you is disappointed at that.

You try to forget about those thoughts that are festering in the back of your mind and making you squeeze your legs together, but as the cold seeps into your bones and makes yourself huddle further into the sheets, you find yourself backing up against the warm body behind you.

The soft rustle of trees keeps you awake, at least that's what you tell yourself at first, not wanting to give into those filthy images of the cowboy flashing behind your eyelids.

Soon, all too soon for your liking, you find yourself panting. It's barely audible, but it's enough to make yourself embarrassed and look back at the outlaw peacefully sleeping behind you, unaware of the pictures you have playing on loop in your head. It makes you bite your lip; the thought of touching yourself right next to the man you've been meaning to tell your feelings to for months.

Quietly and carefully, you slide your hand over your body and between your legs, rubbing your already damp cunt over the fabric of your underwear. The feeling makes you grit your teeth much like earlier, and a small noise sneaks past your lips. You look back at Arthur again to see his chest still rising and falling slowly… fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?

Your hand slips into your underwear before you're even registering it. It's too cold to take the blanket off, or even your underwear for that matter, so you just run your fingers through your wet folds under the thin fabric. The slick noise it makes sounds too loud in the quiet forest, but at this point you're pretty sure the man is asleep, so you continue teasing yourself.

Your fingers circle your hole as you imagine it being his thick digits instead, or maybe even his tongue, since he's usually so quick with it. Another wet noise fills the tent when your fingers slide inside your needy cunt, buried to your knuckles as you massage that glorious spot inside you. When you pick up the pace, and the noises get louder, you're practically praying, wishing it was Arthur's fingers instead. They'd stretch you wide and fuck you good, the thought makes you shove some of the blanket in your mouth.

You're teetering on the edge at this point, scanning your brain for that final image that'll send you descending down the cliff… but a thick arm wrapping around your waist has you freezing in place.

“What have we got here?” Arthur's low, sleepy voice has the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, raising goosebumps all over your body as if he'd just ripped the sheets from your body.

“Arthur!–shit, I'm sorry–." You start, but his nose pressing against the back of your neck makes you stop in your tracks.

“I ain't judgin’ you, girl. We've all got our urges, desires.” He shuffles up closer to you, closing in on your body till his chest is pressed against your back, and his crotch is angled perfectly against your thighs. “Just wanted to know what you were thinkin’ about.”

God, his voice is so soft and low, it could make you fall asleep if your fingers weren't still knuckle deep inside yourself. “I–uhm…” Should you admit it? With the way he's pressing against you, it makes you think you should.

“You.”

“ ‘s that so? And why ain't you told me about this before, sweetheart?” His breath is hot on the back of your neck, pushing out any coldness that was left in your body as his large hand splays across your stomach and strokes your soft skin.

A huff escapes your nose a little louder than you expected. “Because… I'm embarrassed, I don't wanna be thinking about you like this.” You mumble ashamedly, but as those words leave your lips, you start moving your fingers inside your cunt again; a ‘come hither’ motion that makes you bite your lip to contain your noises.

“Oh, that ain't very nice. You ain't exactly a saint ya'self, Darlin’.”

Fuck, the way his words roll off his tongue makes you roll against your hand with a soft noise.

The action must've pleased Arthur, because he lets out a pant and presses his hips closer to yours, grinding in tandem with you as your hips roll on your fingers.

This feels so strange and wrong, but you aren't sure why. It's not like Arthur is married or even has a girl, he's just as lonely as you, and maybe that's exactly why you're so drawn to each other.

“Mmm, been dreamin’ ‘bout this for months, pressing against you like this.” He groans softly. His chin is placed neatly on your shoulder, cheek pressing against yours as his stubble itches your skin. He feels so warm and big behind you, like he's shielding you from any and every burden, and as his hips rock against yours more, you can't help but do the same. You grind back on him with short, soft pants, tilting your head to just get a glimpse of his blissed out face.

“When was the last time you did something like this, cowboy? You're acting like you're gonna cum in your night clothes.”

That makes a soft chuckle leave his red lips, flushed face pulling away from yours to look down at you.

“Long enough to be needin’ you.”

His words make you shiver, but he's quick to distract you with his hand taking your wrist and swatting your hand away.

“Lemme do it for you, sweetheart, please?”

Before your brain can even question or think about it, your body is telling him yes, your head nodding almost instantly. His fingers are quick to dive into your under garments and slide through your slick folds, a groan from him ringing in your ears.

“Dammit girl, you must have one hell of an imagination to make ya'self this wet… Jesus.” He grunts, looking down at his hand in your underwear with only the dim light of the lantern making your skin glow.

“I always get like this when I think of you, Arthur.” You tell him as your hand wraps around his wrist. “You're the only one that can make me cum.” You moan in his ear, making him dive his fingers into your needy cunt.

The stretch is wonderful, not enough to hurt, but enough for you to feel it, and it's just how you expected, if not better. His thick digits curl and glide over your walls until he finally feels you squirm against him as they touch that delicious spot.

“Yeah? You like it there, darlin’? Want me to keep goin’?”

Again, your body simply speaks for you, nodding quickly and grinding down on his fingers. You feel him grind his hips against you again, his body seemingly wanting to get impossibly closer to you as he ruts against your ass.

“You're such a pretty girl, y'know that? Been waitin’ to tell you that since the day we met.” He rests his chin on your arm so he can peck the exposed skin and continue curling his fingers inside you.

The tent is once again filled with the filthy sounds of your hole taking two fingers, sloppy wet sounds that would make you feel ashamed if it didn't feel so fucking good. It feels like all your nerves are being stroked at once, each time his fingers brush against your tummy or stroke your walls feels like you can't get enough of the electricity that runs through your body. You grip his thick arm, looking back at him as moans fall from your lips.

“You're damn good… shit.” You whimper as he looks up at you, big round eyes meeting yours to show he's there.

“Well, I appreciate that, comin’ from you.” He chuckles lightly, his own words breathy while his hips start to snap a little faster and become sloppy. “You gotta lemme feel this cunt for myself, please sweetheart, lemme feel this cunt clench around my cock.”

You find it hard to stop rocking your hips when he's talking to you like that, but eventually you take a deep breath and stop yourself. His fingers slip out of you with a lewd sound, and you feel him shuffle to get his night clothes off.

Your own are gone within seconds, your body too hot and needy to worry about if you'd thrown them outside to the wolves to get torn to shreds, all you can focus on is the man behind you.

As much as this position made you wet before, you desperately want to see his handsome face, even if it is barely visible. So, you flip onto your other side and rest your hands on his chest, the warmth spreading through your fingers. You can practically feel his excitement buzzing off of him and through your body, and it makes you giggle a little. “Jesus, you really ain't done this in a while, have you?”

“Not with a girl as pretty as you, sweetheart.” One hand slides over your cheek while his other finally gets his clothes off.

Just his tone alone makes your cheeks heat up, but as he leans in for a kiss, you find yourself taking in a breath of surprise. It's easy to melt into his arms and get lost in the feeling of his lips; they're surprisingly soft and sweet, and they feel like they fit perfectly on yours.

You're so swept up that it takes you a second to notice his hand snaking around the back of your knee and pulling your hips closer to himself.

That's when you feel it.

His length rests against your slick pussy lips, your leg now cocked over his waist to get him close. It feels bigger than you expected, thicker than you expected, it makes you whine softly on his lips.

You hate his little grin that you feel spread across his face. “Impatient, ain't you?” He teases, slowly rocking his hips against yours to let his cock slide through your sopping folds. His tip manages to butt against your clit each time, making you furrow your brows and moan softly on his lips.

Your hand is still resting on his cheek as you feel him push in for the first time, and god are you glad you're holding onto your bedroll with the other, because the stretch and the way he fills you makes you almost cum on the spot, a loud moan spilling from your lips to make you whimper embarrassedly.

“Oh sweetheart, don't be embarrassed. I love the noises you're makin’ for me, they're makin’ me so goddamn hard, can you do it again for me?” He asks as he pulls his hips back before sliding inside your warm, slick walls again.

You're quick to oblige to his plea, your body automatically reacting with a soft choked moan at the surprise of his thick cock stretching you once again. You can feel his calloused fingers still gripping the back of your knee to hold your leg up, giving him the perfect angle for his length to hit every nerve you have inside you and send sparks of arousal up your spine.

“Thaaat’s a good girl, look at'chu.” The man purrs, his warm breath making your eyes flutter shut so you can focus on his cock spearing you with each slow, deep thrust.

“Holy shit, Arthur, f–feels like you're splitting me in half.” You moan as your hands slide over his thick biceps and along his broad shoulders, finding that the perfect place for you to grip on for dear life too.

Arthur groans before leaning forward to press a kiss on the top of your head as he pants softly. “Biggest you've had, huh? Never felt somethin’ like this inside you, have you?” He doesn't accept the simple shake of your head, instead giving you a sharp thrust that has your nails dig into his flesh and a whimper spill from your lips. “No! No, I haven't… I love it, dammit, I love your cock.”

Something inside him seems to click as you say those words, a long moan slipping from his throat as his grip becomes tighter on your leg to pull you closer to him, his cock burying deeper inside you. He doesn't give you time to adjust before his hips are colliding with yours and the sounds of both your arousal soaked thighs are filling your ears and sending waves of pleasure from your head to your toes.

“Listen to those filthy noises, girl, that's all you. That's your wet cunt..” Arthur manages to moan out. He tilts his head down to watch your hips connecting, his head resting against your collar bones. “What a pretty cunt it is too… shit, I ain't ever felt somethin’ as good as this, miss.” His words seem to roll off of his tongue with ease, as if he's a erotic poet reciting the words he's scrawled down on the page. Maybe it has something to do with that journal he's writing in all the time… lord above how you'd love to read that.

“For you, Mr Morgan,” you blabber without even thinking about the words coming from your mouth. “I'm all for you, want you to take me like this over and over–.” It's funny how worked up you get over your own words, but it seems to have an even better effect on Arthur.

His brows knit together as his jaw hangs open a little, and dirty blonde strands of hair fall in his face and stick to his forehead perfectly.

“Shit, girl, you're gonna make me finish inside you if you keep talkin’ like that…” The man groans, his lip finding its way between his teeth to give him something to chew on. Somehow, his thrusts get faster, impossibly better as you feel the molten heat spread through your body and up to your throat to make you moan his name, along with any other expletives that come to mind.

Before you can stop yourself, you're saying dangerous words that, with any other man, would be like handing a loaded gun to a baboon.

“I want you to do that Arthur! Please– please cum inside me–” Your entire body tenses up before you come crashing down, whaling and grasping onto him for dear life as he continues to fuck you through your orgasm and make sharp thrusts that have you whimpering loudly. Your walls clench him tightly in pulsing rhythm, driving him closer and closer to the edge.

It's only a few more seconds before he's tearing his body away from yours and fisting himself, white ropes shooting all over your tummy as groans and growls rumble in his chest and his head throws back.

You watch the whole scene in front of you in awe, as if you're at the goddamn theatre watching a play… no, it's better than that. You'd never had time for the theatre, but you always have time for Arthur, despite how he gets on your nerves sometimes.

You smile softly at him as he lifts his head to look down at you, a smug grin on his face as he leans forward and pecks your lips.

“Hey, what's with the grin?” You huff softly and hit his chest playfully.

“Nothin’ just been waitin’ for you to admit your feelin's for me for a while now.”

An annoyed growl leaves your lips as you feel your face heat up with embarrassment, burying it in his chest instead to save you from his teasing.

“Shut the hell up, Morgan…”

[antiquarianfics]

Accidental pt. 3

What happens when you accidentally kidnap the exact man you were looking for?

pairing: mob!bucky x reader

warning(s): canon level violence, kidnapping, profanity

a/n: girl, do i know where this is going? no, not until i write it. but what do you think? is this gonna end well? hehehe

You do not have permission to copy, translate, or repost my work; however, feel free to like, comment, and reblog.

part 2

»»———-———-———-———-———-———-———-««

"Have her home by... What time was your meeting again? 7? Have her home safely by 7 tomorrow," you say, standing up from where you sat in front of him. You begin to move around the basement, picking up your things that you had brought with you in the whole kidnapping ordeal. Once you've collected your things, you start walking towards the stairs to leave. "If she isn't there, the deal's off."

"You're just going to leave me here?" James asks, pulling at his arm restraints.

You look over your shoulder at him and smile at him. "You're a mob boss, doll, I'm sure you'll get out of there in time." Then, with that, you ascend the stairs.

—

You pace back and forth through your sister's living room, a million thoughts racing through your mind.

What if James doesn't follow through on his word?

What if you're being played?

What if you let go the one person who could actually help you?

You take a deep breath, pulling back the curtains hanging above the living room window to peek out into the street. Empty. Your eyes drift over to the analog clock your sister has hanging above her fireplace. The hands seem to scream back at you: 6:53.

You pace some more, rationalizing that James still has—you glance at your watch that now reads 6:54—6 minutes to return your sister. Six minutes. Six minutes. Six minutes until you have to pull your mask back on and try and somehow track James down again. He might not have been your original target, but now that you've dealt with him, he's the go-to.

You look up at the analog clock on the wall again: 6:58. You pull back the curtain, looking out the window. Empty. You groan loudly and kick the nearest piece of furniture, wincing in pain when it actually hurts. You glance down at your watch: 6:59. You rush to the front door, looking out the peep hole. Your phone buzzes in your pocket, an alarm for 7:00.

Right on time, a black, fancy-looking SUV pulls up in front of your sister's house and you pull the front door open, taking quick steps onto the porch. You watch anxiously as the driver kills the engine and steps out of the car before walking around the vehicle to open the back passenger door. Once the door opens, you suck in a breath.

Ellie steps out. You exhale.

The two of you make eye-contact and Ellie rushes towards you while you hop the stairs to meet her. The two of you crash into a desperate embrace.

"Ellie! Oh, God! Are you okay?" You pull away, hands cupping either side of her face as you move it side to side, examining her for any sort of injury. Your breathing is erratic.

"I'm okay, Y/N. I'm okay." Ellie assures, her right hand rising to cup your face. She smiles weakly (it's meant to be reassuring).

"I'm so sorry it took me so long to find you. I did everything I could," you promise, willing her to believe you.

"I know."

Ellie looks like she wants to say more, maybe apologize for getting herself into such a situation, beg for forgiveness for being so reckless, but she doesn't get the opportunity. Your reunion is interrupted by the driver clearing his throat, clearly impatient and unaffected by the scene unfolding in front of him. You glance up at the man while Ellie turns and looks at him over her shoulder. She returns her gaze to you before offering you another apologetic smile.

"I'll be inside," she says, walking away. You nod, turning your head slightly to your right as she passes you. You wait for the door to open and close behind you before you look back up at Barnes' man.

"Can I help you?" You ask, your voice cold and devoid of emotion. You're doing your best to summon back the confidence and authority you had when you were questioning James Barnes himself. James, however, had not witnessed what you assume the man in front of you perceived as a weak moment.

The man smirks, as if he is aware of your internal battle, and reaches into his coat pocket. From the depths of his suit jacket, he pulls out an envelope and hands it to you. You raise an eyebrow, eyeing the envelope suspiciously. You take it from him gingerly.

"What's this?''

"From Mr. Barnes," is all he says. He does not move, however, and it's clear that he is going to stand there and watch you open the envelope.

"Uh huh," you say, slipping your finger beneath the seal, breaking it. You cautiously pull out a small piece of stationary; it's white with a gold border. It reads:

To the woman who knocked me out, dragged me to an unknown location, tied me up, demanded information from me, and pointed a gun at me,

If you're reading this, then my men have safely escorted your sister home and you've laid eyes on her. Thus, I have held up my end of the bargain. I trust you will hold up yours. I'd hate for you to have drag me back to that basement...

Let's stay on theme, shall we? I will send for you tonight at 7:00. Wear something nice. ;)

Yours Truly,

J.B.B.

You scoff as you finish reading the note, dropping your hand to your side and looking up and around in disbelief. The nerve of this guy! You didn't miss the teasing tone he held back in the basement—he was as flirty as ever—but you also didn't miss the threat held within his words. I'd hate for you to have to drag me back to that basement... As if you'd ever risk Ellie's well-being by standing him up. You may have the audacity to kidnap him, but you're still very aware he's dangerous. You clench your jaw, swallow, and let your eyes meet those of Barnes' lacky.

"Tell James," you put emphasis on the mobster's first name in hopes of seeming unbothered by the note, "that he has nothing to worry about. I intend to hold up my end of our bargain, but," you say, taking a step forward and jabbing a finger into the man's chest, "also tell him that there will be none of this 'sending for me' business. He wants this meeting so badly, then he can dance his pretty little self up to my door and pick me up. You hear me?"

The man nods, "Yes, ma'am." He looks like he's trying not to laugh, but you feel it's not at you. Perhaps at Barnes' expense? You decide you don't care as you turn around and start to make your way back towards the house. You take only a couple of steps before you pause, though, and turn, a thoughtful look on your face.

"Oh, and one more thing," you say, catching the man's attention before he gets back into the SUV. He raises an eyebrow, you smirk. "Tell James he better damn well bring flowers."

»»———-———-———-———-———-———-———-««

@cjand10 @vicmc624 @mostlymarvelgirl @livingoutsidethetardis @onceithough @thedonswife13 @kaithesimps-blog @buckitostan @julvrs @unaxv

[randoimago]

I always wondered how the romanced companions would react if Orin kidnapped the player character. Especially Astarion, Gale, and Halsin. Any thoughts?

Reactions to Romanced Tav Being Kidnapped by Orin

Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3

Character(s): Astarion, Gale, Halsin

Type of Request: Headcanons

Note(s): Idk if you've played Dragon Age, anon, but the first game (Origins) has companions rescuing the main character and that's very fun. I feel like for BG3 it'd be much less lighthearted 😅

Also, alternatively, if Player Character is Dark Urge I can just see an "Oh no!... Well anyways..." cause the companions figure Orin's head will just be eaten off or something

Astarion

While he has all the confidence in your abilities (you did capture his heart), he does feel that deep seated fear of what may happen. Wyll's father be damned, he'll play along with Orin's plan to deal with Gortash if it means getting you back.

Doesn't care who he has to manipulate and bribe to get extra help. So many innocent people have already died in this stupid fucking conflict, if more die from him trying to save you then so be it. He'd burn down this damn city to get you back to him.

Depending on if Cazador has been dealt with or not, he also has fear of not having you by his side because Cazador might find out and use that to get to Astarion.

If he's become an Ascendent vampire, then he finds it hilarious that Orin thinks she can steal his prized pet from him.

Gale

Tempted to just activate the orb at Orin's mere appearance and the information she gives, but knows that that would be a bit too much of an overreaction (and he doubts you'd end up safe due to the blast radius).

While Gale is a very intelligent and capable man in spellcasting, he knows that it's best to rely on Wisdom for something like this, as much as he wants to immediately run to your rescue.

There is fear for you, of course there is. Fear that Orin will kill you anyway, fear that he won't be in time to save you.

But he knows that he has to stay calm while using time in camp to practice his magic and prepare whichever spells he thinks would be best.

Halsin

Oh he is livid when he learns that you've been kidnapped, but he knows that acting on his rage won't solve anything. There's obviously a time limit on this, but he knows it's best to make a plan first and decide what to do.

While Gortash is an obvious evil that'll eventually be dealt with, Orin is a disgrace upon nature. He'd prefer to strike the snake in her home, but he also understands that it could prove risky to your safety.

But he remains calm as he strategies with the other companions on ways to get you back and the best course of action.

Although, he can't help losing his temper due to some of the disagreements and arguments from the others when your life is on the line.

Taglists: @reo-the-leo @unhelpfulnpc

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Happy For You | Yandere Malleus Draconia

Malleus had read extensively about the matters of the heart. As the prince of Briar Valley with a castle older than a millennium it’s natural, he’d delve into different fae authors as they detailed triumphant and tragic love stories. Filling his imaginative prepubescent brain with dreams of him dazzling his love and finally sharing true love’s kiss. 

But he was grown now. Long gone were the days he needed to rely on books and Lilia and Silver to simulate a sense of community. There were others that he learned to value their company. None stood out as much as the prefect of Ramshackle dorm—(Y/n).

Who in a matter of days after meeting them had ignited those dreams of romance. Unlike his past though this was real. You were real. It was a common event to find you coming through the gate of Ramshackle to talk into the late hours of the night. To say he was enthralled was putting it mildly. Passing thoughts of his time with you turned into bundled excitement that would persist through the week. Where he’d simply dream of sharing holidays turned into a reality he never wanted to end.

It was bliss.

It would have been bliss. 

If not for the measly rock on your finger.

“Tsuno-taro I’m engaged!”

Coupled with your shining smile, there was no way he could express the shattering of his heart with anything but a smile. As a dear friend of yours, it was his duty to stand by idly as you paraded around sharing your good news. Unaware that you were smothering the fae in his heaping regrets. That bubbling anger with himself, with the one who gifted you that diamond, and with everything that had ever been presented themselves as an obstacle. Maybe if he hadn’t spent time destroying them he’d have caught this much sooner. 

He smiles and congratulates you with all the elegance of a prince of the Draconia name.

Inserting himself into plans as he offers to be a part of the wedding in whatever way you need him. Help with decor, finding the venue, handcrafting your accessories—-all you have to do is ask and it’s done. Naturally securing himself as a member of your wedding party, rehearsing to stand by your side up until the moment you say your accursed vows. 

How it burns to witness the developing of a ceremony that’d promise he’d never have you. Not without ruining the joy you’ve been glowing with. The only comfort he deluded himself with was the searing pain described by tragedies of old. Convincing himself amid his stormy sphere as he reread the strong conviction of a character.

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

He hoped this would be true. If fae were to surpass humanity in everything then it’s expected he ascend from his desires. To abandon his selfish fantasies of cursing the one who holds your heart. To keep the dreams of reverting to his dragon form during the beautiful ceremony as figments of imagination. The same way he imagined burning the decor to the ground as he demanded his child of a man be returned to him. Banishing those thoughts as he watched the sunrise on the big day. 

“Tsuno-taro…do you think I look alright?”

You look like everything he’s ever wished for. Like a painting prized as a global treasure. You look as worthy of world domination as you did the moment you ignored the first alarm. Just as irresistible as the day you handed him his first invitation in so long. Alright, that is an understatement. You’re a vision of perfection on earth. Greater than any natural rare mineral or obscure literature that depicts the origins of the world. You are everything Malleus hopes for. 

“You look immaculate, (Y/n).”

He didn’t walk you down the aisle or stand at the altar or throw rice in the air when you shared that binding kiss. 

But he watched. While reciting that your happiness was his. Your happiness was his. Your happiness was his. Your happiness could never be his. Downing a drink that wouldn’t get him drunk as the other guests let loose with rowdiness. He was thankful for the rabblerousing it blocked his vision when your spouse snuck you away from the reception. 

It was then that he left. 

Engulfing his tower in a torrent of violent storms, hoping to soothe the despair that gripped his being. The image of the intimacy he dreamed of sharing with you, stolen by someone who proposed with such a small token. 

He knew he’d be unreachable for days.

But he would pull it together. 

Ruling his kingdom and writing to you with just as much vigor as always. His child of man may never be his but their happiness would be. He’d just have to make do with that. 

__________________________________________________________

“They cheated on me!? Tsuno-tarou can you believe it?! What happened till death do us part!?”

Malleus never thought he could throw up.  He hasn’t gotten sick for many a century but it reappeared at the revelation of your unscheduled visit. Bags in hand and tears on your face it was an avalanche of emotions the King of Briar Valley had closed himself to. 

Anger at the tears on your face. It took you far too long to tell him who’d put them there. Collapsing into his chest brought dismay. His darling human was strong, a paragon of a survivor. Now reduced to a shriveling mess barely holding onto him, shaking with exhaustion. 

Then relief.

There was the conviction in his mind that called for guilt, those thoughts of envy and want, quelled with the truth about your partner. It was rejuvenating that he didn’t have to fight himself any longer for the sake of your happiness. Shattered in their careless actions it was as though fate had created a caveat for the King. No longer would he have to stifle every insult he’d been waiting to spout the second their name left your lips. 

With you by his side, in his arms, it was time he’d silence those regrets of his. Older and wiser now his expertise in running his kingdom extended well past the governing of his people. In his solitude, he learned of the hunger within him. The broiling spirit that beckoned him to cast a spying magic on you in your day-to-day life. The side of him that knew how to speak a honeyed truth into your weakened ears. 

A truth that would one day have you offering a humble but promising stone. 

“I know it’s not much but Malleus…will you marry me?”

Those characters who would have refused knowing what unblinded happiness their love was entitled to were incredibly wrong—in Malleus' opinion. As the King of the Draconia line, he’s read a plethora of literature. Some depict love stories and others tragedies all fueling the romance he had chased after. Malleus had decided that the dreams he had were his greatest wish was fulfilled. Where his child of man looked only at him, where their happiness was him was better than what those books had suggested before. 

His happiness has always been in (Y/n) and by any means necessary he was going to be the happiness his child of man needed.

“I will. I always planned to.”

[mumms-the-word]

Ascension, Return

Pairing: Gale x You (Reader POV) Summary: You watch as Gale restores the Crown of Karsus and temporarily becomes a god before disappearing to return the crown to Mystra. And you can only hope, now that he is a god, that he will return. ao3 link A/N: I was thinking the other day about how in the ending for an Origin run for Gale, regardless of how he plans to deal with the crown business, he always shows up as God!Gale in front of Mystra before agreeing to hand over the crown or deciding to stay a god. And it got me thinking...wouldn't a romanced Tav who is expecting him to give up the crown see him ascend? So anyway I wrote this to get those thoughts out there. As usual pic of my Tav Dani because I keep forgetting to ask to borrow people’s better pictures

It doesn’t take long for you and Gale to make plans to retrieve the crown from the depths of the Chionthar River. The sooner you get this over with, the better, you think, and yet something about this endeavor has you on edge. You secretly wish you can just leave the crown down below the waters…but then, anyone could get it down there, with the right spells or the right technology. You can’t risk that.

You don’t want it in Mystra’s hands either, but what choice do you have? She, at least, is a goddess interested in balance, neither evil like the Dead Three, nor entirely good and thus subject to extreme corruption. There’s no telling what she’ll do with the crown, but she has offered one thing in exchange—a cure for your lover’s affliction.

He’ll be free of the dark hungering orb at last.

It’s enough to convince you. You retrieve your worn bedrolls from the Elfsong and shoulder your pack, ready for your next little adventure—a small boat ride to the other side of the river, and a few days spent with Gale as he searches the murky waters.

You join him on the banks of the Chionthar, well away from the bustle of the city as it is trying to rebuild, watching over him as he sits, eyes glazed with concentration, guiding simulacrums to walk the riverbeds and floors of the river, combing through the mud for the crown. He could have let his simulacrums search without him guiding them, but he wants to be sure, to search closely. He doesn’t want to waste his time turning away simulacrums who bring back scraps of metal, shrapnel from the Iron Throne, or bits from the carnage of the fight against the Netherbrain. So he looks through their eyes, seeing nothing for hours but hazy water, mud, and river plants.

Though you long to lie back and watch the sails of fishing vessels drift by like clouds on the breeze, reveling in a hard-won moment of peace, you don’t want to miss a moment where he might need you. You do not want him to be caught unawares by some curious animal, or worse, a lingering enemy. So you sit and watch, your stomach twisting into knots as you face what you know will be inevitable—the moment when he finally finds the crown.

It takes all of two days of searching. After hours upon hours of looking, he stiffens, his physical body reacting to something beyond your sight, and you know at last that he has found it. You both stand as his simulacrum emerges, dripping water, with the cold bronze of the crown in its hands. 

The Crown of Karsus.

It’s so much smaller than you remember. When you faced it on the top of the Netherbrain it had easily been the size of a large carriage. Here, on the banks of the Chionthar, it’s no bigger than a normal crown. It looks innocent. Harmless.

But you know better.

The power it releases…you are no stranger to it. You readily recall the metallic taste on your tongue as you drew near it atop the Netherbrain and the way its very aura tried to drive you to your knees. Its power is weaker now, pulsating from the bronze metal like a faint heartbeat, but you know that it won’t stay that way.

You glance at Gale, wondering what you’ll see in his face. Dark hunger, perhaps, or something bittersweet. Reluctance, dread, or tired resignation. But his expression is surprisingly neutral. He doesn’t step forward to take the crown just yet. Instead, he studies it with his eyes before taking a deep breath through his nose and turning to look at you.

“Do you trust me?” he asks.

You blink, a little taken aback. “Of course,” you say. “Always.”

“That’s gratifying to hear. It will take me some time to restore the crown and the Netherstones to their original state, fit enough to give to Mystra. The process will be necessarily delicate, given the orb I carry. I should ask you to keep a safe distance. A city’s worth of space, perhaps, just in case, but—”

You cross your arms. “I’m not leaving your side, Gale. I’m here with you, for good or ill.”

He smiles then, as much relieved as he is amused and resigned. “I know. I expected as much. But I thought it best to offer or warn you regardless.” He takes a deep breath. “Very well, then. We stay together. I just hope you’ll be patient with me.”

You reach out and take his hand, threading your fingers between his. “I will be. I’m here for you. Take all the time you need, my love.”

He gives you a grateful look, squeezing your hand affectionately before leaning in to brush a sweet, gentle kiss against your lips. You let him pull away, slipping out of reach, and watch with bated breath as he steps forward to accept the crown, the mark on his chest glowing brighter and brighter as he nears and finally takes the crown in his hands.

You don’t know what you expect. A light show, perhaps. A wave of dark, Netherese magic, or a black hole effect. You steel yourself to the fear that he will simply evaporate or fall to his knees in pain.

But nothing spectacular happens, aside from his mark glowing brightly. To your eyes, the crown acts as little more than a normal crown. To him…

You see his chest expand with a deep breath, the orb flaring brighter, watch him blow the air slowly through his lips, his face tense. But without the tadpole in your heads, you can’t guess at what he’s thinking or feeling. He closes his eyes, simply breathing, concentrating. Fighting, perhaps. Wrestling with some unseen force. The glow on his chest dims slowly until it is only a faint purple tint on his skin. Only then does he finally tighten his hold on the crown and turn back to you.

You get the sense that he has just won a silent, unseen battle within himself. It occurs to you too late that putting the crown and the orb in close proximity might actually hurt him. But it seems that the danger has passed...for now. If he’s in pain, he isn’t showing it.

“Come,” he says. “Let us make sure we’re a safe distance from the city. Just in case.”

His words don't inspire confidence, but you say nothing. You merely follow him back to your camp further up hillside. You know he has work to do.

———

You give him time. That’s all he asked for. Time to concentrate on the magic. Time to manipulate threads of the Weave. The Mystran Weave and the Karsite Weave. Sometimes you think you understand what he’s doing, but more often than not, you don’t. The magic he is performing is beyond your comprehension, guided by notes in the Annals of Karsus which lays open in front of him. You suspect some of it comes innately to him, an understanding born from carrying Netherese magic for so long. The rest must come from Karsus himself, written down as instructions or incantations. You give up trying to understand and simply make yourself useful. Or you try to, anyway.

All you can really do is linger nearby, keeping an eye out for anything that might interrupt his work. You barely interrupt him yourself, save to place some food and water near him with a soft reminder that he needs to eat to keep his energy up. He’s not a god yet, you tease, but the words taste sour on your tongue.

Yet. But soon.

You don’t feel ready for it. You know it’ll only be temporary. You hope so, anyway. But you’re still not ready.

The day passes by without you noticing. Gale sits with the crown, working, weaving, an illuminated aura around him filled with heavy magic. You leave him to his work as the sun moves slowly overhead toward the horizon, painting the sky in tones of orange, red, and purple. You lay down to watch the swirls of violet and indigo magic that gather around him as night falls, until in your exhaustion, you close your eyes for a moment to rest.

You don’t know when you drifted off to sleep, but you’re awoken in the early hours of the morning by his hand on your shoulder. You stir, blinking groggily up at him.

“It’s time,” he says softly. He helps you sit up, hands lingering on your arms, your hands. The crown isn’t with him, but sits on top of his pack several feet away. “I’ve done all I can. The stones and the crown are together again. Functionally the crown is complete, but…there is one last step I need to take.”

He kneels in front of you, dark eyes searching your face in the dim firelight. No, you realize. Memorizing. You feel a sudden knot in your throat and though you are seated safely on the ground, it feels as though a yawning void is opening up around you, threatening to swallow you whole should you tip too far to one side.

This feels like a goodbye.

“Once I put on the crown, the magic of the orb will finally combine with that of the crown. And I will…change,” he explains quietly, while you try to calm the surge of fear that grips your heart. “The magic of the crown and orb will become one and give me the power at last to meet with Mystra as an equal.”

An equal. He doesn’t say as a god. But you both know the truth.

You can scarcely breathe. You want to trust him. You want so desperately to believe in him. And he is looking at you so lovingly, but the very air seems tinged with sorrow. Nothing is certain. Nothing save his love for you, and even then, the tiniest doubt worms its way into your head and your heart.

Once he is a god…will he even remember to come back to you?

“And then?” you ask, your voice no more than a whisper.

“And then…I will hand the crown over to Mystra. And hope she keeps her word.”

You release a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “I trust you, my love.” You use the words, saying them out loud, to dispel your doubts and fears. You do trust him. With your life, with your heart, with your all.

If only you could trust Mystra. Can she be trusted to cure him? Can she be trusted to let him return? And if he does return, can she be trusted to let him return unchanged? Chosen or not, will he still be Gale Dekarios, the man you love? You don’t know. But you hope so.

He smiles at you and brushes the backs of his fingers against your cheek, his fingertips trailing along the line of your jaw. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He leans in for a kiss and you, selfishly, wrap your arms around him and hold him tightly to you as your lips move against his, wanting to never let go. You rise to your knees, following him as he tries to pull away, kissing him deeply, tangling your fingers in his hair, until at last you are both breathless and you have to hide your face in his shoulder. You cling to him, reluctant to let him go just yet.

“Just come back to me,” you whisper. “Whatever happens.”

His arms tighten around you and you feel the bob of his throat as he swallows with difficulty. He strokes your hair and your back, pressing little kisses to your shoulder, your neck, your head. You can feel it in every touch and breath he takes. He doesn’t want to let go yet either. 

“I will, my love,” he whispers back. “I swear it.”

It’s enough for now. It has to be. You could delay this day for a thousand days and still never be ready to let him go. But you have to. If he wants to be whole again, free of the orb, perhaps even free of Mystra…he has to do this.

You reluctantly loosen your hold on him and sit back on your heels, meeting his dark-eyed gaze in the early hours of the morning. He takes your hands and lifts them to his lips, brushing kisses against your knuckles, turning your hands over to kiss the center of your palms. Each touch of his lips to your skin is a reverent confession of love and longing and it only makes your heart ache more.

Please don’t let this be goodbye.

“Wait for me,” he says.

You cradle his cheek in your hand, gazing earnestly at him, soaking in every detail of his handsome face, committing it all to memory. “I will, my love. I swear it.”

He smiles at you then, full of love and happiness. He steals one last kiss from your lips before finally pulling away and standing, taking several steps back.

You stand too, preparing yourself for what is about to happen, even though you scarcely have any idea. You expect some of what you expected before, with light shows and waves of magic at best, disintegration and death at the worst, but now it feels even more real. Even more likely. You don’t know what will happen, so you brace yourself for the worst, heart pounding in your throat, gut churning with dread, and hope, desperately hope, for the best, even though you don’t know what that will look like.

You hold your breath as he moves several paces away from you and bends to pick up the crown. This image, too, you commit to memory. The way he looks illuminated by the firelight, the lights of the city glimmering behind and below him, the stars glittering above him. The sight of him with the crown in his hands, contemplating it with an expression of deep gravity. The crown looks small and harmless, despite the sharp curls and the soft glow of the purple, orange, and pink Netherstones that are now set once more in the bronze. But he looks serious, regal even, with it cradled in his hands. Like a king mulling over the weight of his position and the choices that lay ahead. He is beautiful. Heart-achingly beautiful. You wish this moment could stretch on forever, if only because it means not losing him to the crown. To godhood.

He turns to give you one last lingering look, your eyes meeting over the distance between you, before he slowly raises the crown to his head and settles it over his brown and gray locks.

The effect is instantaneous. A blast of magic blows outward from him, kicking up wind and dust and flashing bright enough to rival the sun. You cover your eyes, shielding your face, the light blinding you. Suddenly the air feels electric, tasting of metal and ozone, as though you’re about to be struck by lightning at any second. Wind swirls around you, picking up speed, a cyclone of power and magic with you caught in the edges. You struggle to stay on your feet, your body resisting the pull into the vortex. What little you can see is naught but a haze of magic, purple, blue, and inky black, rushing around you and mixing with the wind. Threads of blue and silver lightning dance around you, passing close enough to make your hair stand on end, shocking you when you take an unsteady step backward. The vortex of wind, lightning, and magic threatens to suck the very air from your lungs until, with crack like thunder, everything around you stops.

The air grows still. It is as though you suspended in time. Held fast by magic. Your ears are ringing with the sudden silence.

You cautiously lower your hand. You have to blink a few times for your eyes to adjust, but once they do, the sight of Gale causes a flurry of emotions within you.

He stands before you as something…more. A god in all but name. He’s taller, you swear he must be, or else his very presence makes him seem bigger. His skin has turned a shade of hard silver, his hair ashen gray. The mark of the orb stands out in stark black on his chest and when he turns his head to examine his hands, his body, you see splintered blue lightning crackling at his temples and down the sides of his face. His brown eyes now glow blue-white with magic, any trace of his former warmth consumed by the light of the power within him. He’s striking, awe-inspiring…

And you can’t help but fear him, just a little. 

On instinct you have the compulsion to kneel, but you don’t. You force yourself to stay on your feet and look at him, really look at him, and try to find the man you love behind this new godly veneer. He has to be in there somewhere. He has to be.

“Amazing,” he murmurs, and his voice is layered two or three times over with a strange echo, one that gives you unpleasant shivers. Even his voice carries tiny waves of power. You already miss the warm tones of his mortal voice with its Waterdhavian accent.

He flexes his hands, raising them before his face, his expression one of wonder and awe. With but a gesture, he summons threads of the Weave together in glyphs and effects you can barely make sense of, though you feel the thrum of magic deep in your chest and know, instinctively, that he is capable of snapping your mind with a thought or destroying you with a word. He smiles, and the effect is strange. He looks like himself but he doesn’t. Something about it seems wrong to you. Uncanny. Familiar and unfamiliar.

The pit of dread in your stomach grows.

But then he catches sight of you, waiting, watching breathlessly, nervously, hoping that he’ll remember his promise to you. His smile fades and for the briefest moment you catch a glimpse of the man you love. Even his blue-white eyes, shining eerily from his familiar face, can’t hide the love he has for you.

He lowers his hands to his sides. “It is done. The crown is fully restored once more.”

You nod. You haven’t the faintest clue what to say next. You’re still trying to make sense of the man-god before you.

He smiles again, and something about it is both patronizing, as though he pities you for not understanding, and sincere, an echo of his mortal kindness and patience. He presses a hand to his chest. “Well, I’d best be off then.”

“Wait—” You reach out as if to stop him and he pauses. Your hand hovers uncertainly in the air before you lower it to your side. "One last kiss, before you go. Please."

His smile softens. "I can deny you nothing, my love," he murmurs. He crosses the distance between you with a strange grace he didn't have before. Before he was elegant, but at times a little awkward. None of the awkwardness remains in him now.

You look up as he stops in front of you, his fingers curling beneath your chin the way he does when he wants to lift your face or guide your lips to his. You stare into his glowing eyes a moment before letting your eyes flutter closed. His lips touch yours...and it's different.

There's a magnetism there now that wasn't there before. You seem drawn in as if by gravity. He tastes of metal and magic, his skin cold but not unyielding. Your lips tingle with each kiss and the moment you seek to deepen the kiss—you gasp as a blue electric shock drives your mouths apart, your teeth practically rattling, your lips suddenly hot, almost burned. You press a hand to your mouth, looking up at him in shock, but he's just as surprised as you are. He seems unharmed, despite the tiny sparks of white-blue lightning still skittering over his lips.

"Ah...what an interesting side effect," he says, touching his hand to his mouth. The lightning calms. "Are you all right?"

You nod, rubbing your lips lightly as the numbness from the shock begins to subside and the tingling begins to fade. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't unpleasant either. Still, you're wary of trying it again.

He watches you, looking torn, before a new resolve settles his features. "Then I suppose that is my signal to go. The sooner I depart, the sooner I can return." He takes your hand carefully, moving it away from your face, and presses a cautious kiss to the back of your hand. His lips impart another, smaller shock to your skin, but this time you're ready for it. Your fingertips go a little numb, but you manage not to wince.

"Wait for me, my love," he says, finally letting go of your hand. "I won’t be long."

You step back, giving him room to do whatever he needs to do, and watch as he begins to glow, brighter than your eyes can stand. You keep your gaze on his until the very last second, when the light grows too bright to stare at. You blink—and then he’s gone, disappearing in a shower of starlight that fades too quickly.

You are left alone in the cool night, with naught but a dying fire for company. 

———

You don’t sleep. You barely bring yourself to tend to the dying embers of your campfire and stoke it back into warm flames. After that, all you can do is sit.

And wait.

And wonder.

And pray.

“Come back to me, my love,” you whisper into the cool night air.  "Please."

You half-wonder if he can hear you. If, on some level, you’re praying to him, the newest of the gods. You don’t know if that thought comforts you or worsens your dread. How does he think of you now, now that his mind is that of a god, capable of seeing beyond the constraints of a mortal’s limited view? If he hears your prayers, does he think less of you, or love you more? Will he remember his promise, or will the power he now holds tempt him to break it? You want to have faith in him—you do have faith in him—but doubt creeps in despite your best efforts.

Come back to me.

You recall what it was like to wait for him at Mystra’s shrine at the Stormshore Tabernacle. How he had explained that time runs differently in the Outer Planes. How he would only be gone for a moment. Each second that had ticked by during that time felt like a year.

Now, sitting on the hillside, every second that passes feels like an eternity.

The fire crackles. The lights of the city begin to dim. One by one the stars fade out, hiding from view as the black of night begins to lighten into the blue hues of pre-dawn. And still, he isn’t back.

Wait for me, he said. And you will. You’ll wait as long as you have to.

But what if…?

No. You can’t bring yourself to put your fears into words anymore. Doing so will only make them seem more real. More feasible. There could be a thousand explanations for why he isn’t back quickly. You just have to have faith in him.

You get up and begin to pace. You start breaking little sticks and twigs into tiny pieces to feed to the fire, piece by tiny piece, just for something to do with your hands. You pluck blades of grass one by one or count the stars you can see. And you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Your thoughts are your own worst enemy and you wish you had called an ally to come and sit with you. Even Scratch with his favorite ball would have been enough to quiet your heart and mind. But instead, you sit alone, the crackle of a fire the only sound to break the silence.

Your eyelids are heavy now and your body longs to drag you down into slumber, but you resist. You want to be there when he comes back. If he comes back. When he comes back.

You get up to pace again, rubbing warmth into your stiff fingers, amusing yourself with memories of him. His smile. His sly jests and silly puns. His hands on your body and his body against yours, yours against his. The smell of him, as much as you can remember. The way he looked during battles, magic crackling and swirling around him. The way he looked in your bed, fast asleep. Gale Dekarios in all his mortal glory, the man you fell in love with. The man you wish was at your side once more. 

Gods, but you miss him. You press your hands to your chest, feeling your heart beat beneath your palms. What is taking so long?

The first hints of pink and orange appear on the horizon as you turn to pace away from the fire again, your steps wearing a noticeable path through the grass. At this rate, you fear the sun will arrive before your love does. 

You contemplate how you’re supposed to face the whole of a new day alone when a flash of light illuminates the darkness behind you. You whirl, heart racing, to see a shower of starlight once more—and out of it steps Gale.

Mortal. Human. Alive.

“Gale!”

You fly into his arms, which he is already holding out wide for you, nearly toppling you both into the ground with the force of your embrace. You both stagger, but you don’t let go, and his arms around you are as fierce in their hold on you as yours are around him. He practically lifts you off your feet. You can’t put into words how much it means to you that he’s solid your arms—warm, breathing, alive in your arms.

“You’re back,” you gasp, the tears in your eyes and clogging your throat making it difficult to speak. You don’t want to sob and make it seem like you doubted him, but the emotions welling up inside you are hard to suppress. “You came back.”

“Of course, my love,” he says soothingly, not yet relinquishing his hold of you. “You are everything to me. I could do nothing else.”

You untangle yourself from him to wipe the tears from your face and look at him, looking for any changes wrought by his visit to the Outer Planes or from his brief time at godhood. He looks like himself again, his lightly tanned skin flush with warmth and love, his dark brown eyes as rich and deep as ever. You comb your fingers through his soft hair, once more brown and shot through with hints of gray, rather than all over ashen as it was a while ago. Your fingers linger on his cheek, noticing for the first time that the dark vein-like threads that trailed from his eye to his chest are no longer visible. 

The mark of the orb is gone.

In its place are a series of faint scars in the same threads and shapes as the old mark, appearing just below his jaw and flowing down to form a circle over his chest. The tattoo-like color has faded away entirely and there is no dark bruise at the center of the circular marking. Any trace of Netherese magic is gone, leaving behind little more than scars faint enough to be missed by any who are not actively searching for them.

You trace the circular scar lightly with the tips of your fingers. “Does this mean…?”

“It does,” he says, pressing his hand over yours so that both of your hands are pressed flat to his chest. You feel his heart beating, his pulse perhaps a little elevated, but every beat strong and vibrant. “Mystra has cured me of the orb. Completely.”

You want to hate her, and perhaps you still do, and always will on some level. But in that moment you’re grateful and relieved too. You wrap your arms around him and squeeze him tight, overwhelmed with happiness and relief and joy. Your love is cured at last. The threat of losing him to Netherese magic is at last put to rest. He is whole again. Restored. 

And he is yours. Not hers.

As dawn colors the sky overhead and spills pink-golden light over the both of you, you kiss him, reveling in the taste of him, in the warmth and weight of him, in his hands on you. Not a single spark of lightning threatens to drive you apart, so you deepen your kisses as much as you please. You simultaneously want to push him down into the grass and make love to him there and kiss him for an eternity you know you both don’t have and simply gaze at him in awe and wonder that even while he had godhood in grasp and a crown on his head, he gave it all up for you.

He gave up godhood for you.

You never realized you could love him more than you already did. But you do. Your every heartbeat sings love for him.

You lose track of time kissing him. It could be moments or hours. You don’t know nor do you care. But at last, when you finally pull away from him, it takes you a second to remember where you are, standing out on the hillside across the river from the city. The sun is rising over the horizon now, painting the world in gold and shifting the hue of the sky to a beautiful, cloudless blue. A new day is beginning. 

A whole future awaits. And it is yours to shape with your love at your side.

“What’s next, my love?” you ask. “Now that we have everything we both want.”

“Next? For us?” He chuckles and takes your hand, bringing it up to press a tiny kiss on your empty ring finger. “If you still want me, I believe we have a wedding to plan.”

“I will always want you, Gale Dekarios. Now and forever.”

“Is that a yes to planning the wedding? Because I’ll have you know that Waterdhavian weddings are quite the large-scale affair.”

You laugh, his humor clearing the air like the sunlight warming away the fog of a morning and the dew on the grass. “Yes. Come on, let’s find some food to eat and get started. I can’t wait to begin a new life together with you.”

“My love, that new life starts now,” he says, bringing you in for another kiss. You smile against his lips and allow yourself to be corrected. He is right, of course.

Your new life with him begins now.

[virginiaoflykos]

What to read after Light Bringer? (Series similar to Red Rising)

August 2023 update!

Red Rising is my favorite series of all time, and since I first read it, I have sought series and books similar in both spirit and execution. Some of these recs are books I haven’t read personally, but have often come up in discussions with other users!

1. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Status: ongoing, expected 10 books in total, 4/10 out at the moment

Book 1: The Way of Kings. The Way of Kings takes place on the world of Roshar, where war is constantly being waged on the Shattered Plains, and the Highprinces of Alethkar fight to avenge a king that died many moons ago.

2. The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

Status: finished, 6/6 books out.

Book 1 (in publication order): Three Parts Dead. Comprised of 6 standalone books set in the same universe, the Craft Sequence tells the tales of the city of Alt Coulumb. The city came out of the God Wars with one of its gods intact, Kos the Everburning. In return for the worship of his people, Kos provides heat and steam power to the citizens of Alt Coulumb; he is also the hub of a vast network of power relationships with other gods and god-like beings across the planet. Oh, and he has just died. If he isn’t revived in some form by the turn of the new moon, the city will descend into chaos and the finances of the globe will take a severe hit.

3. Hierarchy by James Islington

Status: ongoing, 1/3 planned books out

Book 1: The Will of the many. The Will of the Many tells the story of Vis, a young orphan who is adopted by one of the sociopolitical elites of the Hierarchy. Vis is tasked with entering a prestigious magical academy with one goal – ascend the ranks, figure out what the other major branches of the government are doing, and report back. However, that isn’t quite as easy as Vis or anyone else thought it was going to be…

4. Suneater by Christopher Ruocchio

Status: ongoing, 5/7 books out

Book 1: Empire of Silence. Hadrian is a man doomed to universal infamy after ordering the destruction of a sun to commit an unforgivable act of genocide. Told as a chronicle written by an older Hadrian, Empire of Silence details his earlier adventures and serves as an introduction to the characters and the setting.

5. Dune by Frank Herbert

Status: completed, 6/6 books out

Book 1: Dune. Set in the distant future amidst a feudal interstellar society in which various noble houses control planetary fiefs. It tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose family accepts the stewardship of the planet Arrakis. While the planet is an inhospitable and sparsely populated desert wasteland, it is the only source of melange, or "spice", a drug that extends life and enhances mental abilities.

6. The Expanse by James S A Corey

Status: completed, 9/9 books out

Book 1: Leviathan wakes. Set hundreds of years in the future, after mankind has colonized the solar system. A hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain come together for what starts as a missing young woman and evolves into a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

7. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

Status: completed. 3 books in the original trilogy + 3 standalone books + 3 books in the newest trilogy

Book 1: The Blade Itself. The story follows the fortunes and misfortunes of bad people who do the right thing, good people who do the wrong thing, stupid people who do the stupid thing and, well, pretty much any combination of the above. Survival is no mean feat, and at the end of the day, dumb luck might be more of an asset than any amount of planning, skill, or noble intention.

8. Cradle by Will Wight

Status: completed, 12/12 books out

Book 1: Unsouled. Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path

9. Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (one PB’s favorites)

Status: completed, 4/4 books out

Book 1: Hyperion. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Church of the Final Atonement, alternately known as the Shrike Church, and the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems) to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale.

[coffeesleep-ooc]

Fem BingQiu thoughts

just look at our usual SY, he transmigrates, spoils tf out of his fav character, fails utterly at not dying, and accidentally creates a harem only to end up realizing he is literally obsessed with said fav character whose whole world is him.

now, lets think about how when two men even stand next to each other in swim shorts society is fully convinced they are gay (a teacher literally showed me an image of our president with another man just barely touching in swim shorts, fully convinced there were accusations of gayness, srsly) but when two girls go hand in hand and embrace they are friends, how literally two men bffs can’t take each other’s hand without being gay but it’s normalized for girls to touch each other and be affectionate

now imagine how touch starved LBH would go insane bc SQQ IS SO DAMN TACTILE

like, that man wanted to touch LBH and squeeze him and hug him and spoil him, but truly didn’t do ig bc it would be a bit weird, headpats were the norm. BUT imagine if they were both female, then SQQ wpuld refute the system’s ooc with “we are both women, what’s there ro see? Just a little affection and kissing cheeks! Who wouldn’t want to nom those cute lil cheeks and squeeze such a cute little baby?” meanwhile LBH is glad she is not a man bc if she was she would have to leave Shizun’s very good very warm and soft embrace to hide her pillar’s reaction. She is so washing all her layers today, Shizun’s chest is pressing against her neck and sometimes face and it’s bliss to smell her from up close, and Binghe is ascending when shizun kisses here cheeks and coos at her and god Binghe could turn her head just so to receive a kiss on her lips and Shizun would only laugh and apologize for the mistake and it breaks her heart at the same time it becomes the most tempting thing!

Shizun also embraces other females, she touches their hair and pulls their cheeks, bit Binghe is the only one that gets kisses! She could never (should) take advantage of that!!!

let’s be real, fem Bingqiu would have SY!SQQ even more oblivious and thick, trying to bond with Binghe while making her fall even more, and a much more desperate LBH, who knows what to touch her shizun is and is goong absolutely barking mad by the time the alliance conference comes up. Then when she comes back she is even more unhinged than original LBG and sv LBH

i can see it so clearly too, pls send help im not normal about them >A<

[dapper-lil-arts]

I'm invested now, why don't you like fluttercord?

Okay, here we go then, why don't I like one of the most famous and prolific ships on the fandom?

First of all, there's a major power imbalance at play, you know, chaos god that can reshape mind and reality with a snap of his fingers matched with a regular pegasus girl, and an drastic age difference (which could be discarded cause Fluttershy's an adult, just worth a mention.)

But the primary issue comes from the canon itself, especially with how they came together. Fluttershy was just shafted for her full responsibility to be to make sure Discord gets better; Something that already was a strange choice of Celestia (like girl why are you throwing a random mortal you dont know that well onto a godlike chaos being even you struggled with? It reeks of writers already having come up a solution and not wanting to build a foundation to lead there.) and canon proves again and again that if discord doesnt have fluttershy around, he will make bad choices and hurt people, something that gets proven again and again all the way to gen fucking five. That's textbook codependency and it makes it even more weird by the incredible, terrifying power imbalance. Discord isnt just an alicorn, hes the only one of his kind because of how powerful he is, and his powers are insanely dangerous to have on a relationship with a mortal. Like, you saw how he was when he was jealous of Fluttershy for having a diffrent friend. Can you imagine what he'd do if somebody flirted with her? (even if they weren't dating, if Fluttershy said she got a girlfriend or whatever, Discord would straight up throw rainbow dash on a labyrinth of infinite agony)

I think my primary issues come from the canon because he is always abusing his powers, never using them wisely, and always causing trouble (WHICH WAS THE ORIGINAL POINT OF EVEN BRINGING HIM BACK TOO)-- And the ratio of slaps on the wrist lower dramatically by the end (the final conflict is entirely his fault purely because he thought having a conflict would be cool)-- All of which just makes him untrustworthy to be on a relationship with a mortal hes obssesed with. He'd be like a yandere boyfriend exept a chaos god, which, yikes!

Srsly the fact that cozy glow the toddler gets sent to hell and turned to stone instead of the chaos god that sponsored her is just plain WEIRD. It's a writers problem.

There's a reasons why Alicorns have to ascend, earn their power-- And why they tend to abuse it less. Being born with power just begets a diffrent attitude towards it; Which is smth that the writers do interpret quite well, with how Discord acts. he has no empathy, he doesnt need to care, because reality is his to shape, and then boom, teaching someone to be better just became a lot harder. Good character! Very funny, very well designed and voiced-- But goddamn he's weirdly written as a ""Good"" guy.

Now lets finally turn to the woman in the relationship. because Fluttershy is a normal mortal gal with a normal mortal life with her own needs, which generally shouldn't have to involve her entire life or routine on making sure a godlike manbaby does the right thing with his powers. it doesn't feel like the kind of thing that has any consent to it, after all, discord doesnt need to ask for anything, he can just do. (THANKS FOR THE IDEA CELESTIA) It just reeks of a kind of misoginy-ass writing where the woman has to bend over backwards for the man.

Its like the shy pegasus was just. Set up for LIFE on this strange relationship. Its kind of creepy.

And Fluttershy just deserves better than him in my opinion; And she can do better, too. Also it doesnt help that you know-- 99% other ship with fluttershy dont have any of these issues lmao. Even canon Rainbow Dash would treat her better, so i dont bother with Fluttercord ever!