#Beautiful Centre Table Designs

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Arachnophilia: (Part Ten)

Drider!Miguel O'Hara x Reader (+18)

Chapter Masterlist 🕷️

Content: Fluff and bonding, Monster/human relationship, Miguel is rutting, Reader goes into heat, Rough PinV sex, Spontaneous outdoor sex, Slight voyuerism/exhibitionism, Mouth covering, Rough biting, Creampie & web sealing, Little bit of angst at the end? CW: Mentions of & brief depiction of deer hunting.

Word count: 6060

One Week Later

‘Are you ready, arañita?’

Miguel’s voice drifted up and into the nest, turning your head towards the entrance. You were halfway through getting dressed and the distraction nearly toppled you to the floor.

‘AH- Yeah! Yeah, I’m- almost ready! Just a minute!’

You struggled into your new outfit; a suit made entirely of silk which Miguel had painstakingly crafted for you. It was super soft and strangely warm, but it clung to the contours of your body a little more than you’d have liked. You kept wondering if Miguel had consciously or perhaps unconsciously made it so form-fitting. After all, this was your third suit of its kind, as he’d ripped the other two to shreds during extremely passionate and wet sex.

You felt your face grow warm at the memory and physically shook it away. No, no time for that. If you slipped back into the heat again you’d never get to go on the trip, and you were excited to go.

As you rose to your feet you took a moment to admire how the nest was coming along. The first thing you’d done was make it homely by adding a window and doors, with the entrance now covered by a crude cut oaken circle that swung outward on a hinge and the walls now adorned with little wooden shuttered holes.

You admired the half-made fireplace in the centre of the room, next to the DIY wooden table and the slowly burgeoning food prep area, before turning to the bed.

The mattress was completely drowning in silken blankets and silken pillows, and the floor beside it was now adorned with the pelt of a stag he’d killed. You knew autumn was approaching and it would only get colder, hence the focus on conserving heat, and while you didn’t want to jinx the relationship you enjoyed planning for the future.

You did feel a little bad since almost all these changes were only for your benefit. You had to preserve heat in this empty forest, but Miguel with his soft fluffy abdomen could remain shirtless all year round.

Your eyes softened affectionately at just the thought. Such a beautiful creature. He was a sight to behold when he stepped out into the cold dawn, where the heat of his muscles created a misty sheen of steam and his white breath curling around his fangs.

‘Arañita!’

You jumped in place as Miguel’s voice echoed from below for a second time. Shit, you’d been daydreaming about him so much you’d forgotten to go down. With fumbling hands you grabbed your bag and rushed out the open door.

‘COMING!’

Where once there was only a short sticky rope to descend from his home there was now a generous ladder, allowing you to easily clamber down to the floor.

Miguel was waiting, patient as ever, his legs gently tapping on the dirt as you approached.

‘Alright! I’m here, sorry. Had some- difficulty with the suit’ you called.

‘Ah, arañita. There you are.’ The joy that lit up his face every time he saw you never failed to make your legs weak.

‘Yep! Here I am.’

‘You look wonderful in that suit, by the way’ he noted as you rushed to his side. You took the time to scoff as you grabbed handfuls of his fur, using it as leverage to drag your body onto his back. His fluff was soft where it brushed your skin, and he smelled like grass dew and wet hair.

‘Oh my god- I knew it, you designed the suit to be too tight on me, didn’t you?’

‘I- well, yes. Is that an issue? Is it uncomfortable?’

You landed on his abdomen with an ‘oomph’ and shuffled forward, settling on his back like a great horse. Your hands wrapped themselves tight around his broad waist.

‘No, but- come on. Little bit pervy.’

‘I thought that was the nature of our relationship’ he argued. He tried desperately to catch your eye but in doing so began spinning in little circles, chasing his back as you continuously ducked out of the way. You took great pleasure in making him spin. ‘I like to look at you, yes. I get great physical joy from admiring your form. You are my mate. I thought this was normal. Is that not normal?’

‘Oh my god Mig—alright, come on! No more wasting daylight hours! Go! Go! Git!’

You gently and playfully kicked his side, urging him onward like a horse, but a firm glare from his bloody red eyes quickly brought you down into an apologetic cower.

‘Sorry! Sorry, uh- shall we, shall we go, darling? At your own discretion?’

He gave a curt nod and began strolling upward into the forest.

Today, he was finally taking you hunting.

The woods, once terrifying and unknowable to you, were slowly becoming a comforting norm. You gazed up at the dizzyingly high pines as Miguel walked upward to where the trees grew sparse and wide.

The early morning daylight trickled down in thin rays, their glow highlighting the tiny specks of dust and flitting little bugs as they passed you by.

This place felt old, untouched. It was cool beneath the heavy canopy above. You could hear nothing but the distant chirps of birds and the occasional creaking of an old tree. As you passed beneath those silent giants you clutched Miguel a little tighter.

‘You were talking in your sleep last night’ you whispered. Mig jumped. You’d been walking for almost ten minutes now in abject silence, so your voice was a surprise.

‘Ah- what was that, mi tesoro?’ he whispered back once he’d regained his composure. You bit down the urge to giggle.

‘Oh, sorry, um- you were talking in your sleep last night. That’s all I said.’

‘I was?’

‘Mhm. It’s very cute. You kept kicking your legs, kicking them and grunting, then you said something like don’t run so fast little one or wait for me and um- I think then you just kinda settled and went back to sleep. Like I said, very cute.’

Miguel rolled his shoulders as he continued strolling onward. You couldn’t tell from here what he was thinking.

‘Mm. I don’t- remember my dreams anymore, but, I know that they’re vivid. I remember the feelings but not the events. So- huh. I wonder what I dreamed about?’

‘I should stay up and keep an eye on you, try and sus it out’ you teased. He managed a breathy little snort of a laugh in response.

‘Ah, I’m not sure about that. What if I say something in my dreams that I shouldn’t?’

‘Oh, pft- like what? You gonna say someone else’s name? you don’t know anyone else, well except Miguel maybe, and if you said his name my first thought wouldn’t be that.’

‘I could still- imply something embarrassing’ he said with a shrug. You’d broached the top of the hills by this point and behind you the view was extraordinary, with small windows in the canopy giving you a perfect view of the city in the distance. Mig paused to turn and look at it with you mid conversation.

‘I could- I don’t know, admit some, sexual fetish I hadn’t even realized yet, some- deep interest in the back of my mind.’

You sighed as you rested on his bicep. With your arms still tight around his waist you gave him an affirming little squeeze. ‘You idiot’ you teasingly chided, ‘you admit everything to me anyway. This morning you immediately confessed that you designed my clothes for your own delight, and- wait, yeah, literally the FIRST day you started rutting you sat me down and told me in great detail your sexual fantasy. You are too honest to be worried about this.’

Another guttural choke escaped his throat, his strange little laugh that now filled you with joy to hear. ‘You are right, as always, my tesoro. I suppose it’s just my anxiety. I- suppose I’m just not used to anyone else being around when I sleep. It’s strangely vulnerable, no?’

‘Yeah, yeah. It’s weird, but, It’s nice though, right?’

You felt his fur bristle beneath you, the strands brushing your leg. Oh, you thought, that meant he was upset about something, right? But, why?

‘Is it?’ he murmured.

You turned and leaned around his torso to try and see his face more clearly, but right as you did so he turned himself and began walking deeper.

‘Hey, is something up?’ you gently pushed.

‘Ah, it… Sometimes- you pull away, at night, when we’re… cuddling.’ The way his voice dipped on the word cuddling, like he was embarrassed to be saying it in front of you. God, he was so sweet. ‘You shuffle away and I wake up without you. I- was worried you were uncomfortable with me.’

‘Oh, I love cuddling Mig! But doesn’t it bother you when you’re trying to sleep? I keep waking myself up because when I roll in my sleep you’re there and I keep thinking I’ll wake you up too.’

He let out a soft ‘humpf’ sound in response, clearly surprised by your response. ‘Ah- I don’t believe so. I haven’t slept any worse since you arrived, except, occasionally waking to check you’re okay.’

‘Oh. Huh. Well, you are… Big? I suppose is the best word? Big ol’ guy, you probably don’t feel me as much. But, like I was saying, I’m just not used to feeling something beside me when I sleep. I’m adjusting my brain to it, that’s all. it doesn’t mean I dislike you or dislike cuddling. We’re just uh- finding boundaries, now we live together.’

He seemed to perk up at the reminder that you were, technically, living together. Living together as partners, a concept he thought he would only ever dream out. He did a little rustle before bounding through the trees.

‘Alright, well, we’re almost there. Let me get you something to eat, mi arañita’

True to his word Mig became utterly focused on the hunt from that point onward.

He bayed you to settle down in the roots of a tree while he got into position, somewhere far enough to dampen your scent but close enough that you could see. He seemed desperate to have you witness him being productive, and you were curious enough to go along with his whims.

In this part of the forest the trees were sparser, allowing more vegetation to cover the dry earth. Miguel had said this gave him more cover for ambush, but you were still stumped as to how this giant man was supposed to hide himself even in the thickest growth. Even when pressed to the floor he was huge, as wide as he was long, covered in bright red and black fur.

Surely a deer would see that, right? Curiosity got the better of you, and you settled down in the roots to watch.

Mig started by feeling the vibrations in the dirt. He tapped at the floor, shuffling back and forth as he listened for something far beyond the scope of your own senses. You saw his eyes widen a few times, indicating that he’d felt something in the distance, and once he seemed sure he began the next unusual stage of this dance.

He dug. He dug into the earth with his enormous legs, filling out a small burrow in which his body could just about fit. He used his legs to drag foliage over his head, masking his scent and his body, until even you could barely see him at all.

And there, he waited. He waited, and waited, as clouds came to cover the sun. He waited in the gloom while you picked at your nails, waiting with a patience that frankly scared you to your core, until you both heard it.

A snap. A twig breaking.

A stag had entered the woods. Immediately you shuffled downward, lying as still as possible in the roots. Mig didn’t move an inch.

The stag was sniffing at the ground as it approached. You were certain that it would smell the enormous spider lying in wait, but somehow it just kept drifting closer and closer. You could see its head dipping to push through the grass, its snout flexing and snorting. Its breath condensed hard in the cool air.

Every muscle in your body tensed. You watched, your heart racing, as the stag went to sniff right over Migs head.

CRACK.

You jumped in your skin as he pounced.

It was terrifying. It was pure, primal, a spectacle of undiluted power. He moved with a speed that seemed impossible for something of his size, so large and yet so nimble, as his legs propelled him out of the dirt and onto the beast. It tried to run but his claws caught its neck.

With the sheer weight of his body he brought the bleating giant down. You saw a flash of his eyes, blood red with a single white pupil, right before he clamped his jaws on its neck.

It was over in seconds. The moment the deer stopped moving you scrambled out of the roots to join him.

‘Holy- shit, you’re so fast!’

Mig unclamped the catch with a soft grunt. You could see the blood on his jaw and neck which he immediately smeared with the back of his hand before facing you. He had such a strangely shy smile on his face.

‘Oh- you saw! You saw it. What did you think?’

‘It was… terrifying! Wow! You are- so, strong!’ you said with an awkward laugh. You left out how weirdly enjoyable it was to see him at full strength, to have witnessed the power and carnage he was capable of.

His grin widened as he took your comment at face value. ‘Thank you, arañita. That- makes me happy. I like showing you that I can be of use.’

‘Oh, Mig you idiot.’

You leaned in and affectionately touched his hair, gently brushing back the thick curls. He almost purred at the touch. ‘Now- jesus, let’s get you cleaned up and get home.’

You used a strip of silk from your back to try and clear his face, though he kept nestling into your hand which made it difficult to finish. Something about hunting for you seemed to make him especially soft. He would tap his feet for attention and rustle against you, and you would tut at him while secretly enjoying his touch.

That peaceful downtime did not last long though. As you were brushing yourself down, preparing to head back down, you noticed that Mig had stopped pacing. When you turned to check on him his eyes were wide.

‘Mig?’ you said softly. He didn’t move. You watched with ever growing curiosity as he began to dart his gaze across the forest line, almost as if he was looking for something. You followed his line of sight but could see nothing yourself.

It was only then, on the cusp of your lips parting to question Mig on what he was doing, that your senses picked up the same thing he had.

Your eyes locked in a moment of shared terror.

Footsteps. Distant footsteps, growing closer with every step. Idle chit chat that echoed in the trees, something about being lost and forgetting the map. You sensed a flask on an overstuffed backpack slowly clinking against a metal keychain.

‘Hikers’ you hissed. Mig gave a silent nod.

No, no, no. This was bad, you thought. What were people doing this far out? Why today of all days?

You didn’t want to risk a run in with civilians. You knew Mig was safe, but you also remembered how you’d acted the first time you saw him, and more importantly you remembered his distress at being seen.

Without another word you jumped into action, hopping his back in one fell swoop while he grabbed the kill by the nape of its hide. He lifted it as easily as a cat carrying a kitten, a feat you barely had time to appreciate, as he broke into a canter the moment you were mounted.

In silence you hurried back down the way you’d come.

For about half the way down it seemed to be smooth sailing. Mig made easy progress through the woods, his eight legs silently tapping back and forth on the mulchy earth as you descended to home. Your senses could feel the hikers getting further and further away.

In no time at all you saw the glade appear at the bottom of the hill, a tiny little circle in a sea of evergreen pines slowly sinking downward. You let out a contented sigh.

But then you felt it.

You felt It.

That foreboding tug in your gut. The gentle throbbing that sank down through your insides, the pulsing of blood as your heart sped up. The yearning, the need, the subconscious addictive pleading for satisfaction.

No, no, no, NO. You couldn’t stop here, right? The hikers weren’t far enough away yet.

You shuffled, trying to secretly suppress it, when Miguel abrupted stumbled to a halt himself. You heard him drop the stag with a thump.

Shit. You could smell it. It was heavy in the air, a smell you couldn’t describe with words but which you felt in your loins. He was rutting too.

Your eyes rolled. Oh that smell, it gave you goosebumps. That smell alone dragged you to him like a magnetic force.

‘Arañita?’

His words were soft as he spoke. Those were dangerous words, hungry words.

‘Mig?’

You felt so small on his back as his shoulders arched. You had to tilt your head to see his face, to see the bright glow of his eyes as his head instinctively tilted sideways. You balked. Those eyes were fucking starving.

‘Mig’ you breathed.

His abdomen vibrated softly, rustling against your skin in a way that sent pleasurable shivers through your thighs and spine. You shuddered against him. ‘Mig, don’t—careful—’

He breathed out hard, his breath condensing in the air. ‘Ah… Arañita …’

It curled like smoke around his bloody maw. His full lips parted and he breathed in through the mouth, releasing a dark and foreboding growl. ‘Ah…’

‘Mig—we need to get back—’

He was breathing heavier now. You could see his enormous spider legs quivering as he fought the urge slowly infecting his mind. The urge to pin, to fill, to penetrate, to feel. The urge to claim. The urge to see your pretty form, naked and sweating and shaking as you struggled to take him, as you were fucked to the brim with his very being.

When he huffed smoke for a second time a breathy moan escaped his throat. It was a mating call, plain and simple, echoing through the trees.

‘Mig… Mig…’

It was pitiful; your pleading had gone from genuine concern to depraved praise as you whispered his name over and over again. While you pleaded Mig struggled to focus on his senses. His body was begging, screaming even, to take you now, but he could just feel the hikers still approaching their location.

‘We need- to get back- to the nest’ he panted. You didn’t even respond.

At this point you were broken, involuntarily grinding your hips into his fur for any semblance of relief. Your body was burning to the point that sweat was sticking your suit to the contours of your skin, highlighting every little dip and curve.

‘Miggy—’

‘Arañita!’

His bark of an order made you mewl.

‘We need- to get back—’

‘O-Okay’ you whined. Slowly, painfully, Miguel began to continue his walk down the hillside towards the glade.

It was agony. You’d gotten so used to instant gratification that pushing through the need was now hellish, especially combined with the need to run.

It was an itchy heat, a prickling heat, and as your blood began to pump you felt your insides begin to pulsate. Throb after throb, each harder than the last, as every muscle inside you twitched and tensed around a cock that wasn’t there.

You could feel his body beneath you. You could sense him, feel him in every part of your body. All you could think about was feeling more, tasting more, as that desperate curdling need to feel his cock inside you flooded all of your senses. It was physically unbearable.

‘Don’t’ your mind screamed as you pulled at his fur.

‘Don’t do it’ his mind pleaded as he forced himself forward.

But you were no match for each other’s potent smell. No risk, not even death, felt important compared to that burning ache.

You collapsed from his body and into the dirt with a low moan, unable to maintain yourself any longer. Miguel descended on you in seconds.

You squeaked and squirmed as he gripped you in his claws. He pounced like you were prey. He flipped and thrust your body down onto its back, his gruff hands immediately pinning your arms to the floor. The frail little bones in your wrists screamed out at the pressure.

‘Mig!’

He hissed and flexed his teeth on your neck, hot breath cascading over your skin as the smell of musky hormones and blood filled your nose.

‘I can’t- wait—’ he panted. You could already feel his abdomen rubbing and grinding on you, his slit unable to contain his erection any longer. You could feel the thick, warm shaft smearing your new suit with his thick, pearly pre-cum. ‘I need- you, please- I need it- it hurts—’

You knew it was dangerous, but your brain was a melted pot of red hot lust. You couldn’t fight it anymore. With a soft whine you lay back and turned your head to the side, frantically nodding for him to continue.

‘Okay, fuck—I can’t wait, fuck—just, be quick, please’ you panted.

He didn’t even bother to fully undress you. With a hiss he bent and ripped a hole in your suit with his mouth, a dangerous tactic as his teeth brushed your pussy lips as he tore the silk aside. He took one deep sniff of your pheremones before physically dragging your body into position.

He forced your legs into a mating press, his hefty torso straining the muscles in your thighs to bend to his will. He rustled slightly as he pushed into position, roughly edging his bulbous member against your slit, and as you felt the first inch spreading you open you knew it was over.

‘Okay, okay’ he panted, ‘shh- sh, stay still for me arañita, let me just—fill you—’

He thrust, hard, and with one excruciatingly tight stretch he was inside you again.

‘M-MM--!’ Your hips bucked and tensed, rocking from side to side as you struggled to adjust. Miguel gasped like he’d just avoided drowning.

‘Ah—ahh—that’s it, that’s it. I’ll be- quick, just- stay still, mi tesoro, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’

The moment he entered you he started to frantically rut to completion, his abdomen jerking back and forth as he fucked you into the dirt. Your fingers dug into his arms.

‘MM--!’ It was painful to hold back your screams. You had to bite your tongue until it bled, until the taste of iron filled your mouth and nose, all in a vain attempt to not be caught. He was so fucking rough.

‘Sweet little spider’ he whined. You felt him thrust a little deeper and squirmed with joy at the familiar mixture of ache and pleasure.

‘It’s… ‘S so good’ you whispered in a needy, whiney breath. ‘So—good…’

Desperate now to finish quickly, Miguel angled himself a little further back. He needed the one thing that he couldn’t resist, his most primal indulgence. He wanted to see it. Your small, soft, sweet human body, perfectly impaled on his enormous shaft. The sight sent full body shivers through his spine.

‘So… tight…’

He looked utterly pussy drunk, mesmerised almost. He watched your slick coat his cock as he drew back, those translucent sticky strings hanging between his abdominal fur and your pretty little slit. They made his black veins glisten as they pulsed against your swollen cunt.

‘Mi… aranita…’

He stared, unblinking, as he moved his hand and began touching the spot where he’d entered you. He brushed his thumb down and across your swollen clit, those wet and messy folds, until it came to rest where his shaft was splitting you open. He watched you swallow him whole.

‘Pretty, pretty little spider’ he whispered. ‘F-fuck…’  

He watched your hips jolt as he gave a few short pumps about halfway in, fixated on the way you stretched and wriggled with pleasure. His previous seed was now oozing out at the sides as he pumped in and out, just adding to the absolute mess you were making.

‘So, so… pretty…’

You felt his claws suddenly hit your neck, pressing you down until you were forced to be still. He continued to watch with wide and unblinking eyes as his thick rod squished back and forth, back and forth, filling you until you bulged before slowly slipping out with a wet pop.

‘Mm- mm—’

He was grunting hard as he moved.

‘So, fucking, pretty—’

‘Is it this way?’

Your whole body went rigid at the sound of unfamiliar voices, but you didn’t even have time to process your shock, because Miguel didn’t stop.

Even as the voices got louder he continued rutting you into the floor, his breathy grunts just barely audible in the rustling undergrowth.

You silently slapped at his arm but he couldn’t bring himself to pause. He impulsively clamped his hand over your mouth, his eyes deadly and starved as they stared down at your panicked expression.

‘Stay. Quiet’ he mouthed. Despite your fear, you were just as needy. You let him have you.

He bent your legs into your ribs just to slip deeper, his thick shaft eagerly kissing and smearing your cervix with pre-cum. Your breath was hot on his calloused hand as it muffled your desperate moans.

Despite his rational mind knowing that he needed to be quiet, Mig’s carnal desperation was driving him towards risky behaviour. You could hear the clap of his skin between your thighs echo with each wet pop as he pushed in and out, a symphony just as terrifying as it was erotic.

You watched him savor the feel of your body. You watched him as he experienced you.

‘Ah—ahh—ah—’

He flexed his jaw until it hurt trying to suppress his cries of pleasure, and in a second moment of impulse he bent down and sank his fangs into your shoulder. Your squeaks were silenced.

Now clamped by the terrifying power of his maw you were utterly surrendered. You could feel his teeth moving in tandem with his cock, filling and shifting inside you, flooding you with that same potent mixture of pain and pleasure.

You raked your fingers down his back, drawing red lines into his rough scarred skin. He dug his claws into the dirt.

The footsteps got closer, but there was no breaking free. You were trapped together. With a muffled grunt Miguel sped up to completion.

‘MMFF—’

He came inside you silently, with all his gutteral noises muffled by your skin. You felt it all the same. The heavy spurts, the hot seed flooding in and squirting against his soft underside when your cunt ran out of room. You were filled until you bulged.

In the high of that release you were nearly dizzy. Your eyes fluttered shut as your hormones overpowered any rational fear about being seen. All you could do was lull and whine, relishing the sweet gratification of being filled again.

‘Mig’ you whispered. ‘My Mig. You—’

Snap.

Your eyes shot open.

You tilted your head, slowly, just enough for your eyes to roll and spy the woods behind you. Two hikers were frozen in place, their bodies just barely obscured by the trunk of a pine.

They were staring at you. You, your body pinned beneath the torso of your half spider mate, still fully impaled on his monstrous cock, with your head in his neck and your flesh in his maw.

Your blood ran cold as your body tensed. To say you were mortified was an understandment, it felt like your heart might give out. You felt Miguel’s breath steaming against your shoulder as he panted into it. Did he know? Had he realized?

You opened your mouth but no sound spare a painful squeak escaped. Your brain was utterly fried.

The one to break the tension then was Mig, who decided to release your shoulder and stare directly at the two strangers. Mouth bloodied, eyes red, his naked body straining and panting for air.

Their reaction was swift.

‘FUCK!’

The two hikers almost fell over each other as they ran, both frantically fleeing for their lives into the overgrown brush.

‘JESUS- CHRIST, WHAT WAS THAT?!’

‘WAS IT EATING THEM?!’

‘F-Fuck, FUCK! I DON’T KNOW JUST- GO!’

‘We have to call for help—’

‘JUST RUN JUST- FUCKING RUN!!’

As the screams grew distant, you felt Miguel slowly pull out. His hands were quick to plug you up and carefully stitch your suit back together at the crotch, but you were too exhausted to move.

‘Shhiittt.’

It was the only thing you could think to say as you lay back in the mud, your head still a little woozy from the whole experience. Mig just grunted.

‘Shit, shit, shit. Ah…. I’m- I’m sure it’s fine. It’s fine. I- fuck, are you okay Mig?’

He grunted again as he lifted you up into his arms. His spider legs hooked the stag’s carcass and carefully manoeuvred it onto his back, allowing him to begin the short final trek back to the clearing with you still in his arms. The longer he went without saying a word, the more you began to worry.

‘Mig?’

You patted his cheek as he walked, trying in vain to get his attention. His only response was to sigh.

‘It’s okay’ you said, your voice now rather timid. ‘It’s fine, they- we probably won’t ever see them again. And hey, we didn't have to fight them! That's good, right? They just- left.’

‘It’s not that.’

You were surprised when words finally left his mouth, especially when they were delivered so sadly. He was blunt, yes, but not usually this melancholy, especially after sex.

‘What is it then?’ you asked. It took him a few more seconds to reply.

‘They thought… I was eating you’ he murmured. ‘If I’d been anyone else, they wouldn’t have screamed. We would have been- yelled at, perhaps, or chastised for being perverts. Maybe they’d have just, awkwardly moved away. But they would never have assumed I was eating you.’

The sombre reality sank in slowly. Somehow, you’d both forgotten the reality of what this was. What he was. You tried to shrug it off. ‘Wait, that’s what you’re worried about? I mean… If you were just, purely human, they might have still assumed you were murdering me. People can do murder too yanno.’

He managed a small, throaty chuckle at your light teasing, but it was strained. He looked distant, distracted, alone in his own mind. You gently shook his arm to drag him back down to reality.

‘Hey. It’s fine. You’re fine’ you repeated.

‘Does it not, bother you? The way they reacted?’

‘Mig I would have been mortified to be caught like that whether you were fully human or not’ you scoffed. He seemed unconvinced.

‘If they’d- seen us, holding hands’ he said, slowly musing over the theoretical aloud, ‘if they’d seen us… kissing, or even just sitting together, they would have run. They would still be terrified.’

It was hard to maintain a smile in the face of his dour prediction. You knew he was right, but you didn’t want to simmer in that pool of despair, and you didn’t want him to wallow in it either.

‘People- when they see something they don’t understand, they, react like animals. Sometimes they run, sometimes they fight. They squash it so you don’t have to think about it. It’s easier.’

That morbid thought made him wince, but you refused to let go. You leaned in and tilted his head back towards you.  

‘And it’s horrible. It’s horrible, and it hurts, but then there’s other people. Other people, who- know what it’s like, to be the- scared little spider on the wall. And they know, Mig. They knew. I know. And I’m not scared of you.’

To your joy he managed to shoot you a ghost of a smile, just the barest tilting of his lips. It was enough for you, even if you’d only managed to distract him for a bit.

‘Besides, who do we have to disappoint?’ you said in an attempt to lighten to mood. ‘I don’t have friends to introduce you too, or family, or co-workers. You’re alone. We don’t need to worry about what people think.’

‘You say that now, arañita, but… I don’t know, I don’t feel like that will remain true forever. I also don’t appreciate you indulging my possessive nature.’

‘Awh, what? How, what did I do?’

‘Implying we’re all we’ve got’ he said softly. ‘It makes me- happy, but on some level, I know it shouldn’t.’

‘Well, hey! You know it shouldn’t, so- you know, that’s a start.’

Mig ducked his head beneath a row of branches as he re-entered the clearing. In the clear, bright light of the burgeoning sun he looked glorious.

‘Yes, but—I also know that I willingly ignore that fact and, pretend it is acceptable’ he confessed with a slight shrug. ‘Because- well, it comforts me, especially when I’m reminded that we are… different, to put it nicely.’

‘Well, as long as you’re not getting feisty, huh? I’ll just be sure to let you know if it ever gets annoying’ you offered. You pressed your face against his pec, right over his heart, and tapped it like you were making a promise. He gave you that sweet little ghost of a smile.

‘Very well, mi tesoro. I will hold you to that.’

You allowed Mig to drop the kill near the base of the nest before climbing back in with you still in his arms. You lulled a little in the sudden warmth, placated by the warm orange rays of sunlight warming the floor, and the moment he slid you onto the bed you collapsed into it.

‘Mmm… Yanno, that was the first time we were under such pressure from the heat that you didn’t make me orgasm’ you noted with a yawn. It was more a dry observation than a real problem you had, but it immediately caused Mig to bristle in horror.

‘I- oh, no you’re right. You poor little spider.’

‘It’s okay! I don’t blame you, it—HEY!’

You squealed with delight as he dove onto the mattress, his weight flinging your body a few feet into the air before landing back into his already outstretched arms.

‘Let me fix that’ he purred, his breath brushing your ear. ‘Please, mi aranita, let me taste you again.’

With an eager grunt his lips met yours, his abdomen rustling with excitement as his tongue went down your throat. You were smothered in seconds.

You gave in to his whining need to please and relished in the chance to scream again, your wet lips quivering his name with each breath as he tore your third new suit to pieces for just a lick of your cunt.

You were too focused on his mouth to notice anything as you tossed every item of clothing to the floor. Between his whiny moans and your own panting, you couldn’t have possibly heard anything else.

You certainly couldn’t have heard your society watch as it buzzed against the fur rug, the name ‘Jess’ highlighted in clear orange light. It was left to ring to voicemail instead, with neither of you aware it’d even gone off. Link to next part!

[three-realms-archive]

Unhinged™

(inspired by this post by @leniisreallycool. the pure madness of obey me is the reason why I typically write chaotically-comedic slice-of-life scenarios; because i can honestly write these guys doing the stupidest things and argue that it might as well be canon, these dorks. anime canon, tho. the anime is just another beast of its own to the game ahahaha.)

(so while this may not be anime canon-level obey me content, i hope it comes close. if they’ve actually done any of these and i just haven’t experienced it in-game yet, let me know! it only proves my point.)

There was a time when Solomon brought an extremely-long baguette everywhere with him, insisting it was his magic wand. Even as the days turned to weeks, and the bread crust turned to mould, Solomon would still carry it around everywhere; unbothered by the rancid smell and waving it like a idol group light-stick whenever he spoke an incantation. Then, one day, he showed up at RAD with sandwiches to share. Sandwiches… with suspiciously green and white bread. Turns out, this whole thing was Solomon’s interpretation of dry-aging.

Belphegor and Asmodeus have an ongoing vlog series on Deviltube called ‘Beauty Sleep’. They go somewhere trendy, find some inappropriate place for Belphie to sleep, and Asmo takes some #aesthetic shots whilst timing how long Belphie can nap before being kicked out. It’s incredibly popular and sometimes features cameos from the exchange students and the other Avatars of Sin. Once, a subscriber milestone came with a special surprise: a live-streamed episode of Beauty Sleep in the Demon Lord’s Castle! They never got caught, because Diavolo was busy watching the livestream in his room - too invested to realise it was his own house.

The dining table in the main room of the House of Lamentation has its own fandom on the DevilNet. There are multiple fansites speculating the exact materials used to make it; the exact number of fasteners it uses; and, most especially, its exact length. There are posts, blogs and entire DevilTube deep-dive videos centred around the mystery of how long the table is. This is because, in every piece of media involving the table, it appears a different length despite the decorations and location remaining the same. What the Devildom doesn't know is that the table was made retractable shortly after MC arrived in the Devildom. It was a custom job, done solely so that the table could be used as a runway for a makeshift fashion show (Asmo and Mammon's idea) the brothers held with human world clothes one time MC was feeling homesick.

Once, for a whole month, Mammon dedicated himself to creating a new currency. For the first week, he was an absolute menace, stealing metal objects (like small screws or unused kitchen utensils) around the house to melt down and form into coins of his own design. Beel cried for five days over the lack of cutlery and Asmo kept shrieking whenever he realised he’d had another piece of jewellery had been stolen from him. The rest of the month was spent attempting to rope people into investing; then failing; then celebrating because he had so much of his money to himself; and finally crying because none of it would be accepted at stores.

When he had first gotten into reading books, Satan started a website called ‘Ampbook’ where demons could upload personal writing projects, as well as comment on and share them, too. It’s now incredibly popular, especially amongst younger demons, and is well-known for romance. Well. Much to Satan’s chagrin, it was actually better-known for romance… and fanfiction. He’s constantly torn between allowing his beloved site users their freedom of expression, or immediately taking down any fanfics shipping MC with any of his other brothers. He’s also faked MC x Satan as the most trending tag, permanently.

The height of Beel’s appreciation for Leviathan was shortly after MC’s arrival into the Devildom. They had introduced Levi to an anime centred around four students in a high school swimming team; including a protagonist who Beel thought had a dubiously-intimate love of water. Regardless, Levi tried out for the RAD swimming team - got in and won a bunch of gold medals - and then proceeded to quit the team after a new, different anime he had been waiting for came out. All in the span of a week. To Levi's disdain, Beel brings this up at least once a month: by parading a handmade display of Levi's medals and a framed photo of his older brother in a swimsuit around RAD, showing it off to everyone who asked. And everybody asked. Maybe not so much for the medals.

[flowerandblood]

Glass Cuts Deepest (4)

[ professor! • Aemond x student! • female ]

[ warnings: description of rape, angst, trauma, mention of sexual harassment, violence, swearing, self-destructive behavior ]

[ description: A female painting student is finally able to choose the specialisation she has dreamt of - stained glass. She wants to become a student of the best specialist in this field, but he, for some reason, refuses to accept female students into his workshop. She finds out that he once slapped a female student of one of the other professors. Nevertheless, she makes an attempt to find out what happened then and to convince him to teach her. Slow burn, sexual tension, dark, agressive Aemond, great childhood traumas. ]

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Previous and next chapters: Masterlist

_____

With difficulty, every day, he forced himself to get used to her presence, to the smell of her coconut shampoo when she walked past, to her voice when she spoke to her year mates.

He always worked with his back to her, without looking at her, and she worked, as promised, in the corner, at the last table, covered by a pillar so that he could not see her most of the time.

On the one hand he felt uncomfortable, but on the other he thought with some feeling of pride that maybe this would help him get out of his area of weakness and trauma, that maybe this important decision would make something change in him.

She only dared to approach him when she wanted to show him her project, but when she laid it down in front of him he noticed with disappointment that it was too contrived.

There was too much going on, he thought, she was trying to prove to herself and him that she could create the most expressive, most complicated design possible.

"Overdone and tacky. This is not a competition for the most pompous baroque stained glass. Don't show me things like that again." He said dryly, returning to cutting glass. He heard her swallow loudly and walk away, leaving behind her scent of some new herbal shampoo.

Although he feared she would be a distraction to him and others, she behaved politely and decently, concentrating on her work, talking to her colleagues only during short breaks for tea or food.

She conformed to the rules and always cleaned her workstation thoroughly. She also dressed appropriately, usually wearing a large black t-shirt tucked into high-waisted black trousers, her hair either tied up in a braid or tied partially at the back of her head as the rest of her curls fell down her back.

As much as he didn't want it, she was the centre of his relentless attention − he waited for any stumble from her, any proof that she was faking it, that there was something different under that mask than she had shown so far.

It seemed to him, however, that the more days passed, the more relaxed and smiling she became. She worked on her new project while sitting with headphones on her head, listening to music, bobbing her head to its rhythm, painting at her table, undeterred by his unpleasant comment.

Two days after their exchange of words, she approached him for the second time, again holding a piece of paper. He looked at her sternly, wanting to make sure she knew what she was doing.

"Are you sure you want to show me this?" He asked warningly, and she nodded quickly before placing her draft in front of him. He pressed his lips together, feeling his heart thump involuntarily in his chest.

Her design was beautiful.

Her composition, although not perfect, even in its sketchy outline with the colours she had chosen and the positioning of the figures made the whole thing look light, lifted − he noticed immediately that the figures of the Virgin and Christ were inspired by Raphael's Sistine Madonna and wanted to see if she would admit it.

"Were you inspired by someone?" He asked coolly and she nodded quickly, smiling softly.

"Yes, Raphael's Sistine Madonna."

He hummed under his breath, pleased that she'd confessed, and began to analyse what he saw before him.

"On the left and right the composition is too filled in. You need to leave those four apostles lower, give more space to the background. Let them form an arc under the figure of Our Lady, not half a circle." He spoke at once what he noticed, running his hand over her work, pointing to the parts he had in mind.

She watched his every move with rapt attention and nodded quickly, her eyes shining with delight, as if with her imagination's sight she could see that indeed his changes would make the whole thing look even better.

"Yes. You're right, Professor, I will." She said excitedly, looking at him with a sort of gratitude and joy from which he felt uncomfortable.

He felt some strange kind of warmth in his lower abdomen at the thought that this smile suited her.

That she was pretty.

She was a pretty girl.

He bit his lower lip, embarrassed and horrified at his thought, and lowered his gaze, returning to his work.

"That's all."

He was not helped in dismissing this thought by the fact that, a few hours later, he came across her in the canteen, seeing her in nothing but a floral strapless summer dress.

He was relieved to find that nothing was showing through from under it, but the very fact that he saw her, in his perspective, in such a negligee made him take a greedy sip of coffee and avoid her, trying not to think about the pulsing he felt in the lower part of his body.

When he had gathered all the projects he made an appointment with the bishop, who invited him to his curia − they had coffee together and then proceeded to discuss the designs he had brought him. The bishop was delighted with three of them and couldn't make up his mind.

"You are the artist, tell me what you think. Which one do you think is the best?" He asked him, glancing at him curiously, catching himself involuntarily by the large gold cross hanging from his neck.

He looked intensely at the design that Wright had done and fought with himself, at the same time wanting to admit that she had surprised him positively with such rapid progress and considered her design one of the best, on the other hand not wanting to admit it to himself or to him. He grunted out loud.

"Please choose for yourself, Father Bishop. I am not a fair judge in this matter because I am prejudiced against one of the female students." He said frankly, and the bishop looked at him curiously.

"A female student? I thought your workshop was almost a male convent." He laughed low, gripping his belly concealed beneath his purple robe, and he huffed under his breath.

"It was." He muttered, as he nodded his head in understanding and sighed heavily.

"This one." He pointed his finger at the Wright project, and he pressed his lips together with a loud, tense swallow. Bishop looked at him curiously.

"Did I just choose the project of this female student?" He asked amused, and he looked away, impatient.

"Yes." He replied dispassionately.

"If you wish, because of our long-standing collaboration, I will change my decision." He said softly, and he shook his head.

"No."

Whether he wanted it or not, he had to announce the results and how he divided the work. While it was certainly a great achievement and he thought she had done a good job himself, he knew that she wasn't ready to do such complicated things as she had designed and that she needed to practice the basics for now.

The backgrounds were the perfect opportunity to do so and he saw no reason why she should suffer or consider it a humiliation, especially as he was the one who was to take care of the faces, with a little help from Cregan with the figures of the apostles.

He was concerned, however, when he walked into their workshop one day and saw Jason Lannister standing over her − although he was not happy that she was his student, he had decided to take her under his wing and felt responsible for her safety in every sense of the word.

Especially the kind he might have expected from Lannister.

As soon as he had left, he approached her with an unhurried step, standing on the other side of her table, asking dispassionately what he wanted, willing himself to be sure of his assumptions.

"To learn the secret of my success." She said without much emotion, concentrating on cutting out the papers. He felt a squeeze in his throat at her words knowing what she was implying.

"What did you tell him?" He asked coolly, leaning over the table, wondering if she was expanding on some lie or rumour about him. She looked at him surprised and sighed quietly, numbering piece by piece.

"That he shouldn't measure everyone by his standards. His attitude towards his female students was one of the reasons I didn't want him to teach me." She said quietly, and he furrowed his brow, finding it amusing that she feared harassment from Jason Lannister, but begged a known female aggressor for a place in his workshop.

"And you came to ask for a place with a professor who hit his student?" He asked seriously, lowly, and she threw him an anxious, frightened look − he saw her clench and lick her lips, swallowing hard, cutting another piece of paper.

"And did you hit her, Professor?"

He stared at her for a long moment, wondering if he should go any deeper into the subject, if he should talk to her about it at all. He felt, however, that he wanted to know what she thought about it, how she really perceived him.

"Yes." He replied with fatigue and frustration at the same time.

She didn't answer him for a long moment, her hands shaking as she tried to cut another template with straight, sure slashes.

"Why did you do that?" She asked quietly, and he chuckled under his breath.

"Does it matter?" He asked, as if the answer was obvious.

Since when did it matter what you slapped someone for?

In the eyes of the law, in the eyes of good manners, even if she acted like a monster, he had no right to touch her.

Women were untouchable.

Not like men.

After all, they were stronger.

"It matters if you did it for no reason or if you were trying to defend yourself against her, sir." She said uncertainly and he snorted at her words, amused.

"In what way could she harm me? Hit me?" He asked ironically, knowing that no one would ever recognise any of his explanations, that in many people's eyes there was no way that a woman could have harmed him, that she would have been at fault, unless she had thrown herself at him with a knife.

The woman had to commit the ultimate, sudden cruelty to be considered a real threat, when in the case of the men, verbal aggression was enough.

"Women can hurt men in all sorts of ways. It's just that they are hardly believed." She said quietly in a trembling voice and he felt his heart stop for a moment. He looked at her in disbelief, feeling a tightness in his throat, feeling sick again, as if he was about to vomit.

Women can hurt men in all sorts of ways.

It's just that they are hardly believed.

"I don't know if it's a good idea." He mumbled horrified, looking at her in shock, not understanding why she had come to his room, why she wouldn't let him alone.

She continued to nag him, encouraging him to rub oil on her back when she was sunbathing while his parents weren't looking − she untied her bikini top in front of him and let him look at her breasts.

He felt uncomfortable, excited and embarrassed at the same time, like when he watched pornographic films.

He felt that something was wrong.

"You are such a pretty boy, Aemond." She purred, trailing her slender fingers along his bare arm − he had just started going to the gym and was proud of having muscles, he wanted to look like a man already, even though he was only sixteen.

Her attention simultaneously boosted his ego but also overwhelmed him in a way that frightened him, so he involuntarily ran away from her or locked himself in his room when he heard her voice.

When she came to him that night, however, he forgot to turn the key in the lock of his door and never forgave himself for that.

The fact that if he had got up before bedtime and checked it, it would have never happened.

She came to him wearing only a strapless nightgown from under which practically everything was visible, the outline of her large breasts and her womb.

He looked at her terrified, thinking only of the fact that she could be his mother, that he felt sick, his hands trembling, his heart pounding like mad.

He didn't know what to do, what to say, he didn't want to offend her, he just wanted her to leave.

"Easy. Your eye, your scars don't bother me at all." She said softly, in a low, sensual voice, slipping the straps off her shoulders, revealing her naked body to him, at which he stared in horror, feeling his head humming, finding it difficult to catch his breath.

"Why are you so tense?" She laughed softly, quietly, as if it was funny, sitting down on top of him, sliding the duvet off him, and he shook his head when he felt her grab the material of his sweatpants.

"No. My parents will hear. Please." He mumbled, not wanting to come off as weak, as a man who couldn't satisfy a woman, but all he felt was terror − he felt like his heart was about to burst out of his chest, cold sweat running down his hot back.

"Shhh. Just stay still and let me take care of myself." She whispered, as if this was going to be their sweet secret, her hand exploring what was underneath the fabric and running her fingers over his manhood, clamping her fingers firmly onto it.

He pressed his lips together, holding back a moan of horror and discomfort as he felt himself involuntarily pulsing under her hand, betraying him and his body, responding automatically to her mechanical, determined movements.

"Look, see? You wouldn't be so hard if you didn't want it. It's okay, sweetheart." She cooed, as if speaking to a small child, and when she thought he was ready, she simply slid him deep inside her.

He looked away from her, pressing his lips together as he looked towards the window, thinking only of how a real man would enjoy this, that he had watched endless pornographic films depicting such a scenario and trying to focus on it, however, all he felt was a burning wetness under his eyelids and his body trembling.

She raised and lowered herself on top of him, panting loudly, whispering that she had wanted this for a very long time and that she knew he had too, but that it was okay, that she would take care of him now, that he was such a good boy.

He felt her hands on his torso, on his shoulders, on his cheek, her intense perfume that she must have lathered herself with before coming to him made him feel sick.

He threw up suddenly, and she almost screamed, getting off him, panting heavily.

"What the fuck?"

He sobbed pathetically, panting heavily, and it was only then that she realised how much she had misjudged the situation. She swallowed loudly, quickly dressing her nightgown back up.

"Relax, it's okay, nothing happened. Nothing happened." She repeated, but he didn't hear her, trembling all over, feeling that something inside him just died.

Women can hurt men in all sorts of ways.

He stared at her, feeling that his lower lip was trembling, his mouth twitched in a dangerous grin.

"You prefer to defend the abuser instead of the victim?"

She furrowed her brow at his words, clearly offended by his question.

"No. I just know her version of events. I wanted to hear yours before I decided what I thought of you, Professor. I thought it was only fair." She said with some kind of regret, and he felt his heart squeeze again, the thought that she would be sorely disappointed in him.

She would be disappointed in him just like his grandfather, his father, his mother, his siblings.

"There is no excuse for me. But I don't regret what I did. What do you think about it, Miss Wright?" He asked ironically, cocking his head, wanting to see what her answer would be, how she would try to justify him this time.

A sort of pain flashed across her face, her eyebrows arched in disapproval, her eyes expressing a pure, deep sadness from which he felt discomfort in his chest.

"That I feel sorry for you, Professor. Just like I feel sorry for that girl. I hope you find the decency to apologise to her one day. Excuse me, but I would like to focus on my work." She said calmly, lowering her gaze, going back to cutting again even though her hands were shaking.

He looked at her not believing what she said.

She dismissed him.

He pressed his lips together and walked out on his heel, grabbing his jacket on the fly.

He stepped out and lit his cigarette in a quick, aggressive movement, inhaling deeply, only now feeling how much his heart was pounding, how hard he was breathing, how his hands were trembling, droplets of sweat on his forehead.

He chuckled under his breath, rubbing the tip of his nose with the back of his hand, thinking how pathetic it was that he cared about her opinion.

She was nobody to him.

She could think whatever she wanted.

Nevertheless, he noticed that she had begun to avoid him − when he stepped into the room she would look away, pretend she didn't see him, that he didn't exist.

Even though he had only dreamed of it, her attitude now frustrated him.

She considered herself better than him, a saint, but he knew there were no perfect people.

If she wanted to despise him, so be it.

He decided to focus on his task, on making a faces for her project, which, despite his aversion towards her, he still liked. He easily found inspiration for the Twelve Apostles by sketching the figures of the older men in the town square one morning, standing by the fence.

There he had a whole plethora of interesting, expressive faces.

However, he had no idea what to do with the Mother of God.

Sometimes he would give her the face of his own mother or his sister, but he felt he had done this too many times, and he didn't want his work to look the same over and over again.

Sitting at his desk he glanced at his female student who despised him so much, watched her face in gentle concentration bent over her work, her warm gaze surrounded by a fan of long lashes directed at the glass she had just cut.

He wandered his eyes over her soft facial features, over her lips, her nose, her cheeks, her eyes, her neck, and felt like a voyeur.

He took his sketchbook in his hands and waited for the moment when she looked at him, wanting to make her face him, sketching her in the meantime in the position she was in now, just to catch the right proportions of her figure.

When she finally lifted her gaze to him he felt heat in his lower abdomen − she immediately averted her eyes, but that was enough for him.

He saw what he wanted.

On the one hand he felt like a pervert, on the other he felt some kind of sick satisfaction analysing every last bit of her face, taking several of his sketches with him and creating the final one. When he had finished it and dressed it with the right robes surrounding her head he thought it looked perfect.

Her portrait was melancholic, serene − there was a kind of warmth and certainty emanating from her gaze at the same time, her lips slightly parted, as if she had just taken a breath, making her look full of life, only frozen in stillness, in the moment.

He figured that as soon as he finished painting he would throw away all his sketches of her, and if anyone asked if he had been inspired by her facial features he would deny it.

Halfway through his work he went out for a cigarette and, convinced that there was no one else in their workshop at such a late hour, left the door open.

When he returned, however, he froze, horrified, seeing her figure bent over his sketches, an expression of disbelief on her face.

Fuck.

Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.

"Get out." He growled harshly, enraged that she had seen this, that she now knew what he had done.

She wanted to say something, frightened, but he wouldn't let her finish, terrified of what she could do with her knowledge.

"Get. Out." He repeated warningly. She nodded and moved quickly towards the exit.

He didn't know what had tempted him to grab her tightly by her shoulder − he heard her draw in a quick, loud breath, terrified, he could smell her, herbal shampoo and some cheap hand cream.

"Don't ever come in here again without permission. Your painting room is next door. This is my private studio. Do you understand?" He burst out sharply and she nodded her head quickly, he could feel her whole body quivering. He let her go and she literally ran out, leaving him alone.

He walked over to the table, restraining himself with the remnants of his strength not to drop all the glasses and smash them to smithereens. He picked up the sketches with the depiction of her face and began to tear them to pieces one by one.

She meant nothing to him.

On his way out, heading for his car, he spotted Lyanna, the girl he had slapped then, also heading in the same direction. She was now in her final year of university and wasn't using shared workrooms, not wanting to run into him − as soon as she spotted him she furrowed her brow and turned away, tense.

"Wait." He called out after her, feeling his heart pounding hard, wondering what he was actually doing.

I hope you find the decency to apologise to her one day.

She stopped, looking at him terrified, breathing unevenly. He approached her slowly, stopped in front of her and sighed heavily, lighting a cigarette, taking a deep drag and letting the smoke out through his mouth.

"I'm sorry. For then. That I slapped you." He said, shaking the ash from his cigarette onto the ground with a flick of his finger, not looking at her but somewhere to the side, licking his lip nervously.

"The truth is, if I wasn't earning so much for the rector, I'd be out of a job straight away for it." He muttered, taking another drag and letting out a puff of smoke through his nose, unsure if he was actually apologising or explaining.

The girl looked at him in silence.

"I'm sorry too. For what I said back then. Jason brainwashed me pretty good." She muttered regretfully, not looking at him but somewhere to the side, thoughtfully.

"He was afraid of the fact that you were on his tail, that you wanted to destroy him. He made me believe that we were in love, that there was nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't until later that I noticed how he controlled me. I no longer have anything to do with him, only now do I understand how he manipulated me, and now I watch him do the same with younger girls." She said in a trembling voice, looking at her fingers, and he lowered his gaze, pressing the cigarette to his lips again, taking a deep drag.

"Have a nice day." He muttered, turning away, leaving her surprised.

She thought clearly that he felt like listening to her grief now, comforting her with a good word, that nothing had happened, that she was a victim too.

She had consented of her own free will and was suffering the consequences of her actions.

No one forced her.

She had a choice, and instead of the victims, the girls he molested when she wasn't looking, she chose herself.

He thought with amusement that he didn't feel better at all.

That no one would find out about what he had done.

That she wouldn't now, after two years, have those defamatory articles retracted, wouldn't tell the other professors that they had come to an understanding, to give him a break.

Everything would be as it had been, except that all he knew now was that she was as stupid as all the other women he knew.

And then he thought of her face, that face which in his eyes already appeared as Our Lady in a golden cloud, giving the weary apostles the hope of heaven.

_____

Aemond Taglist:

(bold means I couldn't tag you)

@its-actually-minicika @notnormalthings-blog @nikstrange @zenka69 @bellaisasleep @k-y-r-a-1 @g-cf2020 @melsunshine @opheliaas-stuff @chainsawsangel @iiamthehybrid @tinykryptonitewerewolf @namoreno @malfoytargaryen @qyburnsghost @aemondsdelight @persephonerinyes @fan-goddess

[marigold-hills]

Dunes & Waters, part 3

PART 1 • PREVIOUS PART • NEXT PART

They drink the tea. Remus sits at the small kitchen table, tries to fix the crossword. Sirius stays at the window, pointing out everything he sees and deems interesting. (That woman and her dog look identical. There’s a cat sitting on the boot of that car there, does it come every day? Think I could feed it some fish? I’ve heard there are a lot of strays in Egypt. Maybe if it’ll like me it will come inside.)

“I’ll need to go shopping today,” he says, finally, after having been ignored for the rest.

Remus has been given strict rules from the Ministry, and the first one is: don’t let the criminal out by himself. “Whatever for?” He asks because everything Black could possibly want is already in the apartment.

“Clothes.”

“You got clothes yesterday.”

“What, those things Shacklebolt had left? No way am I wearing those.”

There’s a scowl on his face, accentuating the sharpness of cheekbones.

“I’m not wasting money on your vanity, Black. Anyway, it seems like you managed to get yourself something,” he points to the white shirt, ignoring the way its sheerness offsets the tattoos.

“Like it?” Black hops off the windowsill, does a little shimmy. “I’ve transfigured the curtains.”

He must read the expression on Remus’ face correctly, because he adds, no remorse and full of mischief: “don’t worry, they’re the ones in my room. I prefer to have full access to morning light. And I have money, I’ll have you know. Don’t need you to buy me clothes.”

It’s a beautiful shirt. Looks delicate. Immaculately centred on Blacks collarbones and only showing the very outline of them. A tiny pattern of flowers on the cuffs.

“Fine,” Remus concedes, thinking he needs to get more cigarettes anyway. “We’ll get you more clothes before you rid us of all the soft furnishings.”

The smile Black gives him is both beautiful and so self-satisfied it renders the beauty frustrating. Remus wants to take back his acquiesce – he hates it, that he gave in. People like Black (beautiful, rich, connected) already get what they want too often. Remus vows, for his own sanity or for his own wicked amusement, to stand firm next time and say no. No to shopping, no to cigarettes, no to tea.

If time in jail didn’t teach Black not to take things for granted, then Remus will.

“Change that one back though. I’m not having the hotel bill the University just because you decided to play at a fashion designer.”

“You’re no fun, you know that?”

“I do, in fact. Lucky for me we’re not here for fun.”

“Right. This research you’re doing,” he says research so pointedly there is no need for quotation marks. Remus feels mocked. “Ever going to tell me what it is?”

“As Kingsley said: you’ll be told when you need to know.”

Black huffs, throws himself onto a chair opposite Remus. The way he moves is more than dignified: each careless turn is as fluent as water. Even with how thin he is now, and Remus imagines that’s the result of jail rather than a choice, Black is graceful. Fingers wrapped around a mug, ankles and long legs on display. Every delicate, breakable bone a sight people would pay to see.

NEXT PART

@tealeavesandtrash

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[fanfics4world]

Chapter 3 - Tea and confessions

Daniel, the White Knight, was returning to the castle after a long mission. His armour glittered in the moonlight, and his white cloak billowed with every firm step he took.

As he reached the castle gates, Daniel noticed unusual activity. The guards seemed more tense than usual, and the atmosphere was charged with a palpable unease.

As he rounded the corner, he found two guards guarding the kitchen door; he knew it was Skye, for the kitchen was one of the few places where the princess found peace and calm in the palace. Their stances were rigid, and their gazes watchful. Daniel stopped in front of them, his presence imposing and his gaze steady.

"Good evening, knights. You can retire to rest. I'll take it from here"

The guards exchanged glances, hesitating for a moment.

"Sire, the Queen has ordered us to watch the princess wherever she goes"

Daniel nodded, understanding the situation. "I understand, but I'll take care of it. The princess is safe with me"

The guards finally relented, bowing their heads in respect before retreating. Daniel watched them walk away, making sure no one else was left in the hallway. Then he walked over to the kitchen door and carefully opened it.

The kitchen of the White Kingdom was a place of breathtaking beauty and elegance. The walls were lined with white marble, with grey veins that seemed to dance in the light of the crystal chandeliers. The floor, also of marble, reflected the light of the chandeliers, creating a luminous and serene atmosphere. The countertops were of an even purer marble, immaculate and gleaming, as if they had never been touched by human hands.

Cabinets, white wood carved with intricate floral designs, lined the walls, providing a delicate contrast to the marble. The cabinet handles were silver, polished to shine like little mirrors. In the centre of the kitchen, a large marble island served as a workspace, surrounded by high stools with white velvet cushions.

The air was permeated with the scent of fresh herbs and spices, stored in glass jars lined up on open shelves. Copper and stainless steel cooking utensils hung neatly from hooks on the wall, ready for use. The kitchen was a place of constant activity, but at the moment, it was silent except for the soft crackle of the fire in the fireplace.

Skye was sitting at one of the tables, her head resting on her hands. The calm of the kitchen was a haven for her, a place where she could escape the stresses of the palace. But her peace was interrupted when she heard the door open.

"I strictly asked not to be disturbed"

"You don't even want to greet your knight?"

Skye lifted her head, and upon seeing Daniel, a smile tugged at her lips. "Daniel, you're back" she said, but Daniel immediately noticed the mark on her cheek, a sign of the recent altercation with her mother. His expression hardened.

Everyone in the palace had witnessed, at one time or another, the White Queen's treatment to her daughter. Servants whispered in the corridors, and guards exchanged sympathetic glances when they saw Skye. The pressure of being the perfect heiress had scarred her soul, and at times, her body as well.

Daniel approached her and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "What happened?"

Skye averted her gaze, trying to hide her pain. "It's nothing, Daniel. Just another argument"

Daniel vividly remembered the day the Queen knighted him as Skye's knight. At first, the princess barely spoke to him, keeping a cool, reserved distance. Over time, however, Daniel managed to break through that barrier, showing Skye that he didn't care about the perfection everyone expected of her. In him, Skye found a friend, someone who accepted her imperfections and valued her for who she really was. 

Now, Daniel felt caught in a whirlwind of helplessness. His mission as a knight was to protect Skye at all costs, but how could he protect her from the same person to whom he had sworn loyalty?

The next day, Bridget's mind couldn't stop flashing back to her nighttime encounter with Skye. 

How they danced to the music, how their bodies seemed to coordinate in a magical way, and how they were about to share their first kiss.

In that instant, Bridget let herself be carried away by the impulse, by that invisible thread that pulled her lips to Skye's, who didn't seem to dislike the idea either. And then the Cheshire cat appeared, Bridget couldn't help but smile at the look on Skye's face, clearly disappointed by the interruption.

And then came the promise of a second meeting, at the place where they first met, which made Bridget excited.

What are you planning Skye?

"What gardens is your mind stuck in, sweetheart?"

Bridget snapped out of her thoughts at her mother's question, blushing. "Nothing I was just thinking about the dance yesterday mum," Bridget replied. Her mother smiled.

"I guess it all went well in the end," said her mother and a big smile formed on Bridget's face. "It was amazing! You should have seen her mum, she looked spectacular, everything was just spectacular" Bridget replied excitedly, which warmed her mother's heart.

"Well, you'll have to introduce me to that secret date you're so excited about, it would be a pleasure to meet her," Bridget's smile faltered for a moment, she looked at her mother, whose gaze reflected something Bridget couldn't quite identify, as if she already knew about Skye. No, Bridget shook her head dismissing the thought, it wasn't possible.

"Yeah... I'm sure you'll love it..." Bridget replied, trying to sound as normal as possible. Her mother wanted to meet her date, she wanted to meet Skye. There was no possible way this was going to end well, what was she supposed to say to her when they saw her, it was clear that Skye's appearance, her pale skin, her white hair, did not belong to a citizen of the Kingdom of Hearts.

"Mom this is Skye, the daughter of the White Queen, your greatest enemy, I met her in the forest near the border, as she likes to cross the wall and enter our kingdom" and also, "I invited her to your ball and we danced in front of the pond, she sneaked into the castle avoiding the guards and tomorrow I'm meeting her again"

There was no possible way Bridget would dare tell her mother the truth about Skye's identity.

"That's why I wanted to ask your permission, to meet her tomorrow, and I would like to well, be able to be with her without the guards" she said, Bridget didn't dare sneak out of the castle, she would rather risk asking her mother for the favour of leaving the castle unescorted.

Her mother frowned, she clearly didn't like her daughter's request, but she seemed to be mulling over her decision. "I don't know sweetheart, I don't like the idea of you leaving the castle unguarded, it could be dangerous" replied her mother, Bridget pouted.

"Please mum" Bridget pleaded. "We can't both be comfortable if I have guards following us, I want us both to be able to spend time alone" 

Her mother watched her carefully, her eyes reflecting a mixture of concern and understanding. She already knew the truth, she had stepped out into the garden for a moment to get some fresh air, when she saw her daughter dancing with a young girl. 

She watched from a distance, hidden in the shadows. Her gaze hardened as she recognised Skye White, the daughter of her enemy, in her castle, in her kingdom. The initial impulse was to call the guards and have her caught immediately. But something stopped her.

As the two young women danced, her mother noticed the way they looked at each other, how their bodies moved in perfect synchronicity, as if they were made for each other. The hardness in her heart began to soften as she saw the glint of love in her daughter's eyes. As much hatred and resentment as she held for the White Queen, she could not ignore the happiness that radiated from Bridget in that moment.

Her mother knew she could not blame Skye for her mother's actions. She decided, in that instant, to prioritize her daughter's happiness over her own bitterness. However, she promised herself that if Skye hurt Bridget, she would not hesitate to act.

"All right, you have my permission, but I want you back at the palace by dinnertime"

Bridget's face lit up. She stood up, rounded the dining room table and hugged her mother tightly. "Thank you!" she said before letting go of her mother and running to her room, as her mother smiled warmly.

I hope for your sake Skye that you know how to appreciate my daughter.

After the conversation with her mother, time seemed to pass faster for Bridget, so much so that night had already fallen over Wonderland.

Bridget was about to crawl into bed when she heard three knocks on the balcony door of her room, confused, she approached the glass door, only to discover that on the other side was a floating envelope.

Bridget opened the door and the envelope came into the room.

"Special delivery for the princess," Bridget was surprised when the Cheshire cat appeared in front of her, holding the envelope.

"It's you," Bridget said, the cat's smile grew bigger, which made Bridget's skin crawl for a second.

"I'm Chessur, but you can call me Chess. Skye asked me to deliver this letter to you," he said, Bridget took the envelope, and in a second, Chessur disappeared, leaving a faint trail of smoke.

Bridget sat down on her bed and looked at the letter, it looked like a normal envelope, except that it was stamped with a seal with the initials SW. Bridget opened the envelope and read the contents of the letter.

Princess,

I hope Chess didn't disturb you too much by delivering this letter, I would have liked to tell you in person, but my mother has me under the watchful eye of her guards, and I couldn't risk crossing the border.

About our meeting tomorrow, meet me half an hour before the clock strikes teatime.

I want to see you again already.

Skye.

"I realise you love adventure and danger, but this is too much, even for you Skye"

Skye couldn't help but roll her eyes at Tarrant's response. She doesn't even know why for a moment she trusted Chess not to say anything, but he did, and as a result, she was now being sermonised by the Mad Hatter.

She and Daniel had gone to visit him at his home, Tarrant lived on the outskirts of town, far from the people and the perfection the queen demanded. That was one of the many reasons he quickly became friends with the rebellious princess, they both defied the written rules, but Skye was happy that her mother allowed Tarrant to be outside of her perfection, even if she sometimes envied it.

Tarrant's workshop was filled with hats of all shapes and sizes, and the air smelled of tea and madness.

Not a minute had passed since the tea had been served that he began to sermonise to her. Skye took a sip of her tea before looking out the window at the 5 chess soldiers keeping watch outside the workshop.

"First of all, keep your voice down please. If they hear you, my mother will find out and I may as well be dead, Tarrant. You don't understand what this means to me," he said. Tarrant stopped his frantic pacing and sat down in his usual chair next to Skye.

"You're okay with this?", Tarrant looked at Daniel, who remained standing next to Skye despite attempts to get him to sit down to make himself more comfortable. 

Daniel sighed. When Skye filled him in on the latest events in her life, he didn't even know why he was surprised. He knew Skye too well to know that despite her constant pursuit of danger, she wouldn't go into such danger if she didn't think it was worth it. To him Skye's happiness was above any oath or duty as a knight, and he knew Skye would not find happiness in the White Kingdom.

"Even if I didn't agree, Hatter. Do you think even I could do anything to stop it?" he replied, which made Skye smile innocently, as if it wasn't her life at stake.

"Skye, I know living here is complicated, especially with your mother and her rules, but seriously. Of all the people you could date, the princess of hearts? It's bad enough that I have to have your back on your escapades across the border," she said, picking up her teacup, which was shaking from her nerves. Skye sighed.

"You can't tell anyone Tarrant, it's bad enough I have to let Chess know" Skye asked, Tarrant watched her, hesitating about what to do.

"Skye, this is very serious, much more serious than crossing the border"

Tarrant looked at her with concern. "I should warn your mother. She needs to know"

Skye could feel Daniel tense beside her, even he was unable to imagine what the queen would do to Skye if she discovered the truth, and if to protect her she had to.... Well, eliminate some trouble. He wouldn't hesitate to do so. 

"No, Tarrant. If my mother finds out, it's all over. She'll never let me leave the castle again"

Tarrant frowned, clearly conflicted. "Why is it so important to you, Skye?"

"What I feel with Bridget is nothing I've ever felt before. It's something real. I feel like I'm finally in control of something in my life. I can't lose this, Tarrant"

He watched her silently, seeing the sincerity in her eyes. Finally, he sighed and nodded. "All right, Skye. I'll keep your secret, but if this is serious, you'd better start thinking about how you're going to tell your mother that her daughter's mother-in-law is the Queen of Hearts"

Skye couldn't help but laugh, no doubt that wouldn't be easy, but she was content to keep it a secret for the time being. "Thank you, Tarrant. You'll meet her tomorrow. I'll bring her over so we can all have tea together"

Tarrant smiled, though his concern did not entirely disappear. "I hope you know what you're doing, Skye"

Skye nodded, determined. "I know, Tarrant. I know"

Bridget walked briskly through the forest near the border, her heart pounding. The afternoon sun filtered through the leaves of the trees, creating a play of light and shadow on the stone path. The place where she had met Skye was just around the corner, and the princess couldn't help but smile at the thought of seeing her again.

The scent of spring flowers filled the air, and Bridget paused for a moment to inhale deeply. She remembered every detail of that encounter: Skye's laughter, her gaze shining, and the way her words had made the world seem brighter. She hadn't stopped thinking about her since.

When she arrived, however, she didn't find Skye alone. Beside her, a majestic white horse glistened in the sun, its silver armour glinting like stars in the night.

Bridget stared at the horse in awe. She had never seen such an imposing and beautiful creature. The combination of the armour and the purity of the white coat seemed like magic. Skye, with her mischievous smile, approached Bridget.

Bridget felt a knot in her stomach at the sight of the reddish mark on Skye's cheek. The princess of the White Kingdom, always so strong and confident, now showed a vulnerability Bridget had never seen before. Who could be capable of hurting Skye? 

Bridget felt a surge of protectiveness and affection for her. She wanted to hold her, to comfort her, and to make sure she never had to suffer again. The mark on Skye's cheek was a painful reminder that even the strongest people could be hurt, and Bridget was determined to stand by her side, no matter what.

"If I'd known Star would steal all your attention, I'd have thought twice about bringing her along," Skye said, a spark of amusement in her eyes. Bridget couldn't help but smile. 

The horse whinnied softly, as if it, too, recognised Bridget. The princess reached out to stroke its soft mane. "I never imagined I'd find something so beautiful here," she murmured.

Skye moved even closer, her hand brushing Bridget's. "Sometimes the most beautiful things are right in front of us," Skye said, which made Bridget blush. "Ready for a new adventure?"

Skye mounted the horse, waiting for Bridget. "The truth is...I don't know how to ride," Bridget confessed.

Skye smiled, holding out her hand to Bridget. "Don't worry," she whispered. "I won't let you fall" Bridget nodded, feeling the warmth of the promise in the palm of her hand.

Carefully, Skye helped Bridget onto the horse, placing her in front of her. The animal's white fur was soft under her trembling fingers. "Ready?" asked Skye.

Bridget nodded. The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees as the horse began to move.

"Now you must close your eyes, cupcake," said Skye, "otherwise the surprise will be spoiled"

Bridget obeyed. The world faded away, and only the sensation of the horse moving beneath her remained. Skye guided her expertly, and Bridget held on to her promise. 

The horse galloped into the hollow of the border, and Bridget smiled, allowing herself to relax and rest her back against Skye's chest, noticing how she smelled of vanilla and mint, an intoxicating mixture.

Time in the dark stretched like a silken thread, and Bridget felt uncertainty curl in her chest. The air grew colder, and the muffled sound of the horse's hooves echoed in her ears; they were picking up speed. 

Then Skye's voice broke the silence. "You can open your eyes now, princess"

Bridget blinked, her heart pounding. When her eyes met the light, her breath caught for the third time that week. 

The path of white roses stretched out before Bridget like a dreamy path. On either side, fields of white roses spread out as far as the eye could see.

The flowers, like snowflakes, rise on slender stems. Their soft, snowy petals catch the sunlight, creating an ethereal glow. Each rose seems a small universe unto itself: delicate, yet resilient. The intoxicating scent floats in the air, enveloping Bridget like a warm embrace.

The path meanders, inviting her to explore further. The roses intertwine, forming a white tapestry that seems to merge with the sky. Some are in full bloom, while others are still shyly awakening. The wind whispers secrets among the petals, and Bridget feels she has crossed into a kingdom where time fades.

"Welcome to the White Kingdom," Skye said, her voice soft as a caress.

Bridget could barely articulate words. "It's... it's beautiful," she whispered.

The white horse, guided by Skye, turned off the rose path and into a dense forest. The trees seemed to whisper ancient secrets, and sunlight filtered through the leaves, creating a play of shadows on the ground.

The air grew cooler, and the sense of the unknown filled her with anticipation.

Finally, they emerged from the trees Before her stood a house shaped like a top hat, like something out of a twisted fairy tale. The roof was pitched, the windows of different sizes and shapes.

A place where time bent and normal rules didn't apply. The walls were painted in vibrant colours, and in the garden, a large table held teapots and singing cups. The scent of tea and madness hung in the air.

"I hope you don't mind if we have tea with some friends of mine before I show you my second surprise," said Skye getting off her horse. She held out her hand to help Bridget down. ""It would be my pleasure,"" she replied before taking Skye's hand and getting off the horse.

Skye led Bridget to the table, where Chessur, Tarrant and Daniel were waiting for her. Skye found the scene quite funny, Chessur was over Daniel's head, obviously trying to annoy him, Daniel had a look of wanting to make the cat disappear while Tarrant was busy making tea.

"Can't you even behave for a moment, Chess?" Skye said smirking. All three boys raised their heads to look at them. 

"Guys, this is Bridget. Bridget, this is Daniel, my knight, Tarrant, the mad hatter, and well, you know Chess," said Skye. Bridget raised a shy smile. Tarrant rose from the table, and removing his top hat, did a graceful curtsy. "A pleasure to meet you, your highness," he said. Bridget smiled, "No need for formalities, just Bridget," she said.

Tarrant nodded before going back to preparing the tea. "I hope you like mint tea, well, it's not like there are any other kinds of tea here either," Tarrant said before pouring the tea into five cups.

Skye guided Bridget to a white wooden chair next to hers. Daniel sat across from them, and as always, Tarrant presided over the table. 

Daniel watched Bridget with a mixture of distrust and curiosity. He had heard a lot about her, but seeing her in person was different. There was something about her presence that unsettled him, though he couldn't identify exactly what it was. However, he remembered Skye's words: Bridget was not a danger, and if she made her happy, he could only accept that.

Despite his reservations, Daniel decided to trust Skye's judgment. If she believed in Bridget, so should he. He watched as the two princesses interacted, noting the genuine connection between them. Though he still felt a slight mistrust, Daniel realized that his loyalty to Skye meant accepting Bridget into his life. And if that meant protecting her as well, he was willing to do that.

"Don't let Daniel intimidate you, despite his tough looks and that armor that shines too bright, he's a softie," Skye said, which made Bridget laugh. Daniel rolled his eyes.

"You Bridget, don't let Skye confuse you, despite looking tough on the outside, she's a softie" said Daniel, Skye smiled.

"We'll see if you say the same to my sword" challenged Skye.

"Anytime princess"

"Well, before this turns into a battlefield, let's have tea before it gets cold," said Tarrant.

The afternoon passed in a dreamy atmosphere in the Mad Hatter's House. The scent of freshly brewed tea filled the air, mingling with the sweet perfume of the white roses that surrounded the place.

Tarrant, with his trademark hat and mischievous smile, began to tell stories of Skye's childhood. "Did you know that Skye used to hide in the cupboards to avoid her lessons in manners?" he said, winking at Bridget. "Once, we found her asleep in the coats""

Bridget laughed, imagining a young Skye rebelling against the strict palace rules. Skye, her cheeks flushed, tried to defend herself. "That was a long time ago! And besides, the lessons were boring"

"What about the time you tried to ride Star and ended up in the pond?" continued Tarrant, laughing. "I've never seen someone so soaked and so happy at the same time"

Bridget couldn't contain her laughter. Each story revealed a more human and charming side of Skye, and her heart filled with warmth. Every second she spent with Skye, she felt her affection for her grow deeper and deeper.

After tea, Skye and Daniel decided to engage in a friendly sword duel. Bridget watched with interest as the two prepared. Daniel, with his firm stance and focused gaze, seemed a formidable opponent. But Skye, with her grace and agility, was no slouch.

The duel began, and the swords clashed with a metallic clang. Skye moved with impressive dexterity, dodging Daniel's attacks and striking back with precision. Bridget watched, marvelling at Skye's skill. Each move was graceful and calculated, and it soon became clear that Skye had the advantage.

Finally, with a quick twist, Skye disarmed Daniel, sending his sword crashing to the ground. "Admit I'm a better knight than you," Skye said, smiling triumphantly.

Daniel, though defeated, smiled respectfully. "You're the better knight"

Bridget felt a surge of admiration and love for Skye. Seeing her in action, so strong and confident, only reinforced her feelings. She wished these moments of happiness together with Skye would never end. In that instant, she knew she was falling in love with her, and that she would do anything to protect and be by her side.

Skye helped Tarrant and Chessur carry the cups and plates into the house. "I'll be back in a moment, cupcake," she said, winking at Bridget before disappearing behind the door.

Bridget was left alone with Daniel, feeling a slight discomfort in the air. Daniel watched her for a moment, his eyes serious but kind. Finally, he broke the silence.

"Do you love her?"

Bridget's face flushed instantly. She hadn't expected such a direct question. She looked down, fiddling nervously with her hands. "Yes," she admitted quietly, "I love her"

Daniel smiled, and the tension in the air seemed to dissipate. "I'm glad to hear that," he said. "Skye's life hasn't been easy in the White Kingdom. She's had to face a lot of hardships, but knowing she has someone like you by her side, someone who loves and supports her, gives me peace of mind"

Bridget looked up, meeting Daniel's eyes. In his expression, she saw a mixture of approval and relief. "I'll do everything I can to stand by her side and protect her," Bridget promised.

Daniel nodded, satisfied with her answer. "That's all I can ask. Skye deserves to be happy, and if you can give her that, then you have my support"

At that moment, Bridget felt a deeper connection with Daniel. She knew that, although he was protective and distrustful by nature, he also wanted what was best for Skye. And that united them in a common purpose: the happiness and well-being of the princess of the White Kingdom.

The white horse galloped gently, leading Skye and Bridget towards an unknown destination. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, tinting the sky with warm, golden hues. Bridget clung to the horse's mane, feeling the excitement and anticipation in her chest.

"Where are you taking me?" asked Bridget curiously.

Skye smiled, her eyes sparkling with mystery. "To a place where the roses touch the sky at sunset," she replied. "It's one of my favorite places in the whole kingdom"

Bridget nodded, feeling lucky to be there. The landscape changed as they went on: the trees became more spaced out, and the breeze carried with it the sweet scent of flowers. Finally, they reached the hill.

Before them lay a sea of white roses. Bridget climbed down from the horse, her feet sinking into the soft grass. Skye followed, and together they walked into the field of roses.

The sun was setting behind the mountains, painting the sky with shades of pink.

Skye sat down on the grass and then reached out her hand to Bridget. "Come here," she said. Bridget sat down next to her, resting her head in her lap. Skye stroked her hair, and Bridget closed her eyes, feeling at peace.

The world came down to the two of them. Bridget wished this moment would never end. Skye's closeness, the scent of flowers, and the softness of her caress enveloped her like a spell. 

"What will be the first thing you do when you become queen?" asked Skye, Bridget paused for a moment to think.

"I would like to unify the kingdoms"

Skye looked at Bridget with a mixture of surprise and amusement. "Unify both kingdoms?" she repeated, as if considering the idea.

Bridget nodded, feeling a little braver. "The Kingdom of Hearts and the White Kingdom could be stronger together instead of apart"

Skye smiled, and her gaze grew more intense. "You know, Bridget," she said quietly. "To unify the kingdoms you would have to marry me"

Bridget felt her heart pounding. "And where would the problem be?" she asked, with a bravery she didn't know she had.

Skye looked at Bridget with a mixture of surprise and sadness. "Bridget," she said quietly, "you deserve someone better than me. Someone without so many scars"

Bridget felt as if her heart was in a fist. "No," she replied bravely, "I want you Skye. Scars and all. I don't care what baggage you bring. I'm willing to carry it with you, to face any challenge. Because what I feel for you is stronger than anything"

Skye was surprised, her eyes widening at Bridget's words. "I'm broken, I'm a lost cause. How could someone like you love someone like me?" she muttered, as if she couldn't believe it.

Bridget stepped a little closer, her determination shining in her eyes. "You're not a lost cause, Skye," she said softly. "If you're broken, I'll help fix you"

Skye looked up at her, her eyes full of emotion. "What if I can't offer you the happiness you deserve?"

Bridget smiled, leaning a little closer. "Then together we will find happiness, Skye. Because what we have is real, and I'm willing to fight for it"

And in that moment, surrounded by white roses and with the sunset painting the sky, Skye leaned into Bridget and their lips met in a sweet, promising kiss. 

The world seemed to stand still as thousands of white butterflies, formed from the petals of the roses, flew into the evening sky. It was as if the magic of their love manifested itself in that instant.

As they parted, Bridget was amazed at what she saw. White butterflies danced in the air, creating a magical atmosphere. "It's beautiful," she whispered.

Skye smiled and asked, "Have you even looked in the mirror, princess?"

The blush on Bridget's cheeks intensified, and in that moment, she knew she had found something more precious than any kingdom or crown: true love.

Masterlist

[dreamingofyeo]

𓏲๋࣭ ࣪ A siren's song࿐࿔𖦹ִ

Chapter 3: Merciful agony ࿐࿔𖦹ִ

~ details in masterlist

~ playlist

~ 1,790 words

~ chapter warnings- 4x whiplashes to reader, harsh language

~☆彡 tumblr's algorithm works off of reblogs so please consider it if you like my work :)

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The navigator’s quarters offer nothing to quell your nausea. As soon as Yeosang escorts you inside and the creak of the door sounds, the pit in your stomach deepens tenfold. You don’t take your eyes off of him, you won’t. 

The space you both occupy is dimly lit by candlelight and lanterns, the planked walls are old and beginning to rot in places. A bed sits in the corner, it is small and has an unstable look about it. You don’t deign to consider where you will rest tonight. There is a table in the centre of the room, a map with all manner of pieces meticulously placed upon it, Yeosang settles in a chair before it. He gestures for you to also take a seat opposite him. You will not, you will stand. You have more time to run that way. He sighs at your firm stance and rubs his temples before speaking.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I cannot speak for anyone else aboard but when you are here with me, you will be safe.” 

Safe? With a pirate? Well that’s certainly laughable.

You don’t dare speak your mind.

“Thank you, I-”

“Don’t thank me. it’s moral, not a favour.” He interjects firmly. 

You’re relatively stunned by his words.

“Okay.” 

He gestures again for you to sit; you comply, succumbing to the aches surfacing in you body due to the adrenaline easing away from you.

“So, ‘partially schooled in navigation’ you said, care to enlighten me more?” He changes the topic swiftly.

“I can read a map, and I can navigate with the stars somewhat.” 

He nods slowly.

“Where did you learn, last time I checked they didn’t school women in such things.”

“An old friend, I don’t wish to speak more on the matter though.” You reply curtly, as he said, his ‘safety net’ is constructed with moral twine, you don’t owe him anything, least of all your personal memories. 

Yeosang looks to be deep in thought, before nodding at you and accepting your answer.

“Where am I designated to sleep tonight, I wish to rest.” You don’t want to spend any longer conversing with this man than you have to.

“Here.” He smiles.

No. No. Absolutely not.

Your face must have displayed your distaste as he quickly interjects your thoughts.

“Don’t threat miss, I will sleep there.” He gestures behind him the shelves stacked with maps, a window seat is nestled in its centre. 

You inwardly sigh in relief and nod at him gratefully. 

He may be beautiful and polite but he is still a pirate.

~

You lay awake for the second time tonight. This time though, with intent. No matter what Yeosang says, you will not remain here. You will not resign yourself to this fate that easily. The ship is silent. You’d catalogued every detail on your short journey to the navigator’s quarters. There was a lifeboat on the deck, close to the entrance to the hallway you’d been led down to your current surroundings. You can row. You can escape. It’ll be getting the boat off the deck which will be difficult. You’d also memorised the Crimson’s current location on the map, and the whereabouts of the closest inhabited land. With luck, you could make it there without needing to find any provisions for the journey. 

5 more minutes. He’s not deep enough in sleep yet.

Those minutes are gruelling. 

Times up.

You carefully swing your legs out of the bed, adjusting your attire and the dagger hidden beneath before arranging the pillows under the bed linens (to mask your disappearance in the darkness should Yeosang stir) and tiptoe to the door. 

You manage to slip out with minimal noise. The hallway is clear. 

Seems my bad luck has expired.  

You touch the wood of the wall so as not to jinx your thoughts before peering onto the deck. Still nobody. It’s almost suspicious but you dare not question it. 

Several well placed steps later and you’re at the lifeboat’s side, inspecting the bounds keeping it tethered to the ship. You reach up to touch it but your wrist is caught, a hand covers your mouth.

You try to bite down on it and reach for your dagger but your captor spins you around firmly and presses you against the side of the lifeboat. Yeosang. You question if he was even asleep in the first place. 

He speaks quickly in a hushed tone.

“Don’t do this. I understand you but it will not work, they will catch you and hurt you.” 

You scowl at him. Time is slipping away for you to escape.

Boots sound on the deck. Followed by the smug, gruff voice of Vervona. Your blood runs cold. Yeosang’s head bows in defeat, his hands slipping away from you.

“He’s right you know. Nobody leaves this ship without my saying so, and anyone foolish enough to attempt otherwise lives to regret it, savvy?”

He continues walking towards you.

“Thank you Yeosang, you’ve been most helpful. Now step aside, unless you desire to share in her punishment that is?”

“I’ll take it all.” He says firmly, making your head snap towards him in shock and earning himself a cacophony of laughter and sneers from the crew members appearing behind the captain.

“Ever the gentleman aren’t you Kang. But I think not. Our little siren won’t learn her lesson else.” 

You feel your skin pale. Vervona nods and Broner appears at your side, his harsh grip on your arm returns. You are dragged to the centre of the deck, there is a whip hanging from a hook on the mast. You’re forced to your knees by your shoulders in front of it.

Vervona crouches in front of you and tilts his head mockingly.

“Since it’s a first offence, and you’re a lady, I think four will suffice. Two for your punishment, one for each factor saving your pretty skin from more.”

He turns his head to Yeosang.

“And since you want to be a gentleman and share in her pain so desperately, you can be the one to inflict it.”

It’s almost as if the bastard heard our conversation earlier, he wants to isolate me from any nuance of safety.

Yeosang’s face pales now.

“Unless you desire for Broner to do it, I’m sure he’d enjoy it far more.”

Yeosang’s countenance is that of pure conflict. Vernona nods towards his brute again, he grabs the whip from its hook with one hand and yanks one of your own in-front of him. He steps back, another crew member taking his place in holding your shoulders, and raises the whip.

The crack of the whip sounds, but the steering pain doesn’t come. You look up in confusion. You cannot believe you have only known this man for mere hours, his actions this far have betrayed the idea of it.

The navigator’s hand is curled around the length of the whip, his features hiding the pain of the blood seeping through the gaps between his fingers.

Vervona smirks, Broner hands him the rest of the whip.

You lock eyes with Yeosang, his are filled with guilt as he tries to communicate with you silently.

He raises the whip.

This time the pain does come, blossoming like a lightning strike over your palm. You choke on the scream.

“One.” He strains out.

You choke again, your vision blurring at the edges. 

“Two.”

You barely feel the blood seeping from the lashes. 

It takes all of your strength not to collapse further to the deck on the third.

“Three.” His voice is devoid of emotion. You know the hidden depths to such a thing.

Don’t think, don’t feel.

The final strike lands across your palm.

“Four.”

The crew and their captain disperse, their laughter does not reach your ears.

You collapse forward and Yeosang catches your shoulders. 

~

You’re barely aware of him leading you back to his quarters, of him sitting you in his chair, of him wiping the lashes with a damp cloth.

He squeezes out the cloth, the water in the bucket at his side is turning red. He finally looks you in the eye.

“I’m sorry,”

You say nothing. You understand his actions but you cannot bring yourself to form words. He continues, a soft yet serious expression fixed to his face.

“I do not seek your forgiveness, your understanding would be enough.”

“I do understand.” You somehow get out, you feel like you’re choking on air.

“I can’t protect you if you get into that kind of situation.” He says, looking away to reach under the table into a box and pulling out some roughly cut cloth before continuing. Grateful as you are for the notion, you’re finding yourself continuously confused by his desire to do so. He holds your hand gently in his own as he begins carefully wrapping the cloth around the raw, ugly wounds, he sucks in a breath as if deciding whether to speak, he does.

“I understand your feelings well, but it’s too dangerous at present.” 

“You speak as if these men are not your crew” you assess, raising a questioning brow at the pirate as he gently dresses the lashes across your palm.

The candlelight of his quarters illuminates his features, they’re gentle and kind. Yeosang looks up at you slightly through his lashes, his eyes display a clear inner turmoil which you find yourself longing to understand. 

“They are not. My crew- my family, they’re far from here.” He says sadly, his eyes now far away as if seeing across the ocean to wherever they may be. 

“What happened?” You ask gently. 

Not only is the curiosity too much to bare, but you also imagine he has not been able to confide in anyone on this cursed vessel. He has shown you much kindness these past hours alone, you would like to return the favour. Perhaps it would also offer somewhat of an explanation for his stark contrast to the crew.

“Much like yourself, I am not here of my own volition.  I do not wish to revisit the darker details of my past but it boils down to that bastard upstairs being fully prepared to kill our entire crew if I did not go with him. They’re my family, there was no choice.” He explains, his expression and tone void of emotion bar the venom present regarding your new ‘captain’.

Yeosang’s story is much like your own it seems, he must be a pretty extraordinary navigator to warrant Vervona wanting him on his ship so desperately. It furthers your confusion to your own place on the ship however, what could he possibly want with you? What’s his endgame? Above all of that, it makes you somewhat the some as the man before you, offering you an insight into his mind and actions.

“I will see them again, my own plans do not involve me being here for much longer.” He speaks up again, this time with hope lacing his words.

“I’m sure you shall. I don’t hold much hope for a similar outcome, my family were not given such a bargain.” You reply, and it feels as if it’s the first time it’s truly hit you. You’ve no longer got a family to try and return to.

“That leads me to the point of my telling you of all this.” He says, an almost mischievous glint in his eye which makes him somehow appear all the more innocent.

“Escape with me.”

<-chapter 2 ~ chapter 4->

taglist:

@voicesinmyhead-rc @decadentstrangernacho @baek-at-it-again95 @amalialoved

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

[darklydeliciousdesires]

London Will Burn - Chapter Two.

Told you I wouldn't leave you waiting for long, besties! Thank you so much for all your engagement, it makes me so happy to read your enjoyment of the story. Well, here we go, then. Sexy times below! ;)

Previous chapters - One

Tag list - In the comments, please DM to be added/removed

Words - 3,207

Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI.

The Wallace homestead. A gigantic townhouse standing statuesque in the centre of Richmond Upon Thames, Kew to be precise. It was most definitely a money address, and Rin expected no less. It stood tall, strong and foreboding, much like the family who resided there.  

Thank goodness she was being taken within its walls as a welcome guest, she thought.  

If only she realised the truth. She’d have run as far as she could have gotten away from the duplicitous man who took her hand and led her up the steps, into the house and up two floors to his bedroom.  

“Wait here a moment,” he murmured, hands roaming her, lips pressing a kiss against her neck. “I need to tidy.”  

Grasping his suit jacket, she pulled him nearer, purring softly as her fingertips trailed over his short, neat beard. God, he hadn’t even kissed her lips yet and she was in erotic overload. “I don’t mind mess.”  

He straightened, hands clasping her face. “I do.” His mouth ghosted hers, rumbling a laugh when her tongue shot out to lick his cupid’s bow, reaching to smack her arse. “Patience.” He slid into his bedroom, closing the door with a soft click, the space immaculate as always. He detested anything being left out of place, but he needed a moment all the same.  

Taking his phone out, he put it on silent, walking around to the side of the bed and placing it behind the lamp, pressing down on the large piece of Blu-Tac he’d previously placed there, keeping the phone in place once he’d set it to video and began the recording.  

Only the camera lens remained poking out from behind the heavy silver lamp. She wouldn’t notice it if he kept that lamp off, switching the one on the adjacent bedside table on, illuminating the gloom of his bedroom. It was an uncharacteristically dull spring in London, thus not offering much in the way of bright daylight to brighten a room, and he wanted as much illumination as he could get. The video had to be clear.  

Returning to the door, he pulled it open, greeting her with the kind of look that could easily buckle a set of knees, Rin still feeling the tumult of excited energy zapping through her. ‘Oh god, I’m about to have sex with Sean, oh bloody hell is this really happening to me?’ she thought. It had been so fast paced, even for someone as upfront as her.  

When they both knew exactly what they wanted, why engage further in the lead up, though? Why waste time teasing it, when they could just enjoy instead?  

She knew enjoyment was exactly what she would receive as his mouth met hers at last, the kiss soft to begin with before the heat began to rise, his beard prickling her lips as their tongues rolled together. Her hands moved to unknot his tie as he shrugged his jacket off, the dance of undress as slow waltz to begin with, until hunger dictated a greater need, Rin undoing all of two buttons upon his shirt before simply tearing it open.  

His chest was gorgeous, wide and defined without being too chiselled, her hands touring the planes of his back as she pressed herself against him, moaning softly into his mouth. There was more finesse to the removal of her clothes, Sean savouring in the reveal. That didn’t mean the heat of need ceased to burn through him, though, the want within him spiralling. Just because his designs were not solely motivated by the need to fuck her did not mean he wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy the experience.  

“God,” he breathed, pulling from her mouth and standing back to look at her once his deft fingers had removed the black lace underwear. “Now there’s beauty.” 

She smiled, hands tugging down his trousers and boxers, Sean stepping from them and straightening once more as she grasped his cock, her eyes flitting down. “And there’s one hell of a thick cock. Wow. I bet it feels even better than it looks.” 

He pushed her back on the bed, smirking with satisfaction, beginning to peel down her long, black socks. “I’ve been assured many times that it does.” With her lying spread and bare before him, her folds already glistened with wetness, the urge to simply sink himself balls deep into her was a hard temptation to fight, bringing his thumb to her slit and mouth to her inner thigh. 

Hot kisses peppered her skin, Rin biting her lip with a little hum as she felt him spreading the petals of her sex, his thumb stroking through her wet, looking up to see the anticipation dancing in her eyes. All he had to do was move that thumb a fraction upwards and it’d be skimming her clit, but devilish as he was, he left her waiting on it.  

Keening against his touch, she could barely believe how wet he’d gotten her, just from his kisses while undressing her. The sting of arousal throbbed through her core, craving gratification, her need not sated any by his mouth drawing nearer, licking a hot swipe over the uppermost junction of her thigh. Squirming, she attempted to pull him closer, closing her thighs only to have him prise them back open with his elbows, turning his head to lay a bite against her thigh.  

A single word followed his sharply delivered scold. “Patience.” 

“I’ve never been very good at that.” 

Moving back up her body, his tongue licked a long line from her navel to her neck, staring down at her with a soft frown. “If you don’t show it, I’ll only make you wait longer.”  

Her lips tightened, grumbling in protest. “Tease.” 

“I am,” he confirmed, head dipping to suck her nipple. “I’m also worth the wait.”  

She didn’t doubt that for a second as he worked his way back over her skin with licks and kisses, amping her frustrations further by laying a kiss upon her pubic mound, tongue flickering, so very nearly catching her folds, his mouth then moving to her hip instead. Damn him.  

His hands toured the slender, strong muscles of her thighs, borne of years in the saddle. He could only quietly imagine with much eagerness just how well she’d ride him. His tease was merciless, almost bringing his thumb where she needed it most, a tiny touch against her bud before descending to push lightly against her streaming opening.  

He had her teetering on the edge of desperation just enough that when he finally did meet her folds with a long lick, the sound torn from her was almost primal. That first touch of wet heat gliding over her clit made her hips bounce, his hands holding her down, tongue dragging through her folds again and again until she virtually whimpered.  

He knew exactly what he was doing. Oh, to finally have a guy between her legs who had more than just a vague clue over how to please a woman. Sean Wallace, as she would swiftly learn, had a fucking encyclopaedia of knowledge relating to all things sexual. The bud of her clit swelled hot against his tongue, each lick rolling slowly, smiling against her as her cries filled the room.  

Yes. He knew well how good he was.  

Burying his tongue into the hot honey of her gaping little hole, he tongue fucked her with zeal, nose nudging her bud, experiencing a little pinch of lament that this would be the only time he’d ever get to have her. “Just fucking enjoy fucking her for all she’s worth and remember the goal.” he thought, hands smoothing over her skin, grasping her breasts while returning his tongue to her clit. 

As languid circles were replaced with fast flickers, Rin closed her eyes tight as the pleasure streaked up her spine, her head lost between the downy pillows, her fingernails trawling over his scalp. When he closed his full lips upon her and sucked, he sent her on a direct trajectory to the stars.  

“Enjoying yourself, darling?” 

She could see him grinning at her against the slick mess he’d licked her to, tongue once again rapid in motion. “Fucking hell, yes!” she cried, her groan almost strangulated at feeling two fingers slip in effortless glide into her heat. “You’re damned lucky I haven’t knotted my legs around your neck.” 

He grunted a chuckle, deep and raspy. “I wouldn’t mind, just as long as you don’t asphyxiate me. I cannot deny I’d die a happy man with a mouthful of your pretty little cunt, though.” 

She raised an eyebrow, sharply inhaling a breath when his fingertips pushed firmly into her g spot. “You need to dick me down thoroughly before I’ll let you expire.”  

He emerged from between her legs, kissing his way up her body until he reached her mouth. “Oh that’s an absolute given. Minus the expiration.” Kissing her slow and dirty, his fingers remained nudging deep inside her, a low groan echoing in his throat when he felt her grasp his cock. 

Her touch was much more proficient than he’d been expecting, screwing his eyes tightly shut and pulling from her mouth, burying his against the side of her neck. She left him bereft for a second, pausing to stroke her hand over the sodden mess of her sex, returning to slip a soft clutch over the head of his hardness.  

He twitched against her, abs shuddering, firming further to each squeeze as he began to pant hard into the curve of her shoulder. When after wetting her fingers with a lick, her other hand joined it to circle over the tip of his cock, it was all he could do not to flatten her to the bed and pound the life out of her.  

He would not lose control, though. 

Those delicate swirls, coupled with her other hand working in slow, firm pumping strokes on his shaft sent his shudders right to his thighs. Oh, she was good. Too good, fire licking the pit of his groin as he began to sway into the clasp of her hand. 

“Mmm, you want to be in me so badly right now, don’t you? Yeah, I bet it’s all you can think of, isn’t it, absolutely ruining me with your dick.” 

With those words burning through his brain, the tentative grasp upon the control he sought not to lose slipped from his grasp, his hand reaching to yank open the bedside table drawer and pull out a condom. 

“Oh, you’re going to get it now, little vixen,” he spoke, removing the thin tube of latex from its packet and beginning to roll it on. 

Rin grabbed her legs at the ankle, bringing them down to rest either side of her head. “I’m ready.” Her splayed position and wide, mirthful grin was met by an aroused growl, Sean leaning to circle a lick at her nipple while nudging her opening in tease. 

When he finally pushed forth and spread her around the thick of his cock, her exclamation was but a helpless little whimper, knocked sideways by the feel of her tingling walls being so widely parted. Oh, how she hoped this might become a regular thing. A cock that beautiful wouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry, especially since right from that first moment, he showed her just how well he could use what he had.  

Her mouth dropped open in exclamation, staring up at him as she panted heavily, little darts of pleasure skipping over her nerves as he fucked her steadily. His mouth closed over her other nipple, sucking as his tongue beat across it, her hands moving to trail over his thick arms.  

The way he fucked her... god. It went beyond simple in out, in out penetration. He hit her at every angle, every depth, shallowly breaching her one minute only to plunge fully into her the next. His body moved almost fluidly against hers, Rin running her hands up and down his arms as she met his downward movements with a little upward punt of her hips, pulling him to her, losing herself in a tangle of messy kisses as they panted against one another.   

“You look even more beautiful, you know, when you’re being fucked mindless,” he rumbled, his voice gone to gravel entirely as he bit her lower lip with a hungry groan. Clasping her jaw in his grasp, he hit her deeper with a few more sharply delivered thrusts, the need to quicken taking over for a few moments, her wails making his pulse flip wildly before he brought himself under control again. “God, you’re absolutely gorgeous.”   

He nuzzled her, kissing her again, Rin a little staggered by the praise he heaped upon her. Knowing Sean even only a little, she truly hadn’t thought him the type to be this complimentary. She wouldn’t class him as unfriendly at all, or even arrogant, but she’d always considered him maybe a little too wrapped up in himself to be so extolling of another.   

And then there was the passion in him, which he lavished upon her amply, kissing her, his lips travelling to her neck, his deep groans, the way he stroked her all over as that slow rhythm gave way to something with more voracity. God, the man was addictive.  

His thumb moved to her clit, skating back and forth over the slick little bud, her nails grazing his chest as she cried out. Pleasure so torrid she felt on the verge of tears; that was a definite sexual first for her, being fucked so magnificently, she felt like crying.  

Sitting back on his heels, he pulled her legs up over his shoulders, beginning to pound into her cunt furiously, chasing the tingles of release he could feel beginning to glimmer within him, the coil of his arousal thrashing like an angry serpent.  

Moving her legs, he reached for her, pulling her up with him, Rin feeling her bum cheek sting as he grasped them both in his big hands, spanking one hard. Bloody hell, it felt good, her body moving rhythmically against his as she ground herself down on every last inch of his fat cock. Her walls fluttered around him as the pressure increased, delicious friction scraping sparks right through her, burning to her very marrow and back.  

He coaxed further groans from her, repeatedly spanking her as his teeth nipped gently at her neck, Rin grasping his thick shoulders as she rode him with gusto, her body moving like a wave against his, taking a handful of her blonde waves and fisting it at the roots, pulling her head back, his tongue sliding in a slow drag up her throat until they were sharing kisses full of filthy indulgence once more. 

It was the kind of perfect sex she’d only ever fantasised before, never believing that any reality could ever live up to it, and certainly not with her pre to early teen crush.  

Staring at one another, it was intensity unmatched, Sean feeling himself pulled in by her sharply, so strongly that he had to keep reminding himself that he wouldn’t let his emotions be swayed by her. One time, it would only ever be this moment he would enjoy with the magmatic young woman atop him. 

He constantly reminded himself of that, but it was tricky, being at the mercy of such burning pleasure, given so effortlessly by the enchantment of her cunt, her kisses, her. She made him feel the first flourishes of a truly amazing sexual connection, but it could and would not be. For a few moments though, he let himself tumble, clutching her to him, groaning in utter abandon as he felt the pleasure surging up his spine.   

It suddenly felt much too intimate for him to handle, cursing his own predisposition to be emotive. Gripping her waist, he hauled her off his thighs, turning her over and re-entering the hot clasp of her cunt from behind. Rather than let his thoughts overtake him, he instead focused on the end goal, two hundred million from a man who had been foolish enough to think he would stand being crossed, and not be able to extract himself from it on his own merit.  

Looking over to where his phone was concealed, he smirked directly at the lens, grasping a handful of Rin’s hair and pulling her head back as he began to pound her mercilessly. He wanted Kevin’s stomach to turn, for fury to burn hot in the centre of his chest when he saw it, the video he would edit to shorter length and send to him along with his threat. Sean wanted him to feel nothing short of fucked over, watching the man who he’d attempt to fuck over, fucking his beloved daughter like a jackhammer.  

His efforts had hot pulses darting through her, Rin crying out through each ragged pant, those frantic thrusts plunging her into a release that had glimmers sizzling over ever nerve, leaving her unmoored and drowning in ecstasy as he came moments after her.  

Moving to the side of the bed, his chest still heaved heavily, pulling the condom off and knotting it, lying back with a satisfied huff as he reached to grasp her bum. “Well, that’s one way to spend an hour.”  

She turned onto her back, smiling sultrily. “I can think of a few more ways too, if you’re interested in extending that hour?” 

“Can’t,” he lamented, shaking his head as he stroked her knee. “I have a dinner meeting at six.”  

“Oh.” She looked disappointed, but made no effort to protest, or outstay her welcome. Getting up off the bed, she began to dress, Sean feeling something soothed inside that she appeared to take it for what it was. Well, what she thought it was. He pulled his boxers on, a pair of jeans and a sweater, throwing his shirt and trousers into the laundry basket in his ensuite bathroom. By the time he was done, she was standing by the door.  

Leaning to him, she kissed his lips, Sean encircling her in his arms, kissing her back with heat. “This was fun. I get it, though. One time thing, it’s alright.”  

He nodded. “Glad you understand. And yes, I certainly shan’t forget it in a hurry.”  

He didn’t either. Not after seeing her out, retrieving his phone and stopping the recording, or editing it to trim down to a smaller file with enough evidence on there to show her clearly. In fact, not even after his dinner engagement had finished at just coming up to nine that evening, either. Sex for Sean was a mere commodity, something he indulged in and paid little mind to afterwards, as simplistic in nature as one seeking a meal for sustenance.  

Women rarely remained in his thoughts for long. 

Rin had wedged herself so firmly into his consciousness that come 9:10pm that night, driving himself from the restaurant, he only successfully remained in his house for a grand total of ten minutes. His destination, after changing into black jeans and a simple, dark grey t shirt? Westminster.  

It was only ever meant to happen once... 

[bby-namjoon]

OldFriend!Mafia!Taehyung: First Love

(AU: where Tae was your bestfriend in high school and one day he vanished, but you meet again 10 years later and he has some secrets to hide)

{Part 1} {Part 2} {Part 3} {Part 4}:

———————————————————————

“I’m excited!”

“Why?” He laughed, turning onto his street.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen your house yet and I just wanna see how you live! I think it’ll be nice to just see what you call home”

“Well, we’re here”

You turned your attention back out of the front windscreen and gasped, “this is your house? No way”

He’d turned through a pair of black steel gates before proceeding slowly up his driveway and stopping short of his large garage door. From first glance you could tell that his house was atleast twice the size of yours and far more modern. It’s high hedges made the lavish property feel safe and secluded, like this plot of land was its own sanctuary away from the outside world, but when you thought the exterior was beautiful, your jaw practically dropped as you stepped inside.

The first thing you noticed was the marble floors that stretched the entire expanse of the property, everything was large and beautifully designed, his love of art and music showing through the sculptures and paintings littered around the house, brightening up the neutral monochromatic themes that recurred throughout most of his rooms, just enough to add some character to them. Even his bathrooms were beautiful, both of them holding sleek granite sinks and chrome furnishings, the only thing differing between them was that one had a large roll top bath stood in the corner whilst the other had an enclosed glass shower. You continued to follow him around his home, watching as he pointed out the empty guest rooms and his office, telling you how most of his business gets taken care of at home and that his closest team often come over to work alongside him, coming and going throughout the week as needed.

The final room on the tour was his bedroom. As soon as you stepped inside you could smell his cologne, the last spray of it obviously still circulating around the room from where he’d gotten ready before your rooftop date earlier in the evening. He’d used his connections to set up a romantic sunset picnic for you both, where he used the slight breeze as an excuse to have you sit between his legs and hold you close as you fed eachother strawberries, feeling as though you were a million miles away from the bustling city of Seoul that continued it’s course beneath you.

If Taehyung knew how to do anything, he knew how to centre piece a room. Much like the grand piano in his living room, or the granite island in his kitchen, his king size bed sat proudly against the wall where it was boxed in by a bedside table on either side, it’s white sheets looking pristine and freshly made, making you have to resist the sudden urge to throw yourself onto it, burying yourself beneath his feather down duvet. He let you peek into his well organised wardrobes and drawers before finally pushing back his curtains and opening up a set of french doors that took up much of the wall on the far side of his room, his hand finding yours as he led you outside with him. The doors had brought you out onto a balcony that looked over his dimly lit, flower lined garden and across the distant tree tops to the city skyline, and you couldn’t describe how taken aback you were. Everything about this house from its architecture to the surrounding views was just amazing.

He pulled you over to sit on his outdoor chairs, a smile on his face. “You’re so cute, the whole time you were just like” he paused to pull a face of awe and you laughed, leaning back in your chair.

“I can’t believe you live like this, it’s crazy. I mean, I knew you lived in a nice house growing up, but this? This is just next level.”

“Thank you, I put a lot of my money into this house because I spend most of my time here, but I dunno, I still don’t feel as at home as I do when I come to yours.”

“Really? Why?”

“I guess because this house is so big and it’s just me, it just feels empty you know? I just have all this space with nobody to fill it, but your house is cosy and warm and I like that. 1st world problems amirite?”

“Wanna swap?”

“I’ll move in tomorrow,” he chuckled. “What would you have done if I lived in a horrible area or in a really tiny goshiwon?” (a small one bedroom apartment in Korea that usually consists of a bed and a desk and you share a kitchen/bathroom with others on your floor).

“Well, if you lived somewhere dangerous and you were at risk or you felt unsafe then I’d ask you if you wanted to come and live with me instead, and if you lived in a goshiwon I wouldn’t care because we’re always in eachothers personal space anyway,”

“That is true,” he smiled, “but aren’t you cute.”

“Were you checking if I’d still hang around if things go downhill and you lose all your money?”

“Pfft, no”

“Well just to be clear I wouldn’t care if you were rich or poor, Kim Taehyung. You’re still a good man at heart and that’s all that really matters to me,”

Your words made his heart squeeze because he didn’t agree, he didn’t think he was a good man. He’d told himself that if by the third date he was certain you both wanted to be together, then he would tell you everything, but until then he had to continue to swallow his guilt as if there was nothing to hide.

“Do you wanna stay the night?”

“I haven’t got anything with me,”

“You can wear my clothes, and I have a spare toothbrush you can use”

“Alright then,”

When you got ready for bed he let you look through his T-shirt drawer to pick out what you wanted to sleep in, your hands automatically gravitating towards a white T-shirt with a big design on the front.

“I like that shirt, I have it in black too, I think”

“You should wear the black one! Where is it?”

“Are we really gonna be wearing matching couple shirts before we’re even a couple?”

“Don’t act like you don’t love it, I know you,”

He smiled, reaching into his drawer and pulling out the darker version of your chosen top along with some comfy bed trousers, leaving you to skip off to the bathroom and get changed. When you returned you were bare faced with your hair tied up in a bun, your body clad in nothing but a pair of knickers and his oversized shirt which stopped at your mid thigh, and when you saw him in his matching shirt you couldn’t help but squeal.

“We’re so cringe, I love it” you giggled, and you saw the smile creep onto his face as he failed to conceal how much he was enjoying this moment, no matter how clichè it was. He pulled you closer to him so he could have a proper look at you, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his smile as his eyes wandered down your body, taking in how good you looked in his clothes as a familiar feeling of arousal started to rise within him, causing him to quickly try and cloud his brain with any other thoughts, something that was easier said than done as you pulled him over to the mirror to take a picture together, your bodys now pressed against eachother as he put his arms around you, smiling for the camera.

“These are so cute! Look!”

They really were cute.

“Send me those,”

“I expect to see them printed onto giant posters and stuck up around the house” you smiled as you sent the photos to him.

“As if I’d put them up and let other people see how good you look right now,”

You were surprised at his reply but you laughed, “I’m stood here with messy hair and no makeup on, people would probably think someone had a gun to your head to take these pictures with me”

He laughed, “well I think you look sexy in my clothes, you look way better than I would for sure”

“Shut uppp” you smiled, “and stop looking at me like that!” You reached up to cover his eyes and he caught hold of your wrists, peeking over your palms.

“Look at you like what?”

“You know how!”

“I don’t, enlighten me”

“Your eyes go all soft and you just look at me with a little smirk on your face! Stop!”

“Why? Does it get to you, Y/N?” He cocked an eyebrow and the smirk came back, making you exclaim out of frustration as you pulled your hands away from his and ran over to the bed, hiding yourself under the covers.

He laughed, following after you and hugging the mound your body made through the duvet, “you’re so annoying,”

“And you love it,”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do,”

“Shut up.”

He chuckled as you moved around underneath him, finally re-emerging into the open air. You were a little surprised at how close his face was to yours but you didn’t react, just closing your eyes to let him brush some stray strands of hair from your forehead. You felt his lips follow soon after, pressing a kiss just above the space between your eyebrows.

“I do wanna kiss you on the lips but I know we’re supposed to be behaving ourselves,” he spoke lowly, his voice making you open your eyes again to look up at him.

You tried to hold back your smile, playing it cool. “Well, it could technically be a goodnight kiss? We did just go on a date after all”

“Hmm, that’s true” he hummed, his gaze moving slowly from your eyes to your mouth as he edged a little closer. “Behaving is no fun anyway, right?”

“Someone’s not feeling shy anymore,”

“What can I say? Seeing you in nothing but my shirt has that effect on me” he smiled, closing the gap between you both as he manouvered around the duvet, careful not to break the kiss as he joined you under the covers. A shiver was sent up your spine as goose bumps broke out across your skin, your warm body obviously too sensitive to handle the touch of his icy fingertips. “Sorry, baby” he mumbled against your lips as he hooked an arm around you, making sure he was as close to you as possible to warm you up again, but his free hand was unable to hold back from wandering, carefully tracing itself up your leg before stopping at the thigh, giving it a squeeze, thoughts of him kissing and nipping and trailing his tongue up the soft skin now flashing through his mind, making him realise how desperate he was to have you writhing and moaning under his mouth, just the thought of it was intoxicating.

That was the first night you’d ever shared a bed together, all the other cuddles and erasure of eachothers personal space was usually not able to get this far as he’d tell you he had to go cause he has work early the next day, when in fact he was just heading out on his nightly shift of dealing, leaving you to sleep alone, none the wiser. Still, you took the moment in, your mind wandering back to the way he’d gripped and traced your thighs, fingers teasing the waistband of your underwear before tearing himself away and hiding his face in your neck, his lips still pressing kisses but softer this time, mumbling how much you mean to him as he gingerly tip-toed around the 3 words he knew he felt but wasn’t quite ready to speak into existence, his aura changing from needing release to needing affection, almost giving you whiplash as he did so.

He was mysterious to you, you wanted to keep searching his soul until you worked out what the missing puzzle piece was but you didn’t know where to start. Instead, you just enjoyed the moment, appreciating the way the sunlight that had broken through the crack in the curtains graced his face, illuminating how pretty he was.

You wished you could stay like this forever, wrapped up in his arms as even in his sleep he held you closely, never wanting you to leave his embrace because it brought him comfort. Comfort to know that you were here, with him, happy and safe and content. It’s all he wanted.

Sadly though, all good things must come to an end.

—————————-

Tae spat onto the rain covered pavement, leaving a small puddle of red to spread out on the grey tarmac, blood trickling down from his nose and onto his white dress shirt, mimicking the pattern of the raindrops that had now soaked through his clothes. This wasn’t how the night was supposed to go.

He got back to his car, bloody knuckles scraping against the inside of his trouser pockets, sending a familiar yet out-dated pain to course through his nerves as he pulled out his phone, sending a message to his boys about the event that had just taken place.

It was supposed to be a quick job, a quick job that if completed would mean that he could spend the whole night with you tomorrow, but instead, it was a dirty trap. The deal had gone wrong and Taehyung was jumped by 3 men, all of them trying their best to overpower him and drag him to the floor, expecting to get away with the money and the drugs, but Tae wasn’t the weak fool they expected him to be. Despite the odds not being in his favour, he walked away with all the goods he arrived with, leaving the men with nothing but bullet wounds and broken bones.

He slumped back into the drivers seat, a dull ache pulsating through his right eye after sustaining multiple hits to the side of the face, his split lip throbbing mercilessly, yet he didn’t react. It had been a while since something like this had happened, but he’d been through far worse during his time in the industry, the scars literred across his body were proof of that.

To him, the bigger problem was that he knew he had to avoid you for a week or two, he needed enough time for his face to heal before seeing you again. Sure, he could lie and say he was mugged, or a crazy person attacked him in th street, but his pride was far too great for that. He’d never admit a false defeat.

The first lie of a business trip in Busan lasted a few days, believable enough for him to avoid having to see you, but he made sure to call and text as much as he could, wanting to make it clear that he wasn’t just avoiding you altogether.

“Boss, I caught wind that Yongguk isn’t happy about what happened that night you fought his men. He thinks you dishonoured him and he wants payback.”

Taehyung scoffed, “he wants payback? What is wrong with that guy? He’s the one that ordered for the deal to go bad, it’s not my fault his men aren’t trained well enough to take on one man”

“I know, but we’ve always known that he’s fucked up. Apparently two out of the three men he sent to you died, so he wants to even the playing field, I’m not sure if that means to come and kill you or any of us but he’s got a plan brewing.”

“Well I’m not gonna let him or anyone else hurt you guys, they can come for me all they want, but you’re not getting harmed, I can tell you that much.”

“No, we will stand alongside you. What’s the plan?”

“Well we’ll have to find out some more info first so go with Hoseok and Jungkook and try to find out as much as you can. We’ll gather here tonight at about 10 to talk it over.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Thank you.”

With a bow of his head Jimin left Tae’s office, leaving him alone to think about everything that was suddenly coming his way.

His phone started to ring, snapping him out of his thoughts. Y/N flashing up in bold across his screen.

“Hey Tae,”

“You alright, babe?”

“Yeah, I just miss you..you’ve been so m.i.a lately”

“I’m sorry, I just- after the Busan trip I felt a little unwell..I think I’ve come down with something and didn’t want to get you sick too, but believe me I miss you aswell”

“Oh no, what’s wrong?”

“Uhm I’m not sure really, I keep getting headaches and feeling sick”

“Oh no, rest lots and make sure you eat enough, do you need anything?”

“No thanks baby, I’m good. I’ll be sure to look after myself so I can see you again soon, I promise I’ll spoil you to make up for lost time” he frowned, feeling guilty for all the lies he’s told over the past week.

“You don’t need to, just seeing you again will be enough,”

“Aren’t you cute,”

“The cutest,” he could hear your smile through the phone and it made him feel warm, “now get some rest, I want you to be better as soon as possible! No excuses!”

“Yes ma’am! I’ll try my best and I’ll see you soon, thank you for calling me, I don’t deserve you”

You laughed a little, “shut up, there’s no need to thank me! I’ll see you soon, Tae” you smiled, and even though he couldn’t see you he smiled too,

“See you, y/n”

When you hung up he sighed, putting his head in his hands. He couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

—————————————

That evening tae invited his boys over for them to relay any information they found so they could devise a plan of action against Yixing and whatever he was plotting.

“We need to take him out, Tae. The longer he’s around, the more shit he’s gonna cause. He’s insane.” Yoongi spoke up, shaking his head at the information Jimin told to the group.

“I know, but it’s not as simple as that. We need to be tactical. If we know he’s planning to ransack us at our next shipment pick up, we’ll be on high alert. We’ll change our formation. It’ll only be the start so we need to keep two steps ahead, but the fact we have the information means we’re heading in the right direction.”

“We could set up a decoy shipment? We could reroute and pick up from a different dock? That’ll buy us some time?”

“Good idea, let’s work this out”

The boys continued to brainstorm their ideas for the next few hours, but little did Taehyung know that you were on your way over to surprise him with some dinner, expecting him to be in bed unwell.

When you arrived you knocked on the door just as Yoongi was coming out of the kitchen, a bottle of beer in hand. He looked through the spyhole, seeing you stood holding a bag of food. “I got it!” Yoongi called out, thinking you were the delivery girl for the dinner they’d ordered.

He opened the door and you were confused, “is Taehyung here?”

“Uh yeah, but I can just take it, thank you, have a good night”

He took the bag from you and you you furrowed your eyebrows, stopping the door with your hand as he went to close it.

“Wait-I’m confused, who are you?”

“Why does it matter? Taehyung is here, we ordered this on his account, but he’s busy so I answered the door”

“I’m not a delivery person?”

“Then who are you? Why do you wanna see Taehyung so badly? Oh god, did he hook up with you? I-“

“What? No?” You felt a weird sensation in your stomach, had he been hooking up with other girls? All of this was making you feel uneasy. Something was going on. “Can you just get him? He’s my friend and I was bringing him dinner because I thought he was sick.”

The man in front of you looked confused, he hadn’t seen or heard of you before. “What’s going on? Is the order wrong?”

Perfect timing.

When Tae appeared beside Yoongi you gasped at the bruises on his face, his bottom lip still swollen and scabbed from being split. You saw his eyes grow wide and he felt his heart fall into his stomach. He didn’t expect you to be here.

“This girl said she’s your friend and she made you dinner cause you’re sick?”

“Yeah Tae, I thought you were sick. Not battered and bruised, what’s going on? What happened to you?” You were dying to cup his face and kiss his bruises better but you knew he was keeping something from you, so you stood your ground.

Yoongi looked between you and Tae before backing up, sensing the tension in the air. “I’ll just go put this in the kitchen..”

Taehyungs heart was beating out of his chest, he almost wished Yoongi hadn’t left you two alone, he didn’t want to get into a fight with you. He didn’t want things to go like this.

“Are you gonna answer me or what?” you crossed your arms, looking up at him, waiting for him to give you an explanation.

He stepped out the house and closed the door behind him, blocking out the sound of the other male voices that were flooding towards you from the living room.

“I uhm..I don’t really know what to say..”

“What do you mean you don’t know what to say? You seemed to have a lot to say before when you were making up lies about being sick”

His head was spinning as he tried to think of a response, so instead he just bit his bottom lip, looking at the floor. He didn’t have the confidence to look you in the eyes.

“Are you just not interested in me anymore? Is that it? That guy asked me if I was one of your hookups, is that what you’ve been doing this whole time? Am I just one of your throw away girls?”

“What? No! I’m not hooking up with anybody! I only want to be with you, nobody else! There’s never been anyone else!”

You felt your chest tighten at his words. “How can I believe you when I know you’re still keeping something from me?”

“I just don’t want things to change, I know as soon as I tell you the truth you’re gonna see me differently and I’m scared of that..I-I don’t want to lose you again.”

You suddenly felt scared, maybe you didn’t want to know the truth.

“I’m scared now too, but just tell me. I want to know.”

He took a deep breath, thinking it all through. He realised that there was no way out of this now, and that he had to finally tell you the truth. The jig was up.

“Okay, fine..but can we talk about this in my car? I don’t want anyone listening.”

You nodded, “yeah, fine.”

He disappeared back into the house for a moment to retrieve his keys, trying his best to psych himself up for what was about to happen. He wasn’t sure how you were going to react, the enclosed space of his car possibly becoming the worst place to talk if you end up shouting, but it was too late to go back on himself now. He’d wasted enough time.

Once you both sat down in the front seats you turned to face him while he focused on the steering wheel, still too afraid to make eye contact.

You looked at his swollen, busted lip and the shadows of bruises that took over the side of his face. Had he been mugged? Who would do something like this to him? Why wouldn’t he just tell you?

You suddenly felt a swirl of anxiety in the pit of your stomach and you just wanted to know the truth. Whatever it was, you just had to make sure he wasn’t in danger.

“Tae, please just tell me, I’m worried about you.”

“Please promise me you won’t hate me,”

“What?”

He looked at you for the first time this evening, his eyes panicked. “If I tell you, please don’t hate me. I’ve been scared to tell you this whole time because I’m scared you’ll hate me and you won’t want me in your life anymore. I mean, I wouldn’t blame you, but I don’t want to lose you, not again.”

The anxious swirl returned, this time in the form of a tsunami as it moved to engulfed your chest, your eyes still on his bruised ones as he pleaded to you.

“I-I can’t promise that because I don’t know what you’ve done, Tae. You know me, I will try my best to understand you because I don’t want to lose you either, but we can’t work through something unless I know what it is.”

He took a deep breath, seeming defeated, but he knew you were right. He couldn’t expect you to promise that when he knew the kind of person he was.

“Okay..I’ll tell you.”

And with that, he turned back to the steering wheel, his gaze on his lap, and he told you everything. He told you about the real business his family had been involved in growing up, the trading of arms and drugs and any other illegal substance you could think off. All of which became his after his father had died. All of which became his and that’s why he disappeared.

He told you about his men, one of which you’d met at the door, and how without them he’d never have made it this far, because even though he was their boss, they were a team and together they ran the underground scene.

He told you about the things he’s done and the things he’s seen in order to to get to where he is today and you couldn’t even talk. You were in shock. You watched as he gripped the steering wheel, his eyes closed as he thought back on his career and the life he leads.

Finally he told you about his face and why he’d been avoiding you. He was too scared to let you know about the real him. The real him that laundered and blackmailed and fought in back alleys in the middle of the night after a deal’s gone bad. The real him that killed people. Albeit to stay alive, but he still killed.

He looked in pain as he wrapped up his explanation, his eyes threatening to brim over with tears. He really was a terrible person. He was selfish to expect you to stay. He was wrong to even bring you into all of this, lulling you into a false sense of comfort. He was disgusting and he hated himself.

“I just-I just didn’t want you to know me as this person, I didn’t want you to get wrapped up in my life and the shiftiness that comes along with it. I wanted you to see me as a better person, someone that reminded you of teenage me, of the good memories we had together, but-but I realise now that that’s not fair. You deserve better than this, better than me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

You saw the brimming tears finally roll down his cheeks and he wiped them away. The silence in the car becoming deafening.

You couldn’t process anything he had just said. Being a gangster was one thing, selling drugs and buying guns, but murder? He was a murderer.

You felt your body shake with agitation, you felt sick.

How could he be capable of that? With his own bare hands? The same hands that held yours. The same hands that pulled you close to him and wrapped you in a hug. The same hands that ran through your hair and held your face as he kissed you.

“Please say something..” he sniffed as he turned to you, trying to find some kind of emotion on your face.

“I uhm..I think I need to go. I-I’m sorry but I’ve gotta go.”

Your gaze flashed up to his before gathering yourself and getting out, keeping your head down as you rushed back across his front garden and down his drive, almost reaching the front gate when you heard him call after you.

“Y/N, please! Wait! What does this mean?” You knew he wasn’t asking about your almost relationship, but more so whether or not you’d ever speak to him again.

You stopped in your tracks, turning back to him, you wished you hadn’t after seeing his face. He looked like a kicked puppy. You felt a twang in your chest as you fought between your head and your heart, but in the end you decided to stay neutral.

“I need some time to think, Tae. I’ve gotta go, I’m sorry.”

You tore yourself away from him and hurried out the gate, almost bumping into the real delivery boy on your way out.

You practically ran back to your car, locking the door behind you as you rested your head against the steering wheel, closing your eyes.

You couldn’t believe it.

[averywiseanimatedcat]

The stars in your eyes

Good Omentober #1

Prompt: pre-fall

Word count: 2,311

Rating: G

Tags: pre-fall a Crowley and Aziraphale

Summary: This one shot takes place after Crowley and Aziraphales first meeting as angels. Aziraphale has developed a bit of a workplace crush after meeting the charming star-maker. He makes an excuse to visit him in the planning and construction department.

Read it on AO3

Author notes: The nebula referred to in this piece is the Ring Nebula, to me, it looks like a blue eye….wonder where Crowley got the design inspiration from…can’t be a certain blue eyed angel.

The idea of Crowleys angel name comes from this meta post by @indigovigilance.

Aziraphale didn’t need to go up to the planning and construction floor. In fact he had no business being up there at all. But he’d managed to convince his supervisor that these brand spanking new scrolls with gold inlay absolutely should be delivered by hand, and by his hands specifically. As he rode the elevator upwards, he had a silly, giddy feeling in his chest. It felt like little bits of light dancing around in there. Not that he knew what dancing was. But if he did, that’s what he’d tell you it felt like.

The elevator light blinked onto the planning and construction floor, coming to an abrupt halt. He’d been squished in with multiple other angels who were all heading up here too. It was a very busy department right now, what with all the building the universe going on.

The doors opened, and all the others tumbled out and scattered in various directions, leaving Aziraphale alone. He’d only been up here once before, and that was because gotten into trouble for suggesting that horses should have 5 legs instead of 4.

‘Why not one more if you’re going to give them that many?’

He’d said. It was suppose to be a joke. His supervisor wasn’t amused. So he’d been dragged up here to illustrate how unimportant and uneducated he was on the matters of creation. He hadn’t seen the star-maker at that time, if he had, he might’ve taken a bit more interest in planning and construction beyond how many legs horses were going to have.

This department was an impressive floor. It was wide and stretched out seemingly unending in all directions. Huge, long tables extended into the distance, all covered with various scrolls being pawed over by hundreds of angels. On those scrolls were extremely complex mathematical equations, planning sheets, maps and memos. There were various miniature models strewn about the tables and larger holograms floating in the aisles. Planets, stars, suns and galaxies dotted the room. At the centre was the biggest and most impressive hologram of them all, the Milky Way galaxy. It was a miniature of course, only about as high as Aziraphale was tall. In real life it would be quite enormous. Even as a hologram, it was deeply impressive. And if Aziraphale had been paying more attention to it, he would have said it was beautiful.

Beautiful would also be a word he’d use to describe a certain star-maker he’d met the angelic equivalent of a few days ago. He’d been travelling across a new sector of space when someone had called for help. He’d pulled up and come face to face with the most stunning angel he’d ever met. Gosh he’d been star struck. That was a new phrase he’s coined just for the occasion, considering all the stars that were being made at the time.

The star maker, whose name he never actually caught, must be quite a high ranking angel in planning and construction. He must be very intelligent, Aziraphale thought to himself. Although Aziraphale was equally as intelligent in his own department. Which was what modern humans would call being a ‘book worm’. But the areas of science and creation sounded like magic to him.

He scanned the immediate vicinity, if he couldn’t find the star-maker straight away, he’d have no real excuse to go looking for him. Aziraphale didn’t want to peak curious eyes by wandering around asking for someone he had absolutely no reason to see. Fortunately, the way ahead cleared at just the right moment. The star-maker sat at his own desk a short distance from the mass of longer ones by the windows. Aziraphale fluffed himself up courageously and started towards him.

As he got closer, he could see the angels position title stamped in large, gold letters on the front of the desk. It read ‘Lead design engineer’. Golly, thought Aziraphale, that was much higher than a supervisor. His nerve began to shake more and more as he got closer, Aziraphale hoped the star-maker wouldn’t be upset at being disturbed. But his fears were soon soothed when the star-makers face spread into a wide, bright grin at the sight of him.

“Oh hello again!”

He greeted Aziraphale, putting down the complicated looking instrument he had in his hands. A large sheet of paper was laid out on his desk, it was covered in complicated drawings, equations and scribbles.

“Hello. I uh, got sent up to deliver these. Not sure who else to give them but a familiar face.”

Aziraphale bluffed. The star-makers eyes twinkled as he stood and took the armful of scrolls.

“Perfect! I’ve been waiting for some decent paper. Gotta make it all look pretty you know. Can’t show up to the presentation with a hundred bits of old scribbled on paper.”

He cleared off some space on his desk for the scrolls.

“No, got to have decent paper. What are you working on now?”

Aziraphale asked, trying to make conversation.

“Oh something very exciting, I can show you if you like?”

The angel said cheerfully, Aziraphale blinked

“Oh…absolutely I’d love to see it.”

The star-maker abandoned the paper and gestured for Aziraphale to follow him. But then he stopped suddenly and turned around

“Wait, you’re not suppose to be somewhere are you? I’m not gonna get you in trouble stealing you for a few minutes?”

His eyes had a flicker of concern Aziraphale haddnt seen in their last meeting. He shook his head

“Oh no, I have some time. Please continue.”

The brief moment of tension lifted and the star-maker strode on. They made their way past a large groups of angels all gathered around a huge round table debating something about dwarf planets. Aziraphale had to almost jog to keep up with the taller angels quick pace. eventually, they reached the back wall and Azirphale gasped. All along it were large holograms of what he assumed were different nebula. There were all different sizes, shapes and colours. The star-maker grinned at him.

“Just super isn’t it? I’m working on this one right now.”

He pointed to a large, round one. Aziraphale thought it looked almost like an eye, or a portal to another world. Whatever it was meant to be, it was beautiful. The star-maker then pointed to each hologram in tern and told Aziraphale it’s name, its designer (which was often him), location in space, physical make up, how big it would be and it’s purpose. Aziraphale didn’t understand some of what he was saying, but he enjoyed listening anyway. Once the angel finished he looked at Aziraphale expectantly.

“Just…beautiful. Honestly I don’t know what to say. It’s so much more exciting than the records department.”

He sighed. The star-maker beamed at him. They chatted on about continuing plans for the expansion of space and what they were going to fill it with. This took them all the way back to the desk.

Aziraphale clawed for another point of conversation

“Oh, how did your ah…suggestion box idea go down?”

He asked. The star-makers face went dark for just a moment, like a shadow passed over it.

“Oh, not that well…”

His voice sounded quite absent, lacking its usual pep. He pushed a finger into a model galaxy that sat atop a golden stand on his desk, making it spin.

“Well, you tried. I guess the almighty has other plans.”

Aziraphale said, trying to offer some comfort.

“Mm. I guess so. Anyway…not my job is it, to decide what happens to them. I only make ‘em…”

The stare-maker gestured around vaguely, his eyes settling on the Milky way hologram in the centre of the room.

“Look I know…I can see how important this all is to you. Obviously you’re brilliant at what you do…”

Aziraphale started

“Oh…thank you. You really think so?”

The star makers face brightened a little as his deep brown eyes flicked to Aziraphale.

“Absolutely. Maybe…maybe the almighty is going to make a lot of new ones later. After these have gone. And she would need you for that.”

Aziraphale was just making this all up, he had no idea really. But the star-makers discontent made him uneasy. He could tell the angel was just passionate about his creations, but there weren’t allowances for that kind of thing here. You had to just do what you were told, or things could get ugly.

Aziraphale noticed that the star-maker was squinting at him.

“What’s wrong?”

He asked, thinking that maybe he’d said something offensive. The other angels head just tilted a little as he said

“Have you…ever noticed your eyes, the pupils, they’re the shape of a star?”

Aziraphale felt quite taken aback, they didn’t have mirrors here, so he’d never looked at his eyes. He just assumed he looked like everyone else.

Aziraphale blushed. It was only the second time in history where an angel had blushed at this point. Both times were Aziraphale, and both times occurred when he was in-front of the star maker.

Aziraphale took note of the star-makers eyes. The inky black of the his pupils reminded him of the drops that occasionally dropped from the top of his quill when he got to hasty writing. They sat inside a soothing, earth tone of brown you’d find on many a book cover in the record department where he worked. The deeper brown tones were flecked with white and gold, much like the gold in layer paper he’d just dropped off. Overall, they had the same inviting, comfortable quality Aziraphale enjoyed about books.

Aziraphale suddenly realised he’d been staring for far too long. Although the star-maker didn’t seem to mind, he was smiling in a gentle, lost sort of way.

“Anyway…sorry to interrupt your work. I’ll…get going, lots to do you know.”

Aziraphale said rather awkwardly.

“Oh yes, same. Very busy.”

The star-maker answered, just as awkwardly. He bustled back to his chair behind the desk. Aziraphale went to leave but stopped himself

“Sorry but…”

He started, the star-maker looked up at him again

“I still don’t know your name?”

“Oh, it’s Baraqiel.”

The angel replied, lifting the corner of the large sheet of paper to reveal the name plate that had been hiding underneath it. Aziraphale blinked in surprise, Baraqiel? He had heard the name but never connected it with the face before him. Baraqiel was a dominion, engineering was actually quite lowly work for an Angel of that status. No wonder he had the ear of the almighty herself. Aziraphale felt himself feeling a mix of bewilderment and relief. He had no idea what it was like up in those ranks, maybe they had more freedom to express themselves to the almighty and he was overreacting by worrying so much. “Oh, well it’s nice to meet you then.” Baraqiel smiled, and surprised him by asking

“See you around then Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale felt himself blushing again, for the third time in history

“See you around.”

And then he scooted off, only breathing when he reached the elevator. The doors opened, he stepped inside and took one last look as they closed. The star-maker was smiling over his work.

Aziraphale was already thinking of other excuses he could make to come back here again.

——

Present day

——

Aziraphale opened his eyes, sitting bolt upright on the bed. Crowley was standing over him, looking a little concerned, he asked

“So? Do you remember anything?”

Aziraphales mind slowly settled back to the present and remembered what they’d been doing. They’d decided to try and recover some of Aziraphales memory from before the fall. His memory had been wiped just like Crowleys had. Only Aziraphales was wiped selectively. He worked in the records department and had extensive knowledge on each and every fallen angel. That knowledge was promptly removed after the war. He’d regained some over time, but there were large holes. Aziraphale felt a silly grin spread across his lips, Crowley gestured at him expectantly

“I remember…that I had the most ridiculous workplace crush on you.”

Crowleys eyes widened for a second, then he started to laugh, a lot.

“It’s not that funny!”

Aziraphale suddenly felt quite embarrassed.

“Yes it is! That explains so much!”

He continued to laugh quite heartily, and Aziraphale started to giggle as well. He told the whole story of how he’d managed to convince his supervisor to let him take the scrolls upstairs. How Crowley had showed him the nebula, how he’d been so flustered to find out he was a dominion. The comment about his eyes.

“I think I was quite star stuck.”

He joked, blushing for what was probably the millionth time by now. Crowley threw himself down on the bed and sighed out the last chuckle when the story was finished.

“Well, from what you just told me I think the feeling was mutual.”

The demon said. Aziraphale laid down next to him and looked up at the same patch of ceiling.

“Do you remember any of it?”

He asked. Crowley was quiet for a bit

“Bits and pieces. Shadows of memories, I remember a general feeling like you were following me.”

“Maybe I was.”

Crowley sat up and pointed at the Angel

“That’s why I knew you were safe to approach on the wall, some part of me must’ve remembered you.”

Aziraphale reached up and cupped the demons cheek.

“I think some part of me remembered you too.”

Crowley placed his own hand over the angels, they smiled at each other for a bit. Aziraphale gazed into the deep yellow eyes that now sat in place of the brown ones in his memory.

“You know, I remember thinking your eyes reminded me of books. They were brown back then. But I like them better like this. Yellow is such a beautiful colour on you darling.”

[sourskywalker]

Mrs Darth Vader - Part 6; Rings and the engagement announcement

Relationship: Darth Vader x Fem!Reader

Series Summary: Newly appointed Emperor Vader, has been hassled about getting married and producing an heir. Whilst having a meeting with Admiral Piett he meets his second in command's daughter, Y/n.

Series Warnings: Age difference, forced marriage, eating disorders, postpartum depression, suicide attempt, toxic relationship, smut, angst, pregnancy, darth vader is not only a massive creep but also an asshole, referenced suicide

Chapter Warning: N/A

Chapter Summary: Y/n and Vader publicly announce their engagement

Word Count: 1.5k

(GIF in no way correlates with the readers skin tone)

It was about 7:30 in the evening when Vader asked for your presence in his apartments.

“As you are aware” He starts, hands clasped in front of himself as he speaks “That tomorrow we will be officially announcing our engagement. And, since we never got around to picking out an engagement ring for you, I decided to have one designed” He gestures towards the jeweller who steps forward, holding a velvet crushed box in his hands. Vader gently pries the lid off and places it onto the table beside him

“Oh my!” You exclaim, rushing to get a closer look at the ring “It’s gorgeous” You breathe “May I put it on?”

“Of course, it is yours to wear anyway” Vader replies, but the look in your eyes and your outstretched hand makes him realise what you meant “Ah” He pulls the ring out with his thumb and forefinger and slowly slips it onto your finger “Fits perfectly” His blank mask stares towards you and you half hope that he’s smiling at you

“If I may” The Jeweller stands to the side of you and Vader, the box once in his hands now placed beside the lid on the table “The band is 24 carat gold and that beautiful gem right there” He points to the beautiful ombre stone right at the centre of the ring “Is an alexandrite…A-and of course we have 10 carat diamonds around the alexandrite” You nod along to what the Jeweller was saying, though your focus was mainly towards the beautiful ring that had been placed on by your soon to be husband

“Thank you so much, Vader” Your smile broadens as you look up towards him “You truly have an eye for making beautiful things”

“Only for you, my love” Your cheeks heated up at the new, but not unwelcome nickname “My first wife never got to wear an engagement ring or wedding ring” He says, and you quickly feel your smile drop to a neutral expression

Here we go again with the first wife shtick. You will yourself not to roll your eyes at the mention of the deceased wife of your fiancé. It was just getting ridiculous at this point.

“This is something I never got to experience with her, but now I have the chance to try again, with you” You didn’t know how to feel about the comment, instead opting to nod in response

“It’s getting late” You finally say “So I should probably get some rest”

“Of course…Good night, my love” Vader’s gloved hand clutched onto your smaller one and brings it up to his mouthguard, letting it hover there for a moment before letting go, his hands moving to clasp behind his back

~~~~

Standing on the outskirts of the gardens, you chewed on the bottom of your lip as you nervously eyed workers adjusting the Cam Droids. Although it was a silk white dress, you could still feel the fabric of silk sticking to the sweat patches that had accumulated under your armpits, though the cape of light pinks and yellows most definitely didn’t help in cooling you down. You quickly turned to face the glass door when you heard them creak open, Vader’s gold-lined cape with a regal red that you only just noticed colouring the inside, billowed dramatically behind him as he walks towards you “Good morning” He tips his mask towards you and you follow his movements, instead dipping into a low curtsey “I see you are wearing the dress I brought you... Do you like it?”

“Very much, Vader.” A nervous smile spreads across your face and you feel the warm trickle of sweat dripping down your forehead

“No need to be worried, my love” He says, pulling a handkerchief from the hands of one of his servants and gently dabbing it across your face, being careful so as not to smudge your lightly applied makeup “You’ll do fine” His words of comfort eased you ever so slightly. Though, only moments later did the uneasiness arise once again, when one of the butlers scurried forwards to inform Vader that the photographers would be coming in momentarily “My love?” His hand tangles itself with yours and he gently tugs you towards the fountain right in the centre of the garden

And sure enough, the photographers all barreled through the doors and took their places, cameras at the ready whilst Vader took his place behind you, his hand clasping your shoulder as you gently leaned against his chestplate, an innocent smile gracing your lips as you looked directly into the camera

“Miss!” The photographers called “Show us the ring” You obliged happily, extending your hand out to show off the beautiful ring which adorned your finger, Vader's hand stretched forwards as well his hand dipping under yours to hold your hand

“Where did the Emperor propose?” One asked excitedly

You looked up to Vader before responding with; “In the palace gardens, it was all quite beautiful”

“And how did you two get acquainted with each other?” Another asked

Vader opted to take over the question, answering cooly; “Her father works for me, I met her when I went to visit their home a few months ago, it was love at first sight for me, though I’m not sure what she thought at first”

The cameras continued to go off as you and Vader stood in silence, occasionally answering a reporter's question. Though, soon enough, the reporters were shooed away by the guards, except for a young reporter working for the Empire Broadcasting Corporation.

“Good morning, your majesty and Miss Piett” The reporter bowed respectfully before returning to their full height

“Please, let's have a seat” Vader gestured towards the garden table and chairs just a few feet away from the fountain “I’m sure a few butlers will come out with some tea and other treats”

Your grip on Vader’s hand tightened as you followed him and the reporter towards the chairs. A wave of confusion crashed against you, your brows furrowing when you realised the happiness you felt whilst standing in front of the cameras had disappeared so suddenly “...Iett, Miss Piett, are you alright?” The reporter asked, extending a serviette towards you

“Huh? Oh yes I’m perfectly fine, what was it you asked me?” You shook your head gently, offering the reporter an encouraging smile

“I was asking how you’ve been dealing with everything since your engagement?”

“Oh- I see..Well, to be honest, I’ve just been taking it one step at a time. Granted, there have been tough times, but he-” You place a hand on Vader's arm and give it a gentle squeeze “Has made it all worth it”

“And uhm, may we see the ring once more?” They ask

“Of course!” You grin, stretching your arm forward to give them a proper look “The gem right there in the middle is alexandrite and there are diamonds surrounding it” You explain, recalling what the jeweller told you just a few hours prior

“Do you both have an idea of when the ceremony will be held?” The reporter asked, jotting down a few notes onto their notepad

“The date hasn’t properly set but we were thinking perhaps sometime in the spring” You nodded along, you had to force your smile

Since when did you even discuss when the wedding would be…? And why so soon?

“And, your majesty, if you don’t mind me asking, where do you plan to have the honeymoon?”

“My fiancée and I haven’t discussed it yet, but the one place that comes to mind is Varykino on Naboo that has a beautiful villa out on the lake...The view is almost as beautiful as the one sitting next to me” You feel your cheeks warm up at the compliment “What do you think, my love?”

“I think it sounds like a lovely idea” Your gaze landing on his for a few moments before returning back to face the camera

The interview continued for another few minutes, before the reporter bid their farewell, quickly packing up their equipment and leaving in a haste through the same clear glass doors that Vader came through over an hour ago. The hand that had been holding onto Vader's arm dropped back to its side as he stood up and left without another word. You shrugged your shoulders before standing up and wordlessly walking back inside

~~~~

A sigh of relief escaped your lips as you eased your back against the small cracked porcelain bathtub- well, compared to the bathtub from your old home, this was much smaller. The small wisps of hair that had fallen from your hastily tied up-do had stuck to the tub, your head leaning against the rim as you once again- for the upteenth time that day- raised your hand and admired the engagement ring that had been placed onto your finger a little less than twenty-four hours ago. The moonlight hit the diamonds and alexandrite just right, making it practically glow. A small smile formed on your lips as you dipped your head under the water.

END OF CHAPTER

[sangcreole]

@crimsonrobed continued from (x)

One of the two books, neither alike in dimensions nor colour yet bearing the same faded author’s name on their fronts and the same titles listed in their internal indexes, lay open on the small square table situated between the velvet chairs. Tastefully worn about the seat and armrests they both were, but nonetheless richly coloured and centre like the modest library’s crowning jewels. Rows and rows of brilliantly mismatched volumes cluttered the shelves, stretching from steady modern bindings and the odd well-loved paperback to threadbare cloth and conditioned leather; satin ribbons stuck out from underneath spines or at the top like whimsical feathers; bookmarks lay systematically scattered; stained edges and wonderfully decorated covers stood on display facing the room. Barely a wall peeked out from behind gilt frames tucked in between the tall, dark shelves. Marius looked around as he pondered. Black printed letters against ivory-aged pages and a fine dusting of thoughtful pencil marks formed the words and annotations to Keats’ Ode on Melancholy, one of five such odes written in the spring of 1819 and the last they ventured for their private, entirely unintentional however delightful bookclub. A fine choice of Louis’, and not the least unexpected. The short piece, a mere three stanzas surviving past publishing of the original four, addressed the reader directly in that flowing vocabulary to the Romantic period steeped in referenced to Greek myths, while playing on the poet’s intimate knowledge of nature’s poisons. “I find it’s strangely uplifting,” he said finally, “encouraging. It considers Melancholy through a very modern eye, not as a physical ailment to be cured but as an emotional state and inherent part of life, without which beauty and depth of one’s overall feeling would be lessened, if not lost altogether. Judging by the negative grammar and word choice throughout the first stanza, it sound like it should form a gloomy piece, but it’s not.”

There is a softness in the very air around them as they settle into their little nook within the vast, sprawling shelves. It's quiet here; away from the chatter, away from prying minds, and away from all the noises of the waking mortal world around them. He knows these shelves like he knows himself— perhaps even better. How many hours had he spent tucked away with his precious collections, painstakingly stalking back and forth to stock each shelf from scratch, dreading over which authors to place where, how to arrange each special edition, the Romantics versus the Modernists, the Existentialists versus the Symbolists. It was the only room in this house designed by his own two hands.

Armand had given him the open space, gifted him with beautiful copies in polished leather, but it was Louis who took care to curate every inch to his liking.

Strange, to have Marius here.

Not bad— the opposite, in fact. His very presence strikes some hyper-awareness in Louis as he follows the other's gaze around the room, wonders what the great Marius might see that Louis himself cannot. Is he impressed? Is he underwhelmed? Can he sense which books were gifted from Armand, which were stolen from Lestat, which were picked up from the corner store just around the block from the house on Rue Royale?

"Uplifting, yes. That's exactly it," he breathes as the poetry comes back to him. Lines inscribed on his very heart made new again by the silver twang of Marius' voice.

"The negative grammar places the narrator beside the reader. It starts as if the narrator means to warn you against some grave danger that only he knows, but by the end you realize...you realize that he is beside you. That he has been beside you this entire time...propelling you out of of your own grave."

Silence, for a moment, as Louis considers his own words, feels the weight of Marius' gaze upon him.

"He understood. He understood."

[pecanwriter]

Lord of Lard part 3 (WG story)

Themes: magic-induced weight gain, fantasy-setting, weight-related spells

Words: 2815

Part: 3/?

The part of the castle in which Dosian stayed was much nicer than Kersev’s prison tower. In fact, it was lavish. The floor was made of perfectly polished grey marble, the walls were painted in intricate, elaborate flower designs, the hallway through which the guard was leading Kersev was wide and spacious, every door they passed had complicated, well-made wood carvings on it and was painted in white and gold.

They stood in front of a double-winged door, as elaborate as all the rest but with a massive gold locking mechanism keeping it shut. The mechanism resembled a clockface but with a multitude of smaller and bigger circular gears. It was opened by a surprisingly tiny key which the guard turned twice setting the mechanism in motion, all the gears shifting and grinding against each other.

With an ominous creak, the doors opened.

“Inside!” The Guard jabbed Kersev in the back and as soon as he waddled inside, the door shut firmly behind him.

Kersev found himself in a large, richly decorated room. Everything was in shades of pink, gold and white. Like a room for the Queen’s beloved Poodle, Kersev couldn’t help thinking. There was a large fireplace in front of which stood an enormous bathtub, almost as large as a small pool. There was a wide, sturdy-looking couch stacked high with pillows and in front of it an enormous low table, filled to the brim with fruit, all types of beautiful, mouth-watering desserts and cakes drizzled in chocolate and stacked high with heavy whipped cream. Dosian’s favourite white cream cake with exotic fruit stood in the centre, enormous and so overfilled with cream it was a marvel to Kersev that it was still standing up.

There was a chaise longue next to which stood a beautiful white harp and a lyre rested against one of the pillows. Next to the window stood an easel with an unfinished painting of flowers on it, Kersev recognised Dosian’s brush immediately. In front of the easel stood a wide wooden bench.

There was an enormous wardrobe, undoubtedly filled to the brim with outlandish, revealing garments suited well for the Dark Lord’s favourite pet.

The last thing in the room was a truly gigantic bed with a gauzy, delicate canopy. There were steps leading up to it, despite it being a regular height for a bed.

Under the canopy, resting against a thousand pillows laid, or rather half-sat Dosian. It’s been months since Kersev saw him and he could tell Dosian was even fatter than before. His gargantuan, swollen legs were spread wide to accommodate for the unbelievable mass of his belly spilling in front of him, taking up a significant portion of the bed. Everything on him seemed bigger, more overstuffed with lard, softer, fuller… His arms, his neck, his chest, even his beautiful face. It was all being swallowed by new fat folds and bulges.

Kersev waddled to the bed. Dosian seemed to have been asleep, or at least dozing, his eyes closed and his chest moving slowly.

“My love…” He whispered, laboriously climbing the few stairs to get to the bed.

Dosian opened his eyes almost immediately, pure shock registering on his beautiful face before his eyes filled with tears.

“My Prince…” Dosian croaked, turning his face away “Please look not upon me in such a state…”

“Cease the formalities, Dosian! Look at me!” Kersev shook Dosian’s arm making his entire body jiggle, he didn’t stop until Dosian looked up at him, his alabaster skin flushed and his emerald eyes filled with tears. “There you are…” Kersev stroked Dosian’s soft cheek gently “By the Spirits, I believed you dead for over five years…”

“I wish I were dead, My Prince…”

“Never” Kersev’s voice was hard as steel “Say that again. Ever. I could not be happier that you’re alive.”

“Look at me…” Dosian almost whined, grabbing a handful of his side roll and shaking it “I’m enormous….”

“That doesn’t matter.” Kersev managed to sit next to Dosian, the massive bed somehow accommodating both of their hefty frames. “Look at me, I’m not the Prince you left behind either, am I?” He shook his own gut and watched it jiggle with a sick fascination, still hardly believing it was his body.

“He’s an evil, twisted thing…” Dosian whispered, “I will never forgive him for doing this to you.”

“If he didn’t do this to me, I would’ve never been able to see you again.” Kersev kissed Dosian.

Their fat bodies felt unfamiliar with each other, even their fat faces felt different. But the touch of Dosian’s lips, his fresh, sweet meadow smell felt as familiar as if they were never parted at all.

“I’m sorry I was too weak to escape…” Dosian pleaded, resting his head against Kersev’s chest. “Don’t be ridiculous, my beloved.” Kersev stroked Dosian’s pale hair “You’re an artist, a musician, a dancer, not a Knight Mage! Not even a regular knight! How could you possibly stand against someone like Him? No, my love, the fault is mine. I should’ve known he was too wicked to just kill you without a devious plan at hand. I should’ve looked for you until I succeeded. Instead, I wasted five years on training and dreaming of revenge just to be defeated immediately and have this damnable collar put on me.” Kersev punched the collar against his neck angrily. Truthfully, it was not the same collar, he was way too fat for the first one now. But that only made it worse; the knowledge that while he was deep in another food coma someone removed his collar to replace it. He’d become so fat and sluggish that he wasted such a perfect opportunity to escape.

Dosian looked at his own wrists where two heavy, ornamental bracelets were digging into his fat forearms. Even through his magic-dimming collar, Kersev could sense they served the same function.

Kersev’s training was telling him that he should use every opportunity to plot their escape, but even that rational part of himself was helpless against his starved heart that more than anything yearned to be with his lover.

“Do many people come here?” Kersev asked, reaching behind Dosian to play with his thick braid; a habit he’d assumed to be long lost.

“Not really. They fill the table in the morning and I have to clean it out by the next morning, otherwise, they will punish me, but other than that they let me be. Unless He wants me, then someone comes to take me to him, He doesn’t come here.”

“What happens when he wants you…?”

“Usually it’s to feed new slaves, to scare them by how big I am…” Dosian croaked, absent-mindedly smoothing out the delicate, sheer fabric that covered his massive belly. “But sometimes he wants me for himself.”

“And then what happens…?” Kersev asked calmly, feeling anything but calm.

“Usually he wants me to feed him, or he wants to feed me. Sometimes he wants me to sing. He used to make me dance for him but I’m too big now… And sometimes he wants me to pleasure him…”

Kersev clutched his fists so tight his knuckles cracked.

“But he never touches me!” Dosian rushed to explain, his eyes pleading “He never wants to enter me, he just wants me to touch him. I’m nobody’s but yours, My Prince.”

“Oh Dosian, my love, I’m not mad at you, I could never be mad at you.” He kissed Dosian’s warm forehead “I’m mad, furious, at Him. And myself.”

“You needn’t be angry with yourself, you came to me, My Prince…” Dosian bowed his head low, reverently taking Kersev’s pudgy hand in both of his and kissing the knuckles gently. “I missed you so. Not a day has passed when I didn’t think about you when I didn’t dream about us being together again…”

“Would you allow me to make love to you, my sweet darling…?” Kersev kissed the corner of Dosian’s mouth gently.

Dosian’s face took on a look of terror, he looked down at himself, smoothed out the sheer fabric again, looked away.

“But I’m…”

Kersev cupped both of Dosian’s cheeks and forced him to once again look Kersev in the eye.

“You’re perfect, my love.”

“But…”

“I lost you for over five years. I’m not losing you for a moment longer.”

A single tear rolled down Dosian’s flushed face and Kersev kissed it away.

“But how…?” Dosian asked, looking between their two bodies, Kersev’s massive body that was still somehow clinging to its mobility and his own that was probably only months if not weeks away from being too massive to ever move again unless aided by magic.

“Do you think you can turn face down and bend your knees?”

Dosian looked hesitant but he nodded. The Duke took a deep breath and started rocking his enormous bulk to the left. The folds upon folds of fat began to sway from side to side with the movement. Dosian tried throwing himself to the side, but he didn’t build up enough momentum for his body to move. He let out a soft, but obviously frustrated groan and began rocking again. This time, when he threw himself to the side Kersev grabbed him, pushing as hard as he could, his fat-encased muscles straining against the enormous bulk. Together, they managed to flop Dosian onto his belly, revealing the fat rolls covering his soft, pale back and his wide, unbelievably hefty ass.

Kersev kissed Dosian’s head as he panted with effort. His belly was so enormous that when he laid on it Dosian’s ass was pretty much up in the air already. Kersev’s heart clenched as seeing how exhausted Dosian was just after changing positions when once upon a time he could dance at the King’s Court from dusk till dawn to the delight of every guest and then still have enough energy to make passionate love with Kersev in the pale hours of the morning.

“I missed you, my beloved Duke, I missed you so…” Kersev spoke as he shuffled around the bed to kneel behind Dosian.

Kersev run his swollen fingers across the immense globes of Dosian’s ass, he squeezed his sides, peppered kisses across his back... Kersev worshipped his lover as best as their overfed bodies would allow them. It was different, it would probably never be how it was before, but what mattered was that his Duke, the true and only love of his heart was still alive.

When Kersev entered Dorian they both gasped, struck speechless by the familiarity, by the connection they thought they’d never feel again.

“More…” Dosian pleaded. He shifted from laying face down to resting on his elbows, bobbing his head and swaying his enormous body slightly.

And Kersev gave him more, his grunts and Dosian’s little panting noises filled the room. Kersev was almost at his climax when suddenly, out of nowhere something changed.

“Ah, young love reunited. How wonderful.” The Dark Lord let out a sigh. He lay sprawled on Dosian’s pink chaise longue, eating a chocolate-drizzled pastry.

Kersev wanted to move, to cover Dosian, to do something. Only, he couldn’t.

In fact, he couldn’t move at all.

“Release us!” He spat, relieved to find at least his head wasn’t under the spell.

“I think not.” The Dark Lord said matter-of-factly, getting up from his seat and walking over to the bed with a devilish smile, his obscenely tight garments showing every bounce and jiggle of his fat flesh. “Your beautiful love warms my cold heart, I wouldn’t want to let it go so quickly.” He brushed a long nail along Dosian’s cheek and smiled even wider when Kersev growled.

“Worry not, dear Prince, I wouldn’t hurt my favourite pet.” He scratched Dosian’s double chin as if scratching a cat “I do worry, however. You’re making him burn all that fuel I so graciously put into him, he will waste away, the poor thing!”

Kersev’s blood ran cold as he watched their captor bring the entire massive table closer to the bed with one mindless wave of his hand. He reached for a palm-sized pastry stacked high with whipped cream and sugar-glazed strawberries.

“Open wide, my sweet boy.” The Dark Lord said, his yellow eyes glinting as he stuffed the entire thing in Dosian’s mouth, smearing sugar glaze and whipped cream around his lips and on his fat chin.

“Leave him alone!” Kersev yelled, still unable to move, still deep inside his lover. He was so overcome with rage and humiliation that it surprised even him. He’d have thought that it was impossible to be more humiliated and degraded than he’d been in all these months of captivity. But once again, he underestimated The Dark Lord.

“Oh, do you feel left out, Your Highness?” The Dark Lord reached for another pastry, stuffed with caramel and creamed that oozed out of it. He stuffed it into Kersev’s mouth almost violently, all the while smiling almost sweetly.

“No, please, feed me, My Lord…” Dosian pleaded desperately. Kersev could only see the side of his face, but still, it made his heart clench. There was cream on his fat cheeks and tears in his green eyes. His Dosian, overfed almost to the point of immobility, his soft flesh so overstuffed with fat it didn’t even resemble him anymore… His Dosian, begging to be fed more to spare Kersev’s pathetic life. The life which he already lost when he got captured, the life which he didn’t deserve.

“What do we have to do for you to release the spell?!” Kersev demanded, his own eyes stinging with tears.

“Why, clear the table, of course.” “T-that’s…. Impossible!” Kersev stared at the table overflowing with food.

“Oh, you underestimate your new body, my dear Prince.” The Dark Lord smiled, grabbing Kersev’s fat gut and giving it a solid shake. “And you definitely underestimate my favourite pet. This beautiful body didn’t come from nothing.” the Lord ran an appreciative hand over Dosian’s massive ass and along his back. He reached for a platted with an entire vanilla cake on it. Not even bothering with cutting it into pieces, he took a spoon and began stuffing it into Dosian’s face at an alarming rate. To Kersev’s surprise, his sweet Dosian was keeping up admirably, swallowing as soon as the Lord stuffed it into his face. Within seconds, it seemed, the entire cake fit for a party of twelve was gone, the only remnants of it the cream smeared on Dosian’s face.

“See? He’s such a good, sweet boy.” The Dark Lord patted Dosian’s fat cheek, slowly turning his devilish gaze on Kersev “Now, your turn.”

He took a metal pitcher of something off the table and grabbing Kersev by the hair pulled his head back. “Open wide, Your Highness.” He sing-sang, pressing the pitcher to Kersev’s lips and tilting it.

It was overpoweringly sweet and at first, Kersev thought it was honeymeed, but soon he realised it was much thicker than that. It was just… Honey. The Dark Lord poured an entire pitcher of fresh, liquid honey down his throat. And Kersev swallowed every last drop if it only meant it was one less thing The Dark Lord would feed his Dosian.

The Dark Lord kept stuffing more and more sugary sweets and cakes into them. Soon, Kersev’s stomach was so stuffed that he nearly forgot about the fact he was still naked and inside of Dosian. It seemed a small discomfort compared to how tight and bloated his stomach became.

“Here you go.” The Dark Lord put a pastry against his lips but Kersev shook his head.

“I can’t…. I can’t…” He panted, finding even speaking painful with how stuffed he was.

“Give it to me, My Lord! I’m not even satiated yet.” Dosian urged, even though he’d probably eaten more in the past hour than an entire family of four ate in a week.

“I trained you well, sweet boy.” The Dark Lord’s eyes burned with magical power as he stuffed an entire handful of cake into Dosian’s mouth, not bothering with utensils anymore.

Kersev panted, his stomach so full he was unable to think of anything else but the pain and the slow, simmering anger as he watched The Dark Lord slowly kill his beloved in a way much more cruel than simply killing him with weapons.

“Last bite” The Dark Lord sang, stuffing one last handful of chocolate cake into Dosian’s mouth.

As soon as he swallowed the spell released them and Kersev slid out of Dosian, falling to the bed, his enormous, swollen belly sticking up in the air. He panted, tears streaming down his face.

“My Lord, can we have a bath?” Dosian asked in a perfect, docile pet voice.

“Of course my sweet, you’re all filthy!”

And with that, he was gone. And so was the last shred of Kersev’s dignity.

[alicenpai]

🌟

anime north 2023 con report

finally posting this - thank you to everyone for a wonderful anime north!! \o/ this con prep season was the longest ive ever prepped for a con, and i think it was the busiest con for me ever. it makes me so happy to see people taking my art home!! 😭

so thank you for coming by anime north and chatting and supporting me! and thank you esp to the people who came by gifting their own merch?!??? - either fanart or ocs?! and im honored to see your beautiful ocs?!?? what the hell you guys are the GOAT thank you all 🥹🥹

it was so busy that i wish i had time to walk around & talk to other artists! i really wanted to get dango and onigiri at the delta too.. didnt really get time to eat so im sorry if you saw me shove 10 timbits in my mouth at the end of the con. yes i really did that .

throughout the con i kept saying "he just like me.. HE JUST LIKE ME FR!!!!!!!" every 5 seconds like an NPC. im sorry if you had to hear that more than once.

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i wasn't able to post my con catalogue for AN on tumblr and instagram... i was so busy.. dying... maybe if i do other cons this summer ill post something similar. i had a lot of new stuff this year so formatting it was rough haha. here it is! more thoughts under the cut (bc this report really is more for me, but maybe someone can find something useful)

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this is more for me honestly, so it will be really long. but i'm sharing it in case it may be helpful for others. i find that i'm always looking back at my old con reports, so typing out all of my thoughts are really useful to me. overall a great con, fellow artists and customers alike really inspire me to do better in my art.

comparisons to last year: (since i didn't end up making a con report last year!!!!!)

location: the artist alley layout was huge, and im really happy there are a lot more newcomers to the con scene. i know how much my first con experience meant to me, so i want others to join in on the fun! i don't know how the artist alley staff managed to fit so many artists in the building now! we got placed in a corner where there was a lot of breathing room, and a lot of traffic. i got lost a few times (didn't actually have time to walk around, but you know, it was to get in and out of the con centre and to the washroom/water station) because the amount of tables was overwhelming however, and the layout was super confusing. however i didn't feel as if there were any significant bottlenecks in traffic when i was taking some walk breaks.

commissions: last year it was still busy, but i still had some time to draw a handful of commissions. this year was a non stop barrage of customers! i think i may retire on the spot commissions at cons, just because ive always found it too stressful to draw right at the con, even if the traffic is slow. (and im lazy)

fandoms: last year i felt that it was... never so difficult to sell niche and old fandoms...? most people bought primarily 3 things from me at AN 2022, and not much else was touched. it was a struggle, and i even wondered if my art plateaued, if it wasn't good, if i should stop doing conventions altogether, at least for a little while. this year was so surprising with how much love there was for old and niche fandoms. two people from quebec came by and noticed the old fandoms and mentioned that if i was able to come to otakuthon, i should, people in mtl love nostalgia.. i'm gonna be honest otakuthon was pretty bad expenses-wise for me, but i heard it picked up since cons came back in 2022. it is a really beautiful city so mayhaps.. i will come for miss montreal.................

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and a separate section on the new merch i made:

the new sticker sheets i printed (one piece, baccano, breaking bad/better call saul) did so well! nts to add luffys scar bc apparently i forgot... ive seen this dumbass's face for hundreds of eps and yet i still forgot .

these are a far cry to the sticker sheets i designed in previous years. many sticker places restrict you on how many stickers you can place on a sheet due to spacing requirements... the more stickers you have + the closer they are, the higher the margin of error, which i understand is why many professional sticker printers have these restrictions in place.

the artists i worked with for my AN stickers are so genuinely nice and accommodating with my requests. I just went wild haha. the sheets with the most stickers are brba/bcs at 27 stickers and one piece at 32 stickers.

2021 (top) vs 2023 (bottom), the chara stickers on the new sheet are larger & 2x as many item stickers! the new design makes greater use of the space. my octopath 1 stickers are meant for planners but you could use it for anything!

in 2017 i could only realistically fit 6 ish stickers on a sheet (for vinyl, not cricut home printing) due to printing restrictions. these costed about $3.30 CAD per sheet from s/ticker/mule (not worth it for the price point AT ALL... but i wanted to try sheets for the first time)... and yes it's a tiny 4x7 as well. it was a hard sell for $7 in 2017. but im glad artists have been pricing them a bit higher + sheets have become much more customizable.

now on to charms:

i am so obsessed with this borderless charm look on the new charms... they look like candy... thank you guys for loving my new charms!! i tried out a new technique with designing charms. and im so happy with how they turned out. the charm manu was super accommodating and they are so much better than vograce who fucked up my order so bad in 2022 🤡👍

the soul eater charms from last year were kind of a precursor to this. last year i tried something a bit different than my usual with the transparent bgs, which require full bleed in the file setup, and that was already pretty new for me. i find that charm sales are usually pretty mid for me, so during the pandemic i took a soft break from making them, and i wanted to do research based on others' designs and really tried to improve my design sense. to me i want to design charms that aren't just a flat piece of artwork that gets printed, but something that utilizes the capabilities of the acrylic material it gets printed on 🤔

---

fandoms/merch types i want to try next time i table:

more soul eater? it's one of my favourite animes and im very happy for the soul eater love this year. my partner kept selling out of her soul eater prints even though it was her first time tabling!

fma! ive been rereading AND rewatching it lately. it's one of my top 5 anime of all time so me drawing anything for it is a struggle, the bar is set so high. i never end up having the time or ideas to draw anything for it (and the aesthetics are very different from my usual taste)

shadows house has been one of my favorites recently!

dungeon meshi, the print i made was back in 2018 and i think it's time to retire it! it sold out at AN, thank you! with the way the story has developed in the last 5 years, i really want to draw something new for it if i can.

blue period needs more love!

golden kamuy.....

and many more.....

i also want to try mini prints maybe...

---

administrative stuff:

next time before the con, i definitely need an organized chart i print out before the con so im not.. literally writing down each transaction... 🧍‍♀️

clamps...?

possibly new display? grids even with plastic panels are heavy... and they can be a pain to put up. this AN we had our neighbors and good friends @nappotuna & @stripeyworm helping us put the grids up, they did an absolute speedy banger job! but it might have taken way longer without 4 hands on the grid work.

if we had used tape to hold our prints up as well who knows how long it would have taken. we used magnets, apparently a lot of people were using them at TCAF. they were so easy to put up and adjustable. *jesse pinkman voice* MAGNETS, BITCH!!!!!!!

---

merch i may shelve/do less of:

i really appreciate when artists talk about these kind of things behind the scenes... when products do well, when others dont, products w surprising responses, the factors that we think affect sales... the hard truth is that not everything sells, just bc the art is good =/= good sales, etc etc.

lately ive found it so fun to design sticker sheets over individual die cut stickers!! i understand now why some people only specialize in stickers!! it's also such a pain to stock individual characters and have greatly varying levels, bc of customer interest, and bc of how printing stickers works, you often get extras of random characters due to overflow 😭.. like at some point I had 7 jeannes and like only 1 of the other vnc charas bc the printer had so many extras and she's arguably less popular HDHFJSJHDJS anyways, i think i'll probably do less die cut individual stickers for my next con...

anything old that i only have 1 or a few copies left (meaning i won't reprint) i may not have for display anymore bc of space concerns... before my next con ill just post them on social media to have people claim them!

i may want to do less 3" charms in the future...? theyre a hard sell online prob bc i cant really do deals (i could but id have to be checking the stock every few hours which is not ideal), but they do a lot better in person due to deals.

it's been fun to try specialty products (I've tried scrunchies, stamps, pouches, microfiber cloths, coasters, enamel pins), but i... find they dont sell well for me... maybe my art doesnt have that wide mainstream nostalgic merch type appeal idk... maybe im just not good at designing or advertising them wahahaha. (specialty charms are still charms and i wouldn't necessary consider them a part of this)

my jojo buttons were really popular at anime north 2019 and fan expo 2019, but when the part 5 anime concluded, i noticed that interest for the interest completely moved on 😭 (or it's possible that everyone who was interested bought the buttons already?). part 6 anime didn't rejuvenate the same level of interest. it was a struggle to sell even more than a handful of these at each AN 2022 and 2023. right now they're taking up a lot of space in my con luggage that i'd prefer for newer, better art. i still love the art i did, but unfortunately, i think ill give them a go if i get into otakuthon (and maybe fanexpo too), then it'll be time to retire the jojo buttons. sometimes fandoms come and go so fast, and it's difficult to keep old merch around when they don't have any more interest and when they're occupying a lot of space.

my banana fish lollipop charms do not sell well, and i only sold 5 of them in a 3 year period, across cons and my shop. i created a bargain bin at AN, and it really helped me get rid of old things! unfortunately even in the bargain bin i could not sell a single one of the banana fish charms. maybe it's the art that's not appealing, the characters aren't recognizable, the price point for a lollipop charm was too high, i wasn't hitting the right audience, the market was slow around the time, even when it was included in my promo post... etc. these lollipops were my first time making specialty charms. unfortunately i think that's the last time making lollipop charms, and about time to recycle these charms, so that i have space for fresher and better art!

other thoughts moving on:

maybe go back to simplifying my art a lot more... if i keep making drawings like my great ace attorney tarot + zine, witch hat atelier print, and pandora hearts print, then id not only take 1 month per illustration, id also be destroying my arm 😭 i stopped stylizing my art in 2021 bc i found that my art was getting sloppy in 2020 + i was really struggling in life drawing in school. i needed to buckle down and be more conscientious when drawing poses, learning anatomy and structure... and bc getting back into anime in 2021 really helped me cope with the isolation of the lockdown, so that had a huge influence on my style. but bc of that i think it just took longer and longer to make illustrations and that's something i no longer really wish for.

i really like the period of my art in 2017 with a lot of my persona 4/5 art bc it still has structure even though it's simplified... and the style in my zelda icon... mayhaps experiment a bit more this summer if i can...

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue March 1, 1950

Our model, Pat Blake faces a difficult choice. Which beige gloves should she wear with her Belding-Corticelli silk Shantung dress piped in black, by Henry Rosenfeld? "Mango", pinkish yellow, above left? "Casaba", with a yellow reflection, above? "Curry" in the center, spicy yellow? "Sherbet" on the right, light mauve-white or else "Chutney", spicy orange, below? All from the new Kislav glove palette. Second question: which of the new necklaces combining crystal colors with pseudo-pearls? At the level of his throat, the crystals are clear. In hand, they are pale pink. On the table, on the left, topaz color: on the right, coral. Tous, by Jacques Fath designed for Marvella. Marvella earrings, unilateral hat in beige felt, made to order at Chanda. Beauty note: Her creamy, rosy lipstick, "Heart Throb" by Ponds.

Notre modèle, Pat Blake fait face à un choix cornélien. Quel gants beiges dois-elle porter avec sa robe en Shantung de soie Belding-Corticelli passepoilée de noir, par Henry Rosenfeld ? "Mango", de teinte jaune rosé, ci-dessus, à gauche ? « Casaba », de reflet jaune, au-dessus ? "Curry" au centre, jaune piquant ? "Sherbet" à droite, mauve-blanc clair ou bien "Chutney", orange épicée, ci-dessous ? Le tout, de la nouvelle palette de gants Kislav. Deuxième question : lequel des nouveaux colliers associant des couleurs de cristal à des pseudo-perles ? Au niveau de sa gorge, les cristaux sont clairs. En main, ils sont rose pâle. Sur la table, à gauche, couleur topaze : à droite, corail. Tous, par Jacques Fath conçu pour Marvella. Boucles d'oreilles Marvella, chapeau unilatéral en feutre beige, réalisé sur commande chez Chanda. Note beauté : Son rouge à lèvres crémeux et rosé, "Heart Throb" de Ponds.

Photo Erwin Blumenfeld vogue archive

[theresattrpgforthat]

do you have any suggestions for pokemon-esc monster capture/battlers?

THEME: Pokemon Games

Hello friend, I have already made a post of Pokemon games, which you can check out here! But there are also some games not in that post that I’ll include below.

Powered by Pokemon, by 3dmatt.

Powered by Pokemon is a improvisational TTRPG based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, drawing heavy inspiration form the Monster of the Week game.

In this game, most of you are stepping into this world as a human, a trainer! People who face the trials and tribulations of life with a pokemon partner by their side. One of you will be The Keeper. The Keeper will be in charge of starting you down the path of your story, bringing the world to life and portraying the People and Pokemon you meet.

While the dice system is PbtA, this Pokemon game uses type matching just like the video games, affecting how your Pokemon will deal damage and take damage. Your Pokemon will also level up similar to Pokemon levelling-up in the video games, from level 1 to 100!

Pocket Monsters Manual, by Tragos Games.

Pocket Monsters Manual is a roleplaying game about capturing, training, battling and evolving monsters. 

It has a few marked difference from a typical Pokemon game. Monsters have types just like Pokemon, but a player trainer must select two types and from the beginning onwards, may only only use monsters that belong to at least one of the two types. Additionally, most monsters have a Maximum Level - not all evolve to the same extent. Trainers will also tier up, which feels like an analogue to badge collecting. 

There are also familiar hallmarks in Pokemon in this game - monsters faint rather than die, health can be restored in a healing centre or with potions, and type matching can increase or decrease your effectiveness in a fight. All in all this game is extremely rules-light, and leaves most of the world creation to the group or the GM.

Animon Story, by Zak Barouh.

Jump into the world of Animon with this original tabletop roleplaying game inspired by beloved anime and video games. You'll take on the role of Kids who team up with their very own monster buddies called Animon. Together you'll go on adventures, grow as friends, and maybe even save the world!

This book contains everything you need to create unique characters and tell your own stories, with rules designed to encourage and support your creativity. It has beautiful art and unique creatures, with a unique elements system that doesn’t follow either Pokemon or Digimon conventions, but does allow you to create your own unique creatures!

If you want to try before you buy, you can get the Animon Playkit, and if you want more Animon content, you can pick up the Ani-thology (a supplement with adventures for your crew) and the Shutterbug, an additional Kid type for this game.

Pilgrimon, by The Bardic Inquiry.

PILGRIMON is a roleplaying game designed for short campaigns about humans and their monster companions going on an adventure to realize their dreams.

One player will take on the role of the professor and will use the supplied tools to create a changing map for the trainers to explore as well as engaging scenes that will drive the trainers towards their dreams.

Pilgrimon is a slimmed-down Pokemon game, with different creatures that have evolution mechanics and a type-matching table.  It includes different kinds of scenes for combat, exploration, journeys, and caring for your creatures. In this game, it’s the journey that’s in focus more than anything else.

Pokemon Polyhedral: Micro Edition, by march crow.

Pokémon Polyhedral: Micro Edition is an A6 size solo RPG that is narrative lite and dice heavy. 

Roll dice to encounter Pokémon. Roll dice to capture them. Roll dice to level up and evolve them. Roll dice to use your team to defeat Team Rocket, Gym Leaders, and the Elite Four. 

This game uses only the original 150 Pokemon, although you could likely make your own roll tables that have future generations included as well. The battling rules are extremely slimmed down, and uses everything from a d4 to a d20. There are instructions and quick stats for battling wild Pokemon, trainers, Team Rocket, Gym Leaders and the Elite Four! This game is extremely bare-bones, but is likely the closest to replicating the original Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow games.

Pokemon Dungeon Crawler, by Batts.

This is an unofficial Pokémon dungeon crawler. You play as a Pokémon in a world after humans. You get a dungeon delving class (cleric, fighter, magic-user), you get a backpack, a weapon, and you head out on an adventure.

This game plays similar to OSR-style games with a d20, roll-under system. Most rolls are player-facing; Players roll to attack and to dodge while the Game Master uses dice to keep track of the various complexities of dungeon crawling.

This is the only game in this list in which you are a Pokemon, rather than a human trainer. If you’re looking to replicate a bit of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, this is likely the game you’re looking for. The game restricts your choices to 20 1st-gen Pokemon, because each of those 20 Pokémon get a custom sheet. If you want to play as a different Pokemon, you might have to flex your writing muscles!

If you are hungry for even more Pokemon-style games, you can check out the TTRPG Poke-Jam for more games!

[whypolar]

Gundam Unicorn OVA 3: The Ghost of Laplace

Some of the most stunning visuals from these OVAs yet. What a beautiful piece of animation.

Choosing which screenshots to use for this post hurt me. If I had my way, I would include multiple shots of every sequence where something explodes. Many, many things explode.

I'm glad I don't have problems with flashing lights. The lasers in this one get pretty intense.

This post is very long. There's a lot of novel stuff I want to talk about. Let's get into it!

(Previous posts: Day of the Unicorn, The Second Coming of Char)

I won't lie, they got further into the plot than I thought they were going to. I was expecting more time in Palau and then Riddhe and Mineva arriving and doing stuff on Earth, with the confrontation in the ruins of Laplace being saved for the next one. If I'd paid attention to the title I could have realized they were going to go to the coordinates, but I obviously did not. It caught me pretty off guard!

I definitely feel like this one benefits from multiple watches. They all do, for sure, but this one had a lot of little moments that were much stronger the second time through. A lot happens very quickly! Taking the time to pay attention is rewarding, especially in terms of emotional stakes. It was easy on a first watch to just get caught up in the spectacle and not fully process everything that's happening-- and that's for me, who already knew the background context and plot beats going in.

The Obligatory Music Section

Some of these tracks were probably also in the last two, but I didn't link them so it doesn't count. Here are the standouts I'm highlighting this time:

Bring on a War -- I love the strings on this track. Guitar? The instrumentation for this entire soundtrack is so fun and complex. The intense drums! The woodwinds! The weird ghostly vocals! That repeated noise that sounds like a gunshot and breaking glass! So good.

Capture -- Equal parts jaunty and menacing. I like the bells at the start.

Merry-go-round -- The credits song. Pop music with lyrics about the inescapable repetition of history: it's a proud Gundam movie tradition.

Environments

You guys remember places?

We're spending time in and around a large colony again, so the sweeping establishing shots are back. The space port is so beautiful, and so alien in how you're expected to traverse it.

I definitely will be looking up the staff once I'm done watching these. For many reasons, really, but I'm very curious about who was doing the environmental art and design.

And while we're talking about environments--

Operation Billiard

The most important reveal: the glowing orb pillars in the purple palm tree lounge are low-gravity hologram pool tables.

It turns out that the vaporwave room was a billiards hall this whole time! I assume this is a nod to how the attack plan on Palau was named "Operation Billiard" in the novels.

We get a quick explanation of the plan in the OVA (separate the asteroids that make up Palau, seal the military port, rescue Banagher during the confusion) but they don't bother to explain the mechanics in detail. Why would they need to? When you see a bunch of explosions and a giant fuckoff laser, it is immediately obvious why that might be a problem for Neo Zeon.

Fuck that one Eye-Zack in particular

If you're curious about why it's "Operation Billiard": Palau is made up of four asteroids. They planned to use the force of the Mega Particle Cannon to knock them all into each other. This would obstruct the exits for the military port in the centre of the asteroid cluster, trapping the Zeon forces inside.

The manoeuvre worked as intended, but Frontal knew the attack was coming, so he was able to move all his forces off Palau ahead of time.

(A small number of other random Zeon-aligned soldiers were deliberately left out of the loop to act as bait, because the Sleeves didn't care about them. The way the guys that try to escape through the cracks get picked off one by one is kind of horrific. They might as well be marching single file into a mech-destroying meat grinder.)

I do think the attack on Palau is more harrowing in the novel. In terms of the combat, I'm not sure if that could be avoided. It feels inherently easier for me to remember that every mobile suit is a person while reading textual description than when there's a beautiful laser light show going off before my eyes.

That said, in some places the framing is just different:

I really love this scene, for the record.

In the novel, Nashiri is a perspective character during the battle. We are reading from his viewpoint inside the cockpit with his crew while they pick off Zeon soldiers one by one-- and then the Sinanju swoops into view, and they immediately know the plan is compromised and that they're going to die. They are burned and vaporized to dust, and then we switch to Angelo's perspective.

What I find memorable about the novel scene is the loss of life: how methodically they had been killing, and how quickly the Sinanju does the same to them. How they saw it coming but could do nothing. How living, breathing human beings could be reduced to literally nothing in an instant.

The OVA positions the camera outside, with the Sinanju. We see Frontal slowly and deliberately carving out the Loto's entire chest to make sure he got all of them. We do not see or hear any of the Loto's pilots. We see inside Frontal's cockpit, for a shot of him looking cooly down at his handiwork before moving on. What I find memorable about this scene is that Frontal is scary.

(Imagine me here getting stabbed with a beam weapon, saying "Wow! Cool Antagonist!")

It's not like death isn't thematically important in the OVA-- they absolutely remind you with dialogue that every mobile suit blowing up is a person dying. We see a shot of this same Loto and its partner after the battle as burned out wrecks, and it's clear Daguza and the other ECOAS guys are thinking about their dead comrades. Riddhe and Banagher both deliberately attempt to spare enemy pilots. The level of destruction is immense! The robots are simply too cool. It can't be helped.

This is one of the benefits of multiple watches. When you've already seen the cool robots once before, you can focus in more closely on what they're doing, and what that means.

There's another reason the battle loses some emotional charge: focus is drawn away from noncombatants almost entirely. We see very little of the regular people who live on Palau.

For all Riddhe assures Mineva that they have no intention of attacking the areas where civilians live, it is unavoidable that slamming the asteroids they live on together will have consequences.

The novel describes intense earthquakes. Two residential blocks collapse. Residents are rolling and tumbling around. Windows of the houses that stay standing shatter. You get a real sense of fear on the civilian level.

The OVA gives us a quick scene with Tikva. There's some dust and some shaking, but he stays standing easily enough. We don't see anything collapse on screen. We hear people screaming in confusion and terror, but none of them are visible. Likewise, the streets are totally empty of people and identical to their first appearance when Banagher is making his way to the space port. Civilians are basically not relevant.

The novel spends a lot more time on Palau even before the attack. We spend time with Gilboa's family. Banagher genuinely befriends these people! He plays with Gilboa's kids and fixes a machine they use to make a living. It's a bit sad to lose all that, but I get it.

There's also scene in the novel where a truck driver in one of the connecting tunnels gets blown back fifty feet by the force of ECOAS' bombs going off, slams into a wall, and passes out. He wakes up when he's discovered several hours later, after the attack is over. It's more funny than anything, because he's just like, fine, lmao. I was so sure he was done. Fifty feet just intuitively sounds like too much to be survivable, until you remember there's no gravity.

Anyway, you wanna know something that was appropriately menacing during the Palau attack? The Unicorn. The Unicorn was perfect.

The joy of a hunter.

Marida vs. Banagher

Oh... this sequence is so visually striking.

I was shocked by how quickly it all happened. This isn't a criticism. I guess I was expecting it to linger more, like the scenes with Amuro and Lalah in '79. The amount of concrete "information" conveyed here is so much more than that, and yet it covers it all in less than two minutes. You certainly get a sense for how instantaneously Marida and Banagher are communicating, and how overwhelming it must be for both of them.

I will likely revisit Marida's backstory in future posts, in relation to other scenes that happen later. For now, I'll just say I was surprised and impressed.

I'm admittedly very curious how this scene reads for people who don't already know the backstory going in. Hell, how does it read for people who aren't familiar with Gundam ZZ?

(I put on the dub for my second watch. This is the first time I heard how "Ple" is pronounced in English. Fucked up.)

I wish I'd taken notes on specifics, but I think they shifted some dialogue around between combat, the Newtype link, and the scene in the hospital room. It's not really important, but I think it's interesting how scenes with similar dialogue or themes can be folded into each other in an adaptation.

Some stuff cut from the hospital scene:

There's a CT scan of Banagher on the wall in novel. "You checked whether I was a Cyber-Newtype too, didn't you?" When I read the English translation, I thought they dodged telling the audience what the result of the test actually was. I thought that was a really interesting choice. Unfortunately, I don't think it's actually the case, having checked the Japanese. I can't be 100% sure, but I think the meaning of the line is that as far as the doctor could tell with the equipment they had available, he detected no evidence of Banagher being a Cyber-Newtype. 😔

When Banagher and the doctor discuss Newtype theory, they cut a line where the doctor suggests that a world where everyone knows what everyone else is thinking without obfuscation or deception might not be the magic bullet to end war, and could even be more violent. He's also a little more direct in the novel about implying that the emergence of Newtypes could create a divide between them and "Oldtypes."

The doctor points out that Newtypes are theorized to evolve in space, and how this would be a problem for Earth-Space relations. Banagher says that they should just make everyone evolve all at once. The Japanese line seems a bit vague, but the English translation interprets this as him suggesting they pull a Char / Mafty and send everyone into space. I think that's a fun way to take it, particularly because Banagher thinks it's a childish idea even as he says it. It's cute to me.

Full Frontal

In the novel, we see Frontal arranging his battle plan before the attack begins-- we see that he knows the attack coming, we see him move his troops off Palau, and we see him give orders to leave the Unicorn where Banagher will find it. In the OVA, we learn most of this in retrospect. I don't think the framing changes much, except insofar as it means less screen time for him and Angelo.

The big scene we lose is the one where they speak to one of their major sponsors in Neo Zeon, the guy who owns Palau. He tries to goad Frontal into officially admitting to being Char and taking off the mask, implicitly threatening to rescind his support if he doesn't. Frontal responds to this with "That's okay. I actually came by today to tell you we're leaving! How convenient. Bye."

Frontal speaks very differently to this guy than he did to Banagher, even beyond refusing to remove his mask. It's a fascinating contrast, and I like it a lot. Frontal is very good at being threateningly passive-aggressive in multiple registers.

A good and telling bit of dialogue from Frontal that we lose by cutting this scene: "Char Aznable is a man who lost."

I still don't understand what they're doing with Riddhe, and I'm getting increasingly concerned about it.

I cannot believe how many Riddhe opinions I apparently have had this whole time, just waiting to be revealed.

OVA Riddhe does not feel like much of anything to me so far, which is bizarre when his novel counterpart has so much going on. His blandness is even more noticeable when he's spending so much time with Mineva, who is a very strong-willed character with defined beliefs.

I would say his characterization has been made subordinate to hers, except she doesn't even gain anything from it? Cutting his screen time also cuts hers as well. He's the character that she's interacting with most for this entire section of the story, so making him less interesting just means she has a less interesting conversation partner!

Riddhe is a major character, and there are events later that hinge on the audience giving a shit about him. He needs to have substance, because the story is going to treat him like he has it. If he doesn't have it, it will fall flat.

Here are the key points I want to go over:

Novel Riddhe's values and beliefs are made very clear, while OVA Riddhe feels more ambiguous and flimsy.

Novel Riddhe's relationship to his family is far more complicated and compelling than anything we've been told about OVA Riddhe so far.

Novel Riddhe is shown to have strong emotional ties to the crew of the Nahel Argama.

Novel Riddhe has many clearly established reasons not to do what he does-- personally, professionally, and legally-- and chooses to do it anyway.

This scene was funnier in the novel, because it tells you they have a telephone for each member of the family, but they're all in the same room where they get answered by the same butler.

Novel Riddhe is thoroughly established as a person with opinions and a strong moral compass. He does more to help others, at greater difficulty than anything OVA Riddhe has been faced with thus far, and the negative consequences he knowingly takes on are made more explicit.

In the novel, there's a whole extra step before taking Mineva to earth. Mineva has been moved off the Nahel Argama to another ship, the Alaska, which was going to bring her to a be held at a base on the moon. Getting her out of there is a lot more convoluted than knocking out a single guard and then sneaking down some hallways when no one is looking.

Riddhe sets off a bunch of smoke canisters all over the ship to cause confusion, knocks out some guys, flees the Alaska in a shuttle, shakes the mobile suits tailing them by flying through a debris field, lies about his reason for returning so they let him back on the Argama, and ultimately sneaks Mineva back onto the ship and into his mobile suit. Since the battle has started at this point, it's impossible for the Argama to contact the Alaska or vice-versa.

It makes sense to cut this for time. It's an extraneous trip just to return to the status quo of them needing to sneak off the Argama again anyway. There are other ways to show Riddhe's determination without giving him a dramatic heroic sequence.

But here's the problem with removing it: Riddhe doesn't just rescue Mineva. Takuya and Micott are also on the Alaska. It is strongly implied that they're going to be disappeared.

(There are people from the Intelligence Department on the 'Alaska', so leave the prisoner to them. Don't ask any further.) "Then what about the civilians? They..." (Will be treated as those who violated confidentiality and dealt with as appropriate. You have no need to be involved with them.)

That's significant! Mineva is a person with obvious political importance, and Riddhe became emotionally attached to her before he even knew that. It is entirely possible to interpret rescuing Mineva through a lens of selfish motivations, especially in an adaptation where we aren't privy to his inner thoughts.

Riddhe has no special attachment to Takuya and Micott. He saves them because he has an obligation to do so, because leaving them behind would be wrong.

Are you wondering why the Alaska came to pick them up in the first place? It happened because Riddhe contacted his father at the request of Captain Otto, even though he really didn't want to, in the hopes that he could prevent more deaths by requesting additional support for the Argama.

But Riddhe's father didn't send the support Riddhe requested-- he sent a ship to pick up Riddhe and the prisoners. Why send military support when he can just remove his son from the battlefield that he never wanted him to be on anyway, right? He doesn't even respond himself, some random military guy does it for him.

... this admiral might not have even thought of him as a person. He was just looking at the shadow behind his back-- the authority of Senator Ronan Marcenas. Riddhe felt the emptiness of talking to a wall as he yelled, "WHY ONLY ME...!"

To me, novel Riddhe's frustration with his family is the single most important character trait he has. It informs every single one of his decisions. And so far, in the anime, it has not come up even once.

Riddhe is not just a bit distant from his family. He is repeatedly described as having run away from home. We are told he has not spoken to his father or his sister in some time. He literally refers to his 'family' in scare quotes while thinking about them.

Riddhe too felt repulsed by the fact he had to rely on the 'family' that he had been hiding from at this point, but there was no other way.

[...]

There’s no other choice. Riddhe returned back to his room and ended up spending 2 hours writing a mail to his father. He had never sent a phone call for the past few years, let alone a message. His body did not have a function to communicate with his father, and he felt a chill when he started off with ‘Dear Father’.

[...]

"Since I entered the army with the family's objection, I never intended to come back, but just this once, I have to do this."

The car ride with his father when they first meet and head back to the house is incredibly miserable. They casually drop that Riddhe's mom is in a nursing home, and then they sit in total silence.

Riddhe was looking in front silently, not looking at the greenery passing by outside the window. He was about as silent as the time when he piloted the “Delta Plus” into the atmosphere—no, he might be a lot more tense here. Sitting diagonally in front of him was Ronan, who had his mouth shut, not intending to look away from the notebook terminal. As for what they actually talked about on the limousine, there were only two lines, “Mom?” “She’s in a Nursing Home in Switzerland.” What was left was the heavy and unbearable silence passing between them.

Eventually, Riddhe starts speaking to Mineva while she's looking at the scenery, very obviously as a way of needling his dad. It's an insanely loaded conversation. He basically says "hey Mineva, have you ever read Gone with the Wind? Did you know it takes place here, in Georgia? Just thinking about wealthy white farmers enriching themselves by exploiting Black slaves as we drive to my rich politician dad's house, for no reason."

The dig is not subtle. His dad sarcastically responds to it by pointing out the comparison, as if pretending he isn't extremely aware that's why Riddhe brought it up in the first place, and then they go back to totally ignoring each other.

This is something I think is important: in the novel, Ricardo Marcenas-- Riddhe's great-grandfather and first Prime Minister of the Earth Federation-- is not white. He is stated to be mixed race both during his political speech, when he talks about his heritage, and later when Mineva sees his portrait.

It is an unbelievably pointed choice to have Riddhe and his father be white-passing and from the southern US while the dead great-grandfather with lofty ideals who was implicitly assassinated by his own government was visibly (and proudly) multiracial.

Between the family's politics and Riddhe's sister being in an arranged marriage for political and business reasons, you can guess that this is more than just a coincidence of genetics. Ricardo's descendants wanted to hold onto power, and power was disproportionately held by white people, so that's who they married. Fukui is hitting me with a big cartoon mallet labeled "racism and its consequences persist in the politics of the Earth Federation."

And this... just doesn't exist in the OVA, I guess. They cut the lines about Ricardo's heritage from his speech, and he looks like any other white guy.

The anime as a whole so far has a general trend of cutting anything that directly mentions real-world racial identity or politics, without exception (see also: Syam and Banagher). They've also been erring on the side of lighter skin tones across the board, even in cases where novel description says otherwise.

The doctor on the Argama is described as Arab, with light tan skin. They coloured him half a shade darker than Banagher, who is half a shade darker than Mihiro.

Gilboa is Black. He's still Black here, but they gave him the absolute lightest possible skin tone that still reads as brown. He's way more ambiguous than his wife and kids, and they also have light brown skin. He's described as dark-skinned in the novel!

Yeah, people can have these skin tones with those backgrounds. Obviously. But they've chosen to convey information that is clear in the original text ambiguously, and they've done it to multiple characters.

I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but this felt like the most appropriate place to bring it up. IT BOTHERS ME.

Anyway. Do you know who is the first character in the novel to bring up the rumours that Ricardo Marcenas was assassinated by the Federation? Because it isn't Daguza in the cockpit with Banagher-- that's later. It's Riddhe.

Riddhe is the one who suggests conservative elements within the Federation might have wanted to a eliminate a more liberal and idealistic Prime Minister while also providing an excuse to root out separatists on the basis of anti-terrorism. Riddhe is the one who gives a scathing account of what his family did in the aftermath of the assassination, where Ricardo's son took advantage of the situation to gain power with the support of the same conservatives who killed his father.

Riddhe says all that directly in front of his dad, who yells at him for spreading nonsense conspiracy theories, tells him he doesn't know anything about politics, and says that he abandoned his family. Wrow.

Riddhe is ultimately ashamed of himself for provoking his father just because he's angry. He thinks it's selfish and childish for him to risk jeopardizing the relationship when he's relying on his father's power to accomplish his goals and protect Mineva.

Calm down, he's a Senate Council member who can deal with the army that will suck up to him. I have to put aside all personal feelings and tell him.

Riddhe took Mineva's line about her responsibility as a member of the Zabi family very seriously. He comes back to it repeatedly. He doesn't want to have anything to do with his family, but he knows there are things that only he can do to help, precisely because of his family-- and he has an obligation to try.

There's a very interesting tension, where Riddhe is only even able to survive and successfully enact his plan because of the otherwise unwanted privilege conferred by his father. It's made clear that even that might not have saved him if he hadn't gotten extremely lucky! It comes up again and again, at every step of the plan.

No matter whether the "Nahel Argama" survives or not, Ensign Riddhe's military career will be at an end.

[...]

"I'm risking my life here as well. I might even end up facing the firing squad if I mess up here, you know?"

[...]

If the situation had happened during a Parliamentary Session, the contact would definitely bounce around amongst the secrataries, and the "Delta Plus" would most likely be shot down without any confirmation of its identity.

Even after they manage to land safely by using the name of his family as a shield, the guards surrounding them when they disembark are hostile and keep rifles trained on them the whole way.

I feel like this element of luck is part of why they swapped his model airplanes for a good luck charm, but it's still so weird to me. His luck is important because of the risks he's taking, and they're not really playing that up as much as they could be. They could tell us in retrospect, but Riddhe knew the risks going in, and that's important.

One thing he knows he's going to lose, unavoidably, is all of his established social relationships in the military.

Survivor's guilt and having lost friends is something that comes up a lot in Riddhe's internal dialogue after the destruction of Industrial 7. I talked about it a bit in the last post. His crewmates are people he cares about, not only in an abstract sense of duty and obligation, but as people.

He's clearly deeply hurt by lying to the crew about his real intentions during the attack on Palau, especially as some of them are glad to see him back and praising his bravery as a soldier.

Does OVA Riddhe have strong relationships to anyone on the Argama? Maybe. He gets some advice from a superior officer. He banters with one of the other pilots for three lines or so. The doctor certainly believes that Mihiro is on edge specifically because of Riddhe's "death", but there are no particularly significant interactions between them to confirm it.

Riddhe's romantic interest in Mihiro is established very early in the novels, when he asks her out to a movie before launching for the first battle. He says he needs something to look forward to so he'll come back alive.

This comes back again when he's heading out for the Palau mission, when she specifically privately contacts him:

(Good luck, Ensign Riddhe. I haven't forgotten the promise to watch a movie.)

And he just has to agree, knowing that he's not coming back and she's going to be mourning him, thinking he's dead. Man.

When it becomes clear the battle isn't going to go as planned, Mineva can sense Riddhe's hesitation. She tells him to stay and fight, because otherwise he'll regret it for the rest of his life. While this works as a character moment for Mineva in the anime, I don't feel like it's a convincing one for Riddhe. What made it work in the novels was that we already knew this was an accurate assessment of his feelings. In the anime, rather than her resolving the conflict for him, it almost feels like he hadn't even fully realized he was having one until she told him.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable and nitpicky, and this all comes across just fine to people without my preconceptions. I just can't shake the feeling that too much scaffolding for his character has been removed, so now even big character moments are failing to stand up on their own.

Riddhe's latent newtype connection to Banagher and their Man's Promise is plot important, but on an emotional level it is nothing to me. I don't care about Riddhe's masculine pride. I care about him having a fraught relationship with his shitty rich dad who he has deliberately avoided for years. I care about social bonds. I care about sacrifice.

Banagher's trust in Riddhe in the novel is meaningful because the audience has reason to believe that Riddhe deserves that trust.

I really hope they can integrate at least some of this stuff going forward, but I also worry it might be too late. I can imagine it failing so easily-- like if they give me Riddhe yelling at his dad, but without all the established context it just comes off like he's a brat throwing a tantrum.

I'm pretty sure his crush on Mineva is going to start becoming relevant now, too, so I need them to give me something to work with as soon as fucking possible if they don't want me to become a relentless little hater. Please.

I want to believe they can still flesh him out enough to work for me, even if it's not perfect.

Micott's arc is altered by changes to Riddhe's arc.

This isn't a super dramatic change, since she's not a load-bearing part of the narrative like Riddhe. I do think how they shifted things around is interesting and worth talking about, though.

In my post on OVA 2, I mentioned that Micott is the one who snitches on Mineva in the novel. This was removed in the anime, where instead Daguza just recognizes her face himself. Now the reason becomes clear-- they moved it here, instead.

In the novel, the second part of the conversation they have in this scene happens on the shuttle back from the Alaska. Since the Alaska was cut, they obviously couldn't do that, but having the betrayal without including the resolution would defeat the purpose. Their solution was to combine the betrayal and reconciliation into a single scene, by having Micott consider reporting Mineva's escape but ultimately back down. I think that's a very clever way to handle it.

Micott is more emotional in the novel version. The circumstances are completely different, so the difference in tone makes sense.

"I know this isn't something I should be saying. But sorry, I have no intention of apologizing to you. Your army was the one that decimated our colony." ... "But, I want to apologize to Banagher. If I don't, I..." The rest of her words were vague due to her crying.

She apologizes to Banagher in the novel equivalent to the hologram billiards scene, when Takuya deliberately leaves them alone for a bit so they can talk. Banagher is puzzled by her apology, and they just kind of cyclically apologize to each other for a bit. It's cute.

The novel version of the conversation is very unsubtle about implying that Banagher implicitly believes Riddhe is trustworthy because they have a psychic connection. Micott's line in the anime, where she just comments on Banagher behaving differently than usual, is more vague.

Micott also sticks up for Mineva to Banagher, which I thought was sweet.

"But since you helped her out once, you have to bear responsibility and help her out until the end. That girl's feeling rather down inside despite making a strong look."

The Vist Foundation: Martha, Alberto, and Gael

God, I love Martha. I've been waiting for her desperately. I loooove her anime design. She looks so good. My evil wife.

The Vist Foundation is much less present in the narrative than expected, so far. I'm not entirely sure what to think, but unlike Riddhe's changes, it doesn't raise any alarm bells for me (yet). The Foundation itself is central to the conflict, what with 『The Box』, but all the individual people in it are minor characters.

Do you remember Gael, Cardeas' bodyguard? At this point in the novel, Gael is on the Garencieres. His interactions with Zinnerman and the rest of the crew are very tense and uneasy, but he's a key player in the plan to rescue Marida. He talks to Banagher briefly during the battle as well, just like Gilboa.

Gael wants to capture Alberto and force him to publicly reveal information about Martha, thus ruining her reputation. This allows him to have his revenge for Cardeas without killing her (since Syam objected to him doing so).

For Marida's escape-- rather than being blown out into space, the guys transporting her are gunned down by Gael, and that's when she takes the opportunity to slip out of her bonds.

Gael confronts Alberto about killing Cardeas, and Alberto has some interesting dialogue:

"THAT MAN ONLY CARED ABOUT HIMSELF! HE THOUGHT THAT HE COULD DECIDE EVERYTHING JUST BECAUSE HE'S STRONG! HE THOUGHT THAT PEOPLE WHO WERE WEAKER WERE JUST SLACKING OFF... BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING SO HARD!"

[...]

"Aunt [Martha] was very kind ... She was willing to recognize and accept me. Dad doesn't know about such things."

I could imagine Alberto having a conversation like this with Marida instead, since it's related to her reason for saving him in the novel-- she recognized his connection to Banagher. When Marida saw Banagher's mind, she saw the burden placed on him by Cardeas, and she sees the same thing in Alberto. She mentions that they both have the same sadness in their eyes.

(We still haven't seen Martha tell Alberto that Banagher is his half-brother, by the way. Is Marida going to tell him instead? Does he know? I need to know if he knows!)

Anyway. Alberto shoots Gael and more crew from the Nahel Argama arrive, having heard the commotion. Gael flees.

The scene keeps going, but I'm stopping here, since we might be getting into stuff for the next one.

Daguza has a lot of backstory that doesn't make it in.

Man, this guy is carrying around so much baggage. Banagher has no idea. Content warning for child death for this part. Scroll down to the screenshots if at any point you decide you don't want to read it.

After the conversation with Banagher in the tea room, we get a much longer conversation between Daguza and the other ECOAS guy. We learn about "The Sweetwater Operation", during which ECOAS murdered a bunch of children as collateral while trying to take out a group of terrorists. Yes.

Sweetwater was a refugee colony. The living conditions were terrible, basically a slum, and it eventually became a hub for anti-Federation activity. During Char's Counterattack, it was a working base for Neo Zeon. After the conflict ended, it became "a breeding ground for terrorist planning."

"Those terrorists ignored human rights and laws, so their crimes that went beyond the law should be punished by means beyond the law" -- gee, where have I heard that before? What could Fukui possibly be referencing here?

To summarize: intelligence failed to report the presence of a school bus, ECOAS blew up a bunch of kids along with the terrorists, 33 of them died, and the four who survived were disabled for the rest of their lives. Investigators covered up the incident and it was reported as an accident, but rumours still spread within the Federation special forces. ECOAS was nicknamed "The Manhunters."

Honestly, I think it's a kind of contrived scenario compared to the much more cruelly mundane way that kids and other innocent civilians get murdered during anti-terrorist raids and drone strikes in real life, but I see what Fukui was going for.

From that point on, ECOAS continued to be given dirty missions due to their reputation. I would bet those 33 kids are not the only children they've killed during their career.

They do a lot of justifying it to themselves during the conversation. "It was the intelligence branch's fault, we couldn't do anything." "Well, we were facing a group a group of people who would drop colonies and asteroids on the Earth. If we didn't take them down all at once, there might have been more children killed." "Yes, we have to allow a little sacrifice for the sake of the many." Again, all very familiar.

Despite his words, it's very obvious that Daguza feels guilty. His discussion of himself as a cog is a lot more charged when you know exactly what kind of violence he enacted as part of the machine.

Let me ask honestly, what is this order we have to protect even if it means killing children? [...] Despite understanding that, I still continue to kill myself off, telling myself consistently that it can’t be helped. Won’t I become a real cog gradually? I swallowed reality and sold out myself bit by bit. In this sense, I’m a foolish creature who’s sealed in this shell called an adult.

While they do talk about how Banagher is a child during this conversation, we don't get the line from the OVA here about never having had children and Daguza's implicit fatherly feelings toward Banagher.

The idea does come up later, with Daguza expressing that no matter what the box is, it's not worth exchanging for the future of a child like Banagher. It's pretty clear that this is the reason he's so ready to go to his death.

And what a death it was.

He wanted to hand his life to a child, a child who would think about the future. Of course, he did not think that he could wash away all his guilt after all the atrocity he did, but he felt surprisingly happy that he could do this. He, who only knew how to act on priorities to fulfil his duties, was leaving everything to a young life that had no blood relations or bonds with him ...

Holy shit.

I love the Sinanju with its busted face. Such a look.

Anyway, this death is one that I think is more disturbing than it was in the original text. The decision to let his rocket launcher float just far enough from the beam to survive and then splatter against the emblem is downright nasty. It allows for a person whose body has been totally vaporized to still look like they're leaving behind remains. It feels like a full body gore splatter, even if closely watching the sequence makes it clear it's not. That rules.

And that's when we get our second Destroy Mode activation.

A Gundam is a monster. A Gundam is a devil.

Do you ever think about how Frontal is tactically the single most important person on the battlefield for his side, but he puts himself at risk of burning to death to stop the Unicorn from killing Angelo? Because I do. I think about it a lot.

RIP Gilboa. It really hit me while watching that Banagher has multiple potential surrogate father figures who explode directly in front of him, much like his real dad did. So far, Otto is the only adult man to survive giving Banagher friendly paternal advice.

If you've read all this, thanks for indulging me. I hope it was interesting.

I'm really looking forward to watching the next one. I've heard good things, and that arc of the novel, uh... well, it's a lot. I'll have to think about how much I even want to get into it.