#HE RISES FROM THE ASHES TO STEAL YOUR KNIVES

[dailygoose]

the beast is fed

Daily goose number 993

[midnightexpressproductions]

Demo (TBA)

Content warnings (This IF has situations and themes that might be distressing to others): mentions of death, depictions of bodily harm, body horror, gore, anxiety/panic attacks, stressful scenes, claustrophobia, violence, car crashes, amaxophobia, astraphobia, use of weapons (guns, knives, etc.), explicit language, and sexual content though this is optional.

Dark smoke curls all around you, the black ash clogging up your nose and choking your throat. The sound of sirens is muffled in your ears. The base of your skull feels like it's split in two, a sharp pain blooming on the back of your head. Your eyesight is blurry but you can just make out the body writhing around on the ground.

You're hurt and blood seeps out of your wounds. You should be dead. You shouldn't be able to move, but here you are struggling to breathe. The acrid air in your lungs burns. Your vision tinges red. You can't help but watch as the body across the street from you sits up, rotten eyes fixed on your own.

It's jaw unhinges as it lets out an unearthly scream. It's hungry– no not hungry, ravenous– filthy drool dripping down it's chin. In a flash it descends upon you.

Starving.

Yearning for something to eat.

Desperate.

Yearning for food.

Famished.

Yearning to tear your flesh apart.

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In your senior year of high school, you remain the sole survivor of a brutal car crash that kills your father. Grief stricken, your mother decides that it's time for a fresh start. You soon find yourself shipped away to the other side of the country in bustling New York City; a completely different world from your previous rural Louisiana town.

A fish out of water, you're content with staying in the comfort of your own bedroom, living out your life in complete solitude. However, fate has other plans and after four years of isolation, you are forced to leave your room and venture into the outside world.

You just had to pick the day when everything goes to shit, didn't you?

The dead have begun to rise, violent and angry and desperately ravenous for human flesh. Finding yourself separated from your mom, you team up with an unlikely group of survivors as you begin your journey across a ruined New York in hopes of safe haven.

Who knows what might happen when the dead wake?

Play as male, female or non binary; you have the chance to set your own pronouns.

Play as straight, gay, lesbian, bi/pansexual, demi/asexual or aromantic.

Customize your MC's personality and appearance.

Choose from five RO's (plus a sixth RO who you'll meet at the end of the game) to romance or befriend. Or betray.

Build up your stats.

Make alliances or enemies with rival gangs.

Steal a cop car.

Adopt some dogs.

Your choices matter. You and other characters from the main cast can die.

Javier Delgado | he/him | 23 | ISTJ-T | Puerto Rican American

Javier has short, dark brown hair that curls just slightly around the edges. His down turned eyes are light brown and speckled with green. His golden tawny skin is lightly smattered with freckles across his cheeks. Javier is 5'10" and he has a thin, lanky build which makes him seem much taller than he really is. A pair of plastic-rimmed, light green glasses sit on his hooked nose. He says that they're just for reading but in truth, his eyesight just really sucks. His thick eyebrows are almost constantly furrowed, causing people to think that he’s always upset. Javier favors more muted, earthy toned colors in what he wears. He's not particularly fashionable however, wearing whatever is clean and comfortable.

Carmen Bautista | she/her | 23 | ESFJ-A | Filipina/Brazilian American

Carmen has long, wavy hair that stops just below her shoulder blades. Her hair is dark brown turning into a blonde ombre the further down it goes. She normally keeps it pulled back into a low bun or a French braid. Her wide eyes are almond shaped and dark brown. Carmen’s olive skin is completely flawless. Her full lips seem to be set in a perpetual smile, showing off the deep set dimples on her cheeks. She is 5'9" and has a plump, hourglass figure. She can normally be found wearing jewelry. However, Carmen doesn't wear rings, saying that she prefers to keep her hands free of any obstructions. She does have her nails painted a bubblegum pink though. Carmen favors pastel colors and soft clothing that she can easily move around in.

Max Friedman | she/they | 22 | ISTP-A | Jewish American

Max has wildly curly, dark copper hair that reaches just below their ears which is choppy since they cut it themself. Their eyes are a pale stormy gray and droopy, giving them a sleepy appearance. However, paired with her thin lips that seem to be constantly set into a scowl, it only highlights Max's less than friendly demeanor. Max has pale skin with warm undertones. She's covered from head to toe in freckles. They have a small cut on the right side of their upper lip. Their nose is slightly crooked, having broken it from a skateboarding accident. She's the shortest out of the group (not including Gwen), standing at 5'2" and she has a lithe build though the baggy clothes she wears make it seem that Max is skinnier than she really is. They carry around a skateboard wherever they go. 

Eun-Woo Park | he/him | 20 | ESTP-T | South Korean

Eun-Woo has short, pencil-straight black hair that's been styled into an undercut, his bangs left longer than the rest. Thick eyelashes rim his monolid eyes. The irises are a brown so dark that they're almost black. Eun-Woo's milk white skin is spotted with moles, the most notable being the two that sit underneath his left eye. His hands are covered with old calluses and jagged scars mar his knuckles. Eun-Woo stands at 5'7" and has a sinewy, toned build. His ears are double pierced and he has a helix piercing on his right ear. Eun-Woo's nails are painted black. He likes wearing black clothing however, he always wears a red SSG Landers cap along with a NY Yankees letterman jacket.

Derek Campbell | he/they | 24 | ISFP-A | African American/Caucasian

Derek has dark brown, shoulder length dreads. The ends are dyed a light honey brown though he's constantly changing the color. He normally keeps his dreads tied back in a loose ponytail or bun. Their full lips seem to always be set in a sweet smile. Their dark brown eyes are round and wide set, emphasizing their friendly demeanor. Light stubble softens their sharp jaw. Derek has light brown skin, having two scars on his face: one that runs down the corner of his left eyebrow and the other running across the bridge of his nose. He's the tallest of the whole group, standing at 6'5" and his chubby, thick-set build seems imposing at first. They're really just a big marshmallow though. Derek seems to favor more athletic wear, though they'll wear whatever feels comfortable to them. They like bright colors, especially pink and yellow.

Elijah/Elizabeth Watts | he/him or she/her | 26 | ENTJ-A | African American

Eli has dark umber skin with cool undertones. Jagged, old scars crisscross all over their body. They have a full sleeve tattoo of a snake surrounded by lotus flowers on their left arm. F!Eli has long, tightly coiled black hair which she normally keeps tied back into a low ponytail or a braided bun. M!Eli has short, tightly coiled black hair that's cut into a fade, his coils either left free or tied back into cornrows. Even if they're not upset, Eli's eyes seem to be constantly narrowed, the warm honey brown irises standing out against their dark skin. Their full lips hide a gap-toothed smile. Both M!Eli and F!Eli stand at 6'0". They have a toned, muscular build. They wear no makeup or jewelry, other than the dog tags that they keep hidden underneath their clothes.

Gwen Nguyen | she/her | 10 | Vietnamese American

Gwen has warm toned, honey skin and wide, black eyes. Her chubby cheeks are dusted red, only further highlighting her innocent appearance. However, the sneaky rude gestures and hidden eye rolls show that she's much more cheeky than she looks. Gwen likes to wear anything soft and pastel colored. She always has her favorite pink bear plushie with her. Gwen is also deaf, so she wears a pair of sparkly hearing aids. Other than using sign language, she also communicates with a small whiteboard that she keeps tucked away in a pastel yellow backpack.

Pa and Ma Hazel:

Pa is a 10 year old German shepherd and Ma Hazel is an 11 year old cocker spaniel. Pa is short coated and his fur is a dark sable color with his underside being a honey brown. His muzzle is also lightly streaked through with gray. Ma Hazel is medium coated and her fur is a brown roan. Her muzzle is also slightly graying and her nose is spotted. In lieu of collars, Pa wears a forest green bandana around his neck. Ma Hazel doesn't wear a collar at all.

[yanderenightmare]

Ok, hear me out. Imagine the yandere bnha thinking that their darlings made something wrong/disobey them and when they deny it the boys get really angry and just aply a harsh punishment. So when they find out that she, in fact, didn't do anything wrong and that she wasn't lying, what would they do? I don't know if this is confusing but it's on my mind now. Could you write this for Bakugou, Izuku and Keigo pls??? ❤️

TW: nsfw, noncon/dubcon, abuse, anxiety, guilt, manipulation, slight mutilation, profanity, Stockholm syndrome

BAKUGO KATSUKI - KACHAN

“Where’s the knife, Quirkless.” She would have flinched at the nickname if she hadn't gotten so used to it already, and though he had discarded of the title lately it still felt like a second skin to the girl.

He would be lying if he said he wasn't on edge, if he hadn't been looking for a flaw in the perfect evening. “Knife?” She turned to look at him, fiddling with the bow on her neck, the one fasting her apron.

“That was why you were so fucking persistent on helping me in the kitchen... wasn't it?” He looked hurt as he accused, voice only barely holding together, eyes a burning searing cold. “Just so you could take a fucking knife?” 

She wasn't understanding anything, and he’d know that if he’d believed the crinkle of confusion between her brows. 

“I thought we were making progress.” He sighed, cleary disappointed, seemingly contemplating what to do next, how he could and should deal with the situation before he lost ahold of his temper.

“As flattering as it is you thinking I’d have the nerve, skill and imagination to steal a knife from you-” She started, a halfhearted laugh breathed within her words, nearly amounting to a giggle. “I didn't take anything, you must have counted them wrong.” 

“Don't fuck with me!” His attitude-twist had her jump, expression falling then rising as her eyes grew wide, lips shut, suddenly feeling frozen, as though any movement could only be answered by the great ash-blonde’s counterattack. “Just hand it over and I won't have to hurt you too bad.”

She took a step back, hands rising as an instinctive makeshift shield, or to balance herself with the rush of blood suddenly pumping in her system. “Katsuki, I’m telling the truth.” She swallowed, trying to level the growing feral energy she felt surge and ooze from the fueling fire in front of her. “I didn't take it.”

“Bullshit, there’s a knife missing and I didn't take it, no one else sure as fuck did, so that leaves you.” His eyes scrutinized, narrowing in her direction. “You and your silver tongue who somehow managed to trick me into thinking letting you anywhere near the fucking kitchen was a good idea, I should have just left you tied to the bed.” His voice dripped with venom, contained potent danger, ready to kill, ready to sink his teeth in. “Now, I’m gonna count to three, if you know what’s good for you, you’re gonna give me the fucking knife. One...”

“But, I didn't...” She tried, but he wouldn't have her excuses.

“Two...” She stood there, unsure if whether she should run, though not able to answer quick enough. “Three.”

“Katsuki, I swear I didn't take anything.” Tears slipped down her face now as she watched his muscles flex with the white-hot wrath surging through his veins. Her knees grew weak and she knew she wouldn't be able to run anywhere, nor was there any place to run to if she could. 

“Fucking liar...” He turned away, heading back into the kitchen. “Tears won't save you from this one.” 

She heard the crash of his hands fiddling in the cutlery drawer, thinking he might have given the superiority of his math skills a second thought, but saw him return too quickly for that to be the case, eyes too blurry to see what he was holding in his hand, yet having an educated guess what it might be. 

“Since you like playing with knives so fucking much, why don't we play a game...” He yanked her wrists forward, sent her staggering into him, crushing the dainty joint in his palm, where if it wasn't for the ear-piercing wail that cut-loose into the air, they could have heard the small cracks indicating a fracture, though Bakugo didn't need to hear it where he felt it pop with satisfactory ease inside his fist, only to push her down on the stone floors, hand flattening out her arm. “Each time you refuse to tell me where you hid your idiotic little escape-plan, your senseless downright insulting form of neutralizing me...” His face a mere inch away from hers as he snarled, spit flying, knife placed at her neck. “I’m gonna carve a reminder of how fucking useless you are into your skin so you never get any of these dumb fucking ideas ever again.”

Her high-pitched screams rung like cacophony through his house, bouncing off the marble walls, filling every room with noise so deafening he was beginning to tire, head hurting at the earth-shattering wails. 

“Where is it, Quirkless?” He growled for the dozenth time, knife dripping with her blood as he just finished etching the last ‘s’ into the flesh of her arm, the fully spelled cruel nickname oozing with a stark vermillion just as rich as his bloodshot eyes staring down at her.

“I- I don't know.” She sniffed, chest heaving as she laid limply, pinned beneath him, cheeks stained and streaked with tears, bloated, nose red and eyes unfocused, looking about ready to pass out. “Please...”

He huffed through his nose, twitching with unstifled rage, growing more and more frayed. “Fine, suit yourself, next will be my fucking name.” He seethed, drawing another defeated sob from out of her hiccuping ribcage. “Wonder where I should write it... the other arm, your chest, your ass?” His stained bloodied fingers grabbed her chin, tried forcing eye contact only to find blank blown pupils falling to nothing, glossed over and delirious, feverish with dew-drops prickled on her forehead and breasts. “Shit... you’re even weaker than I thought...”

He got up, left her to lay there with labored breaths, making a quick journey to find some bandages, thinking he’d be merciful enough to secure her wounds before starting a new one. Feet slapping against stone, stomping through the halls to the bathroom, pulling open the cupboards only to come to an abrupt holt. 

Ice through his veins at the sight of the knife in the drawer. 

The knife he’d put there to cut bandage cloths each time he would brand her with burns whence his temper got out of bounds.

“Fuck...” He breathed, eyes stinging, body so unbelievable stiff as his ears burned upon hearing the soft snivels coming from the living room.

He walked out, bandage-roll in hand, knees feeling wobbly, too weak to support his weight, and the newly settled burden on his shoulders. He rounded the corner, the bloody word carved into her once soft skin the first thing his eyes fell upon, heart clenching furiously in his chest, something clawing at his throat from the inside. 

“I didn't- I- please- I didn't- I-” She simply lied there, all limp, on the cold stone tiles, blood staining her dress, apron ripped off and thrown next to her, sobbing with such little power they were reduced to mere sniffles, her weak limbs not even trying to make her stand up, too exhausted to even support her breathing as her chest rose with labor on each meager intake and seemed to crumble on every slipping exhale.

“Fuck- I know- I- I fucked up.” He kneeled down next to her, mind reeling, spinning, trying to wrap around the volume of what he’d just done, trying to find any means of salvaging what perfection they’d started the day off with when he’d made her breakfast and she’d hugged him, kissing him all softly and giggling as he lifted her up to sit on the counter. Finding there was no other option but to pick up the broken pieces scattered around him, and hope, hope with all his heart that he could fix things.

“No, please Katsuki, I didn't take anything, please-” She cried once seeing he’d come back, body trying to curl away when his hands descended to touch her, his large hands unsure of what to do, what he could, what he should, what he had to. Ashamed and guilt-stricken, rusty daggers stabbing at his insides, twisting in his gut as he picked her heavy arm up from the ground, laying it on his lap to wrap the white strip of bandage around it.

He bit his lip and tasted the metal on his tongue, tears starting to fall as he withheld screaming, his heart being ripped from his chest, quite like how he wanted to rip his hair out, pull his tongue out, claw his eyes out, tear the skin and flesh of his bones. “I’m sorry.” 

TAKAMI KEIGO - HAWKS

He’d been going through the regular routine, coming to the bitter conclusion that not everything was up to code. Walking out into the kitchen where his darling had been standing for about an hour cooking dinner, humming a lullaby as she suspiciously went on stirring the pot without a hint of scorn or resistance. 

Her compliant nature all made sense now.

“So, chicken soup?” He quipped, though she didn't pick up on the bitterness.

She just threw her head back to look at him over her shoulder, soft smile on her face. “Yeah, I know it’s your favorite!” It was so heartfelt he almost believed it.

“Clever.” Her brows furrowed upon the strange darkness in his tone, but shrugged it off, excused it on him being tired after a long day.

She poured the soup into two bowls, picked them up to set them on the table where she’d laid out a nice table-cloth and a small vase of flowers, all swift and graceful. “You say it all the time, I’d have to be deaf to miss it.” He waddled over to take his seat, eyes fixed on her and her antiques all the way, trying to spot an inch of regret in her composure, but finding she sprung around him and fiddled and fussed like the perfect housewife he’d groomed her to be, lying to his face with the bright smile on her lips. “Well, go on. It’s my first time with this recipe.”

“Special recipe, is it?” He asked, sitting down and picking up his spoon, twirling it in his hand, eyes still set on her, an eyebrow slightly cocked.

She looked to him then, head tilting to the side, growing more and more confused by his strange attitude. “No... quite simple actually.” She decided to brush it off, thinking he might perk up after he got some food. “Well?” She nodded eagerly towards his bowl.

“You first.” He smiled, though his eyes still looking strangely... dead.

“Oh, thank you.” She smiled, picking up her spoon, scooping to put in her mouth, then swallowing.

“So it’s only in my bowl then.” He sighed.

“What-” 

“Im not eating this.” He dropped his spoon, letting it clatter with soft yet abrasive thumps on the clothed table.

“Did I do something wrong?” The concerned look on her face nearly had him fooled.

“Save it...” He snapped, getting up with an exasperated sigh, carding his hands through his hair as he paced. “You really thought I wouldn't notice you trying to drug me?” She had gotten up to try and comfort him, yet stopped at the accusation.

“What’re you...”

He gave a curt exhale, a rather short frenzied excuse for a laugh. “It’s a good plan, your safest bet really.” She was simply left dumbfounded as she watched him pace, his wings on edge, hunched and ruffled. “I’m too fast for you to try and run, I would sniff you out if you tried hiding, fighting me would be ridiculous... knocking me out with a few pills was the only way.” She opened her mouth to protest, but couldn't really decipher just what it was he was accusing her off. “So fucking clever, I could almost applaud the effort!” His voice boomed, loud and shrill, taking up the space of the open-spaced apartment. “Too bad you fucked up.” She was getting scared now, heart climbing up her throat as she watched him flail his arms, throwing a tantrum with how upset he was about something she didn't even know what was. “Shit... and I thought I was being crazy. You had me feeling bad for not trusting you and here you are trying to pull shit like this.”

She went against her better judgement and walked toward the bristled feral man, her hands held up to touch him even though it seemed she mind burn at contact. “What are you talking about? Keigo-” “Shut up.” He spat, arm flying and landing a sharp smack across her face, impact and angle sending her to the floor, though not allowing her to recover as the same abusive hand came to grab a fistful of her hair, scalp screaming as he began dragging her across the floors, forcing her to crawl after him where he began stomping to some unknown place, tasting the metal of a popped lip bleeding into her mouth. “Unless you’re gonna apologize or beg, I don't want to hear it.”

“But-” She sobbed, trying weakly to pry his fist from her hair, only to feel him tightening and pulling some more, his pace making her soft knees scathe on the marble floors, burns running down her shins.

“It’s time you understood your place as my mate. Your only purpose.” He dismissed.

She’d gotten rather used to being thrown down on the bed, but not with Keigo’s fierce feathers cutting off her dress with little regard to a avoid nicking her skin, nor with his hand squeezing the life out of her, windpipe crushing beneath his brutal grip. 

“This is the only thing you’re any good for, only thing you’re made for, only thing you are. Just my little breeding-bitch, nothing else.” He spat as he ripped her panties down, dug his nails into her thighs while kicking her legs apart as she heaved and spluttered for more air, coughing in a fit once he removed his hand to better spread her open, her dress in tethers around her bruised body, skin once soft now sliced in a thousand small bleeding cuts, her hand weakly coming to push at his pelvis, as she was rendered unable to speak, only hiccup and cough and cry. And Keigo didn't waste any time, spitting on his spitefully erect cock, the only moisture he’d deemed necessary as he pushed inside her dry unprepared tight entrance, feeling her tense up beneath him, felt her panicked sobbing in the way she beat at his chest as he laid down on top of her, all his weight squeezing the breath from out her lungs as he let go of spreading her thighs open in favor of catching her bothersome fists, pinning them into the bed with a crushing grip as he started rolling sharply and harshly and rapidly into her. Growls erupting from someplace deep within his throat, no shame, just white-hot blinding unforgivable rage.

He climbed off once he’d emptied himself inside her, grabbing her arms, he lifted her only to throw her limp body down on the ground. “Mutts sleep on the floor.” He spat, blood still oozing from spliced skin, open wounds around her wrists where he'd clawed, neck almost ripped open beneath the impact of his teeth marking her, throat sore from screaming, yet still continuing to haul up painful bleeding sobs. 

And though he’d made it such a point that breeding was her only usage, made her say it, made her beg for it, made her thank him, he still went to find a pill, yet with the rush of what he’d just done coming to a crash he was left feeling dizzy in the spiraling downfall of his frenzy, adrenaline fizzing out and nerves starting to prickle, messaging his temples to soothe the oncoming headache, finding quite ironically he could use a pill or two to soothe his nerves, the same kind she’d tried drugging him with earlier. 

She curled up on the floor, hugging her body for comfort, bruises and cuts stinging hot against the cool carpet. 

He padded into the bathroom, unbothered by her cries, thinking they were justified, deserved. Hands casually reaching towards the pill-bottle in the medicine cabinet, popping the cap and throwing two circular, not oval, pills down his throat, face contorting at the foreign feel of them on his tongue, realizing, slowly and mortifyingly, that the taste was sweet instead of bitter, as they were supposed to be. 

Grabbing the bottle and turning it in his hand to read the label, eyes scanning and widening, blinking once, blinking twice, whispering a small breathless. “No...”

He ran back into the bedroom, cursing all the way, cursing himself all the way.

He’d mislabeled the bottles. One bottle containing what pills he’d used to take to calm himself during his ruts before finding a better outlet in his darling, the other bottle full of OxyContin. The rut-pills naturally having way less pills inside, which was why he counted that at least fifteen pills where missing this morning.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck...” He cursed, had no mind for anything else as he rounded the corner and stood in the threshold, scared to enter, scared to breathe as he listened to his darling pained whimpers and shattered breaths. His darling still lying exactly where he’d left her, limp where were it not for the wrecked way her ribcage would rise and fall, he’d think she was dead.

Instinctively he sent his feathers out to help her up quicker than his legs could carry him over, though she recoiled at the fluttering of them, whimpering as she backed herself up into the corner of the room, sitting with her knees tucked tightly to her chest, her arms swung around them to shield herself, head hung as she winced and chocked on her cries. 

It felt like dying, the a jagged rock lodged in his chest, it felt like death, like sickness, spreading throughout him, cold and vicious, with no mercy as he began crying too.

“M’ sorry, I’m s- so sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, ple- please-” He begged, but her huddled frame was shaking in terrorized shock as she began rocking back and forth, toes curling into the carpeted floors. “Please- please, Angel.” He reached out a second time, this time not letting her flinching stop him, taking her hands in his, both equally shaking. He knelt, head hung and bowing to rest against her feet. “Forgive me...” He started kissing, first the top of her foot, then her calf, hand held loosely inside his, lips mushed to kiss the top, then her knee, pulling her into his lap, hugging her close, cradling her head to his neck, other hand splayed on her back, arm securing her tightly against his chest. “I’m sorry...”

MIDORIYA IZUKU - DEKU

Izuku came home earlier than usual, though instead of being suspicious, she felt overjoyed, welcoming him home by the door, helping him tread his jacket off his broad shoulders, hanging it up for him on the hanger to be placed inside the closet neatly, standing up on her tippy-toes as he leant down to plant a juicy kiss to his cheek, all just in the order he’d taught her. Perfection. Getting ready to ask him how his day was, before he beat her to the punch.

“Sweetie?” He asked, slight lilt in his tone.

She just smiled in return. “Yes, Daddy?” Feet placed beside each other and standing straight and perfect like a little doll.

“What did you do today?” It’s quite normal for Izuku to ask, liking to watch his little girl bounce with passion, all shy and giddy and awkward as she drones on about the lack of substance in her day with that unrestrained childlike candidness he’s forged her into.

“Uhm...” She blinked, face in wonderment. “Well... I woke up, had a bath, dressed up.... ooh, made the bed, then I played in the garden for a bit, or... for a very long while actually, I picked some flowers and made a flower-crown, and had another bath because of all the mud-”

“Come here, Bunny.” He cut off her rambling, despite it being cute, curling his finger at her to come over as he sat down on the couch. He patted the couch-cushion beside him, not his lap, which could only mean he wanted one thing. She did what she knew from experience he wanted, propping her knees up to kneel beside him. “Lie down, you know what to do.” Ass arched up over his lap, short frilly skirt hiking up her thighs, revealing her pretty cotton panties, with her face mushed in the other couch-cushion on the opposite side of him. “You want to try that again?” He stroked the ample skin of her butt, cupping one cheek in his palm and messaging calloused fingers over the soft skin, fingering the hem and snapping it back to smack her skin lightly.

“Try what again, Daddy?” She asked, unquestioning of his request, folding her feet while having them raised in the air, pearl-white socks pulled neatly over her knees beginning to roll into the crease of her bent legs.

“What did you do today?” He stroked down the back of her bare thigh, other hand leveling on the small of her back, fingering a lock of hair that laid splayed there.

“But I just told you-” Her voice still sweet and childish and girly, just the way he liked, bordering on whiny as she tipped her head back to give him a perplexed look.

“Hmm, give me your hands.” She folded her arms behind her back, let him grab ahold of both her wrists in one of his massive palms, strong finger curling around them, as he continued stroking the goose-bumped flesh of her behind with the other, lifting her skirt higher, now laying it to rest in the slope of her back, leaving her pink cotton panties on full display, hugging her round bum, all exposed atop his lap. “Tell me again. One more time for me, Bunny.”  

“I don't understand, Daddy?” She asked, feeling her breasts begin to ache with how they were squished against the cushions of the sofa, the underwire to her bra cutting into her flesh in the forced position.

“No? You don't understand?” Deku patronized. “Maybe this will help.” His hand left the soft skin it hand been fondling, his other hand tightening around her wrists, bracing for the recoil that was sure to rush through her whence his raised hand struck down with force upon the unsuspecting plush flesh.

She wailed, arms trying to pull free at once, just like he had anticipated. Her booty wiggling to shake the pain away, feet thumping down into the cushions.

“Why do you think Daddy’s punishing you?” He asked calmly, hand stroking the abused flesh of her bottom as she sniffled into the plush surface her head was resting on, thighs shivering.

“I- I don't kno- know.” She hiccuped, sobs ricochetting through her chest as her one ass-cheek stung with blood like fire.

“No? You don't know?” His hand lifted, coming down hard once again. “How about now?” Voice calm, iced and leveled, strict but soft.

“No, please-” She begged through her sobbing fit, hands uselessly struggling behind her back, cramping in his unmovable death-grip.

“Does Bunny want another slap?” He asked, condescension drowning his tone, dripping like venom as he once again messaged the welted flesh of her ass.

“No-” Her voice was mumbled and slurred through tears, wet like a moan, yet hurt like a bawling toddler who scraped their knees on the pavement.

“No? But you seem to like it so much.” He pulled at the bruised flesh, pinching it between his fingers, making her arch to try and reel away from his touch, a whimpering whine leaving her.

“I didn't do anything, Daddy please!” Squealing like a little piglet, as he worked the ample fat of her butt in his hand, kneading it like one would do dough.

“Think again, I’m sure it’s simply slipping your dumb little brain.” He mocked, eyes keen and lightning-like as they look down at her face mushed against the couch, her lips blubbering like a fish, nose red and runny with the tears coating her cheeks, drool dribbling down her chin from the heavy wrecking sobs.

“No daddy, I-” Another branding landing of his large hand against her unprotected abused and bruised skin.

“Bad bunny, you mustn't tell lies.” He chastised, letting go of her wrists in favor of entangling the brutish hand in her hair, holding her skull in his palm as he dragged her up, other clawed knuckled paw manhandling her into kneeling over his lap, her trembling little body doing nothing but abide by his direction, sniveling and sniffling, hiccuping on beaten shuddering breaths as she blinked to make the brimming tears fall out of her sore eyes, lids puffy and eyelashes glossed, looking so adorably vulnerable when wincing at his fingers digging into the delicate softness of her hips, keeping her seated, ass blossoming with lilac and maroon. “My little pet tried to escape today, didn't she?” His eyes were set and stone-cold as he narrowed them slightly at her, left eye mildly twitching every second or so.

Her hands held onto his arms, more to balance herself as she cried than for his sake. “What... no-” She mumbled out between sniffs and bleating, eyes too dewy to focus, mind too clogged to be thinking of much more than her aching flesh.

“No?” His voice mimicked her frail timber. “Then how come I know you tried opening the door to the mudroom at exactly 2.37 in the afternoon today?” He quirked a brow, nostrils flaring at the building potent brew of rage within him. “Care to explain what you where thinking?” 

Chest heaving sporadically, still with her sobs she tried formulating what muddled answer she could. “I- the rain-”

“The rain!” He stated, voice sharp and booming, not buying whatever sorry excuse she was trying to sell him. “Gotta do better than that, Bunny.” He almost felt offended with how little she’d prepared for this, he would have thought she’d come up with something better than the weather.

She sniffled. “I- I didn't want to ruin my shoes in the mu- mud, and my boots are in the mudroom, bu- but the d-door was locked, so I went barefoot instead, I’m so- sorry-” She managed to blubber out, breaths hitching, toppling her words, voice cracked and uneven in her rambling.

“Boots? Barefoo-” He asked, but answered his own question by backtracking to what she’d said about spending the day in the garden. “You weren't trying to leave?” He stated, again more like the answer to his own question.

She whimpered like a pup, small pained cries. “Leave? Why... why would I leave?”

He stared at her for a moment, features soon drawing back, a shrouded mind clearing, biting his tongue. “No reason...” He answered her bleary confused features, hands softening in their grip on her hips, nails dislodging from digging into her skin. “Don't walk barefooted when you’re outside, I don't want you to get sick.” He saved himself, casting the events and the punishment onto the measly crime.

“I won't ever do it again, I promise!” She shook her head, arms swung around his shoulders, pushing her head into the nook of his neck for comfort, basking in the familiar scent of cologne, rubbing her teary face off on the color to his shirt, kissing his throat, laying its worship, body pressed flush against his, hips shimming to better slot herself down on his lap.

Her actions were well received, a little too well with how rigid and uptight and exhausted he was in the wake of his fading anger. “Good girl.” He sighed, pleased. Large hand finding her cheek, cupping it and her chin to pull her up to face him. “It’s been a long day, give me a kiss.” She didn't hesitate, soft bloated lips pressed primly into his, welcoming how he liked to suck on her bottom lip, welcoming how his teeth liked to chew on it, knowing how to make herself useful, petite hands finding his chest, working at the perfect pace in unbuttoning his shirt, hips rocking like they’d been taught to awaken what was kept inside his pants.

FOLLOW-UP ASK

[gallickingun]

last chance || b.k.

SUMMARY: After All Might’s demise at the hands of an unlikely hero-turned-villain, the world unfurls into chaos. Villains run rampant, heroes are dying in the streets, and you are left with a rowdy group of renegades to seek out the legendary Ground Zero, a vigilante that you’ve only encountered through ghost stories. After narrowing down his sightings to one central location, you are sent out to beseech him for help, if he even truly exists in the first place.

PAIRING: Apocalyptic Pro Hero!Bakugou x Renegade!Reader RATINGS: M/E+ WARNINGS: language, violence, smut, etc. WORD COUNT: 7.3k+

FOREWORD: For all intents and purposes, we’re going to pretend that All Might hasn’t lost his power, even after handing it off to Deku!

LINKS: ao3 | masterlist | mobile | writing tag

Author’s Note: This is my submission for the bnharem nsfw collab, apocalypse edition! I was shocked that I was able to snag Bakugou on my first round of collaboration, and I’m so stoked to read all of the other fics! The masterlist can be found HERE. This might feel a little OOC, but hopefully it makes sense by the end. It is an AU after all. 

“The Symbol of Peace is dead.”

You pull the bandana further up around your mouth and nose, the ash in the air seeping into your lungs, clouding your vision as the debris strains your breathing. Your ankles ache, mile after mile threatening to grind your bones to dust.

“It would seem we never knew the true power of All Might’s quirk, now known as One for All.”

A thickness swells up in your throat, your eyes blurring with tears, and yet you keep walking. You push through the thickets of overgrown foliage, slashing away with the machete you usually keep tucked against your hip. Crying will do nothing to help you, not now. Tears are for the weak.

“He had passed on his power to a successor, a young student named Midoriya Izuku.”

The darkness of night helps to hide you from those who want you slain where you stand. Your black clothing keeps you but a shadow amongst the trees, concealing your identity to anyone who might gaze upon the horizon. Even though you are alone, your mission keeps you company.

“The young boy became an amazing Pro Hero, climbing the charts quite fast once graduating from Yuuei High. And then, something happened.”

You grit your teeth when you see your destination ahead – a large cliff, covered in moss and dense, lush kudzu. There is a cave carved into the side of it, hardly able to be seen from the distance with which you are currently separated from it. And yet, you’ve been dreaming about this place for years, ever since the overture.

“It would seem that young Midoriya Izuku, also known as Deku, has killed the Symbol of Peace.

All Might is dead.”

The weight of the world settles on your shoulders at the memory of the news broadcast. It is like this new path you’ve gone down has formed you into some sort of Atlas, a woman in charge of holding the world together from the shadows, as if it may fall apart if you falter for even the slightest of moments. Your knees ache and your back is slick with sweat, but somehow you manage to shoulder the burden and keep walking, galaxies treading in your wake.

After all, finding Ground Zero is your responsibility.

“We need him.”

You brush your hair from your eyes, looking down at the map strewn out in tatters on the tabletop, “No one has seen him, not really. He’s practically a myth, a legend. Even if he’s real, what makes you think he’ll help us?”

The redhead beside you slams his fists together, the echoing sound of stone impacting stone reverberating in the room. You wince at the sharpness of it, but combined with the determined expression rooted within his features, you feel a renewed sense of purpose settled into your spine. You straighten up, curling your hands to fists, and match his manifestation of conviction with a grit of your teeth and tilt of your head.

“You’re right, Kirishima,” you point to the central location on the map, the one you’ve been investigating for what feels like years, “Ground Zero will be there. And I’m going to convince him to help us.”

The stone bites into your blunt nails, drawing blood that makes it even more difficult to scale the side of the structure. You knew this would come, so the makeshift climbing gear strapped to your waist keeps you secure as you continue to lower yourself down.

At the mouth of the cave, you see a small overhang, just far enough past the opening for you to land. Once you’ve gotten close enough that you know you won’t fall to your death into whatever disastrous demise may greet you thousands of feet below, you drop onto the ledge. Your knees wobble, ankles turned at just the right angle that they absorb most of your fall.

The opening of the cavern is dark; ominous smoke leaking from the front of it, furling around in midair. Your body shudders, a chill sending a fresh wave of goosebumps over your skin, and for a moment you wonder if you should retreat.

Kirishima’s crimson eyes, hard set and piercing, are all you can see when you close your eyes. His voice rings in your ears, reminding you that this is what you must do, you have to find Ground Zero. He is the only one capable of taking down Deku.

You swallow, bracing your spine and curling your fists, forcing yourself to take the first step forward. There is a curtain of vines separating the inside of the cave from you. You reach forward, curling your fingers around the thick, verdant tendrils, and push them to the sides so you may walk through.

Every single nerve within your body vibrates with the knowledge that you may die here in this cave, alone and forgotten. Your lower lip wobbles, but you stamp down the negative emotions and rather channel them into something akin to confidence. Once you’ve passed through to the other side, you release the vines and find yourself shrouded in darkness.

It takes a moment, but your eyes adjust eventually. You can make out the walls of the cave, glistening and jagged, and you use the reach of your arms to press against the rocky surface, guiding yourself further down the winding path. It is strange when you feel a substance much more powdery beneath your touch, and when you pull your hand away to smell it, the scent reminds you of soot.

Sweat rolls down your spine, tickling your skin, but you do not have the patience nor the ability to redirect your attention to it, for fear of what might happen when you refocus to something less important. You hold your breath, trying to listen as best you can for any and all sounds echoing within the walls of the cave, but all you hear is quiet.

Your imagination begins to wander as you take each step, furthering the horrific ends you’ve conjured up for yourself within the confines of your mind. The chill of the cave in tandem with your sweat creates steam from your body, rising high and bringing forth a bout of humidity that gives your lungs more difficulty.

Turning a corner, you feel the air begin to get warmer. You force yourself to take short breaths, bringing oxygen to flow back through your blood as it rushes through you, thundering in your ears. The sound does little to quell the panic rising in your throat, like a billow of smoke suffocating you as it rolls through your body.

Fear grips your heart when you hear the first sound.

You stop, turning your feet in case you need to bolt in the opposite direction. Your eyes are widened, pupils dilated in the dark to try and accommodate. It does not repeat itself, but rather alters, when you hear it again.

“Tch.”

The human-like nature of the sound brings about a whole new level of anxiety, lightning strikes underneath your skin as reality settles in. You lick at your lips, the dryness of your mouth ever present when you prepare yourself for a speech. You continue down the cave pathway, the faint glow of orange beginning to color the walls, giving you more light to see your feet in front of you.

Eventually you are able to stumble through the cavern on your own now, without the guide of your hands on the rock on either side of you. Shallow breaths fill your lungs, erratic breathing making your shoulders shake in anticipation. You lick at the seams of your gums, begging your mind to call forth a beautiful string of words that will convince this legendary vigilante to once again rise up, with the backing of your renegade fighters, to take down the villainous once-hero Deku.

You come up on the furthermost part of the cave, the base of it opening up and rounding out to provide the hideaway with a spacious enough cavity to serve as a living space.

Your eyes are drawn to every inch of the room, starting with the wall where weapons are strung up like trophies. Chiseled into the stone are hollows in the shape of guns and knives and grenades, acting like shelving for the tools of destruction. Beneath it is the fire pit, burning high with flames, licking up at the air and peeling away what little oxygen remains. You find it harder to breathe here, mostly in part to the depth of the cave and the ongoing fire, stealing the breath from your very lungs.

Then your eyes find him, his back to you, settled on a log that will most likely be used for firewood at a later date. Your tongue feels like a sandbag in your mouth and you can’t force yourself to produce enough saliva to make up for the smoke in your throat.

And then he rises.

He is every bit as beautiful as they said he would be in all of the stories. Tales of bulging muscle and tall stature, hands that save the world with each flex of his knuckles, scars littering his body like a map, or like veins of pain running through slabs of chiseled marble.

He turns, and his eyes seem familiar.

You take a hesitant step forward, captivate by his serious stare. The rivulets of crimson and amber swirling in his irises make you want to drown in a lake of fire, burned at the stake for the sake of his cause. Your body cannot resist him, so you draw closer, further into the heat, begging yourself to become a slave to it so long as it means you can continue to find him in the flames.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

You are fumbling for words when he speaks again, “You’re wasting my time, baka. I’m not sure what about the sight of a secluded, secret cave gave you the idea to waltz in here like you own the damned place, but I’m kind of busy. So leave.”

The way your eyes roam around his abode, settling on each small space and dissecting it for everything that it is worth, unsettles him. He steps closer to you, blocking your vision with his wide shoulders.

“It doesn’t look like you’re very busy.”

The words are blurted from your mouth with little forethought, but they have you both reeling, your hands slapped over your lips as if you could take them back with simple action. The man stood in front of you shifts into some sort of attack position, hands curled into fists and the air begins to smell sickly sweet.

“Fucking bitch,” he bites the words as they exit his teeth, narrowing his eyes to you until they are but slits, “Get the hell out!”

“No, no!” You are flailing now, the impending doom of your failure to bring him back with you turning your stomach into knots. You shake your head, reaching out to press your hands to his chest, “Listen, please, you are Ground Zero, are you not?”

The sound of his own name echoing in the cave gives him pause. He tilts his head, ashen locks falling over his line of sight. You notice his head is buzzed at the base, nothing but blonde stubble left behind, however the top of his head is covered with pale locks of spike hair, as if he himself is a bomb ready to be blown at all times.

“I don’t know who the hell told you where to find me, but I’m not the guy you’re looking for.” He smacks your hands away with the back of his wrist, turning to stalk back to the fire. Once he settles on his stump again, he pulls another skewer of meat from a pack off to the side, rotating it over the fire to begin roasting it.

All you can think is how much of a let down this entire trip has been. You have walked for miles, for days, in order to hunt him down. You have hidden in jungles and abandoned buildings, and almost been caught by several villains with quirks you almost could not overpower on your own.

“Kirishima spoke so highly of you,” your voice is faraway, like you are on another plane of existence, looking down on him from above, “I thought you’d be more heroic than this.”

At the sound of your friend’s name, the man’s head tilts, eyes shifting as he looks over his shoulder at you, “Kirishima? Eijirou?”

“Y-You know Kiri?”

You take a cautious step forward, unsure of whether he believes Kirishima to be a friend or a foe. His eyes are lost, somewhere between here and there, unable to focus on any one thing as he rolls the name around on his tongue, tasting the distant memories there while they play out against the cavern walls for only his eyes to see.

“Kirishima was my-” he pauses, gritting his teeth together as his knuckles turn white around the skewer, “…he was my friend.”

The man stands to his feet, discarding the half-cooked slab of meat into the fire, “If Kirishima sent you, then things must be bad.”

You nod, striding forward until you are just close enough that his body heat is intoxicating, and the scent from earlier, the one that makes your head spin with saccharine promises, fills your nostrils until you cannot make out anything else.

“We need your help,” you say, voice wavering in the middle, “Deku has started to search for every hero, every renegade, and he’s murdering them. I came to bring you back to the rest of those who are still fighting. You are a legend, if we have your help, there’s no way we’ll lose.”

A wry smirk adorns his mouth, quirking his lips upward, “Kid, I don’t know who told you I was a legend, or that I’d be of any help, but I’m out here for a reason.”

“Just come back with me,” you plead, resisting the desire to wrap your fists around his tank and pull, “we need you.”

There is a hesitant look in his vermilion irises, something that tells you he is still hiding something. But, he straightens his spine anyway, a deep breath puffing out his chest, “I always did like to kick Deku’s ass.”

You cannot contain the beaming smile on your face, even when you turn on your heels to begin walking out of the cave and back to the light.

Which keeps you from seeing the dejected look in his eyes.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

Weeks of planning the perfect attack have brought you and Ground Zero closer.

Although now you know him as Bakugou Katsuki.

When he first reunited with Kirishima, and his presence was made known to your rag-tag team, you were shaken at the realization that legends are people too. Even in his vigilante times, Bakugou still held that same spark that lit his flame throughout the duration of his time at Yuuei, much of which he spent with Kirishima by his side.

“Holy shit, man!” Kirishima reaches around his shoulders for a hug, which Bakugou hardly reciprocates, “I can’t believe Ground Zero is you!”

There are moments where you catch his gaze lingering on you – when you are cooking dinner, when you chop firewood – and of course your eyes find him too. He trains shirtless most of the time, body on display as the sweat rolls down his body. His knuckles are bruised and his body is battered, and yet he continues to get up every day and start all over again.

You do note that you have not seen him use his quirk, not since he arrived at your renegade hideaway. It seems to be in reverie of everything going on, but from what you remember, Bakugou Katsuki was not a shy man, never one to keep himself from the spotlight. It is why he is the only one who pushed himself hard enough to compete with Deku, and to stay as his rival.

When you ask Kirishima, he just shrugs it off, “He probably doesn’t want any attention. Would you, if you felt like you had run away when the world needed another hero?”

So you co-exist. He near you, and you near him. Always orbiting, but never colliding.

There are times where you allow your affections to slip. When you’re passing him by, a gentle palm on his hip to alert him of your presence. When he reaches above you to pull a weapon off the shelf, his hand finds purchase at the base of your spine, as if steadying himself even though he is one of the sturdiest men you have ever seen.

There is a moment, a drunken haze, that leads you to believe he might even kiss you, however it is gone before it has the ability to flower into anything more.

Time passes, months that feel like years, of tracking and sleuthing and killing. There is murder on both sides, and you have both suffered losses.

One night he finds you, sitting on the beach, your tears glittering like starlight on your cheeks.

“This is war,” he says, squatting in the sand, “none of us is innocent.”

You sniffle, rubbing your arm against your face to rid it of your transgressions, “And what about those who want to be?”

Bakugou reaches forward, a careful palm gliding over your cheek as a new bout of tears springs forth like a leak. You can’t see the sad smile on his face through your tears, your vision glassy and clouded, and he is thankful that you cannot spot his weakness. He brushes the tears away and turns your head with the gentle flick of his wrist, “We’ll get there when we get there.”

You want to crumble, to falter and fall into a million shards of glass, and he knows this. He must, because there’s no way that the pressure of the lives of the rest of the world does not eat away at one’s soul until there is nothing but barren earth left. You circle your hand around his wrist, leaning your cheek into his palm so you can feel the heat of him and find comfort in his touch.

“What if we never get there?”

You can’t look at him, not when your scars are on display. Your heart wrenches in your chest and the pain is like a thousand cuts littered across your body until you are nothing but bleeding wounds. In your mind, you’ve succumbed to the sea of red, drowning in it, choking on it.

Bakugou does a strange thing then. He presses his other palm to your waist, drawing you forward so he can kiss the smooth skin of your forehead, “Don’t be an idiot.”

And then he turns to leave.

Your forehead burns like a blister with the echo of his affections.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

The time finally comes.

After months of research and loss, there is a plan.

“We know where he’s hiding,” Kirishima points to a central location on the map, releasing a breath as he looks up to Bakugou, “the guards will change shift at midnight, and that’s when you’ll attack. We’ll be on the ground to distract any other, smaller threats, but we’re counting on you to take him down in the end.”

Bakugou shoves Kirishima, but he falters himself, eyes unable to focus on any one thing, “I know, idiot. You didn’t bring me all the way out here to take my victory from me.”

You smile at the scene, catching his gaze as he turns to look back at the rest of the room. There is a crack in his armor when he sees you, confidence melting into something else, another emotion you can’t quite pin down. And you’re not sure if you really want to.

The rest of the meeting is all logistics, something you have already heard a dozen times, so you find yourself wandering along the coastline, the night air washing like a balm over you, sea salt in your lungs when you breathe. Your feet are barely in the water, but enough for it to lap up around your ankles with foam when the waves crest to shore. You hold yourself around the middle, as if you might be able to keep your broken pieces from shattering if you squeeze tightly enough.

Tears of salt match that of the ocean as the droplets roll down your cheeks, hanging on your jaw until they are too weighty, and then they fall into the seawater, melded together as if they belong. Your fingers ache, digging into your biceps to give yourself some sort of anchor while you watch the moon and stars shift in the night sky.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

The words are reminiscent of the first time you met, all those months ago. They make you smile, a gentle huff of a laugh escaping your lips, even if the gesture does not quite reach your eyes. You turn to look at him over your shoulder, arms still wrapped around your torso, the jagged edges of your soul sinking in deeper the more you try to hide your faltering pieces.

“Thinking,” you answer quietly, soft voice almost overwhelmed by the waves.

Bakugou is drawn in closer, as if you are the sea, a siren calling to him from the beyond, and he strides forward until he is parallel with you. His eyes watch the waves, but the pull is to you, and he can only resist for so long.

“It’s just Deku,” he is trying to reassure you, reaching out to rest his palm on your neck, sifting fingers through the hair at the nape of it. “I won’t lose to him, not again.”

This brings your attention to his eyes, your body turning so you can approach him head-on, fear wracking your body like a storm. You gaze up at him, jaw quivering under the stress of your teeth grinding against one another, “Why did he do it?”

His hand glides from your neck to your jaw, tilting your eyes upward so you cannot look away from him, in spite of how difficult this conversation might be to have. He has not spoken of his childhood rival for what feels like an eternity; airing out his burdened confessions is but a foreign concept. He would rather keep them bottled away within the cage of his ribs, until the poison slowly dredges through his veins and he can fall away into some deep sleep brought on by death.

“No one could have expected it,” Bakugou starts, thumb tracing the curve of your jaw as he speaks, like the ministrations may give him the groundwork to have the conversation, “but One for All had too many wielders, had grown too powerful. Deku’s body couldn’t contain it and still stay sane.”

Bakugou looks frustrated, his brow tugged so his forehead wrinkles. You reach up to brush your thumb over the creased skin, “I’ve heard the stories. That the call to power was too strong, and he never told anyone because he was afraid of being weak.”

“Izuku has never been weak.”

His voice is ragged, as if glass has been lodged into his throat to inhibit his speech. Bakugou turns his head so you cannot see the emotion welling up in his eyes, “All Might should have seen it, but by the time he caught it, Deku had already gone mad. He snapped All Might’s neck on live television, the fucking bastard.”

The heaviness of the situation sits on your shoulders and you wonder if Bakugou has ever felt the burden of Atlas; you recall the significant burden weighing you down when you were first sent to retrieve him. Your mortal body wanted to crumble beneath the importance of your mission, you can’t even begin to fathom the overwhelming guilt he must be riddled with every day from the moment he wakes until he falls asleep.

“Then he came after the rest of us, one-by-one. Todoroki was next, then Uraraka.” Bakugou swallows the thick, pent-up emotion settled in his throat like barbed wire. He steels his gaze, even though it is only focused on the moon. “Kirishima was able to take a group of heroes and hide out when Deku came for me.”

You recall the fight like a movie playing on the backs of your eyelids. Bakugou and Deku fighting head to head, lightning and explosions igniting the swirling storm the unfurled around them. Pouring rain and debris flying, small tornados brought on by the use of Deku’s quirk, destroying the nearby buildings until there was nothing left.

Bakugou’s voice is heady, hands fallen from your face as if he no longer deserves to touch you. He takes a step backward, the roaring of the ocean giving him a pause, as if he were listening to the water for some sort of encouragement to continue his tale, to keep fighting.

You can’t help but wonder if losing the proverbial fight against Deku has tarnished his soul much deeper than he would ever admit, if his body has been at war with itself for years, unable to choose a side, unable to relent.

“I fought him for what felt like hours. Whatever One for All had done to him, corrupted his mind, broken his spirit,” Bakugou shakes his head, a snarl on his lips, “that wasn’t Deku that I was fighting. That was someone else.”

His breath hitches, “I-I’m not sure what the fuck possessed him to do what he did next, but he took-”

Bakugou’s throat bobs and his eyes flit from you to the water, unable to look at you in the face as he gnaws on his lower lip. The words must be too harsh, a pain running much further than skin deep. You know that his soul must be bruised, the very core of him broken beyond recognition.

“Took what, Katsuki?” you ask gently, reaching to tug his chin back so he is looking down at you, “You can tell me.”

Bakugou’s breathing is labored, quick, a mixture of frustration and anguish pressing down on his throat like a pair of hands, encasing his esophagus in a tight grip. He shakes his head, “He, uh- he let me go.”

It sounds disingenuous coming from his mouth, as if he’s forcing a lie through his teeth, his voice grating against his gums like metal. You reach out to touch his arm, but he sloughs you off with a quick movement, taking a step and pushing you further. Tears glisten in his eyes, but he does not let them fall; he cannot lose the battle with his body too. He looks up to the moon and lets loose a feral growl, crumbling to his knees and digging his hands into the wet sand, like tearing into it might provide him some sort of release.

“And then I tucked my fucking tail and I ran. Like a goddamn coward.” Bakugou’s jaw is rippling when he snaps his attention to you, eyes ablaze with red fire, “And that’s the hero you all claim to have needed. I wasn’t a hero, I was a fucking pussy. I was weak.”

Bakugou rises from the water, a murderous glare in his eyes, “And now I’m done being weak. I’m going to finish what I couldn’t before, I’m going to kill the bastard.”

You have let him vent his personal failures into the air, but now it is your turn to speak. Circling your fingers around his wrists, you pull yourself closer to him, as if the two of you are bound by an invisible thread.

“You’re not going alone,” you tell him, voice sure. You stand rooted in the ground, feet dug deep in the sand, “I won’t let you.”

He rolls his eyes, blowing a breath out of his nose, “And you think I’ll let you? No fucking way.”

The words sit on your tongue, burning like embers, syllables you’ve been stoking for months as you’ve grown closer to him. Your body rises up on your toes on instinct alone, eyelashes fluttering shut as you take him in one last time. You grit your teeth and a breath shudders from your lungs, shattering your heart like glass.

Your fingers traipse up his torso, climbing over the mounds of muscle that he has worked so hard to perfect. You feel the heat of tears well up in the back of your eyes, your vision blurred as you try to memorize everything about him in the short time you have left. When your palms reach his cheeks, fingertips dancing against warm, tanned skin, you can’t help but to tug yourself closer.

He can barely protest before you have melded your mouth to his, arching your back so your chest is flush with the broad plane of muscle in front of you. Bakugou hesitates, but just as you are about to pull away and profusely apologize, his arms snake around your waist to yank you closer. Your hips roll into his reflexively, finding the hardened length of his cock almost instantly.

Bakugou’s kiss is bruising, a heated ferocity driving him forward to part your lips at the seams, delving his tongue between your teeth at the first chance he receives. You moan at his affections, your hands threading through his hair, pinkies finding the stubble of his undercut while the others sift between blonde locks.

Tears are pushed from your eyelids, and he feels them against his cheeks as he kisses you. Bakugou slips his hands under the thin fabric of your tattered shirt, warmth spreading from the base of your spine outward to every extremity.

“I won’t lose you,” you manage between breaths, forcing the words out despite the possibility of his rejection.

Bakugou does not stop loitering affection over you like it were his job just because you show a moment of vulnerability. Rather, he’s spurred on by the admission, his hands digging deeper into your muscles now, most likely leaving bruises in their wake, and his teeth and tongue are merciless on your mouth.

The palms of his hands slowly drift down until he has cupped your thighs, his body folded just enough to give him a better angle to pull you up into the air. You hold in a squeal, unwilling to alert the rest of the camp, quickly wrapping your legs around his waist.

He breaks the kiss as oxygen begs his airways to open up once more, heaving breaths making his chest expand with sharp inhales. Through gasping breaths, he shakes his head, “I’m not going anywhere.”

You’re not sure how best to beg him to take you for all you’re worth here on the beach, but somehow you must silently communicate it, because he finds a secluded place and lays you down there, your back dug into the ground, but you are rather uncaring to it all. Your hands can’t find enough of him, insatiable in your efforts to map him out to memory, burning the impression of him into your mind so you may never lose him, even if something tragic were to part the two of you forever.

Bakugou’s fingers make quick work of the button of your shorts, delving his hand inside to brush at the bare folds of your core, already slick with arousal. He chuckles, nudging his nose over your neck, “Prepared for this, were you?”

A laugh is cut short by a whine, his teeth sinking into your jugular, sucking harshly on the skin there. Your hands find his shoulders, blunt nails bludgeoning the skin of his shoulders so he is seething into your body, curses flying from his lips as if they might brand your flesh if he whispers them hotly enough.

You whimper his name as he sheathes his fingers within you, two knuckles stretching your inner walls, scissored fingers making you throw your head back. Your body does not feel like your own, every wanton moan and twitch of your muscles in response to his salacious ministrations, reactions that you cannot fight, even if you wanted to.

Giving in, you reach down desperately, clawing your nails at the waistband of his cargo pants, uncaring as to how you get your palm underneath his underwear. Bakugou uses the hand not buried in your pussy to grab you by the wrist, pinning your hand over your head.

“You’re a needy little slut, hah?” Bakugou tightens his grip and speeds up his pace, earning him a wriggle from your body as you try to fight back. He smirks, teeth and gums on full display as he glowers down at you, “Don’t you worry, baby, I’m gonna give you my cock. Be patient.”

You whine in response, tilting your head to try and capture his lips again. Bakugou finds you halfway, his mouth parted so you can begin mapping out the curves of his teeth with your tongue. You kiss him as if your life may depend on it, like the time you are sharing may end at any moment.

You kiss him like he may die tomorrow.

There is fervor and passion and admiration conveyed with each smacking of your lips, your noses brushing when you try to angle yourselves to become closer. All the while, his middle and fourth fingers are working you forward into the throws of pleasure, lightning striking your core whenever his fingers brush up against your glutinous walls in just the right manner.

“Katsuki, please,” you beg of him, dragging your nails over the corded muscle of his shoulders. You can feel yourself slipping already, the impending doom of what is to come giving your body more urgency.

Bakugou growls when he feels your cunt clamp around his fingers, the thought of his cock within your tight hole making him dick twitch. You buck up when the head of his length brushes your thigh in his arousal, seeking him out despite the fullness you already feel from his digits pumping up into your heat.

Your whole body is shaking with the threat of your impending orgasm on the horizon, brought on by his disastrous fingers urging you forward. You cry out for him, wanton and begging as you pant his name repeatedly, rocking your hips with the rhythm of his fingers. Bakugou’s eyes roam your body as he leans back from you, gaze immediately drawn to the bounce of your plush chest. With each thrust of his fingers, your body quivers, and he knows he won’t be able to last apart from you for much longer, regardless.

As his fingers slowly peel from you, a whine tears your chest wide open. Tears drip down over your cheeks, a mixture of emotion and erotica giving the sound much more conviction. Bakugou feels the reverberations of your voice in his chest, stirring him to brush your silken slick along the length of his cock, pumping his shaft a few times before repositioning himself above you.

Bakugou rolls his wrist so the tip of his dick butterflies your pussy lips. You pant at the exhilaration of it all, your cunt fluttering as he pulls himself away from you only to bring it all back. His teasing strokes make your head spin, eyes barely able to peel open to look up at him. Your tongue lolls out of your mouth, and Bakugou leans forward to tug the muscle between his teeth, earning him an animalistic howl from the back of your throat.

The plea from you gives him the last push he needs to rut forward and claim you in one fatal stroke.

Your hands sink into him like hooks, eyes screwed shut as he starts to suck on your tongue. Bakugou’s breath spills over you like a wash of heat, sending a shudder down your spine. He uses his hands to grip you by the thighs, yanking you closer so your hips are flush as he sinks all the way into you all over again.

“Ka-” you can barely make a sound with the way his mouth has destroyed yours, suffocating you until you are lightheaded with the thought of him. As you struggle beneath him, Bakugou releases you in favor of leaning back to watch as his cock separates your walls and fills your cunt until it stretches to fit his thick girth.

You are a blubbering mess the moment he allows you space to breathe. Your hands can’t find enough of him to paint with your touch, nails dragging thin, angry red lines into his thighs, and your throat only knows how to say his name.

“Good girl,” he chuckles, watching you come undone beneath him, “I can’t wait to feel you come all over my cock.”

His dick is rutting into you at an impeccable pace, the tip of his cock brushing against your walls as he twitches from your tight pussy. Bakugou digs his fingers into the skin of your thighs, likely bruising them with the intensity of his grip, pushing your knees back until they are pressed against your chest so he can fuck into you from above.

You lick your lips, thin rivulets of drool seeping out of the corners of your mouth, “Please, Bakugou, I-I wanna come.”

The desire to rip your arousal from you until you cannot speak in full sentences gives him a fiery drive, his hips slamming into your ass as filthy words fall from his lips. You can feel his cock bottoming out within your cunt, thickening with each stroke of his hips as he grows closer to the end himself. You beg for his spend, for him to coat you until you are dripping with his seed, the mixture of your arousal and his pre seeping from your lips and furthering the wet sounds that echo whenever his balls slap against your ass.

“You wanna come on my cock, yeah?” he asks, voice dithering the longer he’s within you. You are begging him now, your back arched forward so you can seek him out with wide eyes and pleading palms. He soaks in the affections, your hands on his face and in his hair, your lips finding purchase on whatever part of his body you can reach.

A snarl makes his throat shake and, if possible, he rips into your even further, growling voice speaking into your ear as you fall back against the ground at the sheer force of his hips, “Then fucking come, slut.”

His words are all you need to push you into the next plane of existence, where a shattering orgasm racks your body. You convulse around his cock, the newfound tightness as you milk your own release pushing him over the crest as well. He drives his cock as deep into you as he can, your hips flush at the juxtaposition of your sex as he spurts up into your core. You feel the heat of his release, the twitch of his cock, and your limbs grow numb from effort.

Bakugou leans forward so he is balancing himself on his forearms, nosing over the swell of your chest and the column of your neck, small, chaste kisses littered over your skin like stars. He sighs, nudging your collarbone, “You’re not coming with me tomorrow. I won’t lose you too.”

Your heart sings at his admission, and your spirit wants to argue, but when he kisses you again, you can’t find it within yourself to tell him otherwise.

*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*

“All right, man,” Kirishima claps him on the back, leaning against the brick wall of the alleyway.

You can tell that there is much more he wants to say, but Bakugou has never had much patience for any sort of sappy confession, so all that passes between them is a nod of understanding. You, on the other hand, are careless in your affection, launching yourself forward to wrap your arms around his neck and kiss him full on the mouth, uncaring for the onlookers unbeknownst to your time together.

When you pull away, there are tears in your eyes, but you force the words between your teeth regardless, “Don’t die on me.”

Bakugou’s eyes are sad, holding such a dark color in his usually bright irises, “A real hero always comes out on top, no matter what.”

Usually it is said with much conviction, but this time, it sounds like he is trying to convince himself more so than anyone else. Your hands palm over his face, committing him to memory one last time before he turns his back to you, headed towards the end of the line, unknowing as to which side he may end up on this time.

As soon as he steps out onto the pavement, he’s greeted with the familiar laughter of an old friend.

“Oi, Kacchan. It’s been too long.”

Your heart leaps into your throat and Kirishima has to hold you back, hidden away in the shadows. You look at him over your shoulder, eyes blown wide as your pupils swallow your irises, “H-He was supposed to be alone.”

The look in Kirishima’s eyes is haunting, a desolate gaze turned on his best friend. He tightens his jaw and breathes heavily through his nostrils, an answer never given as he watches on in horror at the scene in front of him unfolding.

“I thought I told you to get lost,” Deku speaks, voice confusingly innocent despite the feral look in his eyes. A cackle parts his lips and you’ve never seen Bakugou this quiet during a fight, “But, then again, wouldn’t a fight between the All Mighty Deku and a Quirkless Kacchan be entertaining?”

Your whole world turns sideways.

Bakugou’s words from the very beginning replay on loop in your mind as your breathing corrupts your own lungs, shattered and shaking as your body coats itself in sweat.

“I fought him for what felt like hours. Whatever One for All had done to him, corrupted his mind, broken his spirit,” Bakugou shakes his head, a snarl on his lips, “that wasn’t Deku that I was fighting. That was someone else.”

His breath hitches, “I-I’m not sure what the fuck possessed him to do what he did next, but he took-”

Bakugou’s throat bobs and his eyes flit from you to the water, unable to look at you in the face as he gnaws on his lower lip. The words must be too harsh, a pain running much further than skin deep. You know that his soul must be bruised, the very core of him broken beyond recognition.

“Took what, Katsuki?” you ask gently, reaching to tug his chin back so he is looking down at you, “You can tell me.”

Bakugou’s breathing is labored, quick, a mixture of frustration and anguish pressing down on his throat like a pair of hands, encasing his esophagus in a tight grip. He shakes his head, “He, uh- he let me go.”

Bakugou Katsuki is quirkless.

Now more than ever you want to dart out into the street, to throw yourself down like a sacrificial lamb for the slaughter. Whatever it takes to keep Katsuki safe. Tears blur your vision and anger scars your heart, marring up the organ until you cannot feel it beating within your own chest.

Bakugou turns his head, vermilion eyes seeking you out in the darkness of the alleyway. He smiles, for the first time in full, and offers you one final look at his body completely intact before he returns his gaze to his childhood rival, hands turning to fists at his sides as he gets into his fighting position.

“So pathetic, Kacchan.” Deku looks Bakugou in the eyes as he ignites his quirk, green lightning dancing around as a storm begins to brew. 

He holds up his hands, palms open-faced as his skin crackles, the sweet smell of saccharine turning to ash in the air. Colors of orange and yellow cast frightening shadows along the length of the street, a familiar power exploding on the cusp of Deku’s fingers.

“And now you die.”

-

a/n: i don’t think that went how anyone thought it would! it’s a lot different from anything i’ve ever done, and i’m not fully happy with it. but thank you for reading, if you got this far!! 

[a-n-conrad]

Starcrossed (Dabi x Reader)

[Summary: Being a hero makes dating a little hard. Most heroes either don’t do committed relationships or end up in pretty forced, unhealthy ones. You figured you’d be alone until you either died or retired until you fell in love with a villain.

Warnings: Swearing, alcohol mention, injuries, blood, knives, Endeavor, not canon]

It was a pretty boring day when you met him, to be honest. A regular patrol. You were on your own since your agency was still pretty small and you only had two sidekicks, who you didn’t want to be alone on the streets. You were a bit protective of them. You were a relatively young hero, but you knew that you could hold your own. You trusted them, but they were still just sidekicks. They were your responsibility, and you took that pretty seriously.

Patrols were usually the most boring part of your job. Meet a few civilians. Take a few pictures. Smile and nod while they talked about other heroes. You weren’t very well known, so you didn’t exactly have a very big fanbase of your own. It was getting a little old having to explain that, no, you weren’t friends with All Might. That even the top heroes that you did know weren’t really your friends, and that you just worked together. That, no, you couldn’t say hi to Hawks for them. And no, you weren’t going to give Midnight their number. 

You were on your way back to your office and it was starting to get dark. You were always a little more cautious when it started to get dark. Your quirk was shadow-based so it’s a little harder to use at night when there aren’t really that many shadows. It was during one of your overly cautious glances into the alleys that you noticed the bright blue eyes watching you. They looked like Endeavor’s, but you knew that there was someone a little more dangerous with those eyes to keep watch for. And the shining of the staples signaled that you were right in your second guess. The League of Villains was in your section of the city. Dabi was in your section of the city. Shit.

He broke the eye contact that you had with him to turn on his heel, heading into the alley that he had been lingering in. It took you a second before you thought to follow. You jump into a shadow, hoping to follow a little more stealthily, using your quirk. Manipulating the shadows to cover you so that you wouldn’t be seen. 

“You know that I know you’re following me, right?” He sighed as you reached a secluded section of the alley, “It’s cute that you’re trying though.”

“What are you here for?” You asked, stepping out of the shadows.

“Not ‘work’ if that’s what you’re worried about, sweetheart,” His voice was almost a little amused, despite the fact that he seemed so bored with everything. Something about his voice made you pretty sure that if you were in a different situation, you’d swoon a bit, “Look, Doll, I’m not in the mood to fight you, so maybe we can just both go on our way. I won’t cause you any trouble. Tonight, at least.”

“And why would I let you go? Do you realize exactly how much of a wanted man you are?” Why hadn’t you attacked him yet? Tried to restrain him in any way? Were you just waiting for him to get the drop on you?

“Aren’t you bored?”

“Bored?” What the hell kind of game was he playing?

“All the posing and smiling and playing nice while everyone ignores you for people like Endeavor?” His voice held a special brand of venom for the flame hero, “It’s gotta get exhausting. How do you play nice all the time? Don’t you just want to do something bad?”

“I’m working my way up,” Why were you indulging him? You didn’t have to answer his questions.

“Working your way up? I’ve seen you on the news. You genuinely help people. I’ve seen you on those debates trying to advocate for counseling for villains,” He rolled his eyes, “They’ll never actually let you rise in the rankings.”

You knew that. You’ve gotten enough “subtle” threats from the commission to figure that out. But why did he care? “What’s it to you anyway?”

“You know, this may sound weird,” He finally looked you in the eyes, that shade of blue looked so good on him, “I kinda like you.”

- - - - -

You let him go that night. And you had been seeing him more and more since then. And every time, as long as he promised not to cause any trouble in your area of town, you’d let him go. You had started to actually look forward to your talks. And you had started to worry when you went too long without seeing him.

Eventually, he had started coming to your apartment. It was safer than having discussions out in the open. You’d just come home from a night of patrols and find him half-asleep on the couch of your apartment.

One night you came home a little later than usual. One of the other agencies across town had insisted on a meeting since they had been having a bit of trouble with a small gang of new villains that they had a feeling was crashing in your turf. When you walked in the door you were greeted by the usual shine of the hallway light reflecting off of his staples, but you were missing his blue eyes. Usually, by then you’d already hear some sort of snarky greeting, but everything was quiet.

You flipped in the light to see him, lying on the couch, slumped over with his usual white shirt slowly turning more and more red.

“For fuck’s sake, Dabi,” you say, rushing over to crunch next to where he was sitting, “What the hell happened.”

He groaned and opened his eyes, smirking as he looked at you, “You’re pretty cute when you’re worried.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“A mission went bad,” He said, trying to sit up, only for you to push him back down, “Boss told us to lay low for a bit and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

You sighed and left to grab the first-aid kit. You knew there was no way he could go to the hospital, but you also weren’t about to let him bleed out on your couch. No matter how much of an idiot he could be sometimes, “Take your shirt off.”

“That’s moving a little fast there, dollface.”

“Shut the hell up and let me make sure you don’t die,” You quipped back, rolling his eyes, “Do you need some booze or can you handle the pain?”

“I’m a big kid, doll,” He groaned, throwing the torn shirt on the floor and the jacket on the couch next to him.

He laid back as you brought all the equipment over. He had a pretty decent gash across his chest. It was deep, but not too deep for you to deal with. It’d leave a scar. But considering the amount scars he already had painted across his body, you figured he wouldn’t mind all that much.

“This might burn a little,” you say, before pouring a little bit of hydrogen peroxide on the cut. He didn’t even flinch. You supposed he was used to pain enough that this was nothing. It honestly made you sad to think about all of the pain he must have been through in his life.

You pulled out one of your sanitized needles that you kept in the kit and a bit of surgical thread that you had convinced a doctor friend of yours to give you for free. You were stitching yourself up a lot, and you weren’t exactly proud of having to buy medical supplies that often. At least the practice was coming in handy. 

It took you about an hour to sew him all up, and another few minutes to get him bandaged up. At least he was cooperative. It was actually a lot neater than you expected. Hopefully, it would heal alright.

“You’re staying here for the next week at least,” You command. You’d have to make sure that no one came over and that all of your blinds were closed the entire time, but you were sure you could pull it off. You had to make sure that his stitches didn’t break and that the cut didn’t get infected.

“Stay where, darling, the couch? It’s not exactly comfortable,” He chuckled, obviously trying to lighten the mood. You were starting to be able to read him a bit better. It always made him uncomfortable when you cared about him. He wasn’t used to anyone trying to protect him, so he didn’t know how to handle it. You just had to insist. 

“No, idiot. You take the bed. I’m not even home often enough to need it, I’ll take the couch.”

“Oh, come on, doll. I may be a villain, but I’m not stealing your bed after you sew me up. I don’t need charity.”

“Fine, then we’ll share, you big baby.”

You could see him think about. You wondered if he’d refuse, “Alright, one condition, though,” He said, the usual joking tone in his voice, “Kiss me.”

You know he didn’t actually expect it. He was teasing you, as he often did. But you did. You kissed him. You didn’t think you would, but you did. His lips were rough, and the staples that touched the sides of your mouths were surprisingly cold. You’d think that his body heat would warm them up, but apparently not. It was new, but you wouldn’t say it was bad. It definitely wasn’t bad.

He froze at first, not expecting you to actually kiss him. You took it to mean that he didn’t actually want you to kiss him, and started to pull away. However, before you could actually pull away too far from the kiss, you felt a hand on the back of your head, tangling in your hair and pushing you back into the kiss. It was rough, but somehow also sweet. He tasted a bit like ash and cigarettes and whiskey and you wondered if he always tasted like that. And you wondered why you cared what he always tasted like. 

Eventually, you had to pull back for air. He looked at you with his fiery blue eyes, a little glazed over, and pupils blown out, and you felt your heart skip a beat. He was so pretty. His eyes and his hair. Even the map of scars painting rivers and caverns across the landscape of his body. Fuck. You were hopeless. You had to be the worst hero in the world to fall in love with a villain. But you wouldn’t change it.

“I think I definitely have to take you up on that offer to share a bed now, honey,” He winked at you, and you led him to your room.

- - - - -

You and Dabi had been together in secret for months when you got the call from Endeavor. It was usual for a high ranking hero to talk to the lower running heroes if they were going to be doing an operation in their district. Especially if their quirk could be helpful. And your quirk was plenty helpful in fights. 

He wanted you to help him with stopping a villain attack on a local hero agency. Apparently, one of the other agencies in town had intercepted some of the League of Villains’ goons and had confiscated some sort of new weapon that they had been carrying. Apparently the League wanted it back. And apparently they were sending some people to get it that night. And you’d have to be an idiot to throw away the career-boosting move of helping the now number one hero help take down some of Japan’s Most Wanted. You just hoped you wouldn’t have to face Dabi.

Of course, your hopes were quickly dashed when your eyes met the fiery blue ones that you had gotten so well acquainted with. You hoped he understood why you were on opposing sides, but you didn’t get a chance to even try to read him before Endeavor throw a fireblast directly at him. You froze for just a moment. Just long even to end up with a knife in your side, thanks to the little serial killer that they had adopted, named Himiko Toga.

“Shit,” You didn’t want to fight her, either. She was still a kid. She was in her high school uniform. Obviously she needed help, and you didn’t understand how anyone could possibly fight her full force without guilt. But you needed to. 

She lunged at you, a grin on her face and a new knife in her hand. You quickly dodged and used the shadows to push her back. It was getting pretty dark, so your quirk was kind of weak at the moment. 

It was a struggle. She was faster than you, especially since you already had a knife wedged between your ribs. You were managing, though. At least, well enough. You were starting to get a bit dizzy, but you had managed to keep her from getting any more hits in. 

About ten minutes into the fight things started heating up. Literally. Dabi and Endeavor had been facing off against each other. You had a feeling there was some sort of history there, but you had never really asked Dabi. You had a feeling he couldn’t really tell you without revealing a ton of his past. And he was pretty private about that. 

Either way, the two of them were facing off without much thought about anyone else. Before you knew it, flames had engulfed most of the building that you were fighting in. The mix of blue and orange flames showed that neither one of them was holding back. But it was getting hard for the rest of you to continue fighting. The flames were starting to lap at your legs and your uniform was starting to get a little singed. 

Just before Toga could lunge at you again, somehow ignoring all of the fire, a warp gate appeared. It was a signature of Kurogiri, meaning it was time for the League to leave. Either they got what they wanted, or they were running out of time. You couldn’t help but hope Dabi would just leave.

“Oh,” Toga sounded a little disappointed, “It looks like it’s time to go. And I was actually having some fun.”

She took off and you didn’t even try to stop her. Your legs were starting to give out. You had lost a lot of blood. You were pretty sure you couldn’t even chase her if you tried. You just watched as the Vanguard Action Squad of the League of Villains started to flee. And Dabi didn’t.

You watched as he and Endeavor continue to face off while his friends tried to pull him away. They continued to throw flames at each other for a good two minutes until you noticed something off with Endeavor. He was charging up for a “Hellfire Storm”, which he didn’t use all that often. He was going to do anything to capture Dabi. Even if it meant killing him.

Before you could even think about it, you activated your quirk and jumped into the shadow right in front of Dabi. Just as Endeavor fired off his attack, you used your quirk to create a bubble around you and Dabi. You were straining your quirk, that was for sure. And you had no clue how long you’d be able to hold out, but hopefully longer than Endeavor.

Your nose started bleeding and the shield you created started falling apart. There were cracks and holes where the flames were starting to peak through, but you weren’t about to give up. Dabi was frozen behind you as this all went down. You just hoped he’d be able to get out once you dropped the shield.

Eventually, Endeavor let up. It felt like hours, but you were sure it wasn’t nearly that long. Your brain was pretty fuzzy and your vision was starting to go black. As you dropped the bubble, your legs finally gave out. The last thing you registered before the world went black was a pair of arms wrapping around you.

- - - - -

You woke up what you were pretty sure was a few days later. Your limbs were sore and your head was still fuzzy. You were so goddamn thirsty. And you weren’t in your apartment. Where were you exactly?

“Thank god, you finally woke up,” You heard next to you. It was a familiar voice, though it held a whole lot more relief than you were used to, “I thought you died on me.”

“This was revenge for you bleeding all over my couch,” you rasped, “Can you get me some water or something?”

“Already ahead of you,” He handed you a glass of water. You took a sip, realizing just how thirsty you were. Your throat was so sore. How long had you been out?

“Alright, update me,” You said once you set the glass down, “I have a feeling there’s a lot I need to know.”

“You mean like how you’re now a wanted villain? Or how I got Shiggy to let you stay as long as you promise not to turn any of us in.”

Wanted villain, huh? It was kind of funny. You had a feeling you got more news coverage from just that than you ever had as a hero. To be honest, you feel like you might do more good as a villain too.

“Welcome to the League, (Y/n),” He said, “If you’ll join, that is.”

[Might do a part two if requested?]

[yandere-daydreams]

Hello! I'm new to your blog but I have very much enjoyed your work! Esp your Dabi w Deku's darling series, you write Dabi in a way that makes my heart soft and it's a nice way to see him written. I was curious if you may share headcanons or a drabble following up the last part of their interactions, so further healing of the two of them moving on/coping w their respective past traumas? Maybe even some fluffy romance if possible! Hope this finds you well and best of luck with your writing! 💖💖💖

While I will leave the nature of Dabi and his Not-Darling’s relationship ambiguous, I figured I might as well give him the birthday present he deserves. Here’s a link to the Masterlist for this series, but it’s easier to take fluff for what it is, honestly.

TW: Past Abuse (Physical and Emotional), Guilt Over Abandonment, Panic Attacks, and Mentions of PSTD. 

~

“Do you have a lighter?”

Dabi couldn’t help but chuckle, watching as you sloppily threw together another round of shots with ingredients you had spent far too long looking for. Kurogiri had given up trying to limit the League’s alcohol consumption hours ago, instead turning his attention towards Shigaraki and the boy in pink he was sitting next to, Toga and her own guest having been deemed a lost cause as soon as they noticed an old dartboard hung on the back wall, Twice still attempting to edge his way into their game without ending up on the wrong side of half a dozen knives. “I am the lighter,” He replied, reaching out and letting a small, blue flicker of a flame form in his palm for emphasis. “Don’t say you’re trying to replace me, dollface.”

You pouted, batting his hand away, your elbow throwing a spare bottle of tequila off-balance. Dabi caught it without thinking, only earning another huff and a glare on your part, but the grin tugging at your lips betrayed you. “When you start letting me dip my fingers in your drinks, I’ll let you stick yours in mine.” Again, you ducked down quickly, pawing at something under the counter for a moment before you came back up, a dusty box of matches in hand and a renew glint in your eyes. “Besides, it’s your birthday, you’re not allowed to do any work. It’s, like, birthday law.”

It took him a moment to process what you’d said, no one had mentioned his birthday in years. He might’ve told you the date in passing, but that had to be ages ago, and the fact that you remembered somehow surpassed the shock that he’d forgotten. Still, he tried not to let you see that, only slumping forward and propping himself up on the bar-top. “When you’re seven, maybe,” He countered, trying to steal one of the now-finished B-52s, only to have you move them out of his reach. “What do you want me to do, bring in cupcakes for the class?”

“I want you to relax for once, but cake wouldn’t hurt.” You were only half-focused on him, now, sparking up a match and letting it brush against the drink’s surface, not pulling your hand away fast enough to out-run the combustion. But, much to Dabi’s relief, you shook it off in a few seconds, your fingertips hardly even reddened. He had to remind himself that you were capable, these days. More than he was, at least. 

Not that he’d set the bar very high. 

“Besides,” You continued, your voice quieter than it’d been before. You didn’t seem reluctant, no traces of hesitation breaching your tone, you were just… quieter. Calmer, in a way that sobered Dabi as much as it sobered you. If only slightly. “You… you made my birthday really nice, after you took me in. I don’t think I told you, but it was the first time I went outside. For more than a few minutes, I mean.”

Dabi didn’t have to think, he knew what you were talking about instantly. It’d been a struggle to get you to do anything on your own, back then. You’d had tears in your eyes as you’d stepped out of his apartment building, and you hadn’t said a damn word the entire day, only clinging to his arm and shaking your head whenever he asked a question, not unlike Shoto on his first day of school. But, he’d been in kindergarten. You’d been in a pervert’s basement. “I can still feel your fucking nails digging into me, sometimes,” Dabi commented, no real force behind the statement. “I’m going to make you take me out somewhere nice one day, to make up for it.”

“Put on a decent shirt first, and we’ll see.” The shot was shoved in front of him unceremoniously, a drop or two spilling over the side in your eagerness. You weren’t trying to stop yourself anymore, laughing at nothing and beaming as he blew it out, his narrowed eyes enough to make what would happen if you sung graphically clear. It was still smoldering as he swallowed it, singing at his throat and leaving a sickeningly sweet aftertaste, but the fruits of your labor went down easily. You seemed content too, slamming your glass back down on the counter, if only to giggle at the sound of wood against metal.

With a sigh, Dabi stretched, leaning back on his stool. “Is that all? I’m an old man now, (Y/n), and I’m not sticking around here long enough to see Spinner fist-fight Handjob in the stockroom. I’m not cleanin’ that shit up unless I get to punch one of the bastards myself, either.”

You groaned, already fed with his social aversion, but your resolve lessened at the threat of more whining. “There’s… there’s one more thing,” You admitted, reaching into your back pocket. He recognized the game advert you’d stolen from Shigaraki last week, but hadn’t expected to see it wrapped around a small, nearly flat container. You weren’t careless with this one, placing it delicately in the hand he offered. Like you were afraid he’d break it just from holding it too tightly. “Happy birthday, Touya.”

He opened it hastily, tearing through the thin paper without reserve. The box underneath was unmarked and unlabelled, and the inside wasn’t much better, just a scrap of paper with a few numbers and a street name messily scrawled across its length. All he could do was glance up at you, expression somewhere between entertained and utterly confused. “What the fuck is this supposed to be?”

“The address to a soba shop down the street, one that stays open until the sun rises.” You shifted awkwardly, clasping your hands in front of you. “It’s where your siblings hold a memorial every year. Just the three of them. I think Rei’s going too, but I’m not sure.” With a sigh, you glanced up, meeting his eyes and steeling yourself, if only to keep from looking away. “I thought you might want to see them.”

He didn’t hesitate, crumpling the note in his hands and letting it fall back into the box, pushing himself to his feet. “I can’t do that.”

“You don’t have to,” You assured, already walking around the bar. He could’ve left, he could’ve ran, but his pulse was suddenly beating in his ears, his heart pounding against his throat, the idea of speaking becoming as impossible as executing any plans he had to flee. A soft touch on his back made him jolt, shoulders squaring into a defensive position, but the look of pure concern etched into your face was enough for a forming attack to dissipate. “I’m not going to make you. I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to, either.” There was a pause, and you pulled away. Dabi wished he could say how desperately he didn’t want you to. “But, your siblings miss their brother.”

“Fuyumi’d never forgive me.” It wasn’t an opinion, to him, the thought as objective as any other fact. “Natsuo wouldn’t, either. Not a single fucking one of them should. I’d be lucky if Shoto doesn’t arrest me on the spot.”

You shrugged, but you didn’t correct him. “I don’t think you’re right but… neither of us really know, do we? You’ll have to go if you want to find out.”

He didn’t respond, and you lowered your head, taking his silence as a signal to leave him alone. It hurt, seeing you walk away, a thousand pins and needles driving themselves into his lungs, something as simple as taking in air becoming an act of resistance. It felt like he was trying to inhale smoke, like everything around him was ash and debris and crumbling, and he was stuck in the middle of it, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. As helpless and as weak as he was back then.

But, there was something he could do, even if it limited the damage. One thing that was within his reach, or… half a block away, rather.

He caught your hand tentatively, stumbling forward to reach you. He could hear the others muttering, whispering amongst themselves, but he didn’t care, focusing on what was in front of him as you stared over your shoulder. It took another hitched stutter before he could spit something coherent out, but you waited patiently. He wondered if he’d ever be able to tell you how much he appreciated that. “I’m not embarrassing myself alone, idiot.”

For a moment, he thought you would be the one to break down, your eyes fogging over as you brought up your free hand to rub at them. But, he was able to let go of the breath he’d been holding in as you smiled, then laughed, intertwining your fingers with his as tears began to flow openly. He couldn’t tell whose they were, at this point.

He knew he was smiling, though, and he knew he couldn’t stop as you started to tug him towards the door.

“I don’t know why I ever expected you to.”

[vannahfanfics]

Rivalry

Category: Friendship Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku Midoriya

Hello, all! Here’s a story for @bnhabookclub’s Bingo Event, for the prompt “Rivals”! I hope you all enjoy it; I’ve had the idea on my mind for a long time now…

Warning! Spoilers ahead for My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising!

Everything hurt, but his arms especially. An agonized moan spilled from his lips before he even registered the action. As he lapsed into consciousness, the first thing he became aware of was the excruciating pulsing pain in his arms. It felt like they were submerged in lava, just melting away all the layers of skin until his bones relented too and crumbled into ashes. Katsuki never cried, but despite his pride, a few tormented tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes to roll down his cheeks. It hurts… It hurts so fucking much, he whined silently. For a few minutes, all he knew was that awful pain; no reality, no thought, nothing but the sharp pulsing of his destroyed tissue and nerves. Slowly, slowly, he realized that he lay on his back in refreshing grass.

Though the action pained him, Katsuki forced his eyes open just a sliver. His red eyes peeked out from beneath ash-blond lashes to behold the sky. The roiling gray clouds drifted on the trade winds, coasting away from the island. That’s right. Nabu island. Nine. Deku…! The memories clapped into his mind like lightning, sending a searing pain striking through his brain tissue. Katsuki keened and kicked his legs at the unbearable sensation. The heels of his boots dug into the earth, pushing it up into mounds as he scored trenches into the damp dirt. He remembered everything- his classmates and their valiant effort to subdue the supervillain, the children’s heroic last stand, he and Izuku fighting side-by-side, and…

Katsuki’s vermilion eyes snapped open. One for All.

There was no room for disbelief in his mind. Izuku had really passed on the Quirk to him. He could feel the electric energy of all who had come before simmering in his cells, humming just beneath the surface, waiting to be called forth. Their voices whispered in his eardrums, speaking of glory and valor and sacrifice. No, he begged them. I don’t want it. Not like this. Not like this!

A whimper from beside him caught his attention. Katsuki bit down hard on his bottom lip, knowing that turning his neck would send ribbons of pain shooting down his likely fractured spine. There was another whimper followed by a high-pitched groan. Just do it, pussy, he growled to himself. With a stubborn grunt, he wrenched his head to the left in one swift motion. His jaw then clenched tight as the shooting pain bloomed down his spinal column. A piercing scream was torn from his throat despite his efforts to swallow it. His vision blurred for a few moments, but he could still discern a smudge of pine-green hair and a ripped green-and-black hero costume.

“Deku,” Katsuki croaked. Izuku’s form gradually came into focus. The boy’s chest rose and fell with ragged, laborious breaths, and his eyes scrunched up in pain. Dirt and bruises and smudges of blood littered his face. Blood dripped from the holes of his costume. Katsuki assumed he fared similarly, based on the dull aching pulsing in every part of his body. Katsuki called Izuku’s nickname again, but the boy did not stir. If Katsuki couldn’t see his chest moving, he genuinely would’ve wondered if he was dead.

Katsuki’s crimson eyes swept the length of Izuku’s ragged form. The way his rival rested so stilly caused a visceral reaction in Katsuki; his throat constricted as sobs threatened to spill forth, and his lips wobbled as tears stung his eyes again. Despite his arms being mangled and broken, he still forced the shredded muscles to move so that he could raise a hand and touch Deku’s face. As his purple, broken finger brushed over the linear scrape on the other boy’s cheek, lightning-fire pain blasted through his over-sensitive nerves. That wasn’t what finally made the tears spill down his cheeks, though.

No, it was the fact that now, Izuku could never be a hero.

“You fucking idiot,” he cursed, voice cracking with raw emotion. “You’re an idiot, Deku!” he then shouted. “Why’d you do that, huh? You should’ve used that big stupid brain of yours to think of something better!” Yelling wouldn’t awaken the unconscious boy; Katsuki knew that. It didn’t make him feel any better, either. One for All pulsed in his cells, as if to admonish his scolding. “It’s not fair,” Katsuki whimpered. He no longer had the strength to hold up his arm, and it flopped down next to Izuku’s cheek, his fingers tangling into the sweaty, dusty fibers of his green hair. “He was gonna be a hero.”

The gray clouds parted further, spilling sunshine down upon the pair of young hero hopefuls. The light bathed Izuku’s face with a soft white glow, making him seem so innocent and angelic; meanwhile, Katsuki lay in mottled darkness, like a thief observing the victim of his crimes. That’s what he felt like- a thief. Izuku had offered him the Quirk in a rash, stupid, desperate decision, and Katsuki knew deep down that if he had refused, they would’ve died, and Nine would’ve succeeded to possibly become an even more dangerous villain than All for One. He knew that, yet his heart still ached to share a body with the Quirk. I stole it, he grieved. I stole Deku’s future.

A sudden anger flared in his body. “No,” he snarled aloud. His spine cracked as he shifted, straining his battered limb to grope around for Izuku’s hand. Every flop of his palm against the soft grass felt like a hundred knives stabbing him at once; yet, he just clenched his teeth until they threatened to shatter and continued searching. Finally, he found Izuku’s left hand. He grasped it tight, making the tendons and ligaments of his arm and shoulder wail in anguish, and pressed the small nick of his finger against the one on Izuku’s.

“You don’t get to fucking do this, asshole,” he hissed at the slumbering boy. Katsuki could feel his consciousness fading; fog drifted into the corners of his mind, and the outer edges of his vision fuzzed black. “You and I still have a lot of fighting to do. I’m gonna beat you to number-one hero, fair and square, and I can only do that if you take this goddamn Quirk back!” Their blood mixed in the small cuts. In another time, in another life, perhaps they could be friends taking the oath of eternal brotherhood. Maybe, in the back of his mind, that’s what Katsuki was doing in this life. Everything floated in dark water as his consciousness phased in and out. Please, he begged his tortured body. Just a little more time…

“Give it back,” he whispered. “Give it back to him. I can’t lose him- my rival… my friend.” Katsuki didn’t know if his effort would succeed, and if it did, if he would lose his own Quirk in the passing. At the moment, he could care less. Katsuki could become a hero without a Quirk just fine; he would do it out of spite. One for All was everything to Izuku. It was his life, his faith, his dream. After how far they had both come, Katsuki couldn’t steal Izuku’s dream. He just couldn’t.

“Please, I beg of you…” he pleaded with the invisible force inside of him. His lips curled upwards into a smirk as he felt the familiar hum in his cells of the Quirk activating. A woman laughed amiably within his mind.

You care a lot about him, don’t you?

“Don’t you ever tell him, lady, or you and I will have words,” he warned. The woman’s jovial laughter echoed in his skull again. When Izuku had gifted him the power, Katsuki had felt the oddest sensation of warm energy flooding his body, starting at his finger and spreading outwards. This time, he felt the opposite. It felt like all the warmth was being siphoned from him, leaving him cold and exposed. Izuku’s right arm ignited with red streaks like lightning as the Quirk returned to him.

Don’t worry. We’ll take care of him, several voices chimed in Katsuki’s head. He flopped against the ground with relief, and a shaky laugh rumbled in his lungs.

“You’d better,” he rasped as his eye began to drift shut. The clouds had parted completely now, bearing the full brunt of the sun. Katsuki’s skin basked in the warm glow of the sunshine washing over him; it felt like someone draping a cozy fleece blanket over his body. Just as his vision flooded with darkness and numbness began to creep up from his toes, he murmured, “Because I’m gonna give him hell until he’s the best hero he can be.”

Distantly, he felt Izuku stir beside him and whisper, “Kacchan?” The boy’s hand squirmed against Katsuki’s own, and so with the remaining dregs of his strength, Katsuki gave it a firm squeeze.

“Don’t worry. I’m here… Izuku.”

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @deliathedork​ @simplybakugou​ @sadistiks​ @wesparklebitch​

[seanfalco]

(More Than Just) Travel Partners - Part VI

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Jaskier x f!Reader Word Count: 3.7k Rating: M Warning(s): Violence, Angst a/n:  This is it, we’ve made it to the last part!  Please let me know if you enjoyed it.  I’m excited to begin writing a few one shots I’ve had in mind and requests are also open!

[ Masterlist ]

——

“Hey there, can I get you something?”

“Ah yes please, I’d like two pints,” Jaskier replied, leaning against the bar, not really paying much attention to the serving girl across from him, his mind still on the woman upstairs.  The woman he was absolutely head-over-heels in love with and whom we still couldn’t seem to bring himself to tell.

“Your playing was wonderful earlier,” the barmaid exclaimed, giggling as she leaned over the bar, deliberately showing off her… assets.

“Oh, well, thank you, truly,” Jaskier replied haltingly, barely noticing the woman’s glorious set of tits, his mind still half on [Y/N] and the other half on how he should go about telling her how he felt about her.  “I’m gunna be in that booth over there, if you just wanna bring my drinks over,” he said absentmindedly, pushing away from the bar to take a seat near the back as he waited for [Y/N] to join him.

As the serving girl came over with the drinks in hand everything happened so fast and Jaskier’s head spun as he was pushed back into the padded bench, the woman effectively trapping him with her body, her face nearly inches away from his.

“Whoa!” He exclaimed, completely at a loss for words as he threw his hands up and shrank back from her as far as he could.  “I-I-I think there’s been a bit of a mix up in communication here,” he spluttered, torn between wanting to push her off and not wanting to make a scene.  “All I wanted was the drinks!”

“Aw c’mon,” she purred, her lips brushing the shell of his ear maddeningly, “I saw the hunger in your eyes earlier.”

“Hunger?” Jaskier yelped,swallowing thickly as she tugged at his doublet, practically crawling in his lap.  “I think you may be mistaken, I’m certainly not hungry, at-at least not for, oh for fuck’s sake -- will you stop that?” he snapped, grabbing her arms to hold her still.  “While I’m sure you are no doubt a very lovely young woman, I am not interested and I would thank you to please - get - off - me!”

Of course it had been just his luck that [Y/N] had appeared right at that moment to find him in such an unfair and compromising position, none of which had been his fault.  

The broken look in her eyes as she’d gaped at him had frozen his blood and haunted him still; the accusation and pain in her voice nearly ripping him in two, and as he pushed Swift to the limit, barrelling through the forest after her it rang in his ears.

Even if she never wanted to see him again after tonight Jaskier couldn’t just let her get taken like that and not follow after.  What he’d said to her in the tavern was true, quite possibly one of the truest things he’d ever said, even if the timing had been abysmal and his face still stung with her well deserved slap.  Julian Alfred Pankratz would rather die trying to rescue [Y/N] than give up and live to sing another day -- even if he had absolutely no idea how the fuck he was going to take on this René fellow, the likes of whom was nearly the same imposing size as Geralt.

Pushing that worrying thought from his mind, Jaskier raced onward, hoping the path he was following was still the right one and he hadn’t lost her completely.

——

There was a pounding in your skull and it was getting worse.

Everything was muffled, as if you were hearing sounds from underwater, but with each pounding of your head it became clearer, sharper, more painful.  Stirring, your muscles screamed in protest and you realized you were hanging across the back of a horse, your head dangling and your arms bound behind your back.

A wave of nausea overtook you as your memories began to clear and you retched over the side of the horse.  At this René noticed you were conscious and slowed the horse to a canter.

“You’re awake,” he said, moving your hair from your face to look at you.  “Are you going to cooperate now, or keep fighting?”

You stayed silent for a long moment, weighing your options.  One, you could keep struggling, fight him all the way and possibly throw yourself from the back of the horse, but with your hands bound as they were there was no way you’d be able to land without serious injury and no way to get to your knives to defend yourself.  Two, you could play along, be good, possibly get him to lower his guard and then strike or slip away.  Maybe if you could get him to stop for a bit and untie you…

It would take a lot of convincing but in the time you’ve been on your own you’ve learned a great deal and become pretty adept at acting a part.

“Can we stop for a second?” you asked, not having to try very hard to sound like you were going to be sick again.  “I-I’ll cooperate,” you said, voice trembling -- also not hard to feign.  “I don’t feel so well, please?”

Your plea seemed to work and René slowed the horse further to a walk, turning off the hard packed dirt road and into the forest.  Stopping at a small clearing just out of sight from the main road René climbed down and pulled you down as well, though he didn’t loosen his bruising grip on your upper arm.

With his free hand he pulled a small waterskin from his horse’s saddle and unstoppered it, bringing it to your lips and helping you to drink.  “There, better?” he asked gruffly, taking a swig himself.  

“Yes,” you answered, your stomach twisting at how readily your subconscious wanted to fall back into your old cycle -- wanting to trust him when he deigned to be kind, no matter that he had just assaulted and kidnapped you against your will.

“Sit down there,” he grunted and you obeyed, carefully lowering yourself to the log he’d gestured to, watching, waiting for a moment you could use to your advantage.  Wincing, he crouched down and you noticed the cold circle of stones filled with ashes on the ground where a fire had once been.  While you wondered how René had known this was here he started a small fire before rummaging in his saddle bags.

As he sat down once more you saw he had bandages and salves in his hands and you suddenly remembered that one of your daggers had found its mark.  Shucking off his bloody shirt with another wince you studied the wound in his shoulder.

Good, you thought, that will slow him down some and potentially make escaping easier.

He noticed your eyes on him and scowled.  “I should punish you for that.”

Lifting your chin defiantly you merely stared at him coldly, despite the fear that twisted your insides.

“You’ve grown insolent,” he muttered, grunting as he cleaned the wound.  “What happened to your respect?”

“Respect?” you scoffed, unable to stop yourself.  “What I had for you back then wasn’t respect, it was fear and I’m not afraid of you anymore.”  You hoped he couldn’t hear the lie in your voice.

René stopped and slowly turned his face to you, the firelight glinting off his hard eyes.  “Maybe you should be.  You have a lot to answer for [Y/N]: running off in the middle of the night, stealing from me, spreading lies about me… and now adultery?”

Biting the inside of your cheek you made yourself hold his gaze, but didn’t answer.  He snorted derisively, resuming his bandaging.  “Months spent on the road with that foppish bard, don’t tell me you didn’t sleep with him.  I’m not a fool.  Did he know you were a married woman or did he just not care?”  He paused for a moment, studying you, and you kept quiet, though your anger was swiftly coming to a boil inside you.  

“I could have easily killed him back at the tavern, for touching what’s mine.”

“I’m not your property,” you spat, interrupting him, but René didn’t rise to the goad, instead continuing where he’d left off.

“If you truly cared for Jaskier,” he said his name with scorn, his lips twisting, “then you should be throwing yourself at my feet and thanking me for sparing his worthless life.  In fact, you carried out what I had set into motion more perfectly than I could have ever imagined.”

“What?” you asked; the word a whisper.

“Perhaps killing him would’ve been the kinder option, but let’s just say this one was worth it.”  René finished tying the bandages around his shoulder and spread his hands, smirking at the dumbfounded look on your face.

Finally it sank in and you couldn’t believe you hadn’t put the pieces together earlier -- the cloaked man in the tavern slipping a coin to the barmaid but leaving before she even brought him a drink; the stiff way Jaskier had been shrinking away from the woman, not holding her, his face aghast; and the most important: Jaskier telling you it had been a misunderstanding.  And you’d refused to even listen to him.  It felt as though a block of ice had dropped into your stomach.

“You paid that woman to seduce Jaskier,” you whispered.  “It didn’t work though, h-he resisted her,” you reminded yourself, grasping at the thought like a man drowning.

René’s head popped out of the top of the fresh shirt he’d pulled over his head and he shook his shaggy dark curls out of his eyes.  “Yes, but darling you made certain he wouldn’t follow us.”

You swallowed, bile rising to your throat at the memory of the sting of your palm across Jaskier’s face.

Oh Gods, he was right.

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that.”  

You heard Jaskier’s voice before you saw him and as he stepped dramatically out of the darkness into the ring of flickering firelight, nonchalantly twirling one of your daggers between his fingers your heart swelled.

At his sudden appearance René jumped to his feet, reaching for the short sword at his hip and worry washed over you as he pulled it free from its scabbard, pointing it at Jaskier -- his tiny throwing knives no match for the longer blade.

“[Y/N] are you okay?  He didn’t hurt you did he?”  Jaskier called instead, glancing at you as if René wasn’t even there.

“For the most part,” you answered, once more struggling in your bonds.  “A little more worried about you at the moment.”

Wetting his lips Jaskier shifted his gaze, eyeing the sword pointed at him warily.  “Don’t worry love, I know what I’m doing,” he quipped, even managing a cocky wink despite the way his adam’s apple bobbed nervously.

“I hate to question you, but do you?” you asked, your muscles beginning to burn once more as you continued to strain them.

“You should have stayed away bard,” René spat, beginning to slowly circle the fire, coming to stand in front of you, and Jaskier circled the opposite way, staying across from him.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t come for [Y/N]?” Jaskier asked and your heart leapt.  

This is not the time for romantics, you reminded yourself firmly.

Blinking, you nearly missed Jaskier’s first dagger flying toward René, a second one already in hand.  René dodged the first and the blade landed harmlessly somewhere near you.  Eyes wide, you searched the underbrush for the dagger’s telltale metallic glint, glancing back up to the two men in front of you.

Jaskier had thrown the second knife, but you’d missed whether it had found its mark or not, and you wondered worriedly how many daggers he had left on him.  Gasping as René lunged forward without warning, sword flashing, you cried out, fear strangling you as the blade came away red.  Jaskier stumbled back, managing to keep upright, but in the firelight you could see his blue eyes flash -- a mixture of fear and rage.

“Did you fuck my wife, bard?” René called, slashing  again as he advanced.

Tearing your eyes from the scene you frantically resumed your search for the missing dagger.

“Oh, a good many times!” Jaskier boasted, jumping back, narrowly avoiding the sword tip as it whistled past his chest.  “I hate to break it to you, but I think I’m a better lover than you in all aspects.”

Growling like an enraged animal, René lunged again, but Jaskier was quicker and he spun away, slashing at skin as he ducked under the sword.  Staggering back René howled in pain, grasping at his side, his hand coming away wet with dark blood.

Suddenly your eyes caught sight of the tiny blade half hidden in the sparse grass and you threw yourself at it, gripping it awkwardly in your half numb hands.  Frantically you began to saw at the rope binding your wrists behind you; hissing through clenched teeth as you cut yourself in your haste, but you didn’t stop.  

Jaskier managed to cut René again, an incredulous laugh bursting from his lips.  “You know [Y/N]’s told me about you,” he said, hate lacing his usually gentle voice.  “It’s no wonder she ran, from a monster like you.  You deserve to die an incredibly humiliating and painful death for what you’ve done to her.”  

Snarling, René leapt at Jaskier and though the bard’s last dagger managed to disarm him, cutting into his wrist, both men tumbled to the ground, René pinning Jaskier and his fist making contact with his face.

“Julian!” you cried desperately, your heart wrenching.  Sawing faster at the ropes and nearly dropping the knife as you cut yourself again; tears streaming down your cheeks as you watched the man you once loved rain blow after blow upon the man that held your heart now.

Managing to lift his arms in an attempt to block his face, Jaskier reached for the wound you’d made in René’s shoulder and dug his fingers in.  René howled like a feral animal, pulling Jaskier up by his lapels til they were nearly face to face.

“And do you think you’re going to be the one to give me that death?” he hissed, reaching for the sword.

The last of the rope fell away and you didn’t wait, pushing to your feet and scrambling toward the two men.  “No, I am,” you exclaimed, shoving the dagger in your hand into the side of René’s neck without hesitation.  The sword fell from his hand as a wet gurgle burst from his lips and his eyes rolled, going wide as he gaped at you, his hand clutching the hilt of the dagger sticking out of his neck.  His lips parted, eyes fixed on you, but before he could try to speak Jaskier grasped the discarded sword and sheathed it in René’s chest, pushing him backward and scrambling out from under him as he fell.

Your eyes met Jaskier’s, and for a moment neither of you spoke, the only sounds filling the clearing were the heavy pants of your breaths and the crackle of the fire.  Still in shock at what you’d done you looked from René’s lifeless body to your bloody hands, not quite able to move.

The next thing you knew Jaskier was embracing you tightly and you sobbed into his chest, the numbness of your shock receding.  At that moment you wanted nothing more than to tell him how sorry you were that he’d gotten tangled up in all this, that you should have listened to him, but most of all you wanted to tell him how much you loved him.  

Before you could say any of those things however, you felt Jaskier’s knees buckle and give way beneath him, pulling you down as well as you tried to hold him up.

“Jask!” you cried staggering under his weight.

“I-I’m fine [Y/N],” he slurred, trying to reassure you, but you could see that he was quite the opposite of fine.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, we need to get you back to town o-or --” you felt tears welling in your eyes again, helplessness rolling over you.  Would he even make it back to town?  Pulling him up you looked around until you found where he’d left Swift, reins tied loosely to a tree branch, and that tiny bit of relief fueled you.

——

It had been nearly two days and Jaskier was still sleeping.  Shifting amongst the plush pillows in your chair next to the bed you rose and leaned over him, brushing a few stray strands of hair from his face.  Your fingers lingered, lightly tracing over the skin of his cheek as your gaze followed suit.  Nearly half his face was still covered with healing bruises, and several small cuts adorned his lips and brow from where René’s fists had made contact.

Fussing with the sheets that covered him, you checked his bandages once more, though you knew they wouldn’t need changed again until later that night.  Sighing, you leaned back and closed your eyes, saying a silent prayer to any of the Gods that would listen to watch over him.  After a moment you sat up and grabbed the book from the table next to you and flipped it open one handed, trying to focus on reading while you waited, your other hand gently stroking his hand.

A squeeze around your fingers made you pause and you tore your eyes from the page to look up at Jaskier’s face, your heart pounding painfully with hope.  Grinning softly up at your his blue eyes caught yours and he squeezed your hand harder.

“[Y/N], you’re here,” he murmured, attempting to push himself up; eyes widening as a grunt of pain crossed his lips and he instantly stopped, easing himself back while making a disgruntled face.  Instead he glanced around the room from where he lay, his brows furrowing slightly.  “Actually, where is here?” 

“A nearby farm.  I was lucky enough to find a healer and she patched you up,” you said, laughing softly, glad that even in this state he was still very much himself.

“How long have I been asleep?” he asked, clearly wanting to try sitting up again.

“Nearly two days.”

“Two days?” he yelped, disbelieving.  “I wasn’t injured that badly,” he scoffed.

“Jaskier, you passed out in my arms right after I got you on to the horse, and then you nearly fell off several times as I tried riding back to the village,” you explained, shooting him a level stare.  

“Yes well…” he trailed off, looking somewhat sheepish.  Suddenly he seemed to remember something and his eyes fixed on you with determination.  “Did we…?  I mean, we won, right?”

Swallowing heavily you nodded, not quite trusting your voice to answer.  You could still picture the blood covering your hands.  René hadn’t been the first person you’d ever killed, but he had been the first that you’d known.  Taking a deep breath, you spoke.  “He won’t be coming after me any longer.”  Jaskier squeezed your hand reassuringly and your lip trembled, his gaze soft.

“Jask, there’s something I need to tell you,” you whispered.  You knew it was illogical, especially after he put himself in grave danger to come after you, but there was still that lingering fear that even after saying what you were about to say he would reject you.

“I owe you an apology.”  Jaskier opened his mouth, but you steamrolled onward, afraid if you stopped you wouldn’t be able to start again.  “You tried to tell me what happened at the tavern, but I wouldn’t listen.  I’m such an idiot.  I slapped you in front of all those people,” your voice wavered.

“Hey hey, no, [Y/N],” he exclaimed, letting go of your hand in order to reach up and brush away the tears gathering in your eyes.  “I know exactly what it looked like --”

“Yes, but I should have given you a chance to explain.  I should have trusted you,” you insisted.

Jaskier quieted, recognizing that you needed to say this, his hand lingering at your cheek.

“I’ve never felt so safe or loved or right until I met you, and I kept up this wall, afraid to let you in, and then when I did, I was terrified I was going to lose it all, that you might turn out like him and so when I saw you like that, I just… I hid behind the wall again and ran.  I thought cutting my ties would be easier.”  Glancing up you found him watching you, a softness in his blue eyes that filled your heart.

“Jaskier… Julian, I-I love you.  I love you so much you steal away all my reason.”

An ecstatic smile slowly spread across his face and he reached for you with his other hand.  Smiling back tearily you obliged, climbing up onto the bed with him and letting him fold you into his arms.

“I know,” he stated simply, smiling against your skin.

“What?” you asked, turning your face to gape at him.

“I knew you didn’t mean it when you slapped me, that’s why I chased after you.  Well, I suppose part of me was afraid you did, mean it, but either way I wasn’t about to let that brute steal you away to do Gods knows what to.  Besides, I wanted to be the hero for once.”

A laugh burst from your lips.  “You certainly were the hero — my hero, more heroic even than Geral--” your exclamation was stifled abruptly as he pulled you in for a kiss; moving to pepper more kisses anywhere he could reach, murmured I love you’s between each before kissing your lips again deeply with a contented sigh.

A soft grunt from him reminded you to take it easy, he was still injured after all, and there would be more than enough time later for more physical apologies, so you contented yourself with settling in his arms and fitting your body next to his as he held you, running his fingers through your hair.

“I love you, Jaskier,” you murmured again, heart swelling as he echoed the words, squeezing you tighter.

“I love you, [Y/N].”  He shifted so he could see your face, the smile you loved so much gracing his handsome features.  Gods even mottled with bruises he was still handsome.  “We have to write a song about this.”

“Obviously,” you replied, brushing your nose against his affectionately.  “No one else would be better suited capturing our daring plight.”  

“Okay, good, because I already have some lyrics in mind.”

[someonestole15]

Melting Silicone

There they are, both standing still, filled with determination. In addition, here I am, getting my spine back together.

“I remember seeing you before, but then again, I did not hear your name then.”

“You’ll remember me; I’ll make sure of that.”

“And how will you do that? You lack even the basic weaponry he has… and look where that got him.”

“I lack nothing; I just didn’t know how to use what I had.” Valkyrie drew a set of knives from her left hand, the slot on her hand calibrated to dispense them when needed. That brings me back; I had done the same as on Phobos when I lacked weapons. Come on nanomachines, work faster. I am sure she can keep herself in the fight, but we work better as a team. Knife in hand, Valkyrie readied herself as Emma did the same.

Knives of a Valkyrie versus the flames and bullets of a mad scientist… and I thought I was the one was insane…

Fires that burned in the room started to rise again under a different color. I felt the heat surround me. They were pumping pure oxygen into the room, reason unknown. Scanning the room and the outside, I could see Victors transponder sitting outside the room. If we got through Emma, he would be here to clean the plate. Feeling quite weak after the smack against the wall, I am not capable of doing anything if Valkyrie gets through that shield and kills Emma outright. She had only started the fight, but Emma’s shield was already going down with alarming rate, the power from it was likely getting routed back into Valkyrie, fueling her.

She could not hear me; the radio signals I sent were jammed. Victor… he had taken that into account, along with the fact Valkyrie would attack Emma on sight. Come on… get up, she has things under control but that could change any minute now.

>Spine repair at 99%...100% >Complete, get up slowly to allow the servos inside calibrate.

Slowly and surely, I got up as the servos inside calibrated. Same as before, but reinforced for the moment. Scraped up and beaten, it should hold up for a while.

>Adjusting bolts… Ready

Eyes up, ready to go. I spun the blade around on its mount and stepped forward. The flames around were already back to their highest, I felt my internals adapt as to the heat as my pulse climbed higher. Beat faster electro heart, you are needed right now. My image may warp, becoming the monster, I do not want to see it, but it stares back from every mirror. Ignore it, focus on what matters the most, use that hatred for fuel and kick back. Heartbeat rising further, Valkyrie stepped back and took place next to me.

“How’s the back?”

“Better now. Do you have a plan?”

“Hit hard. I was thinking of following your lead on this one.”

“Hah, alright then. Keep up.”

A pair of androids against a crazed exo wearing lunatic. Just the way it is meant to be. I readied my blade as Valkyrie tightened her grip around her knives. Emma reloaded her weaponry and taunted us with her free hand.

“Come on then. Let’s see what you both have.”

Sleek armor, no stealing of weapons here, nor getting a grip with that shield covering her body. Wait a minute… it covered her body, but was weaker around the arms.

Another card enters the play, 4 hands shaped like a cross. Four hands, the look like mine. No effects, no hidden compartments, just the mix of hand and gun. I have the hands, but lack the guns. Where would they have those… based on how they have preciously stashed weaponry, there is surely a backup locker filled with weapons…

A sharp glint caught my eye. It originated from the locker I had used for cover, the door of it now hanging off to the side, a steel plate had melted away to reveal the contents.

The scorned item inside looked familiar, but from this distance, it was hard to tell what it was. I need a way to get over there and grab whatever it is; it might just get us out of here.

“Heads up!” Emma yelled, swinging her arm forward, it passing by my head and snatching on to my hood, causing me to spin around and fall back. Valkyrie took the chance and struck directly into the joint of the arm. Shield lowered, there was nothing stopping her.

The knife sliced through some the metal like butter before Emma swiped her away. The hand with all the weapons was still active, but her other was now hanging by her body, limp with no power. Distraction, I pulled myself up, ran over to the locker, and removed the rest of the steel plate.

Usual pistols and a small canister of oxygen, but the main item inside was the scorned remains of the revolver that had been in my holster within that underground forest. Blacked out from the ash and partly melted, all the important parts seemed like they were still good to go. Cylinder was empty, but there were six rounds neatly lined up next to the slot where the gun had rested.

No time to waste, I loaded the rounds into the revolver and grabbed two pistols from the side rack. Share the love… or bullets in this case.

“Valkyrie, take some hardware.” I threw the pistol over to her.

“Cheers, this will help.”

Revolver in hand, I walked back towards Emma with a smirk on my face. Fully loaded, either I would get six shots out of the revolver, or just one, I had better not miss with it.

As Emma was busy with keeping Valkyrie out of her range, she had given me a window that I could use. She saw me throw the gun but thought little of it, seeing, as the small caliber handgun would do little against the shielding. Why worry?

Oh, you got a much larger problem coming right up.

[desperate-entwives]

Razor

Emori appreciation week day one: pre-canon

TW: This contains violence and abuse.

It’s cool in here, but all Emori can think of is desert.

An unendingly raw landscape of yellow and white. The vicious nighttimes and the way the sun burrowed under your skin in the day. It was nothing but aching knees and fine-chiseled deception and fighting over scraps but Baylis told her, at a very young age, that she was a scawager. Just like him. “There’s nothing wrong with being a vulture,” he said to her and she must have been a child, not even a woman yet, angry and violent and confused and unsure.

He looked nothing like the unconscious man on the table.

John is walking towards her. She’s leaning against the railing still, watching people mill around, small and anxious. But they’re moving. They’re walking, aren’t they? They should be grateful. 

“They’re setting up,” John says, touching her arm. That darkness in his face is still there. John is a complex machine; some of his darkness is defensive, learned, and some lives in him like a restless child. He has a fascination with winning games, especially if he’s the only one who knows about the victory. “They’re going to start in, uh, an hour.”

“An hour,” Emori echoes. Her voice is flat. The adrenaline, the part she has been playing, the excited desperation in her blood-- it has streamlined into this, this detachment. A kind of floating. A kind of numbness.

He takes her hand in his and squeezes it tight.  “Let's walk,” he says. “Get away from all this for a minute.” 

She looks up at him. “Okay.”

---

It was ten years ago, maybe twelve. Emori remembers it clearly: the group of people she traveled with, the man who taught her to steal, to lie, to hurt.

“Kill him.”

She looked up at her leader, Baylis, who calmly evaluated the scene before him: the group of other travelers, frikdreina like them, lifeless on the road. There was something inhuman about corpses, something that looked like crumpled scraps of paper.

Their group outmatched this group of strangers, both in numbers and in skill. Even though she was a child, Emori had killed two of them herself. Two kills might guarantee her food that night.

There was one survivor. A little boy around her age, maybe a year or two younger. His face was covered in blood from where he’d taken a hit, but he was still moving, groaning in the sand.

“Kill him,” Baylis told her again. “Put him out of his misery.” He looked at her calmly, and she knew what the look meant: Are you weak, little claw-hand?

She gripped her knife in her bad hand, trying not to tremble. The boy looked up at her, mutated face shadowed in the sunset.

Then he moved.

Swiftly, he grabbed a knife from where it had been dropped on the ground. Emori could have lunged, stabbed him in the heart right then and there, but something stopped her. She took one step back, and he stabbed her in the leg.

She looked down at her calf, which was dark and sticky with blood. The boy gripped the dark red knife; the wound was shallow, but it hurt like hell. Baylis made a sound from in back of her: laughter.

“He stays, since you’re too cowardly to kill him,” he announced. The rest of their group started collecting the belongings of the dead, piling them into their carts. “But he shares your food.”

She turned around to glare at the boy, who bared his teeth at her. There was a sudden blow to the back of her head.

“Start collecting,” Baylis told her, moving past them to the bodies laying in the dust. She rubbed her head, which was throbbing from his blow. “Don’t make me regret feeding you,” he added.  

There was a feeling like sickness in her chest, but Emori knew how to ignore it and keep moving. It was what she did every day.

---

They ate birds that night. Desert vultures, charred and stringy. Emori had to share her small portion with the boy.

If she killed him, she reasoned, she wouldn’t have to share anything else with him in the future. I’ll do it tonight, she decided, chewing on the tough meat. The boy was even smaller than her and would be easy to sneak up on when they all slept. She could choke the air out of him, and who would know?

“What’s your name?” she asked, not knowing quite why.

He glared up at her, chewing slowly. He swallowed. “Otan.”

His name came from the same region as hers. “Southern Sangedakru,” she hazarded. “One of the villages by the Trikru border.”

He nodded slowly.

“Me too,” she said. He nodded and looked away. She did the same, watching Baylis and some of their group’s seconds, Philia and Shersh, sort through the day’s loot, their motions dark in the firelight. Philia was a small, sharp knife of a woman. Her mutation weakened her bones, and she made up for her stature in ruthlessness. Shersh was slightly kinder, and quiet-- he was born tongueless.

“That was mine,” Otan said to her, quietly, as Philia unearthed a metal cuff and slipped it on her wrist. It was filthy with dirt, but engraved with small stones that glinted in the firelight. “My nontu left it with me when I was given to the desert.”

“Idiot,” she said, watching her companions. The only family she had. “None of us have nontus anymore.”

---

She didn’t kill him that night. The next night, she reasoned. That’s when she would do it.

---

It was barely the next morning when they were woken with a shrill scream. It seemed to surround the desert, echoing off the cliffs of sand, piercing everything. When Emori opened her eyes, she saw that it was Philia screaming, a weeping nub where her thumb used to be.

The woman had collapsed in the sand, the pale rising sun washing her out, making her seem small. Baylis was standing over her, his knife to her other thumb.

“What are you doing?” Emori cried, sitting up. Philia was often unkind to her, but the sheer pain on the woman’s face was difficult to stomach.

“What do you think, claw-hand?” Baylis asked, focusing on his task. “How many fingers should someone lose for trying to steal from me and run away?”

“I wasn’t, I…I had to go and find my sister,” Philia said weakly, until her voice faded and her body slumped into the sand. She had passed out.

In a moment, the bone was sliced through. Emori made herself watch as the long sleeves of Philia’s garment were stained red, as the blood slipped into the sand around her.

“Remember, my little vulture. This is what happens when I’m betrayed.” Baylis looked at her then and she nodded, trying not to tremble. She had always been afraid of Baylis, ever since he found her and let her live, telling her she was small enough to kill for him without being seen. She knew what he was like, what he could do to people. He’d slashed her in the face once with a knife because of a con she’d ruined for their group the previous year. This shouldn’t be shocking.

She shouldn’t be nauseated.

When she curled into her coat to go back to sleep, she felt a hand rest lightly on her shoulder. The boy, Otan.

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t shrug his hand away either.

---

In the following weeks, Otan proved himself to be nearly as cunning as Emori. He wasn’t as good at fooling travellers as she was, but he was quick with a knife and able to deduce which passersby would have the most tech.

“I’ve traveled with a lot of people,” he explained to Emori once, sharpening a blade for Baylis, who rested while Shersh and Ashing kept watch. Philia had been left for dead weeks ago, that cold, unkind morning. “I would pretend to be deaf and listen as they revealed their secrets.”

“Why didn’t you do that with us?” she asked, and he shrugged.

“You scared me. I thought you were going to kill me sometime, and I forgot to be smart.”

She laughed, reclining in the sand. “I was absolutely going to kill you. Still might.”

He kicked some sand onto her shoes, and she kicked him back. He laughed and dropped his blades, picking up a fistful of sand and pouring it into her hair. She shrieked and did the same, throwing the sand down the back of his shirt and laughing as he started running in a circle, saying, “There was a bug in that sand, Emori, I swear--”

Baylis sat up. They both stilled, and Emori felt the smile fade from her face, falling like a stone into water.

“Come here, claw-hand,” he said, and Emori stepped forward. “What were you supposed to be doing?”

“Sharpening knives with Otan,” she said, quietly.

“Was that what you were doing just now?”

“No,” she said.

“No,” he echoed. He backhanded her in the face so swiftly she didn’t see it coming. Her lip stung, and she tasted blood. Stubbornly, she didn’t cry out.

“Come here, boy,” Baylis said, and Emori cried out “no!” before she could stop herself. The man turned and looked at her coldly, a dark-eyed, predatory bird.

“Then you’ll take his punishment as well,” he said, and struck her face again, harder, and once again. She cried out with the fourth strike, which was a closed-fisted blow that left her eye stinging. It would swell up later-- it usually did.

Baylis then knelt next to her then, taking her face in his hand and forcing her to look him in the eye. “Pain is good,” he said, almost gently. “It’s all life is for people like us. Remember to use it.”

She looked at him, the imposing shadow he cast, even kneeling down, and reminded herself she wouldn’t always be this small. One day she could kill him, and run away, possibly with Otan. She could start her own group in the desert and never have to answer to anyone as cruel as Baylis ever again.

She would be so cruel herself that no one could ever hurt her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, already sharpening herself on the inside. “I will.”

[nightcourtstarlight]

Garden Dancing ( pt. 1?)

Ah so this is my first fic EVER. It’s some elriel since this fandom definitly needs more of it! I’m sorry for the grammar mistakes and stuff. Give me some feedback on how I can get better! So here goes, please enjoy! And go easy on me😅

Also if ya guys like it I can do more parts ✨

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Autum was on the brink in the night court. The leaves were painted vibrant colors and crisp breezes swept through the street. The street vendors stopped selling their usually ice creams and lemonade and opted to carmel apples and warm ciders or chocolates.

It was wonderful.

It had started when she had told Feyre one day that she wanted to be more independent. She had come to love her new found family immensely in the years after the war, but she sometimes felt she was coodled by them too much. She was strong, and fierce. She had proved as much in the war. It was time for her to take charge.

She hated to admit though… she was a bit nervous. What if something happened and she was alone or she needed help. She had never lived on her own or without one of her sisters always present, It’s silly though she thought, my family is mere streets away, and the people of velaris were rather kind. Someone might help her in a pinch. And if not she could- would handle it herself.

She just hoped nothing too extreme would happen.

With feyres help I had perchased a small town home near the market by the beach. The closets member of the circle to me was Azriel, but with his random missions and secrecy I wasn’t sure if he would be home much.

On the morning I moved in i was a ecstatic! I had so many decorating ideas! Flowers and mirrors and marble counters! It’s wonderful.

I took Feyre by the arm and we swept through the apartment. Throwing open the windows and peering through ever door.

“ Feyre isn’t it wonderful. Can’t you see it!” I said tugging yellow curtains out of a chest I brought with me.

“ Of course! I’m so happy for you. ” she came over and clasped my hands. Down in the street the bell rang 10 times. “ I have to go lovie, Rhys and I are having brunch. But I’ll be back around 7 for dinner."

And then she was gone in a puff of smoke and shadows.

I could never grasp the winnowing ability myself.

For the rest of the day I was stringing yellow curtains and laying out grey and green rugs. Placing mugs in the cupboards. New lamp shades and shelves and laying out my lavender and white bedspread.

I never knew I’d like decoration so much. By the end of the day I was well on my way to being done.

When I looked out the window agin the moon was rising over the ocean. The night was filled with stars of every color. You could see the whole universe from here.

My feet carried me out the door and on to my front porch. I could look at them for ever. And never see the same picture twice.

I hadn’t noticed Azriel until I finally turned my eyes from the sky and met his piercing hazel ones.

I yelped and jumped back, knocking over a flower pot.

” Az what are you doing? Don’t sneak up on me like that!“ I hissed placing a hand over my rapidly beating heart.

” I was just - uh - I “ he looked flustered, which was an expression I very rarely saw on him. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, it was then I noticed he carried a small wrapped box in his hands. I smiled up at him

” A gift?“ I was grinning now

” Yes “ He awkwardly shoved the box at me and clasped his hands behind his back.

” Thank you Azriel" I beamed up at him, heart studdering as the corner of his lip tugs upward. “ what’s the occasion?”

“ House warming ” he said with a flourish to the door and a small smile.

“ Well thank you, would you like a tour?” I said as I lead the way through the front door and into the house. I heard his near silent foot falls trail in behind me and allowed myself another small smile.

Its been 2 years since the war and we are all still healing at different rates. Nesta still won’t get near a tub. I can’t eat red meat at all because of the blood. Cassian gets extremely agitated if there is ash in the fire place or lots of dust anywhere. I’m not sure to what lengths Feyre and Rhysand are tramatized. I didn’t see everything they saw. Az is as calm and stoic as ever. Never showing emotion. Or feeling.

“ You are frowning.” Az voice floated up next to me pulling me out of my ravine. My arms were wrapped tightly around me in a hug. I get lost in thought a lot like that. Some people call me distracted and dazed.

“ Sorry ” I murmer and try to turn away but his hand finds my elbow and stops me

“ It’s ok ” he whispered in his deep voice.

I lead him through the living room and point out the little trinkets I have. like the owl sculpture made of wood I got from an artist in the rainbow. Or the colorful throw pillows. As we walk I notice the blue pearls I have under a glass lid on the self in the living room. My face burns as Az studies the three gems. Oh gods why did I put those out. I had brought them because they felt so formilure to me. And now I understand why. They match his siphons. He turns back to me with a nutral expression on his face, but his eyes are twinkling with Mischif

“ These are quite lovely ” he says

“ Thanks I uh just got them. Ok moving on”

I grab his arm and pull him up the stairs.

“ This is the upstairs ” I mumbled lamely. Gods, why.

Ever since Az had given me truthteller and his kind quiet friendship something has changed for me.

It was stupid, I’m no better than a school girl with a crush. But when he comes around I just get flustered and fidgety. But once that passes we slip into our current dynamic. Comfortable silence, quiet chatter, working side by side on a project, eating lunch. It’s just a nice friendship.

Friendship… or could it be more.

No, I think as I glance at him while he studies one of the paintings that Feyre made that I hung. It was of a cool calm lake in the forest she told me she visited. It couldn’t ever be anything more. He may not love Mor anymore but I highly doubt he could love me.

People call me crazy… delusional. Especially the people of the court if night mares. I can’t help the visions. So I shouldn’t be judge by them.

Az had finished studying the painting and he turned back to me, studying me with a calculated gaze. I gave him a small smile, hoping that he would understand. I don’t want to talk about it.

I wandered over to my bed and flicked the light on.

“ Should I open it now?” I asked him while pulling the gift into my lap and folding my legs under me

“ If you want to” He said down a respectable distance from me.

The wrapping was crisp and precise and white with a blue bow

“ Aw Az did you wrap this?” I grinned up at him. He’s so much taller than me even sitting down.

“ Yes..” He sighed with a small smile on his lips and a hand tuning through his fluffy hair.

“ It’s lovely ”

I pulled the bow loose and tire back the paper. Inside was a small brown crate with 6 small succulents in little black pots.

“ Oh my gods Azriel. These are so cute! Thank you ” I jump up and start placing them immediately. One on my night stand. One on the window sill. Another on my dresser. I’m dancing around the room in a flurry while Azriel watches from the bed with an amused small smile.

“ What are you laughing at? ” I quip at him.

“ Oh nothing just you dancing about over suculents ”

“ Oh ha ha Mr. Shadow singer, you’re telling me you wouldn’t dance around a training mat over a new pair of knives?” I giggle as he rises and takes me by the elbow leading me for the stairs.

“ No. I would honor the knives by beating who ever is on the mat with me” He was grinning now too.

“ I’m calling your bluff” I said turning back to him with a laugh. We were so close now out chest we’re almost pressed to gether.

“ Oh?” He let out a low chuckle

“ I bet you would do a dance for a new set of blades ”

“ Not likely sunshine ”

Sunshine… he’s never called me that before. The air between us grew tight and electrical. His eyes bore into mine. Deep and endless and sworling between green and brown with a hint of blue. It was like looking at the earth in his eyes.

Was he leaning closer to me? Was I to him. Like two magnets wanting to cling together. He places his hand gingerly on my waist at a respectful place. Always respectful. Always king and gentle. Always himself

And there in the quiet, candle lit hallway, with Azriels hand on my waist pulling me ever so impossibly closer

Close enough for a kiss.

A banging at the door tore the moment apart. I sprung away from him as if caught in the act of stealing. He looked away, cheeks tinged pink and bashful. Gods he is adorable.

“ I should uh ”

“ Yea ”

I scurried down the stairs quickly and threw open the door

“ Feyre!” I speaked too loudly “ what are you doing here?”

“ You promised me dinner remember” she said with a wink. I was still blocking the door way which made her eye me suspiciously.

“ What were you doing?..” she narrowed her eyes at me slightly and cocked her head, taking a sniff at me.

Oh no. I pushed her out of the door way and slammed it shut just as her eyes widened.

“ Is Az here?” She was grinning wickedly now “ all alone with you in your new house? How scandalous my dear sister” she quipped in a sultury voice.

“ No no no it’s not like that. We were just talking. And plus it’s none of your business’s what we do behind closed doors”

“ I’d assume each other but that’s none of my business” She winked and stuck her tongue out at me. Gods my face is no fire now. As she suntered off she called over her shoulder. “ don’t stay up too late you crazy kids!”

I growled at that under my breath and slipped back inside. AZ was now lounging on the white sofa with his hands tucked behind his head.

“ Please tell me you didn’t hear any of that ”. Of course he had, the deaf could here the conversation with how Lyons Feyre was talking.

“ I didn’t hear anything Elain ”

He was lying. I doubt anyone in the world could ever tell if the spy master of the night court was lying. He told me that he has only lied to Rhys and cassian when absolutely nesissary. Which hasn’t been often. But some how I always knew when he lied. I think this may be the second time he’s lied to me. And both times have been to save me from mortification.

It didn’t help though. I was still mortified. I placed my hand over my burning face.

“ Gods. I’m so embar-

” Would you like to have dinner with me?“

” What..“

He was sitting up straight now staring at me.

” I … yes, that would be great, yes"

“ Great ” we sat there grinning at each other for a moment before I fumbled to reach for my cloak and pulled it on. He opened the door for me and we were off into the night of velaris.

[roseharlaws]

Dearheart

Much like Helene, this friend was enchanted by books in a way that animated his every word; what resonated between Helene’s voice on the page before me and my friend’s in my memory, was the respect, need, and love for books that characterized their mutual passion.

books provide: a way of reaching out across time and space to friends and strangers, and to the absent presences that play such a large part in all our lives. I

The books arrived safely, the Stevenson is so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves, I’m almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch.

The day Hazlitt came he opened to “I hate to read new books,” and I hollered “Comrade!” to whoever owned it before me.

I require a book of love poems with spring coming on. No Keats or Shelley , send me poets who can make love without slobbering—Wyatt or Jonson or somebody, use your own judgment. Just a nice book preferably small enough to stick in a slacks pocket and take to Central Park.

Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul’s where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: “Then it’s there.”

The Newman arrived almost a week ago and I’m just beginning to recover. I keep it on the table with me all day, every now and then I stop typing and reach over and touch it. Not because it’s a first edition; I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it. All that gleaming leather and gold stamping and beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English country home; it wants to be read by the fire in a gentleman’s leather easy chair—not on a secondhand studio couch in a one-room hovel in a broken-down brownstone front.

Thank you for the beautiful book. I’ve never owned a book before with pages edged all round in gold. Would you believe it arrived on my birthday? I wish you hadn’t been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of on the flyleaf. It’s the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you’d decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.)

Thank you again for the beautiful book, I shall try very hard not to get gin and ashes all over it, it’s really much too fine for the likes of me.

Write me about London—the tube, the Inns of Court, Mayfair, the corner where the Globe Theatre stood, anything, I’m not fussy. Write me about Knightsbridge, it sounds green and gracious in Eric Coates’ London.

P. S. Your mother is setting out bravely this morning to look at an apartment for you on 8th Avenue in the 50’s because you told her to look in the theatre district. Maxine you know perfectly well your mother is not equipped to look at ANYTHING on 8th Avenue.

You may add Walton’s Lives to the list of books you aren’t sending me. It’s against my principles to buy a book I haven’t read, it’s like buying a dress you haven’t tried on, but you can’t even get Walton’s Lives in a library over here.

You can look at it. They have it down at the 42nd street branch. But not to take home! the lady said to me, shocked. eat it here, just sit right down in room 315 and read the whole book without a cup of coffee, a cigarette or air.

Doesn’t matter, Q quoted enough of it so I know I’ll like it. anything he liked i’ll like except if it’s fiction. i never can get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.

Boy, I’d like to have run barefoot through THEIR library before they sold it.

Fascinating book to read, did you know John Donne eloped with the boss’s highborn daughter and landed in the Tower for it and starved and starved and THEN got religion. my word.

You want to be the murderer or the corpse?

You’ll be fascinated to learn (from me that hates novels) that I finally got round to Jane Austen and went out of my mind over Pride & Prejudice which I can’t bring myself to take back to the library till you find me a copy of my own.

I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I’m never going to read again like I throw out clothes I’m never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don’t remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON’T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can’t think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

The Book-Lovers’ Anthology stepped out of its wrappings, all gold-embossed leather and gold-tipped pages, easily the most beautiful book I own including the Newman first edition. It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I’ve never read before. Like Tristram Shandy’s description of his father’s remarkable library which “contained every book and treatise which had ever been wrote upon the subject of great noses.” (Frank! Go find me Tristram Shandy! )

THOU VARLET? Don’t remember which restoration playwright called everybody a Varlet, I always wanted to use it in a sentence.

I shall be obliged if you will send Nora and the girls to church every Sunday for the next month to pray for the continued health and strength of the messrs. gilliam, reese, snider, campanella, robinson, hodges, furillo, podres, newcombe and labine, collectively known as The Brooklyn Dodgers. If they lose this World Series I shall Do Myself In and then where will you be?

Have you got De Tocqueville’s Journey to America? Somebody borrowed mine and never gave it back. Why is it that people who wouldn’t dream of stealing anything else think it’s perfectly all right to steal books?

I write you from under the bed where that catullus drove me. i mean it PASSETH understanding.

Up till now, the only Richard Burton I ever heard of is a handsome young actor I’ve seen in a couple of British movies and I wish I’d kept it that way. This one got knighted for turning Catullus—caTULLus—into Victorian hearts-and-flowers.

And poor little Mr. smithers must have been afraid his mother was going to read it, he like to KILL himself cleaning it all up.

I go through life watching the english language being raped before my face. like miniver cheevy, I was born too late. and like miniver cheevy I cough and call it fate and go on drinking.

I am starting with a script about New York under seven years of British Occupation and i MARVEL at how i rise above it to address you in friendly and forgiving fashion, your behavior over here from 1776 to 1783 was simply FILTHY.

When, as a little boy, William Blake saw the prophet Ezekiel under a tree amid a summer field, he was soundly trounced by his mother.

I will read the three standard passages from Sermon XV aloud,” you have to read Donne aloud, it’s like a Bach fugue.

i am going to bed. i will have hideous nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labelled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged.

Thought of you last night, my editor from Harper’s was here for dinner, we were going over this story-of-my-life and we came to the story of how I dramatized Landor’s “Aesop and Rhodope” for the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” Did I ever tell you that one? Sarah Churchill starred as Landor’s dewy-eyed Rhodope. The show was aired on a Sunday afternoon. Two hours before it went on the air, I opened the New York Times Sunday book review section and there on page 3 was a review of a book called A House Is Not a Home by Polly Adler, all about whorehouses, and under the title was the photo of a sculptured head of a Greek girl with a caption reading: “Rhodope, the most famous prostitute in Greece.” Landor had neglected to mention this. Any scholar would have known Landor’s Rhodope was the Rhodopis who took Sappho’s brother for every dime he had but I’m not a scholar, I memorized Greek endings one stoic winter but they didn’t stay with me.

Wasn’t anything else that intrigued me much, it’s just stories, I don’t like stories. Now if Geoffrey had kept a diary and told me what it was like to be a little clerk in the palace of richard III—THAT I’d learn Olde English for. I just threw out a book somebody gave me, it was some slob’s version of what it was like to live in the time of Oliver Cromwell—only the slob didn’t live in the time of Oliver Cromwell so how the hell does he know what it was like? Anybody wants to know what it was like to live in the time of Oliver Cromwell can flop on the sofa with Milton on his pro side and Walton on his con, and they’ll not only tell him what it was like, they’ll take him there.

“The reader will not credit that such things could be,” Walton says somewhere or other, “but I was there and I saw it.”

that’s for me, I’m a great lover of I-was-there books.

We had a very pleasant summer with more than the usual number of tourists, including hordes of young people making the pilgrimage to Carnaby Street. We watch it all from a safe distance, though I must say I rather like the Beatles. If the fans just wouldn’t scream so.

I introduced a young friend of mine to Pride & Prejudice one rainy Sunday and she has gone out of her mind for Jane Austen.

I hope you and Brian have a ball in London. He said to me on the phone: “Would you go with us if you had the fare?” and I nearly wept.

But I don’t know, maybe it’s just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: “It’s there.”

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Looking around the rug one thing’s for sure: it’s here.

We all lead busy lives—perhaps it’s better so.

If you happen to pass by 84, Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. I owe it so much.

[book-picks-for-pride]

PRIDE MONTH FANTASY/SCI-FI PICKS FOR YA

Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy(Lumberjanes (Collected Editions) #1) by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters, Brooke A. Allen(Illustrator)

At Miss Qiunzilla Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's camp for hard-core lady-types, things are not what they seem. Three-eyed foxes. Secret caves. Anagrams. Luckily, Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are five rad, butt-kicking best pals determined to have an awesome summer together... And they're not gonna let a magical quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way! The mystery keeps getting bigger, and it all begins here.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen.

That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right.

Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up.

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

There are a few things Henry Denton knows, and a few things he doesn’t.

Henry knows that his mom is struggling to keep the family together, and coping by chain-smoking cigarettes. He knows that his older brother is a college dropout with a pregnant girlfriend. He knows that he is slowly losing his grandmother to Alzheimer’s. And he knows that his boyfriend committed suicide last year.

What Henry doesn’t know is why the aliens chose to abduct him when he was thirteen, and he doesn’t know why they continue to steal him from his bed and take him aboard their ship. He doesn’t know why the world is going to end or why the aliens have offered him the opportunity to avert the impending disaster by pressing a big red button.

But they have. And they’ve only given him 144 days to make up his mind.

The question is whether Henry thinks the world is worth saving. That is, until he meets Diego Vega, an artist with a secret past who forces Henry to question his beliefs, his place in the universe, and whether any of it really matters. But before Henry can save the world, he’s got to figure out how to save himself, and the aliens haven’t given him a button for that.

The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo #1) by Rick Riordan

How do you punish an immortal?

By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.

But Apollo has many enemies—gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go... an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood.

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

Ash by Malinda Lo

Cinderella retold

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their difference, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess.

But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does…

As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the story of how he and his best friend , Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.

To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

What if you aren’t the Chosen One?

The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...