#Return of the Black Comet

[darktripz]

WARLOCK CORPSE (Труп Колдуна) - Return of the Black Comet

[kneelingshadowsalome]

I Never Missed You 3/3 (Bodyguard!Ghost x F!Reader)

Word count: 6.4 k

Tags/warnings: 18+ only. Romance, eventual smut, fluff, light angst, banter, pining, flirting, minor injuries, major character death, HFN ending. Lady/Knight dynamic. Unequal pairing trope. Bodyguard AU. Reader is a rich bitch (how else could she afford a PPO?)

Summary: You hire a bodyguard to protect you and hunt down the one who's been sent to take your life. This man was your lawyer's first recommendation, and you never even looked through his file because you had better things to do. But it soon turns out that this man – this Simon Riley – is very talented... Talented in driving you crazy.

A/N: A three part fic based on this request. Angst and smut and fluff (the holy trinity!) in this last part.

Part 1 Part 2

Juice spills all over the table from the oranges you press, but you don't mind. There has been a soft smile on your face all morning.

Simon's still sleeping, and you want to surprise him with a special breakfast today: scrambled eggs, freshly pressed orange juice, berries, and…

"You took my shirt."

You flinch when you hear his familiar rumble not a few feet away. The staircase wailed like a widow last night, but obviously, this man has learned to avoid the creaky spots when he wants. A goddamn heavyweight ninja...

"I'm sorry." You lick your fingers from the juice and try to feign innocence. The sleeves of his black tee reach your elbows, but you're not sorry. Nor do you feel bad about seeing him in your kitchen without a shirt.

"It was not an accusation," he says, the corner of his mouth curving a little, the dark eyes that made love to you last night giving you an approving once-over.

You approach him with a glass full of sun, but it's you he grabs in his hold. Your fingers find the scars on his back as you two embrace, and you feel an odd churn in your stomach.

"What's this…?"

Your hand floats across the embossed, white ridges that crisscross his back. The collection forms an entire mountain range, and it's chilling because you've only brushed the space between his shoulder blades.

"A reminder. To trust no one."

"No one…?"

"No one."

You remain a coward and refrain from asking for more details. You doubt he would even share them.

"I made you breakfast," you lower your gaze to the colorful palette you've gathered on the plates. Is it some sort of an instinct to want to feed a man after they've fucked you so good?

"So I see," he says, ever more approvingly. Then you're lifted on the table, next to the plates, like you're the breakfast.

Soon you're only wearing his shirt and your tiny socks, which Simon decides to leave on, too busy with getting his face between your legs. 

No one has done anything like that before… No one has chosen you over breakfast; an entire abundance of delicacies laid out. 

He licks you until your legs are trembling on that tortured back. You're pure, you're untouched by evil, and he carries your naivety on his shoulders like it weighs nothing. He flattens his tongue on you, sucks your flesh, tortures you on that table and doesn't even mind his teeth all too much. The peak stubble he hasn't yet shaved stings and burns as he moves across your folds. 

Saying that the coarse chin on your silk feels good would be an understatement. You come undone next to the breakfast, clad in golden light shining through the small window left uncovered.

You feel alive, and raw, and stellar. A shooting star, a comet high above the sky, although the space through which you ignite consists of golden rays of sunlight and the scent of orange juice. 

He takes the shirt back after he's done. After you're done and try your best to return back to earth with shaking legs. The only thing you're wearing is your socks, but you feel completely naked before him, dopey and dumb before the day has even started. Simon only licks his lips, throws that shirt on, and grabs his plate.

He dares to comment that there's no hot water. You put the kettle on with a wobble, feeling hotness on your cheeks while he sits down to eat his second breakfast like it's the most natural thing in the world: to wreck you first thing in the morning.

…............................

Simon.

He fixes the door on your fridge. He helps you clean your garage and fucks you on the table. Oily, dusty, filthy table. You go to shower after, together. You're giggling; he's smiling. Fully, now.

You want to ask him, Is this free of charge too…? Not just his cock... But his smiles. His assistance and support. The looks he grants you when you come out of the shower, ready to be licked to ruin.

He calls you his Princess to tease you just right. To get you in a state where your eyes flash with half-rage, half-lust, just before he slips inside you. He knows exactly which strings to pull – and then calls you love just when you're about to give him a piece of your mind.

You end up on the table, on the counter, on the floor. He takes you while your jaw slowly falls open from his audacity and his cock, splitting you apart with slow love. The first time he takes you in a missionary, you squirt. It's like his cock was made for you. And he dares to tease you about that, too.

"Did ya just squirt all over my cock?"

You have tears in your eyes, shame on your cheeks, and he's wetter than a wet dog down there… then he makes you squirt again, high on the lewd, obscene praise you just gave him with your pussy. 

Your cunt can't lie; he knows it by now. So it's futile to keep your lips sealed either.

Kiss me. 

That's what you would've usually ordered. But after an exceptionally quiet and passionate and desperate fuck that leaves you both catching your breath, leaves him hovering only inches from your sweaty upper lip, you whisper…

"I want to kiss you."

You expect him to laugh or mock you, at least crack a stupid joke or two. But he doesn't. Instead, his eyes drop to your lips, and he swallows with a heavy roll, then closes the gap between you two. Covers your mouth with his, uses that strong jaw to open you for devouring.

The kiss lasts long enough for you to begin breathing through your nose. Your inner walls grip him, still buried deep inside, and the gusts of exhales passing through his nostrils hit your face with pure bliss. He’s a little breathless when he parts – withdraws just enough to look into your eyes.

“Will that do...?”

There is a drunken vigor in his eyes of crushed amber, but to your shock, you hear your own question laid out before you. The one you asked when you were going to that party.

Will I do…?

Your hands find his jaw and cup his face from both sides, drawing him back to your lips.

“Yes." 

You will more than just do. 

And then you say… 

"I want more.”

He chuckles a soft scoff on your face. 

"Greedy little thing." 

Then he swallows you again. You kiss for a good few minutes while he grows half-hard inside you. It's the most romantic kiss you have shared with anyone, ever. He tells you how spoiled you are between the breaths you both catch, then spoils you some more with his mouth and tongue and cock. 

You start to curl together in the evening. Just to watch a comedy. He massages your feet and smiles more every day. It's kind of domestic, how he wrinkles his nose at your fine white wine and asks what it is in that decanter you have in your study. When you say it's just some old bourbon, he goes and gets himself a glass like he's finally made himself at home. 

It makes your heart grow thick from love. You almost forget why he's here in the first place.

When you ask him about the plan, he explains it to you in detail while kissing his way down your ribs and navel. He takes his sweet time while doing it, kissing the inside of your thigh, the hollow place below the knee, the tender skin under the knee. He kisses your calf and the ankle bone while holding your leg up for his lips with just one hand. Then he does the same to your other leg, but this time, kisses his way from ankle to thigh until he reaches…

You.

You've forgotten half the plan by then because you realize Simon hasn't looked at you like you're a steak or garbage in a long, long time. 

He looks at you like you're a queen. You could say he worships you, but the thought alone makes your heart flutter with the anxiety of a fragile hummingbird. 

Simon gets you your groceries and gets himself only a beer as a reward. You would happily offer him a case if you knew it would make him happy.

But you don't really know what would make him happy. You don't know anything about this man. You know he likes it when you're dolled up and angry. He likes you when you're sleepy, without makeup, wearing only his shirt. He likes to fuck you from behind and hold you close after. He likes to give you a wash, likes it when you wash him. He likes to watch the two tall trees outside the window sway when there's a strong wind. 

"What makes you happy?" You ask one night after you've had him in your mouth.

"Blowjobs," he answers with a straight face, and you shove him in the shoulder. Nicely. Softly.

"No, for real."

"I dunno." He sighs and turns to stare at your ceiling with a bothered look. It's a tricky question, perhaps. Or weapons, not willingly gifted. 

"Dogs," he shrugs after a while. "A day of silence. Good whiskey."

He doesn't grant you weapons. You get some rope, but not enough to choke him with it. He trusts no one.

"Why don't you like missionary…?" You continue roasting him while curling your fingers around the pale hair on his chest.

"I never said I didn't like it."

"Don't avoid the question, Mr. Doggystyle."

You prop yourself up on your elbow and place your palm flat over his heart. His stare slowly drifts from the ceiling back to you.

"Simon. Why do you always fuck me from behind?" 

He raises his eyebrows like he's innocent of the crime he's being accused of. "Not always."

"Seriously, Simon."

The smug look returns; it gives his eyes a delightful little spark and tugs at the corner of that kissable mouth.

"I like your ass."

"But not my eyes?"

The smile dies, and he gulps down a short surprise, caught between truth and dare. But then his eyes settle like the calming sea under a full moon. Stern, but not remorseless. Bold, but not heartless. If anything, he's naked and bare.

"Darlin'. Love your eyes the most."

Your heart does a backflip. You've been a fool because what else has he done but search for your eyes first thing in the morning? Given you flashes of mischief over breakfast, made love to you with those eyes as you cum around his cock? That liquid fire and smoke hasn't left you since he stepped inside this house.

You breathe together; you can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest. There was a time when you thought this man was incapable of love, but now you fear he has never been allowed to love enough.

"We never talked, you know," you whisper. His heart swells underneath your palm like a sail.

"What'ya wanna talk about?"

"Us."

"So talk."

Walls are raised so quickly you feel them knocking the warmth out of your body. It's cold, it's Antarctic, the technique he uses to withdraw. Your room turns into a kingdom of ice from the cruel, emotionless indifference he emits. 

You've been a fool, yes... And a child.

"You're making it hard," you say, noticing how the man starts to tense up under your fingertips. This is not the way, but you're not smart enough to stop your rampage.

"What happens when you've done your job?"

He doesn't sigh. He doesn't even think twice before giving his answer.

"I go back to the base."

You know now why he's called a ghost. You wonder if he was ever even here. Simon becomes a reminder for you, a reminder to trust no one.

"...Right." You pull your hand away slowly. As if it somehow helps with the pain to pretend you haven't just touched a hot stove and ended up getting your fingers burned.

He notices how you tense up far more than he. The arm around your waist goes tight, and you wonder if you've always been a bloodied steak to this brute, a stupid little princess with your wines, sighs, and wet eyes. He just doesn't want to let go of the last bites of his fine, delicious meat.

"I never thought you wanted a relationship," he says with a hollow voice, and the red rage nearly blinds your sight. You're too riled up to even yell at him.

"Love…" he tries for the last time.

"Get out of my bed."

…............................

His musk still clings to you as you descend the stairs the next morning.

He's sitting at the end of the steps with hunched shoulders and a tense back, exiled into the man he was the first day you met him. Your heart bleeds from the sight, wondering whether Simon has waited there the whole night after you kicked him out of your bedroom. But the boiling bile in your stomach forces you to lift your chin and draw your shoulders back as you walk down those steps with an audible clatter as your heels clack across the parquet.

He must've heard you before you make a racket fitting for an angered queen, but rises only after you've made it halfway through the staircase. You won't allow yourself to even look his way as he draws a deep breath.

"Love. Sweetheart."

But with that, you flash the man a stare full of despise as you walk past him.

"Don't."

"Let me–"

"Don't say a word," you take a sharp turn and raise a hand to shield you from whatever brutality he would like to stain you with. "You don't talk to me. You just do your job. Ok?"

His chest swells with another deep breath, but otherwise, this man is still as a statue again.

"Ma'am."

It takes you a while to notice he has regressed back to that term again, and you tilt your head. The movement is that of a warrior who swings her sword to a guard before a fight. He crosses his hands over his crotch as if to shield the most vulnerable parts from a low blow, but his eyes are full of hateful hurt as he gives you his most pretentious, mocking tone.

"Miss."

Your heart skips a beat – Simon becomes the thing you miss. 

A hit and run.

You have to resist the urge to grimace at the pure venom in his voice - it doesn't matter what he calls you because that tone seeps straight through your skin like lye. It hurts; it burns to see him even more withdrawn to his shell than when you first met. He retreats far beyond the front line, he goes further than the rear, and it's a bitter defeat for both of you. 

This man has rubbed your feet while you've laughed at a stupid joke in a sitcom. The same man has been inside you – night after night after night. It rips your heart to see a distant, perfectly blank expression on his face after you've seen him give you a plentitude of relaxed and wicked little smiles. 

You share the breakfast in funeral-like silence. You wish you could pay him to stay home so that you can go through your day filled with terror and longing without Simon Riley following you around.

"I've been meaning to update you on new intel about the target," he breaks the silence, and your heart feels like it's being put through a wringer. Simon hasn't even touched his breakfast. "Turns out he received training in a sniper unit."

"So?"

"There's a high chance he might prefer to use long-range weapons."

He's professional, curt, clinical. Even more so than when you first shook hands with him. And all the while, those eyes burn you; they examine you like you're the most challenging puzzle he's ever tried to solve. He's cold as ice with his words and hot as hell with that stare. Those eyes seem to pierce your clothes, they even reach under your skin.

"Right," you say without giving him a single look back.

"We have to update our protocol asap."

Our…

We.

"The protocol…" you whisper and finally look up at him. His lips draw into a thin line as he sees how your walls crumble; they didn't last even half a day.

"Simon, I can't do this," you say, your voice breaking. The tears are only seconds away. They blur your sight, but as he rises from the table slowly and takes a hesitant step towards you, you turn your head back to your toast with a snap.

"I want to change bodyguards."

From the corner of your blurred vision, you see how he raises a hand. If you didn't know any better, you could say that he's at his weakest. But the hand falls straight back and gives a twitch by his side. You wonder why he even bothers to disguise the spasm so lousily as a stretch. It's as if he wants you to see that he's in tumult too.

"I'll stay until–"

"No. Get out."

"Miss. I'll just get my things," he says, and you nod briefly. No exchange of gazes is probably the best policy after informing him you no longer need his services. It's better to rip the band-aid off with one yank than try to pretend that this relationship was something more than sexual. 

You know he came to your house with minimal belongings, a duffel bag full of spare clothes and a large case which you supposed was a container for different weapons. That is why you notice he takes a surprisingly long time to get those things and leave your house.

When he finally emerges from his room – no, not his room, but the guest room, you remind yourself – he places the luggage in the hallway and comes back to you, probably to say his polite farewells.

"You won't let me speak to you, so I wrote you a fuckin' letter."

You turn to solid stone as he places an envelope between your water glass and cup of coffee. You sit with your heart thumping in your chest as he picks up his things, walks to the door, walks out of it and out of your life.

It's one of those moments you wish you could freeze and rewind. Do everything differently so that it wouldn't have to come to this. Instead, you listen how the front door clunks shut.

Then you send your trembling fingers up from your lap and onto the pure white thing that holds his secrets. You pry it open and find yourself reading the lines, scribbled with surprisingly sophisticated handwriting, through a round of hot tears.

They cloud your vision, but they don't cloud his words.

You skim through the letter in a frenzied hurry once, then again with more control, and try to remember how to breathe.

He shares shrivels from his past, ugly, horrid things which make your breakfast nearly push up your throat. He tells you he stopped dating eleven years ago for a reason. He writes that he would rather be tortured again than make you suffer from his past and incapacities.

There are certain lines that enter your heart like a thief with the most delicate crowbar. Lines like I'm not good with words and You must know by now that I'm a broken man.

Lines like I'm not a fucking poet but I'll miss your warmth even under the desert sun.

Some lines make you want to tear the letter to pieces. Lines such as Don't throw your diamonds in the dust and I can't give you what you deserve.

He thinks you can't take his darkness, so he shelters you from it. He says he would come back to you if he could. You don't know what the hell he means by that. 

If he could? 

What the fuck prevents him?

You sit inside your empty, lonely house, confident of the fact that it is not you who prevents it. It was not you who just sent him out that door. Who commanded him to leave because you didn't need his services anymore.

The letter makes you cry, and then it makes you boil.

Such sweet words, and so many empty sentences. If only, if I wasn't, if I could.

You get the feeling that he's mocking you again. If only you weren't a princess and a spoiled brat, then perhaps he could reconsider this relationship.

You leave the letter there; you leave your coffee and your breakfast. You almost wish someone would shoot you and put you out of your misery as you call a taxi and go to the heart of the city.

You're completely numb as your fingertips brush silk and linen and all the newest designs. They curl around tiny bottles of bright nail polish and touch the perfumes made from the last free wildflowers of a burning world, but you feel nothing stir inside.

You're emptier than the echo that rings through the malls and corridors of stone; you feel poorer than all the beggars on the street. Shopping always makes you feel better. But now you want to burn all your money, throw your jewels out the window, torch all the fucking stores like some bloody anarchist. You leave every store without buying a thing and try to remember what it was to have lunch without drowning in tears that can't be cried in public.

"I can't give you what you deserve."

That's the line that scalds you most. You know what he meant when he wrote those words, seemingly humble. But your bleeding heart twists that sentence until his words are a testimony of pure rejection.

You have money, so you don't deserve love, is that it?

You want to find him and shake him. It's not about what you deserve or what he deserves. It's not about what anyone deserves. And if the bloody man thinks he doesn't deserve love only because he's made his home in suffering, then he's the last person who should be allowed to decide who deserves what.

You walk through the crowds and streets like a small whirlwind, on the verge of yelling your heart and loneliness out in the air until your vocal cords are raw. You're so riled your mind doesn't even register the gunshot.

The only thing you hear is a glass shattering next to you just before an entire boulder hits you.

His scent envelops you like a safe, warm blanket, even if that blanket weighs a ton and causes your jeans to grate and tear as you two hit the asphalt. Simon gives you bruises, scrapes and burns all across your left side as your body grinds through the dirt. 

Another shot is fired; this time, a car's glass is shattered above you, and the body surrounding you tenses until you worry your bodyguard has been hit. The bodyguard you fired this morning, who's still doing his job, who never even left you…

People are screaming and running in different directions all around and above you, but time comes to a halt as Simon rises only an inch or two.

"Stay down," he gruffs in your ear. "Don't move. Don't you fucking move, ok?"

The whole world could've gone silent from the way you only hear his voice. His words. His distress. You remain still as a stone and look up at him – your lips part because he's looking at you with impatience that's not just pressing; it's demanding.

"Yes," you stutter, "yes, of course."

Someone's pissed because a third shot sends him right back over you, and only then do you notice you're clinging to him, to his jacket and his shirt, like he's a human shield. Then the human shield speaks again, and the words that come out only make you grip him tighter.

"He has to change the magazine soon. You stay right here, ok? I'm going in."

"No, don't," your fingers curl around his clothes and try to keep him on top of you. "Don't go. I'm afraid."

I'll get you a dog. 

A day of silence. 

I'll buy you some good whiskey. I promise…

"I'll be right back," he murmurs, more softly now. "I promise." 

Then he rips himself off you. Your body misses his heat like the desert sand must miss the sun, and you realize you've ruined everything as you finally get to watch him in his element. He's agile and beautiful as he reaches for his gun, takes it out, and prepares it in a few seconds to fire death upon your faceless enemy. You've ruined everything because if Simon goes in, he might get killed – he's a human, not a shield, he's not even a weapon – and all the things you never said will haunt you for the rest of your life.

"Don't leave me," you want to reach for him, but don't dare disobey his orders. It should send you laughing: that you're finally doing precisely as he says. You finally trust your life with him, just before he leaves you, leaves you, leaves you. 

"Simon–"

"Sweetheart. I never left you."

He looks straight into your eyes. You gulp the tears now.

"I'm so sorry," you whisper, and someone is screaming; everythings a buzz, cars whir by as you tell him all the things you meant to say weeks ago. "I never wanted you to go. I always liked you. I– I think I love–"

"Shh. Don't you do this to me now."

The words are so soft you have to struggle to hear what he's saying under his breath. It's like he's talking to himself, and you realize you're an asshole, saying things like that to him when he's trying to concentrate on his mission and his job. But you just can't help yourself sometimes. No one in your life compares to him. No one has caused such a ruckus, such turmoil, such devastation and such love.

"Do what?" you whimper there, motionless on the ground as he gives you a last, painful look before his stare fixes on the piece of glass still unshattered, the dim, transient mirror of a store window he uses to locate movement in one of the buildings. 

Then he takes a peek over the car, and you hold your breath – he's the bait now, and ducks his head immediately as two more shots are fired. You don't even have the strength to scream; your whole body simply shudders from the echoing sound of pure fear – how can he play tag with death like that? 

And then he leaves. 

He rounds the car and darts for the building and the sniper; he disappears from your vision so quickly you wonder if these past weeks have been but a dream.

A hit and run.

"Do what…" you repeat on the ground and curl into yourself even though he said you shouldn't move. You figure it's not that big of a crime to go into a fetal position when you don't know if he's ever coming back to scold you for breaking the rules.

You want to close your ears from the sounds that follow – you fear you'll jinx something if you listen too closely to what happens in that building. You try to concentrate on your breaths, slowly bringing you back to your body. You haven't even noticed that there's blood running down your arm.

It's funny how you only notice the pain after seeing the flowing crimson that makes small rivers around your fingers. You don't want to look at your burning shoulder because the shock is already here. 

The searing pulse gets worse as you hear another shot, then another shot. Those sounds pound inside your shoulder and send more fire down your arm. Minutes or hours pass and you think how strange it is that everything's completely still, how bizarre it is that there are no sirens, no cars, no screaming. They've finally closed off the roads.

You only start to cry when you see that he's alive.

You try to rise from the ground to meet him – a bleeding princess, waking from her beauty sleep and realizing everything's just been a bad dream, greeting her knight in a black pair of fitted tactical pants and a pistol on his waist. Diamonds and darkness…

He rushes to you in what seems like desperation. You find it oddly beautiful that he's not only relieved to see his client is still alive and well, he's also relieved to know you're still there. That his princess has waited for him.

He falls on his knees and prevents you from rising. You're quickly wrapped in his arms, feeling so happy and safe that you don't even bother to tell him you're injured. It's just a scratch anyway. Even if your leg was blown off, you wouldn't complain about being picked up in his lap like this. 

"Shh. I got you. I got you."

He's cradling you like a child while tears stream down your face, but there's no audible sounds of crying. You weep a whole river of tears and your nose is clogged, forcing you to breathe through your mouth, but there's no wailing, no screaming, no bawling. The first words that roll off your tongue are a child's moody complaint.

"You left me," you mope as he caresses your head.

"Only for a little while."

"You came back."

"I said I would."

More tears flow, and this time you sniffle and sob. He rocks you gently back and forth as you cry in his embrace. Simon would make a good father.

"Is he…?" You whisper, then look up at him. He just nods and gives you a quick scan, drawing a sharp breath when he notices the wound on your arm. 

You're placed back on the ground as he inspects your shoulder and tells you the bullet managed to scrape some skin but has mostly just ruined your jacket. You're almost sorry that the wound is not as severe as it feels. You thought the burning sensation meant shattered bones and scarred flesh, but the scratch is no deeper than if you had accidentally cut yourself with a kitchen knife.

"No, I don't want… No hospital," you beg as he offers to take you to ER. You're not spending the rest of the day in a frigid treatment room where tired medical personnel only clean the wound and put a big plaster on it. 

"Just take me home," you plead like you're his daughter who doesn't want to go to school today. "Please?"

"Sure. Whatever ya want."

He makes a few phone calls, arranges things with the local police or something. You don't want to know anything about it. You don't want to know who got shot in that building and how.

It's not a taxi that drives you back this time. You don't know where he got a car and a driver, but the vehicle is big and black, and your head is in Simon's lap when you lie in the backseat. There's a panel between the driver's seat and the rear, so you don't even know who's driving, but you're only grateful for the privacy after the crazy morning followed by a murder attempt. You look up at Simon, who looks back at you for the first time while you're in a car together.

"Why did you become a soldier?" You ask, not knowing why you're whispering. He's holding your hand – a simple, wholesome thing to do, but his grip on you is solid and warm and feels equally as intimate as the times this man has been inside you. 

"I wanted to help people." 

"By killing them?"

"By saving those I can."

He keeps a hand on your cheek too. Simon has spoken softly ever since you were fired at, has been humane and caring and tender, and you realize… This man is naked before you; he's stripped bare from all pretenses. 

And he's not darkness. He's not a skeleton or a dead man or even a soldier.

He's a beacon in the night.

"You did a good job," you squeeze his hand softly.

The last glass-like veil in his eyes shatters, but far more softly than those windows shot at with a rifle.

"I live to serve, Ma'am...–Miss."

"Don’t… Simon, please don’t call me a–"

He descends. He doesn't need that hand to lift your chin up to meet him in a kiss. It's not a hungry devouring this time, but a soft promise, a lover's seal. You feel the rest of the shock leave your body in his embrace. There's no more coldness, only a fragile burning.

"You never look me in the eyes," you whisper as a tear escapes from the corner of your eye. It's a silly thing to say when he looks at you with all the love in the world.

"Yes I do," he gives you a soft brush of a thumb across your cheek. His lips are right there, an inch away from yours. "How could you have missed that?"

He's right, as always. The dark love almost swallows the brown of his eyes as he looks at you, shining light on you as he has shined for days, for weeks now. How could you have missed that, indeed? You raise a hand to cup his cheek, not caring about the pain, not even mourning that your blood stains his chin. He doesn't seem to mind at all, so why would you?

When you arrive at your house, he drives away the loneliness, sorrow, everything a rich girl can fear by carrying you in his arms, stepping over the threshold with you like you two are married now.

He peels your jacket off with affection and tenderness, tends to your wound and wipes away the blood that has caked dry all over your arm. The gash has bled a lot for such a small wound, and you purse your lips from how accurately it reflects your feelings for him.

He ties the wound, checks at least two times he's not tying it too tight. His care breaks your heart, because you don't know whether he will leave you after this. There's nothing that keeps him here anymore – there's no way you can keep Simon Riley to yourself. So you abandon him first for the second time, ascend the stairs to your lonely domain while he cleans up the small mess in the bathroom.

It's a small miracle that he follows you. He opens the door to your room without knocking – not because he's entitled to your privacy, but because there are no more barriers between you two. You're gathered in a stout embrace for the second time this afternoon, and you wrap your arms around him to hold him closer.

"You'll leave me soon," you speak to the wall before you, to the man behind you, holding you so gently against his chest. "I'll miss you."

"Love," he murmurs behind you, you feel the words against your back as a warm rumble. "I'll come back. If you want me, I'll come back to you."

"You will…?"

"I promise."

You have no more tears to cry, so you settle for examining the stab inside your heart, the wound that will bleed you dry if no one ties it tightly enough. 

"I don't believe you."

"It's not a matter of whether you believe me."

He turns you around and lets you bathe in his warmth again, the same golden light that came through the window when he placed his mouth on you in the kitchen. It's almost frightening to know that there's nothing that can keep him from you. Nothing, except you. The only thing that has stood between you was only and ever pride.

"Simon," you breathe, a soft attempt to introduce him to mercy. "It's not a matter of what we deserve."

He blinks a few times, the chest against your side collapses a little. It's a hard reset. The corner of his mouth tugs, a beautiful betrayal of his surrender, a sign of being hit by a boulder – your boulder, finally bringing the rest of those walls down.

"You think so...?"

"Yes. I think so."

He brushes his knuckles across your sternum – a familiar motion that always manages to lift your heart. You used to think it was foreplay when it was in truth, an attempt to touch the organ said to be the house of love.

You think about the times his harsh breaths have hit you just before he cums, the urgent praise he's peppered you with merely seconds before you've cried from pleasure. Can't get enough of you pet, you’re fucking perfect, 'm gonna make you cum, sing for me, just like that... 

You always thought it was a catalogue of shallow lust when it was an offering of naked devotion. 

He was as vulnerable as you when you drifted through space together, when you drowned in his stunning midnight sea. He was catching fire and burning too, again and again until you were both satisfied and sweaty. He always held you close after, panted desperate love on your skin, planted kisses on your collarbones and neck before resting his head on your heart. Settling there, over your pulse, like he had finally found his way home…

The hand glides between your breasts and molds itself over your waist. It fits there like a second skin. You're relatively sure his hands were made for holding you. 

"You asked what makes me happy," he says, completely naked and bare. The heavy love surrounds you with warm safety; your breath flows freely as you await his confession, the last secret revealed. "I think you know, love."

You know. It has finally dawned on you. What you didn't know was that tears of hope could feel like fire too. You've never been more eager to burn.

"Now keep those pretty eyes on me."

[thatfreshi]

Can you make an Angsty Astarion x mortal!reader fic where Astarion realizes that one day the reader will pass and he’ll be alone again🙏🙏🙏 I need more Angst of this man😭

TW - Talk of death, graveyards

Recommended Song: Halley's Comet - Billie Eilish

Astarion often visits graveyards. It's some form of therapy, a place where he can let it all out, a place where he can mourn what he never had, what he doesn't remember. You don't usually go with him, deciding it's best to give him something just for him. Occasionally he'll ask you to come with him, if it's been a particularly rough time or if it's a special day. At the very least he goes once a month, and it's never a question of where he's going, you just know. You worry about him sometimes, being alone in some graveyard. You are all each other have, all you cherish, all you love. It's not often you're apart, but it's not all that difficult to stick to someone like sap when you can't be in the sun.

It's the anniversary of the death of some family member he doesn't remember, who died centuries ago, but some part of him feels as though he should at least go. Not like anyone else goes to see his family anymore. You're in the living room, setting up the fireplace for when you return. Astarion comes downstairs, and you hear his shoes tap each step. You turn to find him in all black, you are as well.

"Are you ready to go?"

You ask, grabbing your trusty knife off the table by the front door, sheathing it under your jacket. It's been quite cold as of recent.

"Mhm."

He doesn't say much. He doesn't have to say much.

"Then let's go."

You smile warmly and wrap yourself around his arm. The graveyard you're visiting isn't too far from the house. It's where most of the Ancuníns were laid to rest, including Astarion's 'grave.' When you arrive, he knows right where to go, and you simply follow along. A while back he memorized all of these people, their death dates, who they were, trying to remember anything he could from a life he lost long ago. The two of you sit in front of an ornate grave, a second cousin of his, or something of the like. You feel guilty that you don't remember like he does.

"I appreciate you."

He'd been silent the entire walk here.

"You always come with me when I ask. I know it may not make sense, I just feel as though it's right, to at least try."

"Of course my love. Whatever you need."

You rest your head on his shoulder and read the inscription on the tombstone. Apparently this man got a terrible illness, died sometime in his 20s, extremely young for an elf. You wonder how much Astarion remembers, if he knew this man at all. You never pry though. He always shares when he's ready. Suddenly, he squeezes your hand.

"I'll miss you. I don't miss these people, but I'll miss you."

"That's hardly a fair comparison. You barely remember them."

"I'll remember you forever. Even if I were enslaved for two hundred more years after this, I couldn't ever forget you."

He kisses the top of your head, lingering for a moment to take in your scent, the feeling of your hair, every little thing he'll remember when you're gone.

"The truth is darling, I don't think I'll ever love again, once you're gone."

He begins to cry. You hadn't thought about him with future lovers, lying with another soul.

"That's not fair though."

"What makes you say that?"

"You deserve to love after me. You deserve to be loved after me."

He sadly chuckles to himself.

"As if anyone could ever compare. You're the sun, and I the moon. Without you, no light would ever reflect off me again. A dark husk of a man, that's what I will be when you're gone."

He sounds so sure of himself, as if beyond you there is nothing. Then again, you've made this entire life together. Who else would fall in love with a vampire spawn with no master, a monster who's never going to be quite right? You're not sure what to say.

"To be honest, I don't think I could fall in love with someone else, even if I tried my damnest. You've made me feel safe in a way that is so foreign, fabricated just for me. You can't replicate that. You can't find someone so willing to be this patient, this kind, to not only love me for my body."

"You have so much more to love though."

"I don't think anyone would see it the way you do my sweet."

You shift to turn and look at Astarion, taking his hands in yours.

"You know what I love most about you?"

He softly smiles.

"What?"

"That you can change. It's something many people forget to do, to change and evolve, to find more in life than their misery. You've changed, for the better. Very few can do that the way you have."

"It's you who changed me."

Sometimes it frustrates you, how little credit he gives himself. Then again, it's much better than it used to be.

"Just promise me something? Once I'm gone, find another way to be happy. Find something that makes your heart flutter, that causes those precious creases when you smile. Find something else, if not for yourself, for me."

He nestles into your neck, giving you a soft kiss.

"I promise to try my love, that's all I can do."

His eyes are still misty, the tears get onto your neck. You try hard not to cry yourself, but it's hard when your heart is breaking outside of your body. You pray in that moment, although you're not sure to what god or power, but you pray that he'll be okay when you die, that it's a long time away from someone driving a stake through his ribs, that he finds joy in the small things like he does now. After all, hope is all you have when the afterlife comes to get you so soon.

"I hope I get to watch over you, wherever I end up."

"Like some kind of angel or something?"

"I guess. Like your guardian."

"Do you think I'll know?"

"Yes, I think you'll know. Maybe I'll take on the body of stray cats, follow you on the streets, lead you down paths with less heartache."

"I'd like that, very much."

~~~

Decades later, Astarion gets ready to leave the house, your knife on the table. When he steps out onto the cobblestone streets, there's a pure white cat standing a couple feet away. It meows, almost melodically, and turns to a nearby alleyway. He walks to where the animal was standing, and turns to look into the alleyway, but there is no sight of the stray. He smiles.

"Thank you, my love."

[blluespirit]

i wish that there was more time between the day of black sun and sozin's comet bc zuko's official desertion from the fire nation would have the most insane ripple effects (and it would be nice to see the gaang interacting a bit more than we got but hey i'll take what i can get)

zuko's desertion would have been essentially impossible for the fire nation to bury since it was such a big deal that he returned at all. so i imagine the smear campaign against zuko would have been craaazy. i think it would have been interesting for the gaang to try and deal with that when navigating the FN. zuko would be very recognisable i think at this point, and it would have made staying hidden much harder. would they still have chosen ember island? maybe the kids didn't recognise zuko and azula during The Beach , but with the prince of the fire nation committing treason would there be more wanted posters? would there be more talk around the island? would zuko have to remain hidden while the rest go out and get food?

i wonder if zuko deserting and very meaningly committing his loyalty to the avatar influenced other soldiers in the FN to also desert? or would it have had the opposite effect and made people feel more patriotic since zuko was banished, returned under the guise of having killed the avatar, and then left when aang announced his survival to world during the failed invasion?

SPEAKING OF THAT!! the rumours around this would be INSANE. we know what really happened, but the public don't. did zuko and the avatar plan this so that there would be an inside man during the invasion and then zuko used that chaos to escape? what really happened in ba sing se if zuko didn't kill aang, but azula thought that he did? (again: we, the audience know the truth, but the general public don't). if zuko and the avatar where working together... for how long? was iroh involved somehow since he also disappeared the same time that zuko did? did iroh get captured on purpose to be close to zuko to possibly help him if needed? did zuko break iroh out of jail or did one of the guards or was iroh alone? you could spiral on this as just an average person in the avatar world for years like. if youtube existed in atla imagine the video essays breaking down all the conspiracies

its a kids show so obviously Nothing Bad Happened BUT in the Boiling Rock, zuko getting found out as not only an imposter (already, a very bad situation), a traitor (extremely bad), AND the traitorous (ex) prince of the fire nation (devastatingly terrible) would have been... incredibly dangerous for zuko. in zuko and iroh's original wanted poster, the official translation says “Permission is granted to kill them on sight” and this was before zuko has gone right ahead and committed Treason On Purpose. the warden is not going to be nice. when the warden visits zuko in his cell he literally tells him "If these criminals found out who you are, the traitor prince who let his nation down, why they'd tear you to shreds." the boiling rock would be hell trying to survive. it also puts a lot more weight on zuko refusing to leave sokka in their first escape attempt. also ozai obviously knew that he has his son was in prison bc he... broke in to the prison bc azula was there but then zuko manages to escape with sokka (another imposter) and suki and hakoda (POWs) and chit sang (a prisoner) and two of azula's trusted friends end up in prison for treason as well i just. that is literally insane for the average person to hear about. again, THE CONSPIRACIES!!

when zuko eventually does take the throne there's a lot of conjecture around what zuko did while he was banished and moreso, what he did the second time he left, this time voluntarily. i think zuko's loyalty would be questioned a lot; by other world leaders who are understandably wary about the fire nation and its motivations, but also by its own people - some who believe that zuko is a traitor to his country and is trying to sabotage it since he helped end the war.

idk these are all just me rambling but it would been so interesting to explore the implications of zuko leaving the fire nation and how that would have impacted the gaang and how they interacted with others in their travels. there are so many fic where zuko joins the gaang early, but neither myself with the aus that I have written, nor many that ive read have explored this very much or at all.

[zuko-always-lies]

Azula's opportunities to kill Zuko (that she never took)

Many ATLA fans claim "Azula was always trying to kill Zuko." However, a cursory examination of the series reveals that Azula had many opportunities to easily kill Zuko that she never took.

"The Chase"-During the Azula vs. Aang vs. Zuko battle, Azula disables Zuko and renders him unconscious. However, instead of taking a half second to finish off her helpless opponent or at least make sure he can't get up, Azula ignores him to continue her chase of Aang.

"The Crossroads of Destiny"-Azula captures Zuko. Instead of killing him or torturing him or anything like that, she leaves him unharmed.

"The Crossroads of Destiny" through the Day of Black Sun-Azula probably could have easily have had Zuko covertly killed off, especially before the Fire Teens return to the Fire Nation. She had the whole Dai Li working for her, after all. And who would have cared if the disgraced, banished prince "accidentally" fell overboard and drowned? Instead, Azula makes Zuko a war hero.

Boiling Rock, Part II-Azula could easily have ordered the gondola lines cut so that Zuko, Sokka, Hakoda, Suki, Chit Sang, and the Warden fell to their deaths in the boiling lake. That would have been the easy thing to do. Instead, Azula took the much more risky route of trying to capture the escapees herself. It was the Warden who ordered the lines cut, a decision which nearly killed Azula and Ty Lee.

Sozin's Comet-After Azula's lightning disables Zuko, she could have easily finished Zuko off. Katara was forced into hiding, and it would have taken only a split second for Azula's comet-enhanced firebending to seal the deal, while Azula's dialogue suggests she knew or believed that Zuko was still alive. However, she leaves him alone, and her comments suggest that the idea of getting him medical attention has at least crossed Azula's mind.

If "Azula always wanted to kill Zuko," why did she avoid killing him at so many clear-cut opportunities?

[pillotalkin]

I got carried away while doodling and made an entire Sonic My Little Pony AU...! (My Little Hedgehogs? MLP: Chaos is Magic?)

Story under the cut!

Sonic Speeds (Sonic) is a royal knight in training under Prince Brilliant Mind (Eggman), who serves as the captain of the guard because his underdeveloped horn made his magic too weak to handle the celestial duties of the royal family. Sonic Speeds's cocky attitude and foolhardiness has held him back from achieving his dream of being an elite guard despite his physical prowess, so he's desperate to prove himself to his mentor, by any means necessary. Eternal Night (Shadow) is the runaway half-umbrum prince of Equestria. He's on a quest for revenge after the death of his elder sister, Princess Fragile Dawn (Maria Robotnik), at the hands of his umbrum father, King Comet (Black Doom). His true name is Midnight Star, but he adopted a new moniker on his travels, as a way of hiding his identity and also to represent what he intends to bring upon the umbrum for taking his best friend from him. Brilliant Mind, who blames Midnight Star for Fragile Dawn's death and resents him for his great magical talent, sends Sonic Speeds on a near-hopeless quest to bring back his lost brother so justice can be served (and his own revenge for being outshone can be had). Through some miracle, Sonic Speeds actually manages to find him, and as he travels alongside the somber prince, attempting to convince him to give up his quest for revenge and go home (since attempting to force him to go would be... unadvisable), their relationship grows. He begins to doubt his mentor's convictions, but his sense of duty compels him still, and the day comes when he manages to persuade Midnight Star to return to the palace with him, unaware of what lies in wait...

I've got some more thoughts on Midnight Star's origins and the underlying history surrounding this series of events, but I'll save that for another post hehe. Stay tuned!

[astra-kamari]

me again :3 zuko and fem reader?

reader is zuko’s childhood best friend and one night she went to market to buy some dinner however on her way back home she’ is being followed by a strange guy.

when she notices a figure following her, she doesn’t know what to do at first but somehow finds herself running towards zuko who is training nearby.

A/n-Ofc🫶🏼 i love this idea!! I wasn’t sure if you wanted them dating/confession so i kinda just went with it. Its not very long and kind of sloppy-so lets just ignore the plot holes lol.

Pairing- zuko x reader

Never go alone again

You were so exited. Zuko had finally killed the avatar and returned back home. You would finally have a chance to tell your best freind how you felt.

You decided you would do it over dinner. You were searching through the pantry to make sure you had everything, when you realized you were out of flaming sour dough.

You quickly grab your shoes and walk to the store. You were kind of nervous about tonight. Did he feel the same way? Was this all a mistake? You decide not to overthink it and quickly buy your supplies for the bread.

As you were shoping you noticed a man following you around the store. Always from a distance. Maybe he just needed the exact same things you did.

As you were walking home you kept looking behind you. A ways away you could see the man behind you-following you. He was quickly gaining on you.

You looked around, you were near the training grounds, quite aways away from your house and even if you beat the guy there what would you do?

You look behind you one last time and see the guy running for you. Thats it, you thought, Zuko better be there like he always is. But it would be just your luck if the one time you actually needed him training he was gone.

You run in quickly spotting the black haired boy. “Zuko!” You scream

He looks up startled, and catches you when you practically run into him. “A man, chasing me, so far, your here.” You say gasping for breath.

As soon as he realizes whats happening he starts looking you over for injuries. “Are you ok? whats wrong? Are you sure your not hurt? Where is he?”

He’s bombarding you with questions and you’re just trying to catch your breath, running was never easy.

You end up just pointing behind you, just as the man comes running in. Zuko snaps his head up and quickly takes care of him as you calm down.

Zuko is still sending comets of fire as the guards come running out. “Take care of him.” He yells to the guards as he comes towards you.

He pulls you into a hug, and you both stand there for a moment, just enjoying each other’s presence.

Then he pulls back, “how did he find you? Why weren’t you safe at home?”

You’re startled by his intensity. “I was getting the ingredients for dinner tonight. I just walked to the store, i never thought something like this could happen.”

Now he just looked more upset, “what were you thinking! Going alone? I would’ve gone with you! You could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse!”

“Im sorry, i was just exited for tonight” you say sadly.

He sighs, “i just, i dont know what i would do if something happened to you.” You look up at him, this was almost too good to be true. “I have liked you for a long time.” He says very slowly.

And it seems it just hit him with what he said and everything immediately follows up with, “i didn’t really mean to say that! I mean i ment it-but i didn’t want to tell you like this. And obviously you dont have to feel the same way and i-“

You cut him off by kissing him, after a few moments you pull back. “Its ok. I like you too, i was actually planning on telling you at dinner.” You laugh

You look up at him and see the biggest smile on his face. “This is perfect” he says, “and now i can go with you to the store. You’ll never have to go alone again.”

You two walk to your house to have dinner, the happiest you’ve ever been.

[red-riding-wood]

Made For You

"I've been loved before, but right now in this moment, I feel more and more like I was made for you."

A oneshot based off the song Halley's Comet by Billie Eillish. Was inspired to write this back in February of 2023 thanks to @cillmequick's House Party Event. This has been stewing in my brain for nearly a YEAR and I'm finally writing it! Thank you for the muse and for introducing me to this song, Alex! <3

Pairing: Robert Capa x Reader

Fandom: Sunshine (2007)

Warnings: angst, lots of angst, some fluff?, childhood friends to lovers trope

WC: ~2620

Time always ran different here, beneath the blanket of shattered stars and hollow black sky.

You’d lost track of the hours you’d spent, lost in them, eyes tracing each constellation but mostly lingering in the gaps between them, the blackness that stretched endlessly into the sky. That spanned between you and the other half of your soul, the boy you’d loved and the man you’d lost.

Sixteen months ago, you’d said goodbye as he boarded his plane. Sixteen months ago, you’d watched the shuttle launch on national television, feeling as though a piece of you had been stripped, raw and bleeding, from your chest.

“Someday…” he’d said, when you were barely old enough to understand the concepts of space and time. “… I’ll be up there, and you’ll be down here, and I’ll bring you back one of those stars.”

You’d scoffed, and playfully hit him on the arm. “And just how are you gonna do that?” you’d said.

“I don’t know.” He’d smiled. “But I’ll find a way.”

Sixteen months ago, he’d been sent on a mission to renew the dying sun that plunged the world into a winter so cold, the green of summer turned to a white death, and the waters of the Caribbean nearly froze over.

Shards of ice prickled at the back of your hair, the slight gaps of flushed skin where your scarf and toque left you bare, crystals of snow kissing your cheeks and the cold seeping in past the dampness of your scalp and the down of your parka, but as you shut your eyes, you imagined the snow to be blades of grass. And your fingers, to be digging into the earth instead of the fleece of your mittens.

“You see that star, right next to the Big Dipper?” he said, pointing up at the diamonds in the sky. Propped up on one elbow, the warmth of his arm brushed yours in the cool air of the spring night, the sleeve of his shirt tickling your shoulder, his lashes limned like chalk outlines by the soft sheen of the moon.

You opened your eyes, the low rumble of his voice having practically lulled you to sleep. You didn’t get much sleep in those days, when he was in university obtaining his astrophysics degree and you were working early shifts at your dead-end job, when the innocence of childhood was lost to the bitter realities of the world but you had no idea just how empty you’d one day find yourself to be. You still saw glimpses of this innocence on his face, in the grin that stretched his lips across freckled cheeks and the glint of awe in bright blue eyes. You had no idea how lucky you were just to be able to reach out and touch him, to bear witness to these traces of happiness that were tangible and not hidden behind a screen.

You spent almost every night with him beneath the stars. Dreaming of greater things, of the day when you’d both break free of your cages and return to your innocence, when you’d become greater than your past and he’d change the world. When he’d bring you your star and you’d display it in your glass heart.

“Mhm.” Your eyes followed the tip of his finger to a star that gleamed particularly bright.

“That star died seven-thousand years ago,” he told you. “It’s so far away, we just can’t see it yet.”

You scrunched your face and narrowed your eyes, a smile quirking your lip. “Then how come it’s so bright?” you asked.

His grin softened into an almost sad smile, his hand lowering to the earth and his head turning on his shoulder to lock bright eyes with yours. Your breath hitched in your chest, and for one moment so fleeting you could’ve imagined it, you thought his gaze darted to the parting of your lips.

“Light does not always equate to life,” he told you. And each day onward, you would ponder the mysterious woe laced in a silk tone.

Your warm palm cupped your face, mitten cast aside, the brush of your cold fingers laying a kiss to your tear-streaked lips. Muffling the choked sobs that rose from a chest void of hope and full of shattered dreams and shattered glass.

Here you lay, in your cage, your tomb. Not knowing if you’d ever see him again, not knowing if you’d have the chance to tell him that you’d broken your promise.

“What is it?” His soft voice was laden with worry as you buried your face in the warmth of his chest, and his arms wrapped tentatively around your back.

“It was all a lie,” you sobbed weakly, his shirt damp with your tears. “He broke up with me.”

“Oh,” he said, his thumb tracing small circles along your spine.

You sank into his chest, weighing heavy against him, knees shaking beneath you. He kept you standing, allowing your tired body some respite. Thinking that when you were done crying, he might be able to tell you a story that would tempt you to sleep and you wouldn’t feel the crash of pain against your ribs anymore.

“I’m worthless,” you whispered. “He said so himself, he never wanted me…”

“What?” His reaction was so sudden, so sharp, you nearly flinched, sobs stilling as they rose to your chest. Damp threads of hair clung to his shirt, splintering the blurry visage of his freckled cheeks and dark, messy hair as he pushed you softly back to look him in bright, blue eyes. His palm cupped your jaw, thumbing at your cheekbone as he said,

“You’re not worthless. You’re – “

“No. No.” Shaking your head, your eyes gleamed with pain as you began to plead with your friend. “Promise me, Robbie, that you’ll never fall in love with me, and I promise the same. I hate this… this feeling in my chest, like I can’t breathe, like…” You chuffed out a nervous laugh. “… I don’t know. I just don’t wanna feel this again. I don’t wanna lose you, too.”

Robert had stared back at you, silent for a while, the bright of his eyes fading ever-so-slightly. You wondered, for a moment, what he’d been about to say before you'd cut him off, until he pulled you to his chest and murmured in your ear,

“I promise.”

And each day onward, he would keep his promise, watching through high school as you would try to date dumb boys and lend a shoulder to cry on when you’d denounce each one, and after graduation came and went and he’d break up with his own sweetheart, he’d tell you it was because he wanted to focus on his studies.    

How had you been so blind, you thought to yourself. How had you not realised that each relationship you’d sabotaged hadn’t been because of your trust issues, or your self-esteem. It had been because the only guy you’d ever wanted had been right there, letting you sob into his shirt and stare up at the stars with you and tell you about all the things you’d both achieve when you were older.

And now that you were older and wiser, you cursed your foolish heart that bled like the stars across the hollowness of the black sky. Blinking away tears that clung, cold, to your flushed cheeks, you tried to chase away the sobs that echoed through the abyss that stretched from one rib to another.

What a fool you were, to fall in love with nothing but stardust. 

You reached a hand up to the stars as if you could pull them down from the sky, let them spill over you in thousands of glittering lights, make a halo of them until they burned away the snow and brought forth a blue-eyed angel from the white fire.

His transmission came to you when the darkness was just beginning to peel away from the dying light over the horizon, when what was left of the sun began to usurp the night, snaking its tendrils of rose-gold through the black canvas sky.

You swore that his hair had grown longer since the last time he’d sent a message, darkly framing the sides of his pale neck. Those blue eyes stared back at you from the artificial light of your phone, stirring something within the hollowness of your chest. Something warm, like hope.

“I… don’t think there’s really any easy way to say this,” he said. Your hope seemed to sink to your stomach.

Robert cupped his hands over his mouth, as if in prayer, and those piercing blue eyes stared back at you for what must have been an eternity, something cruel and malignant weaving tightly in your gut. You longed for that gaze to rest on you again, to be able to reach out and run your fingers through his messy brown locks, to wipe away the tear that beaded on his lower lash. He scarcely cried, always so stoic. That was how you knew that something was truly, dreadfully wrong.

That you’d realised too little, too late, that you were made for him, and him for you.

“There are only a few of us left,” he said, clearing his throat as his hands came down from his chapped lips. “Some miscalculations were made, and at this point, we only have enough oxygen to deliver the payload. It takes exactly eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth, and so… if one day you’re watching the stars and you see the sun rise with a little extra brightness, you’ll know we made it.” He swallowed again, Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat. “But you’ll know that I’m…” His words were breaking now, just like the sobs that wracked your chest.

“…  I wish there was an easier way to say this, dear God…” his voice tapered into a mere whisper, and he ran a hand over his face. Blue irises were rimmed by red, fatigue and sadness showing through the cracks. “There’s no easy way to say this to you, of all people.”

Your heart stopped in your chest. You sucked in a breath of frozen air, tickling your burning lungs.

“You know that I’ll be gone,” he said at last. “Only stardust.” His lip quirked into a sad, almost ironic smile, and he said, “I did this for you, Y/N. So that someday, those things we talked about under the stars… someday you’d be able to achieve those things, in a world that isn’t dying.”

He paused again, his emotion clawing its way thick into his throat with the way his words came out so strangulated. “I wanted you to know, I’m sorry for breaking our promise… I’m sorry for falling in love with you, Y/N. But up here… with the stars and the blackness and this… impossibly bleak dread, this knowing for once that anything I do or say won’t matter because everything will be gone, including you… ” He shook his head, inhaling sharply, and your breath caught in your chest. “… I loved you since we were kids, and I never told you and I wish I had. Believe me, I wish I had.”

You wanted to reach out and comfort him, run a finger along his freckled cheek, to pull him into your arms as he had you countless times. You wanted to tell him it was okay, that you’d broken your promise, too, and it was all your fault, really, for not realising sooner that you were made for him. That he shouldn’t blame himself for any of it because it was you who should’ve said something, you who should’ve kissed him that night he boarded his plane.

“So, I guess I’ll be seeing you in a few years,” he said, swallowing hard against his throat as baby blue eyes looked at you with some unexplainable emptiness that you were unable to identify. It was the same look he’d given you so many times before, and yet, despite knowing him better than you knew yourself, you still couldn’t quite put your finger on what the mysterious emotion or reason behind it was.

“Soon,” you corrected him, fighting back tears. Sniffling, from the cold or your own emotions you could tell not. “I’ll be seeing you soon, okay?” You squeezed his arm, if only to ground yourself, to remind yourself in the years to come that he was tangible, that he existed not only in your mind.

He nodded, smile playing sadly at his mouth. “Soon,” he repeated.

You had drawn so close to him that his familiar scent engulfed you, took you away from the bustle of the airport and drowned out all the noise. Your tongue darted to wet your lips as you glanced down at his, a few threads of some strange yearning tugging at the empty of your chest in that moment. You were so close, yet, not enough. This feeling, of needing to be closer, of needing to express your affection in more than words and friendly touch, was foreign to you, and you weren’t sure what to do with it.

For one moment, you thought that you might’ve kissed him.

Cheeks flushing in embarrassment, you chastised yourself. The last thing he needed was for you to complicate things on the last day you’d see each other for so long, and so you pushed the childish notion from your brain and you smiled past your anguish and you bid him farewell.

And each day onward, you felt as though you had left things incomplete, this emptiness spanning wider between each rib, like a black hole that swept away all joy and feeling and semblance of being human.

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered into your balled fist, fingers trembling from the cold. You blinked away your tears so you could see him better for the last time, capture his image in your mind before your angel burned his wings for flying too close to the sun.

That sad, ironic smile tugged at the corner of his lip again, and he said, “I always promised I’d bring you a star.”

Your shaking hand tucked your phone back in your pocket as the video ended, and you didn’t even silence your cries as you wept to the heavens, wanting them to hear of your anguish and your loss.

And slowly, after what must have been hours or perhaps minutes, in this plane of altered reality where time ran differently beneath your blanket of stars, your sobs came weaker from your chest, and a warm glow painted the backs of your dark eyelids. The harsh cold had frozen your lashes together, and you blinked, pulling them back to witness the sun’s conquest over the night, the tendrils of pink and orange turning to a fierce gold that you hadn’t seen in years.

You stood, slipping your mitten back over your damp, shaking hand, and trudged, weary and sleepless, through the snow. Your eyes burned, squinting against the swell of the sun, unaccustomed to the brilliance of its lost light. Your heart still clenched, bleeding, shatters of glass falling to the vacuous pit between your ribs, but you couldn’t help but stop for a moment and just look.

Warmth caressed your face, chasing away the bite of the cold, reminding you of spring, of slushy snowball fights with Robert and picking flowers by the local stream.

“Light does not always equate to life,” he'd told you, all those years ago as you'd laid beneath the stars.

And with this pain searing white-hot in your soul and your chest torn empty, and the burning warmth of his confessed love shattering your heart to cold glass, you finally understood.

But despite your pain, it was beautiful.

MASTERLIST • REQUEST

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Taglist: @emotionalcadaver @zablife @shelbydelrey @call-sign-shark @look-at-the-soul @fiercelittlemouse @brummiereader @mrkdvidal1989 @ohwellthatslifesstuff @purplesnorlaxplush @henrywintersdearestgirl @goblinjnr @forgottenpeakywriter @chris-seb-marvel @muhahaha303 @thatonesinglefriend @s0urmarvel @onasmoko @elenavampire21 @mizzbel

[starstruckphantommoon]

Polar Opposites: An A:TLA Prince Zuko Love Story (x reader version)

Original x OC version

Hello and welcome to my Prince Zuko x reader love story: Polar Opposites!!!

To say that I am very proud of this story and how it came out is a complete and utter understatement!

This story was something that I wrote as a Prince Zuko x Waterbender OC! Love Story which I can post on here if you guys’d like me too, just let me know by commenting or sending in an ask!

This x reader version of my original Zuko x OC love story is something that I decided to do as the original is something that I’ve kind of noticed that not too many people like to read canon x oc content (here on Tumblr specifically anyway)!

Anyway, I really hope you guys enjoy this version of this story!

And like I said, let me know if you guys want me to post the original x oc version of this story so that you can see which version can see which version you like to read better!

Enjoy!!!

Blue, Green and Red Dividers on this post and in each chapter by: @peachesboard

Story Status: As of 05/06/24 - This version of this story is currently In The Works! CHAPTERS ARE CURRENTLY BEING POSTED!!!

As of: 05/28/24 - Book 3 Chapter 1-8 has been posted! And chapters 9-20 + epilogue and a post-epilogue *featuring Korra, Mako, Bolin and Asami!* bonus chapter will be posted soon!

Chapter Index

Reader Background/Information

Introduction

Book 1: Water *All Chapters COMPLETED as of 05/09/24!!!*

Chapter 1: The Boy In The Iceberg

Chapter 2: Avatar Aang

Chapter 3: Saving Aang

Chapter 4: Interrogation

Chapter 5: Commander Zhao

Chapter 6: Agni Kai: Zuko vs Zhao

Chapter 7: A Proper Thank You

Chapter 8: Kyoshi Island

Chapter 9: The Search For Iroh

Chapter 10: The Fire Temple

Chapter 11: The Waterbending Scroll

Chapter 12: Jet

Chapter 13: The Great Divide

Chapter 14: The Storm

Chapter 15: The Blue Spirit

Chapter 16: The Bounty Hunter

Chapter 17: The Attack

Chapter 18: Zuko?!

Chapter 19: The Siege of The North Pole - Part 1

Chapter 20: The Siege of The North Pole - Part 2

Book 2: Earth *All Chapters COMPLETED as of 05/25/24!*

Chapter 1: The Avatar State

Chapter 2: The Cave of Two Lovers

Chapter 3: Return To Omashu

Chapter 4: The Swamp

Chapter 5: The Blind Bandit

Chapter 6: The Chase

Chapter 7: Bitter Work

Chapter 8: On The Run

Chapter 9: The Ferry

Chapter 10: Jet's Suspicions

Chapter 11: The City of Walls and Secrets

Chapter 12: The Tale of Zuko and (Y/N)

Bonus Chapter - The Tale of Zuko and (Y/N) *Alternate Version!*

Chapter 13: Lake Laogai

Chapter 14: Metamorpisis

Chapter 15: Simplicity

Chapter 16: The Crossroads of Destiny: Part 1

Chapter 17: The Crossroads of Destiny: Part 2

Book 3: Fire *Chapters being posted as of 05/28/24!*

Chapter 1: The Awakening

Chapter 2: The Headband

Chapter 3: The Painted Lady

Chapter 4: Sokka's Master

Chapter 5: The Runaway

Chapter 6: The Puppetmaster

Chapter 7: The Day of Black Sun: Part 1: The Invasion

Chapter 8: The Day of Black Sun: Part 2: The Eclipse

Chapter 9: The Western Air Temple

Chapter 10: I can’t forgive you… Not yet…

Chapter 11: The Firebending Masters

Chapter 12: The Boiling Rock: Part 1

Chapter 13: The Boiling Rock: Part 2

Chapter 14: I Forgive You Zuko

Chapter 15: The Southern Raiders

Chapter 16: The Ember Island Players

Chapter 17: Sozin’s Comet: Part 1: The Calm Before The Storm

Chapter 18: Sozin’s Comet: Part 2: The Old Masters

Chapter 19: Sozin’s Comet: Part 3: Into The Inferno

Chapter 20: Sozin’s Comet: Part 4: It’s Finally Over

Polar Opposites: Epilogue

Polar Opposites: Bonus Chapter *feat. Avatar Korra and Team Avatar!*

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Halloween prompts no 31 (part 2)

Red Robin was thrown through the air, landing safely in a crouch next to Robin, who had his sword ready, "So much for boring."

The entity preventing them from escavating the bones showed itself. The boy looked almost like a superhero, decked out in black in white and glowing all over. He even had a symbol on his chest resembling a comet. Maybe his powers were space themed when he was alive?

Then again the kid was claiming to be the ghost of the person they were trying to dig up for the investigation and the symbol did kinda resemble a sideways bedsheet ghost. Maybe he needed more coffee. At the moment it didn't matter, they needed to get this investigation on the way before more problems arose. The kid claimed to be the one to bury his own body here so he should have answers, right?

When asked why he chose to bury it on the Wayne estate he looked sheepish and admitted he didn't know it belonged to anyone, rather he thought it was city property or something. When asked why he didn't have his loved one bury him in a cemetery he got defensive, saying "They didn't mean to! It was an accident!" And "They'd never believe them!"

Instead of further answers they got a fight and were forced to retreat after thier weapons proved ineffective. A fact Robin hated.

They returned later after the teen had calmed down and he was willing to talk a bit more.

Appearently his parents were a pair of crazy mad scientists whose invention got him killed. The more Phantom talked the more curtain the entirety of the batfam were curtain this kids death was no accident.

The portal having an on button on the inside??? Being fed foods mixed with dangerous chemicals known to cause mental health problems and mutate people? Constant exposure to dangerous substances that the parents wear hasmat suits for but let thier kids be around unprotected? Trying to power household electronics and kitchenware with the same hazardous material? Phantom also described "check ups" his parents did from time to time that the ghost couldn't really understand. But the batfam did, and it made thier stomachs sick

It sounds like the parents had been expiramenting on the children.

Now the batfam are racing against the clock to try to get Phantom out of denial, cause now that he's gone they might turn all there focus on the surviving science expirement. The worst part is that the bats are right.

[balanceoflightanddark]

The fire nation's defeat was technically Azula's fault.

Zuko and Iroh were branded traitors and failures. Azula was given specific instructions to capture them, dead or alive. Azula had them both red-handed in Ba Sing Se. Instead of doing what she was told, she asks for Zuko's help and she clears his name in return.

Now, it could be argued that without Zuko's help, she would've been pummeled into submission by Aang and Azula. Well, then after his usefulness was used up, she had a chance to pull yet another fast one and apprehend him without having to lie to Ozai.

Zuko acted suspiciously. He made Azula doubt that Aang really died and she began to think that Zuko may have had something to do with his survival. Instead of searching for proof of Aang's survival and informing her suspicions to Ozai, she puts unnecessary risk on herself and sets up a gambit that was ultimately pointless in more ways than one.

If Azula did what she was supposed to do, Zuko and Iroh would be dead or put in prison which leads to Zuko never finding out about the plans with the comet, Aang never finds a firebending sifu, the FN gains victory unopposed, and Azula can reign as Fire Lord.

In short, by choosing to lend Zuko a hand more than once, she indirectly did Team Avatar a huge favor.

Boom: Butterfly Effect.

The FN's MVP was also Team Avatar's MVP. I do enjoy the irony.

I wonder though, what would the Gaang's, Azula's Zuko's, Iroh's, Ozai's, and all of FN's reactions when realizing this epiphany?

It would break Azula.

...no seriously. It would break her.

While I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say that the defeat of the Fire Nation was her fault (cause there's no way in hell she could've seen bringing Zuko home would end up with his betrayal of Ozai), I do think she was hurting already with Zuko betraying her. If she was torn up about Mai and Ty Lee turning on her, I have no doubt she'd feel the same about Zuko regardless of what her relationship with him is right now. Add on to the fact that this is a girl that is hoisted with way too much responsibility than she is able to handle (being driven to become perfect at any cost), a revelation like this would destroy her.

And the fallout wouldn't be pretty. At all. It would probably rival her breakdown at Sozin's Comet, if not be worse. Hell, I think Zuko and Iroh would be a bit concerned for her. Zuko did seem somewhat regretful at her state after the Last Agni Kai and Iroh (while not Azula's biggest fan) probably wouldn't be that callous to brush her off.

Ozai would hate her though. Hate hate HATE her though. He puts on so much pressure for her to be perfect. What do you think the abusive piece of shit is going to do when he puts two and two together. Might even disown her on the spot, which will cause her to spiral even more. And she'd probably lose a lot of support in the Fire Nation for indirectly letting an unpopular successor on the throne, which would cause her to spiral even further.

...kind of why I don't really want to put the blame on the Fire Nation's defeat on her since the poor kid doesn't need that on top of her failures already. Besides, I think the defeat of the Fire Nation can better be laid on Ozai's feet. I mean, he was the one who banished Zuko and mistreated both him and Azula. If we want to go indirect, he set up a domino effect. And directly, he wasn't able to consolidate the Fire Nation's gains at the end of the war which led to a huge rebellion movement. And he certainly didn't seem to want to get involved with fighting Aang during the Day of the Black Sun which could've stacked the odds further against him when the firebending was turned back on. Mind you, this was before Zuko showed up. Like he was sipping tea while Azula was holding the Gaang off.

That being said, I could see him pass the buck off on Azula for the Fire Nation's defeat. Which would lead into the scenario I just outlined above.

[yourlocalcorviddad]

Saw a post about Danny calling Dani his little Comet, this one, and then I had an idea to and mix it with a favourite Hozier song, Work Song. Feel free to add or whatever if it strikes you!

-

"Ah, shh, shh little Comet, it's ok, I've got you."

The attempt at keeping his voice steady didn't really work, but he was sure he was keeping a good hold on his emotions at least, since Ellie was calming down in his hold. It didn't mean he wasn't panicking inside at the situation but he was managing. He only had to make it a few more weeks before the others could come, then everything would be safe.

He got her settled in his bed, sleeping and calm now. He had a crib for her, and Jordan too eventually, but he couldn't really stand the thought of them to far. So bed it was.

Both clone and future self had been deaged due to the damage taken, done at Frostbite's direction to heal and better stabilise both. Jordan's injuries had come in defence of both him and Ellie, and, like a weird mirror, Ellie's from defending him and the injured Jordan when he was to weakened from injuries to fight. Ellie had just been deaged from it Dan, who he decided was going to be called Jordan too give himself some separateness, was reverted to his core. In an effort to protect and give him time to heal, he has him inside himself, next to his own core. He'd been warned it meant that Dan would likely take on more of being like his child than his future self, but he just wanted him alive, not like he didn't have the risk of it anyway, at least this time it was under his control.

There was no hope of returning to his dimension, it had been clear at that point, but they had been trying to free all the ghosts they could and get all liminal people and their family rounded up to safety before the GIW got to them. Danny, as the heir prince-until he was of age for the throne at 100-was sent ahead to bridge trust with another dimension, this one in fact, to see it they could bring their people, his people, there.

Clockwork and the Ancients and Observants worked with his parents and the others from town, and other liminality touched people, to get everyone into the ghost zone, which he had leaned also got called the Infinite Realms, safely and cut off that dimension from it.

Apparently that's what most magical creatures had done to that one anyway, long ago. He'd even met the descendents of the witches that had been hunted by, and thus placed the curse on, his family back when Amity was a village.

They'd lifted the, severely weakened by then but still present, curse after apologies were made and explanations done. It was a relief, even though it is likely what had even held him tethered to life enough to become a halfa at all, but he felt more at ease now without it.

All in all, it led him to where he was now though. A new world, a new set of rules, similar but still so different, and two kids that were essentially his.

The sudden crash outside his window on the alley side had him rushing over, ready to defend as best he could, still healing from the injuries in the last fight with the GIW, in case it was a villain attacking.

Only to pause at the sight of the, now likely unconscious, blue and black clad vigilante in the dumpster below.

"Fuck... Well can't leave him, who knows who'd find him there."

It took a bit of work, and mild use of his weak but still present powers, but he got him up stairs and into his apartment onto the, comfortable if he said so himself, couch.

Once there, he checked him over for injuries, careful not to take the domino off and keeping him as clothed as possible, but tending to his wounds as best possible. Doing so, he realised the other was probably only about 20-21, close to his age at least. It made him wonder how long the other had been a hero, and made a thought to ask later.

For now he settled in to make some food -that hopefully wouldn't accidentally come alive again-and keep an eye on his daughter and the hero.

[kyber-kisses]

Into Your Arms

Captain Rex x Jedi!Reader

Summary: When things go sideways on a mission, you realize you need to tell Rex how you feel before it’s too late.

Warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, blood, major injuries.

A/N: as a queen of angst! Here you are! I might write a part two if it gains enough traction, tell me what you thought!

Exhaustion.

That’s the only word your brain could produce as you dodged another blaster bolt from one of the many advancing waves of battle droids working their way through the rocky grasslands of Ryloth.

The sun had long since set, dragging the battle into the inky blackness of night. Blaster bolts streaked past in all directions like deadly little comets, some hit their targets, others missed- which only led to setting the red grasses ablaze around you off in the distance you could see the swift blue and green light of other lightsabers as Ahoska and Anakin plowed through a battalion of B1s. Somewhere behind you Obi-wan was yelling orders at his own troopers, but where he was you couldn’t tell.

If it weren’t form the seemingly endless onslaught of droids you were sure your knees would have buckled from exhaustion. It was nearing 24 hours of fighting and it had yet to stop.

You didn’t know how much more you could take. You hadn’t eaten or slept, you were covered in ash and dirt and several burn marks from blaster shots that had ventured much to close to your liking. There were so many troopers littering the ground and you felt each loss deeply.

In other words you didn’t think it could get much worse.

And then the wave of tanks had to crest over the hill.

You sensed them before anyone else saw them, the big hiking machines crawling their way through the darkness, their sound hidden by blaster fire and other explosions.

You weren’t sure wether to blame your exhaustion or how disoriented you were but when you saw where the first tank was aiming your legs were moving before your mind was.

Several yards away the Captain of the 501st was knelt on the ground, aiding one of his men to returning to his feet after being thrown into the side of one of the crashed gunships. Neither of them had yet to see the tanks and with all the noise your yells to move out of the way fell on deaf ears.

If that tank hit that gunship the explosion would kill them immediately.

All your aches and pains seemed forgotten as you rushed across the landscape, your lightsaber cutting through any droids in your way as you did.

“Get back! Damn it get back they’re aiming for the ship!”

Just as Rex and the other trooper were turning towards your voice you felt the ground shake as the tank fired.

Diving over a headless battle droid you battled into both men, using the force to help knock them back further from the ship and out of harms way.

Unfortunately for you, you weren’t so lucky because a second later the shot founds it’s mark and the ship behind you exploded in angry ball of fire and metal, the force of it send you flying through the air as it struck.

For a split second there was a feeling of absolute bliss before your sharply made impact with the ground and everything went dark.

———————

You couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds and you probably would have been out longer. . .if it weren’t for the white hot pain that shot up your body and propelled you back into the waking world with a painful shriek.

Your muscles tried pulling you upwards as you woke but you only got so far before the pain grew worse and you fell back. Hands shooting immediately to the epicenter of the pain another cry, this time of horror, left your lungs as your hands came into contact with a large hunk of metal. Through blurred vision you picked your head up as far as you could, bile rising in your throat at the sight of a large piece of destroyed ship imbedded in your abdomen. The piece was was about the size of your arm, the metal warped and twisted and in the dim light you could see the faint shine of blood as it dripped down onto your robes.

Suddenly there was the sound of heavy footfalls rushing closer towards you and amidst the blurring colors of the spreading fires and blaster shots you could see someone running towards you, their wrist held up as they yelled into their comms.

“Kix! I need you at my exact location! NOW!”

There was the sound of plastiod armor hitting the ground as whoever it was fell to their knees besides you. It was only then did they rip off their helmet and you were met with the horrified expression on Rexs face as his brown eyes bounced between your abdomen and your face.

Gloved hands hovered over you as he tried to figure out what to do, how to help. “Commander! What in the force were you thinking?!”

You blinked slowly, hand rolling to the side slightly as you attempted to look at the captain. “Rex?”

Rexs eyes found yours and for a split second there was silence and then he was yelling into his comm again. “KIX!”

A second later the comm crackled. “On my way captain, ETA two minutes-“

You weren’t sure what exactly caused the tears to come to your eyes at that moment. Maybe it was the horrible pain, maybe it was Rexs face, maybe it was the fact that deep down you knew you probably didn’t have two minutes in you.

“Rex-“ the captains name left your lungs in a choked and painful sob. You weren’t ready to go. You still had things to do. People to save, words to speak-.

And that’s when it really hit you;

You were afraid.

It took a lot to scare you- but this? This had rocked you to your core.

“Commander, just stay with me. Kix is on his way-“ one of Rexs gloved hands slid into your own, squeezing it reassuringly as he tried to remain professional. . . But inside he was terrified.

One of his commanders was balancing on the brink of death and there was nothing he could do. That blast should have taken him out. You shouldn’t have done what you did. If you hadn’t you would be safe- not here, laying in a steadily growing pool of your own blood.

Almost as if you could read his thoughts, you let at another sob, both out of pain and grief as your bloodied hands desperately clung to his wrists. “I’m sorry- I’m sorry, I-“

“Stop, stop you didn’t do anything wrong.” Rex shook his head, looking up momentarily as he surveyed the area around the two of you for Kix.

Rex knew that you were apologizing for getting hurt, for worrying him. He knew you. He knew how your brain worked and he wasn’t about to let you belittle yourself.

“I’m not ready to die, I’m not r-“ you paused, your chest rattling as you let out a series of weakened coughs, your face contorting into pain as you did.

Besides you Rexs face grew paler as blood gurgled up from your mouth, painting you lips red as it ran down your chin.

“You are not gonna die Commander, I won’t let you.” The captain breathed deeply, trying to steady himself. Your grip on his wrists was weakening, he could feel you slipping.

As you weakly spat out the blood in your mouth, your mind settled on one solid thought.

You had to tell him.

You had to tell Rex how you felt.

From the moment you were brought on as another Jedi commander for the 501st and Rex walked onto the bridge with his awkward smile and soft eyes you were a goner. He was so patient and trusting and kind and a thousand things you never were.

He was the best of you all.

“I need you- I need-“ struggling to catch your breath, you did all you could to focus on Rex. Blood was beginning to rise in your throat again and you need to get the words out. “I need you to know that I love you.”

Despite your worsening vision you could see Rex’s expression shift. “Commander-“

“It’s Y/N, please it my name. You never need to call me commander again. I don’t want you to-“ your chest rattled once more as you felt your eyes beginning to roll back into your head.

And then there was the distinct feeling of hands on your face, bare hands. The gloves you had felt earlier on you were gone, and the skin on skin contact now felt like the safest place ever.

“Hey, hey stay with me. Don’t close your eyes. Y/N!”

There was a light tap to your face as Rex tried to pull you back, and it did somewhat- but you were so tired- and you could only open your eyelids a fraction of an inch.

“Rex-“ panting on the ash filled air, your head rolled further to the side. “I- I loved you from the moment I met you- and you need- you need to know that. I can’t go without you know—“

Another series of weakened coughs left your chest, once more coating your lips crimson and filling your mouth with the taste of copper. You could no longer see the pained expression on his face as he used his thumb to wipe away the blood on your chin. Inhaling deeply something inside the clone captain broke and tears stung the corners of his vision as he lowered his temple to yours, squeezing your hand tightly.

“Don’t leave me cyar'ika, I have things to say too.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Comet Donati [Chapter 2: Story Of My Life]

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, mental health struggles, cryptic song lyrics, tattoos, motorcycles, pretentious veganism, the return of the Cookie Monster pajama pants.

Selected Chapter Quote: “I’m not interested in therapy. But I’m somewhat interested in you.”

Word count: 6.9k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @doingfondue​ @catalina-howard​ @randomdragonfires​ @myspotofcraziness​ @arcielee​ @fan-goddess​ @talesofoldandnew​ @marvelescvpe​ @tinykryptonitewerewolf​ @mariahossain​ @chainsawsangel​ @darkenchantress​ @not-a-glad-gladiator​ @gemini-mama​ @trifoliumviridi​ @herfantasyworldd​ @babyblue711​ @namelesslosers​ @thelittleswanao3​ @daenysx​ @moonlightfoxx​ @libroparaiso​ @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics​ @mizfortuna​ @florent1s​ @heimtathurs​ @tclegane​ @poohxlove​ @narwhal-swimmingintheocean​ @heavenly1927​

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

Under the stars, under the canopy of incandescent string lights, you tilt a Salty Dog against your lips: clinking ice, rosemary, a wedge of grapefruit, salt on the rim. The indigo wind raises goosebumps on your arms. From the speakers flow notes muffled by car horns and ambient conversation: Coldplay, Life In Technicolor ii. The Missouri River is a snake in the distance, twisting and glimmering, silver scales built of reflected moonlight. It is one year before you fly to Rome. It is the prologue of a book you never thought you’d write.

“I hope you’re not cheating on anybody,” you say to Aegon. Your voice has that drowsy, unguarded honestly that follows good sex with someone you might have the capacity to love under the right circumstances. His does too.

Aegon snorts and shakes his head. There is sunburn on his cheeks like a stain of spilled wine; summer in the Lower Midwest doesn’t agree with him. It’s too hot, too primal. It’ll bite you if you’re not careful. “No. There’s no one.”

“Is there ever?” you ask. “I remember seeing paparazzi photos of Jace and Luke with their girlfriends, Aemond with Shelby, Cregan with…plentiful, interchangeable Victoria’s Secret models. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen you attached to anyone.”

“Look, can I be honest for a second? I mean, I don’t want to offend you. But you seem cool, you seem like you might get it. Can I be real with you?”

“Yeah. Be real, I’d like that.”

“I love what we’re doing right now,” Aegon says. He takes a swig of his Salty Dog, your suggestion. His blond hair, nearly shoulder-length, whips in the night breeze. There’s something about Missouri that feels old, prehistoric almost, and you know because you’ve left it and come back: untamed, unrefined, brown recluses and black bears, copperheads and water moccasins, droughts and floods and tornados, humid and buggy like the earth the dinosaurs knew. “And I loved what I was doing last week in Boston and Philly, and I’ll probably love what I’m doing a few days from now in Houston. But if I knew I had to do it, I wouldn’t love it anymore, you know? That’s just how I am. It’s not a reflection on anyone but me. I can’t handle obligations, commitment, chains. I feel the weight of expectations settling on me and I run.” He rests his chin on his knuckles as he gazes at you like a distant constellation. “I don’t think my worth is determined by who or how I fuck. I don’t think yours is either. I think there are sluts who are angels and virgins who are demons. And I think to believe otherwise is not just archaic or puritanical or ignorant. I think it’s deeply, catastrophically harmful.”

You’re smiling; tears brim in your eyes. “Thank you, Aegon,” you say softly.

He is mystified. “For what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Coldplay recedes from the speakers. Next—for no less than the fourth time this evening—is the Weeknd’s Starboy. Aegon groans and drums his Salty Dog on the tabletop. “Oh my God, this song again?!”

“They’re obsessed!”

“They really are.”

“It’s for you,” you tease. “You’re the big star. The boy band star. The Starboy.”

He takes your right hand, flattens your palm, and lays it against his chest. Through his t-shirt—Nirvana, grey, short-sleeved, from Target—you can feel muscle, bone, rushing blood. “Starboy,” he tells you, grinning. Then he presses his own palm to your heart, beating calm and slow beneath your dress the color of emeralds. “Stargirl.”

“Oh no. Wrong. I’m definitely a nobody.”

“You’re not,” Aegon says. And then again, to make sure you’ve heard him: “You’re not.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“So I only have to talk to two people?” Rhaena says suspiciously, like she’s waiting for you to pull the lever of a trapdoor.

“Exactly.” You take another bite of your carbonara, an Italian invention that would be at home in the Midwest: heavy, cheesy, lots of pork products. “At the meet-and-greet before the show tonight, I want you to pick two people. Just two. And they can be anyone you want. 13-year-old girls, frat boys, soccer moms, grandmas, whoever. And I want you to chat with each of those two people for two minutes. That’s four minutes total. And then you’re done!”

“I’m really done? You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay. Two people, two minutes. I can do that.” Rhaena turns to Luke, who has bits of lasagna all over his shirt and one wayward shred of a noodle in his dark curly hair. “I can do that, right?”

He nods encouragingly. “You can totally do that.”

Aemond is watching; you can see him on the periphery of your vision, short blond hair and a black t-shirt. He wears a lot of black, few accessories, like he’s trying not to be noticed. You look across the table at him. The band is enjoying a late lunch—everyone sleeps in until at least 1 p.m.—on the patio of a restaurant that overlooks the Palatine Hill. Intense midday sunbeams stream, in threads like tinsel on a Christmas tree, through the gaps in the pergola of grapevines, climbing roses, and ivy. In the daylight, Aemond’s scar is jarring—red, wrathful—and his sightless blue dreamscape of a left eye all the more peculiar. He fixes his gaze on you, daring you to flinch away, to be disgusted, to wilt like something parched and dying. You stare steadily back. Aemond sips his white wine, half-smiling, and twirls spaghetti onto his fork. You have white wine too. You keep choosing whatever drinks he does.

“You came all the way to Rome only to order the most basic, fifth-grader version of pasta imaginable?”

“It has marinara sauce,” Aemond replies. “I’m a vegan.”

“Uh oh,” you say. “For health reasons or the environment, or…?”

He shrugs, like it’s obvious. “I just feel that the world has enough suffering in it already without me contributing to the mass torture and execution of sentient beings.”

“Okay. Pretentious.”

Aemond chuckles, covering his mouth with one hand so he can chew his spaghetti with dignity. “What do your parents do in Kansas?”

“Missouri,” you correct, like a reflex.

“I know, it’s so confusing,” Aegon tells him. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses and a salmon-colored tank top that matches his sunburn. “It’s Kansas City, but apparently it’s in Missouri, not Kansas. But there is a different, smaller, much worse Kansas City in actual Kansas.”

“It’s confusing for your little hamster brain,” you say.

Aegon holds up a dark green bottle of olive oil that he’s been drenching his salad with: lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, skinless boneless chicken. “This is healthy, right?”

“Yeah, it’s really good for you. Antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties.”

Jace snickers. “Dude, that has like 100 calories per tablespoon.”

Aegon frowns dejectedly down at his salad. “Fuck.”

Aemond asks you: “So what do your parents do in Missouri?”

“They have a farm just outside the city.”

“Oh. Nice.” Some apprehension now. “What do they raise?”

“Beef cattle.”

The rest of the table bursts out laughing. Aemond’s cheeks—one smooth and pristine, one cut in two by a rust-colored cord of bitter corporal memory like barbed wire—flush pink. He is happy in a way that he hasn’t been in a long time; you can see that in the warmth that glows on the others’ faces. He is alarmingly, breathtakingly beautiful. He has the sort of features that belong carved into marble, in myths, in museums. “I mean…I’m sure they do a great job.”

“You should visit one day. You can help brand the herd.”

“Absolutely,” Aemond quips.

“Nothing gets one’s deepest, darkest revelations flowing like hard labor.”

“I’m not interested in therapy.” He peers around the table for the basket of bread. “Jace, can you pass me some of that?”

Jace picks up a piece of crunchy Italian bread and lobs it through the air. It goes sailing right past Aemond, at least a foot from his fumbling, futile hands.

Aegon is exasperated. “Jace, bruh, you know he’s got no depth perception!”

“It’s fine,” Aemond says quickly, like he wants the conversation to be over.

“It’s not fine.” Aegon stands up and leans across the table to jab his index finger menacingly at Jace. “Have some consideration for anyone besides yourself. Have some fucking respect.”

Jace is more entertained than intimidated. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that I outrank you now.”

“Yeah. And how’d you get there?” In the uneasy quiet that falls over the table, Aegon—quite tipsy already—lurches inside the restaurant to use their bathroom.

Daeron slides the basket of bread over to Aemond. Luke studies him sympathetically without knowing what to say. So much of what settles in us—accumulating like radiation, cooking malignancies into our bones—are things we cannot speak of. This is the great supposition of therapy. It’s what first inspired Sigmund Freud to get that fateful ball rolling in the latter half of the 1800s, before television or radio or record players, before airplanes, before Alaska or Hawaii were added to the Union.

Criston sighs loudly and stabs at his carne alla pizzaiola. Cregan stares indifferently out over the Palatine Hill: the Palace of Domitian, the House of Tiberius, the Temple of Apollo, ruins of gods and men. He slips a minibar-sized bottle of Absolut Vodka out of his sweatpants, empties it into his San Pellegrino, and gulps it all down. Jace has one arm slung across the back of his girlfriend Baela’s chair. She whispers something to him, clearly irritated. He replies briskly back. They have the look of a couple that has spent more time trying to claw their way back to a good place than they ever spent happy to begin with. Jace steals a glimpse of you, smirking. He turns away as soon as you notice him watching. His arms and chest, visible through his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, are a mosaic of tattoos: the Eiffel tower, cherry blossoms, Christ the Redeemer, an alligator, a pair of dice.

After a few minutes, Aegon returns to the table, noticeably more peppy. He starts collecting everyone’s silverware and piling it on a plate for when the servers clear the table. He sorts the utensils by type—forks, knives, spoons—and then by size.

“What is on your face?” Criston demands.

Aegon feigns innocence. Badly. “Huh? What? Face? Huh?”

“Your face. What the hell is all over your face?”

Aegon touches his fingertips to his nose. They come away dusted with white residue. “Um. Donuts.”

“What?”

“Powdered sugar donuts.”

“That’s what you were doing in the bathroom? Eating donuts?”

“…Yes.”

“Aegon,” Criston says sternly.

“They’re called zeppole here.”

Criston claps his hands together and rises from the table. “Okay, time for soundcheck!”

There are groans and complaints, but the band obeys, mopping stray sauce from their lips with cloth napkins and then heading for the black Escalades parked outside the restaurant…everyone except Aemond. He sips his wine leisurely, like he hasn’t heard Criston. You don’t leave either.

Criston regards Aemond with fatherly concern, a hand rested on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah. We’ll catch up with you later.”

“Really?”

“If memory serves, you don’t need me for this part anymore.”

“Right,” Criston admits awkwardly. “Well one of the Escalades will be waiting out front whenever you’re ready.”

“Sounds good.”

Criston and the rest of the band vanish towards the front of the restaurant. You can hear the slamming of doors and Criston shouting: “Get in the car…get in the fucking car…put your seatbelt on…Aegon, right now, put it on—!”

Aemond takes a pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes out of the pocket of his dark jeans, puts one between his lips, ignites it with a small square metal lighter—vintage? heirloom?—and then throws the glittery gold pack onto the table. “Okay. Go ahead.”

You smile at him, bars of shadow and sunlight across both of your faces. The restaurant speakers, breaking the spell of the ever-ancient Roman mirage, are playing Foster The People’s Pumped Up Kicks. “I thought you weren’t interested.”

“I’m not interested in therapy. But I’m somewhat interested in you.” He exhales smoke like a dragon. “So go on, ask your questions so I can theatrically unburden myself and emerge from the wreckage like a phoenix, all shiny and redeemed.”

You gesture broadly. “How did this happen?”

“This?”

“You getting kicked out of Comet. Daeron being added to the lineup, Jace being promoted.”

He speaks nonchalantly as if discussing ancient history or the weather, like that’s just the way the world works, a morally ambiguous eventuality. Every once in a while a tsunami or a mudslide comes along and gobbles up a couple thousand lives, but the planet keeps on spinning. “The label made the call. An executive decision, they said. A boy band is a fantasy. It has to be light, fun, erotic without being scandalous or threatening. No one wants to watch some mutilated, half-blind guy strutting around a stage trying to reclaim some long-gone, better version of himself.”

You are at once immeasurably vengeful on his behalf, but you can’t show this. “That must have been difficult. To be treated mercilessly when you were vulnerable. To realize that something you poured your heart and soul into was so transactional.”

He shakes his head, smoking, not looking at you. He gazes out over the Palatine Hill instead.

“Aemond?”

“What do you want me to say?” he answers abruptly. “That I’m angry? I am. That I wish the accident had never happened? Yeah, I wish that. I wish it every goddamn day. But there’s nothing I can do about any of it. Of course I’m furious. Of course I’m resentful. I built this band. I got us together, kept us together, wrote virtually every hit we ever had. Comet was mine. It was my whole life, my past, my future, my legacy. And they took it from me. You want to know how I really feel about that? I couldn’t tell you in words. I’d have to hit something until my knuckles split through the skin.”

He puts out his cigarette in the ashtray with trembling hands, then he drags his fingers—long, uncalloused, dexterous, though you wish you could stop staring at them—through his hair. He glances at you, embarrassed. You look calmly back.

“Jesus Christ,” Aemond says shakily. “I don’t know where that came from.”

“The band was yours,” you agree. “So you’re the one who named it?”

“Yeah.”

“Comet Donati. The first comet ever photographed. 1858.”

He is impressed. “You’ve studied astronomy?”

“Well…I Googled it,” you confess, and he laughs. He’s relaxed again, he’s sunny like the sky. “But I really like it. A disproportionate number of astronomers are from the Midwest, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Because there’s nothing to do there, so people watch the stars instead.”

He nods, thoughtful. “Better than livestock farming or teen pregnancies, I guess.”

“What is it about the comet that inspires you?”

Aemond lights himself a fresh cigarette. His last name is etched into the side of the steel lighter, you see now: Targaryen. “It has an orbital period of 1,740 years. That last time Comet Donati clipped by Earth, Abraham Lincoln was watching it from the front porch of his hotel. It won’t come back until the late-3000s. I’ll never see it. You’ll never see it. But it’s always there. And to me, there’s something really beautiful about that. So many things in life are invisible, silent, unspoken, unacknowledged, unknown, misunderstood. But that doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

You recall the woman you’ve seen standing beside him in countless paparazzi photos: an actress and influencer, 20 million Instagram followers, California blond, Ibiza clubs and Met Galas. “Where’s Shelby?”

“Not around anymore, obviously.”

“She left you or you left her?”

He flicks away ashes, vague, evasive. “She couldn’t handle it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” It isn’t, that’s clear. It’s marked him somewhere deeper than the flesh.

“No, Aemond.” You reach across the table to take his free hand, his left hand, in your own. “I’m really, really sorry.”

He’s watching you, but he isn’t just watching; he’s a little bewildered, and little captivated, a little impishly proud like he’s won a bet. When you release his hand, he says: “Don’t worry about it. I don’t want someone who’s repulsed by me. Or worse, someone who can only see me as something damaged and pitiful. I don’t want to be fucked out of pity.”

Oh no, you think, gazing helplessly at his face, his fingers, his wrists, the slope of his throat. Oh no, I don’t think pity would be anywhere in my mind, not even a whisper of it, not even a ghost.

Aemond notices. His lips pull up at the edges into a sly smile…and then he grows solemn again. “Are you going to ask me about what happened at the Budokan?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about the past anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because I think what happened to you was horrible and senseless and unfair. And the worst part isn’t that you look different. It’s that you are different. You can’t ever unlearn how people treated you afterwards, what their true motivations were. People who discarded you, people who forgot about you. You didn’t deserve that. You were worthy then and you’re worthy now. I don’t want to talk about your past. I want to talk about where you’re going next.”

“I have no idea. When I said the band was my whole life, I meant it.”

“You’ll figure something out. And maybe I can help.”

“Maybe.” He takes a long drag off his cigarette, intrigued. “What made you want to be a therapist?”

That nervous drop in your stomach; a sensation like falling. You disguise it expertly. “No no, I’m asking the questions here. I’m the one with the master’s degree.”

“Now who’s pretentious?”

You’re giggling, and then Aemond is too, like mirror images of each other: sipping white wine and averting your eyes—those so-called windows to the soul—towards the Palatine Hill before they can reveal too much.

~~~~~~~~~~

When Comet Donati performs now, Aemond isn’t on stage. But he never misses a show. He paces around with a black notebook and a white gel pen—Luke learned that from him, you realize—jotting down suggestions and critiques to share with the others afterwards. You follow him, trailing soundlessly like a shadow, through hallways and down aisles and across sky-high catwalks like ancient aqueducts. You’re wearing the only dress you brought from home: short, black lace, cold shoulders. Unconsciously, Aemond takes your hand to make sure you don’t fall behind. Wordlessly, he points out things that make you laugh: Aegon repeatedly slipping on a puddle of beer that he spilled, Daeron’s improvised dance moves (the Mailman, the Beached Whale, the Reckless Uber Driver, etc.), screaming middle-aged women flashing Cregan, Luke giving little crochet stars and planets and comets—handmade by Baela and Rhaena—to children in the audience. But Aemond rarely acknowledges Jace.

As you and Aemond lurk just offstage, the band is performing A Song I’ve Never Heard, the lead single off their first album and an enduring fan favorite.

“If you disappear, I’m going under

Telling you right now, there is no other

Who could ever replace you, no need to wonder

Your name is a song I’ve never heard before.”

“They’re really good live,” you shout, barely audible over the noise. You stand on your tiptoes and lean against Aemond’s shoulder so he can hear you. You are struck by the dormant power beneath your palms, his tense muscles, his radiating heat. You can’t help but imagine what sort of rhythm you might fall into together.

“Yeah,” he says distractedly.

“They’d be even better with you.”

Aemond turns, startled, then smiles. He passes you his notebook and gel pen so you can read his comments and add any of your own. You skim through his scribbled, pearlescent observations.

Cregan – Good smolder. Pay attention to every fan in the crowd, not just the fuckable ones. Thumbs up and high fives for kids. Fist bumps for dudes. Wear less clothes, maybe? If you’re cool with that.

Luke – Don’t be afraid to move around the stage more. Weave. Prowl. Pretend you are a shark.

Aegon – Wrong lyrics during Space-Time Continuum. And Lake Effect. And A Girl Named After A Car!! And The Worst Way To Be!!!! Please for the love of God the words are on Genius.com if you don’t know them.

Daeron – Really great overall. Missed verse during If You’re Summer I’m The Rain. Beware of handshakes with crowd, they could pull you in. Invent a new dance move, something inspired by Kansas City. The Tornado Watch? The Oppressed Beef Cow?

You write at the bottom:

Aemond – Cultivate at minimum one (1) hobby not directly related to Comet Donati. Or pretentious veganism.

You hand the notebook to him, and then he scrawls back:

Already have it. I’ll show you later.

When the concert ends, Aemond leads you backstage to reunite with the band, along with Baela and Rhaena who spent the past two hours dancing and shrieking in the front row.

“I did it!” Rhaena trumpets when she sees you, eyes alight and hands waving in the air. “At the meet-and-greet before the show! I talked to people for four whole minutes and then I got to sit in the corner and drink champagne all by myself and it was amazing!”

“That’s so great!” you exclaim, hugging her. “See?! We knew you could do it. But next time you have to talk to people for ten minutes.”

“Ugh,” Rhaena says, but she’s still beaming. She knows she’s capable of it. It might hurt, but it won’t kill her. And that’s true for a lot of things, isn’t it? The trick is figuring out which of our brains’ frantic doom-signals are misfires, exaggerations, genetic malformations…and which are warnings of something actually lethal.

Everyone piles into the Escalades for the short journey back to the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi Rome Hotel. You and Aemond end up sharing a car with Aegon, Luke, and Rhaena. Luke sits right next to Aemond, wants to see all his notes, wants to rehash every detail of the night with him: Did you like this little move I came up with? Was I too extra when I did that? Am I too low in the harmonies? Did you see how psyched that one kid was when I gave him a stuffed comet? As you watch them, streetlights passing by overhead like miniature suns, it occurs to you that Luke is the only person who still treats Aemond like he’s an essential part of the band, not a progenitor to be paid occasional pennies of homage but a heart or a spinal cord, something that can’t be excised without killing the host.

Aegon is lying on his back across the floor of the Escalade and scrolling through his phone. “Oh my God, guess who else is in Rome right now!” he gasps.

“Who?” Rhaena asks, but she rolls her doe-like eyes in a way that tells you this happens a lot.

“Selena Gomez!”

“Great,” Aemond says. “I don’t think she wants to see you.”

Aegon is typing manically with both thumbs. “We’re about to find out.”

Back at the hotel, a force like gravity—stringless, unthinking—pulls everyone towards Jace’s suite. The lights are low, the air smokey, the drinks misty with condensation, the balcony door open as people—friends and roadies and label executives—drift in and out of the starlit night breeze, the music loud and rumbling, lots of bass, Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous by Good Charlotte. Crowded together in one corner of the room, illuminated by an end table lamp, are Jace, Baela, Daeron, Cregan, and Criston, who is observing with arms crossed over his chest and an exhausted, long-suffering sort of disapproval. There is a tattoo artist getting set up on the coffee table, laying out the needles and ink cartridges, latex gloves, sanitizer, a squeeze bottle of green soap.

“Get the Pantheon!” Baela is telling Jace. She’s sitting in his lap on the white leather couch, his arms locked around her waist but his eyes roaming around the room. “Or laurels, maybe. Or an eagle.”

“Get a gladiator!” Daeron says.

Baela grimaces. “Please don’t.”

“Get the Colosseum!” Luke says as he hurries over to join them.

“What’s going on?” you ask.

“He gets a new tattoo for every city we play in,” Daeron explains.

“Some are better than others,” Baela adds. “There were so many gorgeous possibilities for Miami and you chose an alligator?!”

“Every single city, huh?” you say to Jace. “You must have a lot of tattoos.”

He grins crookedly up at you through locks of dark, messy curls. He’s wearing a black and white striped shirt that is mostly unbuttoned. Aemond’s gaze flits anxiously between you and Jace. “I do. But believe it or not, we’ve never been to Rome until now.”

“Get the Leaning Tower of Pisa!” Aegon says.

Criston snaps: “Really? The one that’s in Pisa? Which is a completely different city? The one that’s four hours north of Rome? That Leaning Tower of Pisa? That one?”

“Well fuck, don’t let me inconvenience you with my presence!” Aegon thumps a fist against Cregan’s brawny shoulder and they disappear together, peering down at their phones, faces painted by the white-blue glow of the screens.

“What should I get?” Jace asks Aemond. It sounds like a loaded question.

“Julius Caesar. A usurper.”

Jace winks up at him, arrogant and taunting.

Baela rubs Jace’s bare, ink-adorned chest. “Baby, don’t.”

“I want the Pantheon,” he declares suddenly. “Right here on the back of my right hand. Prime real estate. I won’t be able to do anything without remembering this city, this show.” He turns to Aemond, victorious. “They were filming, you know. They’re going to make it a Netflix special.”

“I’m aware,” Aemond replies, flat, cold.

The tattoo artist is nodding agreeably at Jace. “Si signore, I do the Pantheon all the time. Tourists love to have a picture to take home with them. Nessun problema. You want it on this hand? You are sure? Va bene, place it here on the table. Si, si. I will clean the area and then we will begin.”

Soon the needle of the humming tattoo gun meets the skin: metal, blood, Jace hissing in pain as black lines spring to life across his metacarpals. Baela passes the time by chatting with you. She is clever and kind like Rhaena, but louder, tougher, beautiful yet barbed like a lionfish. She can talk to anyone and never drops her eyes. It amazes you how siblings, built of the same genetic Legos, can grow up to be so different: Baela and Rhaena, Jace and Luke, Aegon and Aemond and Daeron.

When Jace’s tiny Pantheon tattoo is complete and his hand bandaged, he goads you: “Now you’re getting one too, right?”

“Sure,” you say, and you are delighted to see the shock leap into his face.

“What?!” Baela cries.

“You’re joking,” Aemond says uncertainly. “She’s joking.”

“No, I really want one.”

“Get a gladiator!” Daeron bellows, jumping on top of the couch and flexing his muscles like Hercules.

“Get my name on the side of your face like Post Malone,” Jace says. And then, when Baela and Aemond glare at him: “What?!”

“I definitely don’t want that. But I do want something.”

“I will do whatever you like, signora,” the tattoo artist says, changing out needles.

“You’re actually serious?” Aemond asks. And what he means is: You don’t have to do this. It would be reckless. It would be permanent.

“Yeah.” You smile up at him. “I want to remember this little adventure. When I’m back in Kansas City…in a few weeks, or a few months, or whatever…I want to be able to look in the mirror and know that it wasn’t all something I made up. A fantasy, a dream.”

“You should get Comet lyrics,” Luke says excitedly. “Aemond’s lyrics.”

You tap Luke’s notebook: black paper, white gel pen, just like Aemond’s. “Absolutely. Help me choose them.”

Within ten minutes, you’ve settled on a design that Luke has sketched in starlight-colored ink and a location: upper back, equidistant between your shoulder blades, someplace you can easily conceal it when you’re working. It will be a small, minimalist comet—nucleus, coma, and tail—with cursive lyrics from a hidden gem off the band’s most recent album encircling it like the rings of Saturn:

I’ll come back for you if it kills me

Comets clip by again after eons and so can I

Somewhat clumsily, you manage to unzip your dress, shimmy the top part down to around the line of your bra strap, and then lie on your belly across the couch. Baela and Rhaena giggle at the way the men bashfully avert their eyes…all except Aemond. He is speechless, blinking, fascinated. He shakes it off and turns away when he realizes he’s been staring.

“I’m sorry, is this too unprofessional?”

“No, you were perfectly clear,” Daeron says. “You’re a therapist, but not our therapist. So feel free to walk around in just your bra anytime.”

“For real,” Jace adds.

Baela shoos him away: “Go, get us more drinks. Go! Bar! Now!” And Jace reluctantly retreats.

Using Luke’s rough sketch as a reference, the tattoo artist begins working once he’s thoroughly cleaned the area of perfume, shining perspiration, invisible fingerprints, tobacco, other remnants of life’s general untidiness. The pain is bad but not overwhelming, worst when the needle nears your spine. Aemond sits on the floor beside you and observes thoughtfully, sipping a rosy-pink Bramble. Aegon and Cregan wander back into the suite—white powder on their palms, more on their shirts, their pupils dilated and glassy—and are extremely amused by this turn of events. They stay for a while and then are gone again, forever both here and there, comets zooming around their elliptical orbits, Schrodinger’s cats.

“How’s it look?” you ask Aemond as he studies your back. You can’t see anything; you can only feel it.

“The tattoo, or…?”

You laugh and shove him away with your very limited range of motion; then, when you wince at the stinging pain, Aemond grips your hand in his. “I know I’m being pathetic. I know it’s not that bad.” Not compared to what you endured: blunt force trauma, partial blindness, your face stitched back together, your life’s work stolen from you.

“You’re not that pathetic. Louis Tomlinson probably would have cried.”

You laugh again, louder, and the tattoo artist scolds you: “Signora, per favore! Stay as still as you can, I beg you. We are almost done.”

Aemond’s iPhone rings and he glides it out of his pocket with his free hand. His ringtone is Mr. Brightside. “Oh. I should take this.”

“Go ahead,” you tell him. “Go, I’m fine.”

“Who is it?” Criston asks Aemond with curiously intense interest.

“It’s my mom.”

“Does she want to talk to me? To see how the tour is going?”

“No, Criston.”

“Fine,” Criston says testily. “I’m gonna go make sure Aegon isn’t on the roof or something.”

He departs from the crowded suite, momentarily parting the miasma of cigarette and cigar smoke like Moses split the Red Sea. Aemond goes out onto the balcony. Baela and Rhaena take his place next to the couch, fawning over your almost-finished tattoo and showing you their own: Baela has a ring of roses around one ankle, a quote from her grandmother across her ribs, and a compass on her forearm; Rhaena has a tiny L behind one ear for Luke. Even over the buzzing of the tattoo gun, the reverberating music, the chattering of new friends and perfect strangers, and the backdrop of traffic noises outside on the winding streets of Rome, you can hear chaos: yelling, banging, the pounding of sprinting footsteps.

When your tattoo is completed and bandaged, you fix your dress and follow the commotion out into the hallway. Several doors down, you find Criston in Aegon’s suite. He’s standing on top of the mattress and attempting to handcuff Aegon to the bedpost. Aegon, thrashing and yowling and shirtless for some reason, rips away from him.

“Give me your hand!” Criston roars. “Give me your fucking hand! You want to act like Motley Crue, you’re gonna get treated like Motley Crue.” He finally clicks a cuff around Aegon’s left wrist, fastens him to the bed, and then doubles over gasping for air.

You say from the doorway: “This is not what I, personally, would call effective conflict resolution.”

“Oh good, you’re here.” Criston wipes fat beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. “You talk to him. Meditation, yoga, hypnosis, a lobotomy, read him bedtime stories, get him a shock collar, I don’t care what you do, just give me fifteen minutes of peace. I need a goddamn San Pellegrino.” He stomps out of the room and is gone.

Aegon sighs listlessly. “I’d like to say I don’t deserve this, but I probably do.”

“Hey, Aegon?”

“Yeah?”

“What was up with your salad at lunch today? And the skinless boneless chicken?”

He smirks, an expression you can’t quite read. Nervousness? Cynicism? Shame? “I’ve gained like twenty pounds since last summer.”

“So?”

“So almost none of my tour wardrobe fits.”

“Can you not afford new clothes? Have you snorted that much coke?”

He chuckles, but his large blue eyes are sad, defenseless, watery. “The label doesn’t want a chunky popstar. Girls won’t spend thousands of dollars on tickets to see me anymore.”

“Yes they will. And I would too. In a hypothetical alternate universe where I was rich.”

He smiles, for real this time. “You wanna stay? I still have one hand free.”

“That’s a super tempting offer, but I think I’ll pass.”

He blinks up at you with groggy, drunken realization. “You got your eye on someone else, Stargirl?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He’s grinning, toothy, playful. “You didn’t have to.”

There is a knock against the doorframe. When you spin around, Aemond stands there. “Hey,” he says. “Found you.”

“How’s your mom?”

“Fine. Do you want to see something?”

“…Okay?”

“It’s outside.”

“Oh, no way,” Aegon tells him, still handcuffed to the bed, cackling. “No way is she gonna be down for that.”

“She might be,” Aemond replies evenly.

“You still got a second helmet?”

“Of course.”

“Helmet…?” you venture.

Aemond smiles, nodding towards the hall. “Let’s go.”

Aegon waves goodbye with his free hand. “Good luck, Stargirl. Hope your last will and testament is in order.”

“Like I’d leave you anything.” You set several bottles of water and a box of Nutella snacks on the end table where Aegon can reach them.

“Wait wait wait!” he cries when you are about to depart. “Bring me a trashcan too.”

You are puzzled. “Why?”

“So I can piss in it, obviously.”

“You’re an animal.”

He howls like a wolf, rolling around on the mattress. You supply him with a trashcan, as requested, and then follow Aemond out into the hallway.

“Stargirl?” he asks once the two of you are alone in the elevator and headed down.

“It’s a the Weeknd reference. It’s hard to explain.”

“And you and Aegon are…” Aemond raises an eyebrow, the scarred one, the one that’s cut in two. “Friends?”

“Yeah. Friends.” You’re worried your voice will squeak, but it is traitorously steady. Aemond seems mollified. And is that really such a lie? What would be closer to the truth? Yes, Aemond, your brother and I are friends. But we’re less than that, and we’re also more, because I’ve fucked him but somehow that was the very least of it. He looks at me and I feel understood like a language the rest of humanity has forgotten. I look at him and I see someone who I care for deeply, irrationally, who I could fall in love with in a slightly different world. But that’s not the world we live in. And in this world, the real one, you’re the person I’m falling in love with.

Aemond takes you all the way down to the ground floor and then out front to the entranceway, fountains, cobblestones, taxis, Ubers, stars. He speaks to the valet and within minutes, they ferry it out of the garage for him, growling and puffing like some kind of mythical beast, a dragon or the Minotaur or the Cerberus. The valet lowers the kickstand and then hands the keys over to Aemond.

“What is that?!” you exclaim.

“It’s a 1960 Gold Star, made by the Birmingham Small Arms Company.”

“Alabama?”

He is amused. “No, the English Birmingham. The original one.”

“Oh. Right.” The valet brings two helmets and two jackets. “You travel with a motorcycle?”

“It fits on the jet,” Aemond replies casually.

“You are so freaking pretentious.”

Aemond offers you a helmet and jacket, and he’s trying to keep the fear from his face but it’s there, because he keeps waiting for the spell to break, for the illusion of who he thinks you are to shatter like glass and reveal that all along you’ve been disgusted by him too, that you misunderstand or patronize or pity him. He surveys you with two eyes, one wary and clear and searching, the other a cloudy planet of misty blue like Neptune. And he waits for you to ask one of those fateful questions—Can you really drive this? Is it safe? Can you see well enough? Can I trust you?—and look at him with bleak, sympathetic skepticism.

Instead, you look at the motorcycle. There are extra mirrors on the left side, you notice, capturing angles that he would otherwise miss. He doesn’t need to be reminded of his maiming. He couldn’t forget it for a second. You don the helmet and jacket and say: “Are those leather seats, Mr. Vegan?”

He beams and straddles the motorcycle. “Shut up and get on the bike.”

You climb on behind Aemond, your arms around his waist, your lungs capturing pieces of him to absorb into your bloodstream: smoke, cologne, hair gel, gin, molecules that become your own. He starts the engine, flicks on the headlight, and steers his Gold Star out into the late-night traffic.

You fly through a nightscape of car horns and streetlights and babbling tourists clustered together on the sidewalks like prey animals, ancient landmarks whirling by like comets: the Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, the Arch of Constantine, the Pantheon that Jace now has inked irrevocably to his flesh. The sky is freckled with constellations you couldn’t name. The moon is full and brilliant. There is a black limo cruising nearby full of hooting, half-naked frat boys and blaring Coldplay’s Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. At stop signs and red lights, Aemond reaches down to rest a palm lightly on your bare thigh, just an inch or two above the knee—his wrist brushing against the black lace of your dress—but enough to pillage your mind of anything else, enough to rip the door to your skull off its hinges and build a home there in the web of neurons and flashbulb surges of electricity that we call memory, emotion, instinct, desire. When you close your eyes as the wind rushes by, you can imagine that you’ve always known Aemond and that you always will. When you press yourself against him as hard as you dare to, you can feel everything else dissolving away: pasts, futures, doubts, every other person on this planet, scars that mar the soul with jagged rifts and knots as red as blood.

In the abandoned, golden halls of the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi Rome Hotel, Aemond walks you back to your suite. His hands are in his pockets, his head down, his steps swift. He doesn’t speak. Neither do you. Your thoughts are deafeningly loud with clattering impossibilities: Me? Aemond? Lust? Love?

You arrive at your door, swipe your keycard, and open it. You stand at the threshold, but you don’t vanish inside. You don’t want to be apart from him. You gaze up at him, dazed with longing, resting your head against the doorframe, fresh ink burning between your shoulder blades.

“Hey, Aemond?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t fuck you out of pity.”

There’s satisfaction on his face, there’s pride, there’s hunger, but there’s trepidation too. He hesitates in the doorway. “Look, I, uh…” He sighs, resigned, perhaps warring with himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” But he doesn’t leave.

“Are you lost? Need a map back to your room? I can try to draw one for you. We could get one tattooed on the back of your hand.”

He laughs, marveling at you. “No, I’m good. Thanks.” He makes it halfway down the hall, glances back, shakes his head to himself, keeps walking until he’s disappeared.

You shut the door and say to your empty suite: “I don’t even like him that much.”

But I do. I do, I do, I do.

“Oh no,” you moan, covering your face with both hands. But you can’t stop smiling.

You take a shower, pull on an oversized Backstreet Boys t-shirt and your favorite Cookie Monster pajama pants, then crawl into your hotel bed: scratchy comforter, a mattress that’s too firm, pillows that are too squishy. You turn on your laptop, open YouTube, and start searching for Comet Donati performances before Aemond left the band, scenes from a different lifetime under the same stars.

[dwindlinghaze]

Hiii ur writing is sooo good

I was wondering if u could do a Remus x reader who is James sister and she falls for the first time she sees him and just like a fluff kinda thing idk but I was thinking and it sounds cute 🤷🏽

no worries if u don’t wanna write this but if u do thanks you write him so well 💗

hi!! tysm for requesting! i hope you like this! sending lots of love 🤍🌸🫧🪽

the light is coming

(remus lupin x potter!reader)

contents : fluff, pining

　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

"james! where are we going?" you squeezed his arms, leaving white prints on his skin.

"ow- we're going to meet my friends," james answered, pushing through the crowds in diagon alley.

"i've meet them before," you replied with a huff. you wanted to see them actually, since your pretty crush is a part of his friend group, but you weren't going to show it. playing it cool.

"but you've never met them," he emphasised.

it's true. just sharing smiles and waves when you passes them in the hallway. you were younger than them so your schedules were different.

"so... here's my sister!" james happily introduced you to his friends once you entered a coffee shop where his friends were.

"this is sirius," he pointed to the infamous hogwart's handsome boy with eyes so grey and cool. he wore a black leather jacket with shiny chains decorated within them.

you sent sirius an awkward smile. the thing is, you were scared of meeting them in person, face-to-face. not because they intimidated you, but because you were never really comfortable with the presence of men around you. you knew deep down that james' friends are friendly and fun but that fear doesn't go isolated.

"this is remus," james tilted his head to the boy standing closest to him. he wears a green coloured sweater, even though it's the summer. you noticed this of course, he never took his jumpers off. his hair was the perfect shade of golden blonde, eyes as green as a comet in the sky. he wore a macrame bracelet that his mom probably made for him.

he has a different aura. you actually might be comfortable with him overtime. his gaze so friendly and warm, despite his scruffy exterior. you thought you might actually blush when he sent you the prettiest smile known to men.

"and here's peter," james patted peter's shoulder. he was shorter than all of them. he seemed kind and polite. wearing an outdated cardigan with the edges a bit worn out.

"lovely to see you guys," you chuckled, sending a happy smile. and in return, you got warm greetings back.

"let's go to the quidditch store!" james announced, dragging you and sirius by the arms.

your brother and sirius were in a deep conversation about quidditch that you ncould never understand so you wiggle yourself out of his grasp. preferring to walk behind them along with remus and peter who were having a peaceful time admiring the wizardry architectures.

your pace slowed down, meeting with the two. a part of you also just wanted to be closer to remus. he welcomed you by smiling at you with the kindest eyes. leaving your heart hammering. maybe it was a bad idea to leave james 'cause now you're in this messy situation.

"hey," remus started softly, not wanting to scare you off. "how you're enjoying your summer?"

"hmm good, how about you?" you replied, finding it hard to create a complete sentence.

"it was fine, missing school though. wait- i meant friends- james sirius peter not like i'm a school-lover or anything," remus let out a nervous laugh, tips of his ears turning a shade of red.

"yeah i totally understand that. i miss my friends too," you smiled at him warmly. "did you do anything exciting?" you asked.

"no, not really. you?" he looked so focused at you to the point that you think you might disappear.

"uh i just.. went to the beach s'all, nothing really exciting. i guess when we grow older, the things we find exciting isn't much fun anymore," you shrugged, still keeping your eyes away from him.

a few seconds later, he pulled your shoulder to himself, making you gasp reluctantly. he did that so you wouldn't hit the person who was carrying a trolley. how convenient.

that simple gesture made your heart beaten twice as fast. your long time crush was holding you?

"oh i'm so so sorry," remus pulled his hand away, sending apologetic eyes. "i- i didn't want you to hit him so i pulled you, i'm so sorry!"

"that's okay remus, i appreciate what you did," you smiled softly. "can i call you that?" you asked.

"you can call me anything," he smiled.

you two bonded together overtime. he is becoming your best friend in the whole entire world.

he asks about your day. he opens doors for you. he asks what is your favourite breakfast menu were so he can save it for you. he pulls out chairs for you to sit.

"i've been seeing funky things about you and moony," james said one day.

"what funky things?"

"as if you two were in love...?" james quirked his eyebrows up.

"we're not," you huffed, feeling your ears turning warm.

james looked at you suspiciously, "y'know you can tell anything to me. i won't let remus knows that you're in love with him, promise."

"i'm not!," you defended. though you think you were.

"you are! i can see it. y'know i'm really glad it's remus who you've fallen for because he's a good guy. the only one i'd let you be in a relationship with."

"james stop that. i'm not in love with him, he wouldn't love me anyway."

"oh you're so wrong about that!" james said before he left you to his quidditch practice.

remus did everything right. starting from little things to big gestures like this one.

you were sitting on the grass besides the black lake with a carpet under you. seeing the waters shining and glimmering.

it has been a routine for the both of you to sit here every friday, talking about literally anything and everything.

surrounding you were pretty wild flowers, matching your florally dress that you wore today.

it would be a lie to say that remus wasn't in awe of your appearance. your hair were shining under the warm light of the sunset. everything was perfect today.

"is this okay?" he asked, wrapping both of his arms around you from the back as you stared into the big wide lake. he just wanted to be close to you. to feel you. hug you.

your stomach was flipping, feeling his gentle touch. "yeah, you're so warm," you cuddled into him as he nuzzled his face to your neck.

he swore he's going to ask you to be his girlfriend soon. it's inevitable. he feels it.

[quitealotofsodapop]

So sonce Wukong is heavily associated with he earth and especially FFM, what if the mountain itself changes to fit Wukong's emotional and physical health? Like when he's sad, depressed, or hopeless it becomes more barren and cold, when he's hurt the earth itself cracks and plants wither and die, whe he's happy it's lush, warm, and beautiful like depicted in the show! It doesn't instantly change of course but slowly, the longer the time Wukong is in a certain mood, the more it affects the mountain. That'd also why the monkeys, who have EVERY reason to be distrustful of a stranger on the mountain considering literally everything in the book, are so quick to warm up to and welcome MK and his family into their midst! Because they make Wukong happy!

Ooo this is such a cool idea.

Wukong being basically the Te Fiti of Flower Fruit Mountain and the surrrounding country of Alolai.

When he ws young and unsure, the islands bloomed with new haphazard shoots and flowers.

When he jumped through the waterfall the first time, the rains came and watered the parched fruit trees.

When he travelled onto the mainland and trained with Sudbodhi, the air became heavy with the winds of his travels - A certain Macaque amongst the troop able to hear where exactly their King was based on how he sang to the breeze. Soon the skies became full of fluffy clouds so thick you could nearly walk (or rather Sommersault on them). It was one of the few joys his people appriciated whilst under the threat of the Demon King of Havoc/Confusion.

The night before the King returned, a great thunder rain occurred - startling all of them awake. A thunder of sadness and anger. But when their King landed home and cut the Demon's head in half with his new powers - the sun shined upon the island once more.

When the Brotherhood was made and friendships forged, the mountain bloomed with new life. Spider lilies flourished in the time the King had been whisked away to the Underworld, and lotus flowers sprang forth upon his return.

When their king lost himself as an attendant of Heaven, the waters in the streams became stale like a horse through, and fruits shrivelled on the branches like they had been dried for a dessert.

Oddly enough, when their King made havoc in Heaven; the most that the mountain experienced was a sudden unseasonable bloom of peach blossoms that dripped a heady dew.

When Sun Wukong was defeated and captured for the Furnance... the mountain Burned.

For 49 days straight.

They at first blamed the war god Erlang that had bested their King in the first place, but he and the rest of the brothers of Meishan rallied to save as many monkey yao as possible from the flames and the subsequent floods of murky ash.

When the Monkey King burst forth from the Trigram Furnace, it sent a volley of burning charcoal comets down to earth. Including onto the Stone Place itself.

And when the Buddha was forced to raise his hand? The island stagnanted.

For 500 years the razed island could not grow more than grass and ferns. No more fruits or flowers bloomed. The water was bitter and black with charcoal. And whats more, humans from the mainland beyond had discovered that the country of Alolai was ripe for the picking...

When their King returned once more at the helm of a fight with his religious master, the island rained for the first time in centuries. As he struck down each and every hunter he found, and saved and returned as many as his people as he could, the island seemed to Revive with the scent of blossoms and peaches.

When he left to rejoin his Pilgrim friends, the fruits and flowers still came, now just less sweet.

His subjects knew immediately knew when something terrible had happened with their King years on. The winds stopped blowing as if a switch had been struck. Stone fruit trees crumbled into dust as if they were diseased. The waters of the streams became salted as if with tears... it took a long time for the island to return to some normalcy after that. Though the plum trees never returned, no matter how ardent the efforts of those who keep mountains orchards.

A great bloom of golden flowers and fruits occurred the day their King had reached the home of the Buddha. The rush of life announced via a clap of thunder. The monkeys of the island hooted and sung for weeks at their King's return.

Many years later, fire broke out on the mountain's peak. Their King returned home with a haunted look upon his face but gave no explaination. They began to see less and less of the Western Horse-Dragon after that day... soon the fruits and waters became stale once more. The only flowers that bloomed were ones of mourning.

On a day, after many of arficially sweetened waters adn fruits, a great aurora of golden and purple lights broke forth in the skies above the island - distracting the King's subject long enough that they missed his wonder and conflict at finding a little stone monkey much like himself. The clouds rained heavy with seawater in the days to come.

And on the day a certain child appeared, the sun shone a hue so beautiful and happy that the subjects of the island just knew someone dear to the King had returned.

The plum trees returned some time afterwards, though the fruits were a little sour. They became sweet once more in the year after.