#all kinds of emotional whump you can expect here:

[revelisms]

Excerpt: Emptied Spaces

Vi recalls her first nights as a new recruit to Zaun.

From a work in progress set after 'heron blue,' an AU where Vi and Jinx reconnect under different terms. Slow, rocky relationship rebuilding, found family messiness, and hurt/comfort abound.

A series of tinny pricks muddle the air. 

"He's not all bad, you know," her sister mumbles. 

Vi presses her nails into her palm. 

In her mind's eye, a litany of refusals. 

She sees the stairs down to the storeroom—their old room—that she'd found boarded up, paint streaked over the walls: a glaring, caution-taped denial to any who dared to enter. She sees Jinx slumped at the bar, dotting black varnish on her nails, flippant as anything to Vi's tight-mouthed questions of what had happened to their things; if there was anything left.

Just ghouls and ghosts, Jinx had said, in an accent not her own, and shot a whip-fire glare through her fringe. Then she'd grinned, cold and feline. Droused on, Key's in Silky's desk, if you care that much.

Like that room was nothing more than an ill memory, to her. Her and Vi's things. Mylo and Claggor's things. Mom and Dad's things. Vander's—

Like all of it wasn't theirs, anymore.

(Never had been.)

They had new rooms, now—ones of their own, only paces down that dark-lamped hall from each other.

Just days prior, that rat had dangled hers in front of her, in some twisted attempt at an olive branch.

It had ridiculous wallpaper and jade-tinted windows; furnishings absurdly ornate, for all their simplicity; shelves upon shelves filled with books she'd never read. They'd given her a bed with smuggled silk sheets and feathered pillows—the kind any Fissure brat in their right mind would dive into, relishing in the best sleep they'd had in years. A luxury all of them deserved. 

Her own room. A real, proper room.

Not four walls and a cot.

(Not a room with Powder.)

In silence, that bastard had stood behind her: smoke and spice on his clothes, a chill like an autumn sea seeping off his bones. The shadow of his suit had lingered in her periphery, unnervingly still. Spindly hands folded at his back; too-clean shoes canted, unmoving. 

Will it suffice? he'd graveled, eventually.

Vi'd fought down the urge to scoff.

Suffice.

As if he couldn't give a damn that he'd paid for it all on the backs of children carting industry wares as much as vials of liquid death; hadn't taken up his keep in their home, Vander's home—claimed the damned thing unrightfully as his own—and now had carved out a pathetic share to toss back to her.

Vi'd found her voice. Our old room was fine.

Hands ticking at his back. If you'd prefer to sleep on the boxes, then be my guest.

She said you emptied it.

Silence ebbing, knifing. A heaviness had snared around his bones: the kind that had rage smelting around it, slow-simmered and tightly leashed: one that set the hairs on her nape rising.

In it was an image. A memory he wouldn't give her the privilege to share.

She didn't want to picture it.

Powder, eleven years old, bruises on her cheek, standing alone in the center of that storeroom. 

Powder, frozen, for minutes or hours or ages—a tattered bunny squeezed between her hands, blood still on her clothes—before the screams finally tore their way out of her.

She didn't want to picture it—but the thought had itched within her, like a virus. She couldn't blink it out.

It's been emptied enough, Silco had answered her: a slither of a hiss. His mismatched stare had veered away, notched to an unseen point in the wall.

Under your orders? Vi'd pressed on.

Another tick of his fingers.

He'd known they'd already spoken about it. That she was aware, by then, that it was Powder—Jinx—who wanted nothing to do with that room: who couldn't sleep in it, couldn't stand to be in it; could only hover at the foot of those stairs, boots welded through the floor, every time this shark-skinned thing offered for her to go through her belongings and do with the space as she wished. 

A denial Vi couldn't grapple with had pooled nauseously in her. One he'd had no qualms in laying out to dry.

I will remind you, Silco had said, placid for all its venom, once, by whose request you are here. And he'd stared her down, like a beast waiting to strike: head tilted, eyes inhuman: chloroform polluting the sea-foam of the living one, magma igniting the ore of the dead. 

Nothing but a dull indifference. Bemusement glazed beneath a fanged snarl. 

He didn't see her as a threat, she'd realized. Not as mirrored strength to be wary of, the way Vander had. 

In the path of his leering, she felt like a child. A gutless, gut-twisted kid.

Like a pair of boxing gloves squeezed shamefully behind her back, and her father's glare simmering above her, a finger lifted slowly between them—Don't you leave her alone, again. 

In his image, the words twisted. A different voice. A dead eye. A threat that bastard didn't need to speak.

She'd heard it, all the same.

Give her one reason to regret that choice, and I will see you out, myself.

"Y'know what's funny?" Jinx says, plucking another piece of metal off her knee. Vi's fingers stutter around her hair. "You've got way more in common than you think. Little spit-fire peas in a pod, really—all Zaun this, Fissurefolk that—No pickles in the stew, Jinx; No bombs in the basement, Birdie-blue." Her sister pitters into a snort, piranha-teeth gleam over the shoulder. "It's bonkers. Like I've got two of ya, now."

And Vi pictures him occupying a similar space in this bar, this room, in her sister's own head. Pictures, dreads, refuses the thought of him toiling over a stove, with little Powder's fingertips peeking against the counter: of him standing bland and impatient in the glittering eaves of a Piltie tailor, wrinkling his brow at the colors this girl insisted on piecing together; of him waking to her tear-muddled face at ungodly hours of the morning, as Vi had done so many years before, and groggily flipping back the sheets; of holding her, at all, in a space that never should have been emptied, in the first place.

The thought curdles in her throat.

Six years—nearly seven, now.

Now, her sister speaks about Powder like a dead self. She spends her free hours dancing around that monster's desk. She has nightmares more vile that the ones Vi remembers, that made voices crawl from the walls, the kind that said the nights would never end and that none of them would ever come back, never come back again (and Mom and Dad never did, and Vander was taken from them)—

And still. 

Still, after all of it—after those terrors would send her panicked and shaken into the hall, with Vi's door already cracked and waiting; after the years Vi had cared for her, reassured her, done her best to be the lovely softness that their mother was, that she feared she could never be—Jinx would go to him, first.

Vi squeezes her eyes shut. 

Slowly, the comb picks through another tangle.

"Two of us, huh?" she mutters, a fire in her chest—and denies it.

[dapandapod]

Bruises

I realized I forgot to post this on Tumbl! It's about 8,5k and written in one day in a fit of inspiration (helppppp) because I needed that sweet sweet Jaskier whump. Please enjoy this emotional hurt/comfort ish-fix-it of season 2. On Ao3 here

Jaskier never expected to see Kaer Morhen, especially not in the way he ended up seeing it.

The dwarves lead him and Ciri as far as they can, banter and cutting remarks following Jaskier at every step.

Sure, he gives as good as he gets; whatever he is dealt he makes sure to give back, if he can get away with it.

But you can only be hit so many times before it becomes a bruise, no matter how lightly.

And Jaskier is already sore, from years of barbs, from years of being told to “fuck off, bard” or “shut up, bard” or “you are so fucking loud,” and well. It hits harder when it is someone you consider a friend.

Especially when it turns out that friendship was one sided.

The little princess is full of resentment and anger, but trading banter puts a small smile on her face, so he lets her.

If the way to get friendly is to let her tease him, so be it. He knows she needs an outlet for her inner turmoil so it doesn’t fester, so he turns up the dramatics and plays along.

The second to last eve they spend with the dwarves, it suddenly becomes too much. He knows Yarpen isn’t a fan, he knows there is some truth behind his name calling and swearing. 

Ciri is sitting across the fire, sharpening a stick with the knife from her boot, looking for all the world like she isn’t paying attention to the conversation around her.

But then one of the dwarves calls Jaskier an ignorant, lazy, useless human, wondering what the fuck he is doing here anyway.

Maybe it is the ale, maybe it is the smoke stinging his eyes, or the years of putting up with it.

Jaskier doesn’t remember which one of them it was afterwards, and it doesn’t matter. His anger flares. He stands up, and the group goes very quiet.

“Have any of you asked me anything of my life? Have any of you bothered to ask what I was doing in a fucking prison cell, why I don’t have a lute, or where I went after you left that fucking dragon hunt with Geralt?”

There is complete silence, only the crackling of the fire and the night sounds of the forest.

“You might think I’m useless, and that I am lazy, and that I’m ignorant. But I don’t have to be here. I have people depending on me, yet here I am. Giving up responsibilities and comforts alike, all for someone who can’t even call me a friend, surrounded by people who clearly don’t want me here.”

He flexes his hands, feeling the blistered and burned skin strain, the pain clearing his head some.

“I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.” He finishes, picks up his bedroll and his pack, and settles on the outskirts of the camp, by the wagon.

Close enough to be safe, far away enough to get some peace.

It takes a few minutes for the muttering to begin, a few more until Ciri stands up too, and gathers her bedroll.

Until now, she has been distant, and he can’t blame her in the least. Now she settles down just a few feet from him, alongside the carriage.

It is colder here in the north, and neither of them had any kind of proper gear packed for their journey, unplanned as it was. He still drapes his leather jacket over her when he hears her chattering teeth, and settles on his bedroll with just a thin blanket.

~

Kaer Morhen is all big halls, high ceilings and hairy men. Hairy witchers. Lots of them too, and Ciri runs to greet them with a big smile.

They had found Eskel along the path, guiding them the rest of the way up. Ciri knew some of the way already, but only the paths closest to the keep, so it was a great relief having someone who knew what to avoid and what trails led them past ancient traps and monster dens.

The road was long, and Jaskier can’t believe Geralt thought he would make it here unscathed. Eskel seemed a little concerned as well when Jaskier explained his task, but said nothing.

Still says nothing, now that Ciri is surrounded by witchers, and Jaskier is left just standing there at the edge of the room. He is usually not one to hesitate to introduce himself, but he is tired, hungry, and frankly feeling rather neglected.

Eventually Ciri introduces him to the group, and it takes about three seconds after that to figure out who Lambert is.

Ah, ‘Lambert, Lambert, what a prick,’ indeed.

He is given dinner, a place to sleep, and is shown to the room where they keep a myriad of bathtubs. Lucky for him, there is already a fire going, making the room warm and toasty, and making it considerably easier to warm the water without any signs.

Jaskier can’t lie, he had been picturing hot springs, or anything pre-heated really, especially the shallow pool that had been built in the floor.

A quick toe dip later, and he is never stepping foot in that pool, ever.

His fingers ache when they come in contact with the heat of the fireplace, and he flexes them in an attempt to dispel the discomfort.

Sinking down into a tub at long last is heaven.

Dirt from far more than the road to the keep has had his skin itching, his hair stuck in a permanent curl around his ears, and he longs for his artistic dishevelment once more.

Sharing breakfast with the witchers of Kaer Morhen enlightens him about the many odd manners of Geralt of Rivia.

Watching the other witchers mess with each other explains so much. Unguarded food is immediately stolen, and if given the chance, someone will increase the temperature of their tea all the way to boiling, and then challenge each other to drink it, and so on, and so forth. Brotherly pranks, clearly, but the kind you need a certain set of mutations to deal with.

Jaskier only has his mixed heritage to keep him out of the worst of troubles that technically would be bad news for full humans, but nothing to keep him safe from this, so he steers clear.

Yennefer and Geralt join them that same afternoon.

Ciri runs into Geralt’s arms, and Jaskier remains at the table where he is challenging Coën with loaded dice.

Not until most of the others have gone to bed does Geralt finally approach him.

“Thank you for bringing her safely here.”

Jaskier looks at him for a long while, before replying.

“You’re welcome.” He says finally, and Geralt pats his shoulder. Weird.

~

After that first day, Jaskier approaches Vesemir while the others are busy.

The way he left things in Oxenfurt doesn’t sit right with him, and he is pretty sure Pricilla is going to assume he is dead if he doesn’t get a message to her soon.

He still has no idea how long he is supposed to stay in the keep, but he writes a carefully worded letter, assuring his safety and asking her to keep singing the Song of the Shore.

She will know what the coded song title means, and he has enough funds squirreled away to keep the entire Sandpiper operation going for a while longer, before he needs to find a way to beg his benefactor for assistance.

Vesemir gives him a long look, and Jaskier offers the letter he is holding, stifling a frustrated sigh.

“You are free to read it. I’m not trying to give away your location, just assure my safety of me and those I left behind.” He says, because he knows.

He spent years in the library of Oxenfurt, and he has read the old tomes that contain what little witcher history there is to find, as poorly depicted as it is. He knows about the sacking of the keep, understands the fear of it happening again.

It still stings.

Vesemir accepts his offer, and opens the letter, reading it over. His eyebrow climbs up his forehead, and he looks at Jaskier before putting it back into its envelope.

“I’ll have it sent.” He says, his mustache twitching when he makes a considering face. “Do any of the others know?”

“About the Sandpiper?” Jaskier asks, and Vesemir nods. “Yennefer knows. She was a part of the last group I sent off, before…” Jaskier stops and takes a breath. “Before. I know how and when to keep things to myself.”

Vesemir nods again approvingly, and takes the letter with him.

No one seems to have noticed the exchange, and Jaskier is left wondering if that is a good or a bad thing.

~

Things are a bit tense in the keep. Geralt still hasn’t seemed to forgive Yennefer for her betrayal, and Ciri seems to be more withdrawn lately.

Between witcher practice and chores, Jaskier tries to make himself as useful as he can be.

Which is not very, as it turns out, since he is not trusted to be in the lab anymore because of a tiny little tasting incident. Nor is he allowed to help with the patching up the keep. The library is Vesemir’s baby, and Jaskier is sure he is safeguarding secrets of the past there.

So Jaskier just… hangs around. Without a lute, he can’t play, and he probably wouldn’t be able to just yet anyway with his fingers still in their sorry state. The blistered skin has started peeling now, and new soft pink skin has started to show underneath.

He and Yennefer are getting closer, both of them evidently outcasts of a sort.

Especially since none of the other witchers make an effort to get to know them, nor is Geralt paying any kind of attention to either of them. She is the only one who really knows about the firefucker, and nobody has bothered to ask about the bandages.

If she had her chaos, she could have healed him, but she doesn’t, so instead she makes what ointments she can and watches him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t eat it instead of applying it.

~

Late summer is slowly becoming early fall, and Jaskier realizes that his window for leaving is ever shrinking.

He doesn’t want to leave, not really, but he has no idea what he's doing here. Geralt hasn't asked him to leave, but neither has he asked him to stay.

Their interactions are short and rarely between them alone.

A lot of it consists of Geralt being nearby when Jaskier is retelling funny stories of their travels, making Ciri smile and the other witchers roar with laughter and the corner of Geralt’s mouth twitch in an aborted smile.

They don’t treat him like the dwarves did, but they clearly don't know why Jaskier is here either, and it is frustrating to say the least.

They seem to appreciate his singing more than Geralt ever did, sure, but sometimes it feels like they use him to annoy Geralt, and sometimes Jaskier thinks it’s working…

Lambert is probably the worst. He is an asshole and excuses it by calling it honesty.

He picks up where Geralt left off after the mountain, poking at every visible sore spot until Jaskier is stinging. Jabs and jibes, poking fun at Jaskier to make the others laugh. Nothing he isn’t used to, but something that makes Jaskier feel uncomfortable when nobody steps in to stop him.

Ciri sticks close to his side after those nights.

She doesn’t say much, doesn’t try to defend him, and he would never ask her to, but she glares at Lambert and asks Jaskier to tell her another story, which he gladly does.

~

It’s been two weeks since their arrival, and he, Lambert, Coën and Geralt are gathered around the dining table. Most of the others have filtered out to their own tasks or downtime activities, but they linger, chatting and playing dice. Coën stays out of it, still not trusting Jaskier since the loaded dice incident, which Jaskier is immensely proud of.

For the first time in a long time, Jaskier is actually enjoying himself, and enjoying being next to his friend. Maybe, after all this time, Geralt has started to think of him as a friend too.

Until Lambert opens his mouth and ruins it all.

“You are not half as bad as Geralt made you out to be. Or maybe it’s because he made you leave your lute behind at the bottom of the mountain?”

Next to him Geralt stiffens, and Jaskier feels his jaw working.

“Thanks,” is all he says, shaking the dice in the cup one more time before slamming it down on the table a little harder than strictly necessary. Then he stands up and climbs over the bench, very fucking done with the entire conversation.

Behind him he can hear Coën berating Lambert, who pretends he has no idea what he said wrong.

Fucking asshole.

He doesn’t hear Geralt say anything, nor ask about the missing lute.

It’s not that cold out yet, but the air is fresh and crisp on his face when he steps out through one of the side entrances to the courtyard. Here and there witchers are milling about, but Jaskier wants to be alone.

He hurries to the main gate and across the bridge, seeking his solitude amongst the trees on the other side. Technically, it is a bit dangerous to go out alone, but Jaskier is pretty sure no little beasties would dare come close to a monster hunter’s keep in broad daylight.

“Jaskier.” Geralt calls after him, and Jaskier stifles a long line of swears. Still he lets Geralt catch up to him, even if he is decidedly not looking at the witcher.

“Lambert can be such a prick.” Geralt says when he has caught up. “He only wants to rile you up.”

Jaskier notices the clear lack of an apology in there.

“So I’ve noticed. And he succeeded,” Jaskier says shortly, flexing his fingers again.

A bad habit now, but it is better than picking at the sharp, hardened edges of skin that still cling to his fingertips as they heal.

Clearly, Geralt hadn’t thought through what he wanted to say, or he had expected this to be enough. It isn’t. He lingers, still standing there, waiting for… something.

“What do you want from me, Geralt?” He asks when Geralt isn’t saying anything, and turns to look at him. His… friend. The man he has spent far too many years believing he meant something to.

“... I wanted to see if you are alright.” Geralt says haltingly, and Jaskier finally snaps.

“Oh yes, I am clearly alright after being told time and time again that I am annoying, unwanted, useless, loud, and being told by your family that you had made me out to be all those things too, before they even met me.”

Geralt looks taken aback, but Jaskier is not done.

“I’m tired of this, Geralt. I am so fucking tired of this. Not once have you come to my defence, not once have you told them to fuck off.”

“You can hold your own.” Geralt says, frowning, and Jaskier spreads his arm in frustration.

“I can, of course I fucking can! I have to, since not even the man I thought of as my best friend considers me a friend enough to have my back!”

Again, the witcher doesn’t have a reply to that. Fucking figures.

“Leave me alone, Geralt. Before I say something I’ll regret.”

“...Don’t wander.” The witcher cautions him hesitantly, and thankfully returns towards the bridge.

Jaskier stays longer than what is probably advisable. He is just fuming, and he kicks a young tree, making yellow leaves fall down around him.

He could technically blow off steam by sitting down to write, but there would be an audience no matter where he goes in the keep, and he is also not very much in the mood for another Burn Butcher Burn.

That one has done enough damage already.

In the end, it is Ciri who ends up fetching him. She doesn’t say anything about his red eyes and tousled hair, nor the bruises on his knuckles.

“Dinner is ready,” is all she says, and waits for him to join her back across the bridge with the others.

Jaskier takes his dinner and chooses another table far from the big group. Predictably, Ciri joins him, but he didn’t expect Eskel to sit down with them, too. Nor Yennefer. Nor Geralt.

They talk amongst themselves, even if Ciri and Jaskier are the only one replying to Yennefer when she says something.

It makes him feel weird, considering their rivalry all these years.

He knocks their shoulders together and teases her, calls her the worst wife ever. It is worth it for the smile he teases out of her, but he notices Geralt pull in a sharp breath of air.

“What?” he asks, but Geralt says nothing, just stares down at his food.

That evening, Geralt walks Jaskier back to his room.

“I’m sorry,” the witcher finally says after a long stretch of silence that Jaskier refuses to fill. “For what Lambert said. And for what I made Lambert believe.”

Jaskier blinks in surprise. When there is nothing else, he turns towards his door.

“Sure. See you around, Geralt.”

But Geralt stops him with a hand around his wrist.

“Are you and Yennefer… really married?”

Of course. Of course that is what would be on Geralt’s mind. Another sore spot amongst the others on his bruised heart.

“Fret not, witcher, the sorceress is still unwed and free for the taking. She did get me out of a rather sticky situation, though, so if it’s all the same to you, I do consider her my friend and platonic wife.”

With that, Jaskier turns and closes the door behind him.

Fuck, that was not how he wanted this day to go. His eyes sting and he swallows many times and he clenches his fists to keep his emotions in line.

Maybe it is time to leave.

Maybe it is time to go back to where people need and want him. Where he can make a difference. Where he can matter. Where he is enough.

His eyes sting once more, and with a great sigh he heaves himself from where he was leaning against the door and pours himself a cup of water.

He’ll talk with Eskel in the morning. Or Vesemir. Find a way to leave that won’t inconvenience anyone any further.

~

Leaving is harder than he thought, mainly because now, all of a sudden, people seem to seek his company.

Yennefer keeps appearing, asking him for help with stupid things. Some of them, he realizes, might be a way to regain the trust she broke between her and Geralt, but he appreciates her company it all the same.

Especially since most of it includes making Ciri smile, some other parts of it to make Lambert’s life a little more shitty. Something he is all for, to be honest.

Jaskier is petty when he wants to be, and right now he is the Prince of Petty.

Geralt too, seems to have come to some conclusion. He bites back faster when Lambert becomes too much, or Eskel, or Coën for that matter. In Jaskier’s defence, even.

It’s… weird. Nice, but weird.

And it is tearing at the walls that he spent all summer building.

~

Jaskier writes another letter to Pricilla.

Vesemir had told him that he will accept no return letter, but there are some strings he could pull if it were really necessary. Since they are hiding from Nilfgaard in a keep deeply hidden away by time and nature, Jaskier respects the need for it, and continues writing his one sided letters.

He is rather used to one sided communication, after all.

~

When he finally thinks he is about to get Eskel alone, it is not by his own doing.

“I’m sorry, I found a journal without a name, and I looked through it to see who it belonged to.”

Well, fuck.

“Jaskier. You are putting yourself at great risk.”

“And others even more so, if I don’t.” Jaskier replies, knowing exactly what he is referring to. Eskel blinks, then nods.

“I need to go back, Eskel. Before winter comes.”

“It’s too dangerous. The pass will be open for a few weeks more, but you are a wanted man.”

This is news.

“What do you know?” He asks quietly, accepting his journal back.

“I have no idea how you got into the prison cell, but word’s spread that the White Wolf busted you out.”

Fuck.

“That’s not good.”

“I’m sorry.” Eskel says, and Jaskier pats his shoulder, but he immediately pulls his hand back with a grimace. How can one see the spikes on his shoulders, and forget that they are, indeed, spikey?

“Shouldn’t have done that. Why do you keep wearing spikes?” Jaskier says. “ Also, no fault but my own, I suppose, with the jailbreaking and all that. Actually, scratch that, are all witchers allergic to just bailing someone out? Or is it just a Geralt thing?”

Jaskier tries to lighten the mood, but his stomach is sinking and his hands feel clammy. Time to write another letter or three.

“Witcher’s are all cheapskates, I’m afraid,” Eskel grins, but then sobers. “Do the others know?”

Jaskier shrugs.

“They didn’t ask. Nobody asked.”

At the same time, Geralt comes around the corner and spots them, a frown forming on his forehead. Of course.

“Right. Well, if you would keep this to yourself, I’d be immensely grateful.” Jaskier says quietly, and this time Eskel pats Jaskier’s shoulder.

“I got your back, bard,” the scarred witcher says, ironically, and now there is a lump forming in Jaskier’s throat.

Great. Fantastic. Splendid. Amazing.

Without waiting, Jaskier takes off towards his room to hide his journal again. Not to avoid Geralt. Not at all.

~

The letters he puts together are swiftly given to Vesemir. His eyebrows shoot up again when he spots one of the names addressed.

“Not a friend I would have expected of you, Pankratz.” Vesemir says quietly. “I hope you know what you are doing.”

Jaskier knows. It is a high risk game for everybody involved, with him in the direct line of fire.

“They will have to make do without me for a while.” Jaskier says quietly. “Or so Eskel tells me.”

“Ah, yes. Might be good to lay low for a while. You are welcome to stay the season with us, if you don’t have anywhere else to go, but we expect you to pull your weight.”

Does he have anywhere? Is he really welcome here?

The way Geralt looks at him sometimes, he is not so sure.

“Thank you. Though I might need to make a trip down to civilization soon. Some more clothes, paper and a lute. What kind of bard am I without a lute?” He asks, half joking.

“It’d be better if we sent down one of our usuals.” Vesemir says, scratching at his beard. “A man like yourself is sure to stand out anywhere in these small settlements.”

Was that a complement?

“Was that a complement?” Jaskier says, smirking, and Vesemir huffs goodnaturedly.

“I can see them looking, bard. I have eyes. And ears.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jaskier asks, frowning, but Vesemir turns to go.

“Write me a list of what you need, and I’ll see what we can do.”

~

Aubry and Coën leave only a few days after Jaskier had written his list. He doesn’t really expect them to find him a lute, but something stringed to play would be nice. It’s rather likely they would find a 4 stringed lute at most, nothing like the one he smashed over that guard’s head, nor like the one he got from the Elven kind that he keeps safely in Oxenfurt.

Frankly, he’s glad that he couldn’t bring one of his nicer instruments.

The temperature changes could crack the wood, if not treated carefully, and it would be hell to keep that many strings tuned. He is pleasantly surprised when there is a knock on his door, and Geralt steps in with a leather case.

“The boys found you something,” he says by way of greeting, and Jaskier stands from his desk to accept the offered case.

He can feel the corner of his mouth tick up, and he wipes his hands on his trousers first to rid himself of stray ink before he dares touch it.

He grips it by the neck, feeling the smooth wood even through the leather of the case, and the gentle sounds of the strings as they are pinched in his grip.

“Oh, hello there,” he whispers to it, and opens it reverently.

She has six strings and a little care package, and she is terribly out of tune. The wood is old, loved, worn out, and he can see clearly where her previous player liked to put their fingers, the lacquer worn or marked to help the unpracticed one.

“What a beauty you are,” he tells her, and from the corner of his eyes, he sees Geralt leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. It almost looks like he is smiling, but Jaskier won’t turn his head to look.

There is a nervousness in him, like when you get to know a new lover. Excitement, fondness, curiosity.

He sits down on the bed, lute perched in his lap, and attempts to tune it. He fishes out the little tuning fork around his neck, raps it on his knuckles, plucks the matching string, and starts adjusting it.

Geralt makes a face; it’s probably not a nice sound to sensitive ears, but he remains.

“Did you know, it's common lutes have as many as 12 courses?” Jaskier says, turning the peg until it feels right.

“Courses?” Geralt asks.

“Strings. Oh, I might need to get this little darling some new pegs eventually, and that string looks a little worn out. We will fix you up, love.” He coos at the lute, and he hears Geralt huff.

“Doesn’t yours have 13?” Geralt asks, and Jaskier looks up, surprised.

“They do, yes.” Jaskier looks down, and his hands suddenly feel a little clammy, his cheeks warm. “The most I have ever heard of is 35, which is ridiculous. One of my old masters in Oxenfurt has one with 19, but I find those are best suited for academic music, rather than music for the masses.”

Geralt doesn’t say anything else, and when Jaskier looks up, Geralt is smiling.

“What?” He asks, but Geralt just shakes his head.

“Just haven’t talked like this in a while. It’s nice.”

That… is not what he expected him to say. Truth be told, he is still a little hurt. He still hasn't received a proper apology from that outburst from Geralt on the dragon hunt, nor any kind of thanks for just dropping everything to come with him again.

“This is going to take a while,” Jaskier says hesitantly, when Geralt doesn’t say anything else, nor move. “Technically, I should look her over first, then tune, but ah, can’t blame a man for being excited, can you?”

Jaskier looks down, puts his tuning fork back inside his shirt, where it clinks against the ring, and puts both hands on his lute.

“I don’t mind. If you don’t mind me staying.”

This is so weird.

Geralt stays, and listens to Jaskier tuning his new treasure. It takes him almost twenty minutes to see that Geralt is holding another bag, most likely one with the requested clothing.

They will have to wait a little more, as Jaskier is getting into position and putting the lute strap over his shoulder.

His right hand already stings a little, the new skin not used to the sharpness of the strings. Jaskier plays a few scales to get to know her, and to get back into it. He plays a little ditty from his past, humming the familiar nonsense words of the warm up song of his early days in the academy.

They don’t know each other yet, but it feels good to play again.

Just because he can, and because he wants to show off a little, Jaskier decides to test her limits. An old lullaby, embellished by the academics and time, harmonies and contrast ringing out in the room.

He smiles, until his index finger stings, and he hisses and puts it in his mouth.

“You alright?” Geralt asks, sitting up straighter from where he finally was sitting on the chair by Jaskier’s desk.

“‘m good,” Jaskier says around the finger in his mouth. “Just a cut. New skin’s not tough yet.”

He takes the finger out, and inspects it. His fingers are red, and the small cut is bleeding a little more than it should. Even his cuts are dramatic, he hears his teacher say, an echo from a distant past in the back of his mind.

“...New skin?” Geralt asks, face blank, and Jaskier looks up at him. The good atmosphere in the room is changing, and for some reason Jaskier feels like it is his fault. It makes him feel a bit defensive.

“Yes, you know, after the old skin blisters after a bad burn? Haven’t played in some time either, so that probably makes it worse, I suppose.” Jaskier can’t help but prod, to see if Geralt will take notice.

“You didn’t tell me about the burn,” Geralt says, his mouth a thin line.

“You didn’t ask.” Jaskier says, laying both hands flat over the strings, looking at Geralt challengingly. Good mood is all but gone now, and he feels that old bruise makes itself known again. This time he is the one poking it.

“Usually don’t have to.”

“Maybe I got tired of our one sided friendship,” Jaskier says before he can stop himself. Fuck, that is not how he meant to say that.

By the looks of it, Geralt doesn’t take it too well either.

He stands up, staring at Jaskier as if he grew a second head.

“Tired?” He says, hands clenching and unclenching against his sides.

“When was the last time you called me your friend, Geralt?” Jaskier says, starting to get agitated. “When was the last time you asked me something, anything that didn’t directly relate to Yennefer, Ciri, or you needing me to do something? When was the last time you apologized, for anything you have said to me?”

Jaskier stands up and puts the lute down on the bed, lest he does something he regrets too. All the words are pouring out of him now, why risk breaking anything but his own heart?

“Maybe I grew tired of being the only one trying.” He grabs his handkerchief to stop the blood from his finger, clenching his hand hard around it.

“Why are you here then?” Geralt spits, and it’s like a slap.

“I ask myself the same thing every day,” Jaskier shoots back, finding himself taking a step forward. “Why am I here, when clearly nobody wants me to be?”

Geralt stares at him, and Jaskier can’t really tell what that expression is.

“Are you leaving?” Geralt asks through clenched jaws.

“Can’t. Apparently there are consequences for being broken out of jail. Especially when it happens to have been by someone like the White Wolf.”

This time, Geralt visibly flinches.

“Didn’t think about that, did you?” Jaskier says. “I was so glad you found me again, I didn’t give a damn about the consequences. I pretended we could start again, maybe you would want me by your side, walking next to you for once, not just trailing behind like some forlorn fucking puppy.”

Jaskier looks at his bed, looks at the oh so loved lute, that had seen so many sets of hands, every scratch and tear a part of a journey.

“Vesemir has allowed me to stay through the winter. Unless you’ve all got something against that. Let me know, and I’ll be on my way.”

Jaskier wishes he wasn’t in his room. Wishes he could just leave. Instead, he has to stand there like an idiot and wait until either Geralt does, or opens his mouth, for once.

“I didn’t realize…” Geralt begins but trails off.

“That actions have consequences, Geralt? That words do damage too? Did you learn nothing from your entire Butcher experience?”

That is a low blow, and he knows it, but he doesn’t feel like being nice right now.

It’s remarkable that Geralt hasn’t blown up at him yet, which in itself is probably not a very high standard to hold anyone against.

“You are still bleeding,” Geralt says eventually, and Jaskier looks down to see that he’s dropped his handkerchief. The witcher bends down and picks it up, grabbing Jaskier’s hand along the way.

Jaskier is too stunned to protest, and Geralt lifts his hand enough to inspect the cut. It’s not bleeding much anymore, but from where it’s placed, it is likely open easily.

Geralt pinches the tip of Jaskier’s finger with the handkerchief, and Jaskier suddenly flashes back to another room, another time when someone held his hand.

It takes effort not to just yank his hand back, his pulse rising and his palms getting clammy again. Geralt looks at him from under his brow, concerned, but Jaskier pinches his lips shut.

“Will you tell me about it?”

“About what?” Jaskier manages when Geralt breaks the stare to reach for some linen Jaskier has been using as bandages every now and then.

“What I missed this past year. How to be your friend. Where we go from here.”

Geralt makes a tight wrap around his finger, to the best of his ability. Not the best place for a bandage, but at least Geralt has experience.

“I can’t tell you where we go from here, Geralt. If you ask, I can tell you about the months since the dragon hunt, but the rest, you will have to figure out along with me.”

Geralt holds Jaskier’s hand in his for a moment longer, neither of them looking at the other. The witcher’s hand is not much larger than his. With a gentle thumb, Geralt moves Jaskier’s fingers, allowing him to see what the firefucker did to him.

“You and Eskel seem to get along,” Geralt says carefully. “Does he know?”

The corner of Jaskier’s mouth tugs upwards in half a smile. Geralt is fishing, but Jaskier won’t say unless there is an actual question.

“Some. He found a journal of mine that I thought I had hidden.”

Geralt frowns and releases Jaskier’s hand. It drops to his side, and they both just stand there in the middle of the room, looking anywhere but at each other.

“You don’t usually hide your songs.”

“It wasn’t a song book.”

“... Can I see?”

Fuck it, why not. Whatever is happening in this room tonight will change things either way.

The new hiding place isn’t really a hiding place, just the drawer in his desk. He hands Geralt the leather bound pages, and Geralt opens and looks through it.

At first glance, it looks like his economic books. Taking stock of things bought and sold, to who and where.

Geralt glances up at Jaskier, who just nods at the book again.

Flipping a few pages, Geralt starts to make connections. When he looks up at Jaskier again, his face is carefully blank.

“You are the Sandpiper.”

“I am.” Jaskier agrees.

“You smuggled elves out of the big cities.”

“Indeed. Don’t worry, I have taken precautions for if I’m not around.”

If he should be discovered. If he were not to come back.

“Jaskier, you are putting yourself at risk.”

“And so are you, every time you take a contract. Don’t you dare tell me it’s not the same.”

“So it’s for the money?”

Jaskier sniffs, glaring at the witcher.

“No. It’s for the people who don't have anyone else to turn to. Because when they run out of elves, they will find new targets. You can’t tell me you took every contract for the coin, I have seen you accept contracts for half of your rate if they can’t afford it.”

“Is that why your fingers were blistered?” Geralt asks.

“No. That’s… something else. Something I’d rather not talk about tonight, if you don’t mind.”

Jaskier knows that if he does, he will spend the rest of the evening wondering if he gave anything away, wondering where Rience is, who else he is burning because Jaskier got away.

Geralt gives the book back, and Jaskier places it back in the drawer.

“Rest your hand, Jaskier. Heal before you play again.”

The room is strangely empty when Geralt has left.

Jaskier sits on the bed, staring at his hands for a long while, until he finally decides to look at what was in the bag of clothes that Geralt brought, and Jaskier promptly forgot about in favor of the lute.

Looking through it,it seems like Geralt might have added a shirt of his own to Jaskier’s new wardrobe.

He shoves it to the bottom of the pile.

Jaskier doesn’t make it down to dinner that night.

~

After that day, things slowly progress in small steps.

Everything goes to shit, however, when Voleth Meir makes herself known.

Ciri’s body moves at the possessing demon’s will, and she manages to stab three witchers badly before the alarm is raised.

Yennefer wakes him up, pulling him from a dream into a nightmare. She needs him.

Somehow they always need him.

The powers channeled through Ciri’s small body are strong, destructive.

Jaskier is hiding under a table when a large creature steps through a portal, a creature he has never seen before. It sweeps at the witchers, and Voleth Meir laughs with Ciri’s mouth.

It takes Yennefer tearing open her veins for Voleth Meir to finally let go, for Ciri to free herself from the snares her mind had been tangled in.

With a scream, Ciri, Yennefer and Geralt disappear from view through a portal.

Jaskier sees Lambert land on his back, leg bleeding badly after a swipe from one of the creatures still roaming. He pulls him to the relative safety of his table, and tears his tunic enough to wrap Lambert’s leg.

“Thank you,” Lambert grumbles as he gets his bearings, the commotion in the room making it hard to hear. Jaskier just nods, tying the makeshift bandage off.

Finally, it’s over.

And somehow, Yennefer got her powers back.

~

The days after are a mess. One of the stabbed witchers doesn’t make it, and Ciri has been hiding in her room, guilt ridden, making herself as small as physically possible.

Geralt tries to coax her out, but he still has too little time, too many things to sort out. With her newly regained magic, Yennefer heals who she can, focusing on major injuries until she almost exhausts herself completely.

All the while, Jaskier is left to his own devices. Again.

Not that there is anything he can actually do for them. He isn’t medically trained, nor does have magical abilities.

It leaves him wondering how he survived the whole ordeal at all, and while he feels lucky about it, there is also a morsel of guilt.

So Jaskier finds himself knocking on Ciri’s door. She is reluctant to let him in, but with some honey cake bribes, she finally relents.

This, he knows. This, he can help with.

A young girl, plagued with guilt and fear, struggling to get a hold of herself and what she did, he knows how to help her.

“Not what you did. What your body did, under someone else's control.” Jaskier reminds her between bites. “I might not have gone through what you have, but I know what it is like to feel helpless. Fear and expectations don’t mix well, especially not when a murderous witch is involved.”

They talk a lot, mostly Ciri actually, and maybe they cry a little. After they finish their stolen cakes, and Jaskier has sworn not to tell Lambert, Jaskier brings out his lute to let Ciri play.

It seems she has a basic knowledge, plucking out the chords of a famous love song.

Sadly, not one that Jaskier had written, but at least it wasn’t one of Valdo Marx’s. Which he tells her.

And then she proceeds to play one of Marx’s love songs.

When Geralt finally joins them, Jaskier is chasing a giggling Ciri, who is hugging the lute close, calling her a traitor and a terrible little child, cursing Valdo for tainting her poor, innocent ears.

~

The first day Ciri dares to join them for breakfast, she hides behind Geralt. Both Yennefer and Jaskier hover, ready to step in between if anyone has anything to say.

They don’t.

Lambert is the first one to approach, bandage and limp both gone, Jaskier notes. He sits opposite of Geralt and Ciri, slamming his plate down, his fork rattling down across the table.

“Hey, it happens. What is a little mind control between friends?” is all he says, then digs into his food with the worst table manners Jaskier has seen in a while.

The tension breaks when Jaskier starts berating him for it, and is met with a mouthful of food telling him exactly where he can stuff his manners.

Ciri smiles when Eskel settles next to her, bumping their arms together.

The others make a toast to the lion cub among the wolves, the one who finally found a way to shut Lambert up. Even if it was by challenging him to stuff his mouth full enough to almost choke.

~

The first snow falls not long after.

The last letter has been sent, the last visit to the village by the foot of the mountains has been made, and those witchers unwilling to be stuck for the season have left.

It is colder than a grave hag’s asshole, as Eskel declares one day, with Coën immediately wanting to know why he knows that piece of information.

“I am a man of science,” Eskel grins and winks, and Lambert almost spits out his mead.

Ciri and Yennefer are slowly bonding, their first lessons taking place by the giant lake below the keep.

Jaskier takes care of his lute, works on new material, and with Vesemir and Eskel’s help, looks for new routes for the Sandpiper to take.

Geralt finds him more often now, seeking out his company rather than just tolerating it.

For a moment, Jaskier had expected him and Yennefer to fall back into bed as soon as the air was cleared, but if they have, they never said.

Instead, Yennefer spends more and more time with Ciri, trying to work out ways to control her power when they realize just how strong the young girl already is.

Sometimes they all do things all together.

They go ice skating.

They lose a snowball fight, pelted until they yell for mercy.

Jaskier finally learns of the hot springs, much to his outrage.

“You mean I could have dipped into preheated water all along?!” he yells, waving his arms around dramatically, and is rewarded when Ciri snickers, and Geralt bites down a smile.

It makes something in his chest soar.

The walls from the past year are slowly being torn down.

Deliberately so, in fact.

Piece by piece, Jaskier decides to let Geralt in.

It’s not perfect. It’s painful and it’s terrifying to let himself be open to hope again, to trust that there is friendship this time.

~

When Geralt learns about the firefucker, he is gone for an entire day.

Jaskier has no idea where he went, and he is feeling terribly vulnerable after talking about it, hands shaking and heart racing. Yennefer finds him outside her workroom, and she pulls him inside, cursing Geralt all the way.

“Let him sulk,” she says. “If he can make a hardship his fault, he will. When he gets his head out of his ass, he’ll come back.”

Later that night, Jaskier hears Yennefer rip Geralt a new one for leaving like that, when Jaskier clearly was shaken up and shouldn’t have been left alone.

Ciri learns about the firefucker days after, and angry tears roll down her cheeks when she realizes what Jaskier went through for her, even before they met.

They sit on the bridge outside the gates, feet dangling over the edge. The air is cold enough for their breath to fog, and Ciri’s slightly damp hair to freeze.

Jaskier thumbs her tears away and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“The whole world could be at my heels, and I would do it all again to keep you safe.”

“Sometimes, I just want the world to burn.” Ciri whispers, and Jaskier tucks her into his side.

~

Geralt calls him his friend now.

It’s good.

Jaskier gets to borrow a horse, and they go out riding in the snow around the keep. They argue about whose turn it is to do the laundry, and who is the worse cook. 

When the window to Jaskier’s room breaks for reasons Lambert and Ciri swear up and down they know nothing about, Geralt simply moves him into his own.

The bed is wide enough for the both of them, which makes Jaskier think of who else might have shared it before him, but he pushes that thought down.

It has no place here, nothing to stand on.

They actually interact less after sharing a room, both of them needing their own space during the day.

They learned that after a vicious fight, where Geralt found all Jaskier’s sore spots once again and pounced.

“Do you ever tire of your own voice?!” he asked nastily, and that shut Jaskier right up.

He slept in the main hall for three days, until Geralt actually apologized.

After that first apology, the rest came a little easier.

They talked about what happened on the mountain. They talked about Jaskier’s past, and Geralt confessed that sometimes, since way before the dragon hunt, he thought Jaskier was only following him for the stories, for the fame it brought him.

It was Jaskier’s turn to apologize, for not seeing that, for not respecting privacy and boundaries set. He realizes he might have been blind to Geralt’s reactions to his songs, distracted with the fame their association granted them.

“But,” Jaskier says,”Not once would I have left you, even if you never lifted your sword ever again.”

To this, Geralt admits to how he always expects to be abandoned, or to be left behind.

“The thought of you leaving, or dying, it’s terrifying. I don’t think I could piece myself together again. So I left first.”

It’s like a kick in the chest, when Jaskier realizes.

That is the first night they actually sleep close on purpose. Geralt is a nasty little blanket thief, but Jaskier makes due by simply curling in close.

~

Midwinter comes, and a new year grows on the horizon. Darkness grants them a perfect view of the stars above, and the snow a blanket to let the world sleep.

Jaskier still is not allowed to join them on hunting trips, but he is getting good with a bow, under Vesemir’s sharp eyes.

~

Another sleepless night, another early morning, at the first light of dawn, when the first rays find their way through the dirty windows of Geralt’s room, that is when Jaskier dares to press a kiss to Geralt’s forehead.

Convinced that the witcher is asleep, he leans on his elbow, tracing a wild strand of hair behind his ear. It’s a quick kiss, dry lips against warm skin, making Jaskier’s entire body ache.

This is why he feared bringing down those walls. This is why he withstood the bruises, an armor to keep his heart at bay.

He doesn’t expect Geralt to open his eyes and gaze up at him. Doesn’t expect Geralt to wrap a hand around his neck and pull him down, pressing a kiss of his own to Jaskier’s forehead.

Resting against Geralt’s chest, Jaskier draws in a shaking breath.

“Ask me, Geralt.” He whispers into the dawning day.

“Do you love me?” Geralt whispers back, arms tightening around Jaskier’s back, pulling him closer.

“I do.” His voice wavers, eyes stinging. “Where do we go from here?”

“Wherever we want to. We’ll figure it out.”

“Geralt?”

“Hm?”

“Do you…?”

Jaskier doesn’t dare ask. Too scared of the question, even more scared of the answer.

Instead of replying, Geralt rolls them over.

Now he is the one leaning on his elbows, hovering inches from Jaskier. They are so close, he can feel every breath Geralt takes, see the pulse jump in his throat.

Instead of replying, Geralt kisses him.

A surprisingly chaste kiss, lingering and soothing and earth shattering and heart wrenching.

“I do.” Geralt whispers finally, lips brushing together. “Whatever that will do to us, I do.”

~

Come spring and the first visit to the village below the mountain, Vesemir finds him with ten envelopes and a small box.

The box is a set of strings and pegs and lute varnish they couldn’t get before the pass closed this winter. Most of the letters are from Pricilla, updating him on what is going on in Oxenfurt and the Sandpiper network, all well coded.

Jaskier realizes he can’t stay anymore.

The world around them is growing ever more restless and chaotic, and the only way to be prepared is to be out there.

Parting with Geralt is harder than it ever was before.

Being alone is dangerous, but being with them is even more so.

He has an organization to run. Stories to tell. Lies to spread.

During the winter, Jaskier came to realize how he can make a difference. On the road, with a lute on his back, in inns and taverns, the way he always did.

As they part, on a crossroad that finally will lead them to part, they stand next to new Roach and Pegasus, arms wrapped around each other and foreheads pressed together.

“Ask me,” Jaskier whispers.

“Won’t you tell me?” Geralt whispers back, making Jaskier huff and smile.

“I won’t make it that easy for you, witcher.” He teases, and Geralt steals a kiss, humming softly into it.

“So I’ll have to come find you then, and ask you to tell me again.” Geralt mumbles against his lips.

Jaskier will hold him to that.

Words held back until they meet again.

The road is long, and full of dangers.

Jaskier hopes it will lead him to Kaer Morhen once more.

[vexingwoman]

I’m loving hearing everyone’s thoughts on whump. Many such cases of ostensibly straight or bisexual women consuming nothing but torture porn (with a tasteful side of woobie coddling or “caretaking”) for gay male pairings almost exclusively. Extreme rambling below because I’ve been thinking about this forever and I’ve never seen anyone else talk about it in a meaningful way.

The non-sexual elements of whump are actually even more interesting to me, especially since even that is still reserved for gay male characters (or straight male characters being written as gay for fic). The whole caretaking part, the way so many whump writers often deride canon material for failing to properly explore the sort of pain they think their fandom faves ought to feel (more accurately: exhibit). Many whump fics are non-sexual but the voyeuristic attention to the suffering of its gay male protagonists feels sexual, in a fetishistic way. There is no similar equivalent to people paying this much precious, mawkish attention to the traumas experienced by female characters. Even if it mirrors or exceeds the actual amount of canon emotional catharsis experienced by their male counterparts.

And I really don’t think these women are a 1:1 equivalent to men who can only get off watching extremely violent porn about women. I don’t even think it comes close to the level of harm those men cause. But I would like to ask the people who consume and produce this content: Why is it only ever about gay men? Why is suffering, crying, rape, terminal illness, torture, etc. such a heavy erotic fixation for them?

And unfortunately I cannot picture any response that isn’t either 1) pornsick or 2) violently defensive.

Very eloquently said. In my experience, aside from admitting that it’s a fetish or misogynistically claiming that male characters are more complex and easier to empathize with, the most common answer I’ve received to the question of why this community focuses almost exclusively on male characters is that it’s an “unexpected and intriguing reversal of gendered expectations.” And while this may be true for some, I’m not convinced this is the main reason.

Because obviously, having a female character abuse and torture the male character would also constitute as an unexpected reversal of gendered expectations, but this community isn’t fascinated by that. Both the character executing the abuse, and the character receiving the abuse, are virtually always male—and the character who plays the role of the caretaker, of course. Coincidentally, I just ran into some stats which really emphasize the point, not that they were needed:

Also, have you noticed a strange upsurge in ridiculously abusive and shockingly violent homo-erotic media? I’m referring to stories like Killing Stalking or Hannibal here. Of course, these kinds of stories have always existed, but I feel like the fascination in them has recently spiked. I recall that even ten years ago the most popular media on gay male relationships was mawkishly adorable—what some would call “fluffy.”

You have to wonder how much of a role that plays in all this. I know for many girls, these vicious homo-erotic stories were their first real exposure to whump content. Maybe they prefer gay male whump content because it’s all they know? But again, that seems too convenient an answer.

In conclusion, I think this is just a mixture of fetishization and internalized misogyny, as I’ve said. In another post, I’ll go further into why I think it’s actually false to argue that male characters are more complexly written and easier to empathize with, and how the real culprit is not the writing, but gendered stereotyping and unconscious misogyny.

If anyone wants to chime in and give their perspective on this, please do.

[hold-him-down]

🧣

For Leo

From this ask game

Notes: this isn’t exactly fluff but it’s not really hurt/comfort either, maybe some emotional whump? i was shooting for pure fluff just to prove i COULD but this is the result, which landed somewhere in the middle 😂 just a little getting to know you piece that im not exactly convinced should exist, but it does 🫶 like 5 months in

TW: none really

✥ ✥ ✥ 

The moment that Leo jolts awake, he feels first relief, before he takes a breath and checks his surroundings. He’s mostly sweaty, but nothing else. So that’s… that’s good. He expected the nightmare tonight, and was cautious in how deep he let himself sleep, but as his breathing returns to a normal cadence, he stares at the ceiling in the pitch black bedroom and reminds himself, several times over, that it wasn’t real.

He sneaks into the bathroom and takes a cold shower, redresses, and then tiptoes down the stairs and into the living room. Snowflakes are falling to the ground, visible only where the light from the patio door radiates into the night. 

Leo pours himself a glass of water and selects his favorite blanket from the basket, turns off the lamp, and curls up on the sofa. 

It’s early, or late, depending on your perspective. He powers on the TV and immediately seeks out this medical dramady he begrudgingly started two weeks earlier; it’s stupid, and it’s mindless, and he could never openly like it, but it’s an absolute truth- he does like it.

He keeps the volume muted, opting for the captions instead, and half-watches the graphically imprecise surgical nightmare play out, half-watches the snow. 

His eyes are glued to the TV when Luke appears in the hallway. It takes a moment for Leo to notice him, and so when he does, he’s not certain how long he’s been standing there. Leo wants to change the channel, but thinks maybe drawing even more attention to it is a mistake. He, instead, fights the urge to stand as he straightens his spine, just a little.

Leo has been given painfully explicit permission to watch the TV whenever he wants, but he hadn’t intended Luke to catch him watching this particular thing–

“Good morning,” Luke says, smiling warmly. 

“Good morning,” Leo responds. He smiles back, forcibly relaxing his body. It’s 3:30 in the morning, which, Leo knows, is close to Luke’s normal wake-up time. He hadn’t really thought that part through. Luke yawns and stretches, exposing a little bit of his stomach, and Leo looks away. 

When he disappears into the kitchen, Leo runs his hands through his hair, adjusts the blanket, and himself, as quickly as he can. He hears something clatter, and his grip on his glass tightens. 

“All good,” he hears from the kitchen. 

Luke emerges a few minutes later, two cups of coffee in hand and wearing an easy, genuine smile.

“Can I sit here?” Luke gestures toward the open spot on the sofa and Leo repositions himself, giving Luke a little more room, and lifts the blanket. Luke almost imperceptibly hesitates, then curls himself under it.

“What is this?” Luke asks, his attention momentarily caught up on the TV. 

Leo, mortified, takes a breath.

“It’s uh, actually, it’s called A Cut Above, and it’s… not very good. I found it the other day when I was looking for a–” he pauses, fingers fidgeting, careful with his words “–a thing that is not important, and I’ve been kind of slowly making my way through it. It’s a medical drama, but it’s not very accurate so far…” His jaw snaps shut, painfully aware that he’s rambling.

Luke laughs. “I didn’t know you liked medical dramas,” he says, his eyes landing on Leo. 

“I… don’t think I knew that either? I’ve never really watched one before, but I started it and now I simply must know what happens.” His voice is soft and he puts a silly cadence behind it, which earns him another smile.

“I always have a hard time with them. I know they’re just designed to entertain, but I always get hung up on how inaccurate they are. I used to date this guy who was obsessed with several of them, and it got the point where he wouldn’t watch them with me because of how heated I’d get. This was in med school, and I haven’t really watched any since graduating. What about you?” Luke asks, his voice guarded. “Does it bother you at all? All the…” Luke gestures, grimacing. “Blood and needles and stuff?”

Leo turns his attention to Luke, taking a breath. 

“I don’t think so. Maybe because it’s so ridiculous… I actually used to think I’d become a doctor, too.” Leo swallows, very aware that Luke is watching him with that fake-casual intensity that means he is zoned in. Leo takes another breath, and decides to do it. To give Luke a piece of himself, however small it might be, that he never thought he’d give anyone again. He tries not to think too hard about it. 

“I grew up kind of poor, but after high school, I got a decent job and was able to save some money. I thought maybe I’d go back to school, once I really had a grip on what I wanted to do. I was pretty constantly torn between becoming a doctor or a stripper, though, so I still had some soul searching to do.” He smiles, which Luke returns, but there’s a sadness there, maybe between them both.

“What was the job?” Luke asks. “If you feel comfortable telling me. No pressure.”

“Bartending, usually. Sometimes I took odd jobs, doing oil changes or helping with construction work or whatever became available that filled the daytime hours. My mom was struggling a lot, toward the end… so I kept myself busy and just helped out around the house when I could.”

Leo is not unaware of the sadness in Luke’s expression, and he wonders if his own expression gives him away. It’s a dangerous line he’s toeing, but it’s also a line that he knows he needs to test the limits of.

Still, the overwhelming sense of grief, over what he’s lost and what he’ll never get back, twists at him, and he pivots abruptly. “What about you?” he chokes out. “What did you, um. Did you always want to be a doctor slash politician?”

Luke laughs. “Doctor yes, politician no. To this day, I’m not sure what was my dream and what was my parents’ influence. They were hyper-focused on making sure we both were super successful…” The why that lingers in the air doesn’t need to be spoken. “I don’t blame them, really. And I enjoyed being a doctor, I miss it sometimes. The politician part kind of came out of necessity; I started getting involved in local politics while I was still in med school, and ran for local office after my first year in residency. It was… chaos.”

Leo feels the heat of Luke’s hand along the edge of his, just a second before he feels Luke’s eyes on him. An eternity passes in silence, the light of the TV flickering as the coffee grows cold and the sky starts shifting.

“Are you okay, Leo? Did you sleep at all?” 

Leo clears his throat, tugging the blanket closer to him. “Yes,” he says, his voice a whisper.

Luke studies him, before speaking again. “Have the nightmares gotten bad again?”

“Yes,” Leo says, after a moment’s hesitation. He offers a small smile.

“Do you know,” Luke asks, “that you’re having a nightmare when you’re having them? Can you tell it’s not real in those moments?”

“Sometimes,” Leo responds. “It’s– It can be hard sometimes, because they’re all rooted in reality. They’re never really so far out there that I’d immediately know it couldn’t be real.”

It’s Luke’s turn to nod, as he sips his now-chilly morning coffee. 

Luke clears his throat,  turning his focus half back to the TV. “I don’t know how true any of this is, so take it with a grain of salt, but for what it’s worth- I used to have nightmares sometimes. When I was a kid. And my mom would come in and sit with me until I fell back asleep.” His hand finds Leo’s under the blanket, squeezing it.

“She told me once that if I could identify it was a nightmare, and say this random safe-word that I’m pretty sure she made up on the spot, I could get myself out of whatever terrible story my brain had conjured up.” He pauses, then Leo feels his hand slip free, and Luke stands, retreating toward the kitchen.

“What was the word?” Leo asks genuinely.

“It was 'quicksand' when we were kids. We changed it a few times, but always came back to 'quicksand.' It became kind of a running joke. Whether there’s any truth to that, I make no guarantees. But Rob and I used to swear by it.” 

Leo smiles. “I’ve never heard of kids having safe-words,” he says, following Luke to the other room. He leans against the counter as Luke starts breakfast. 

“Okay, to be fair, it wasn’t exactly a safe-word,” Luke retorts. “It was a word that was intended to keep me safe from my own imagination.” He’s teasing, Leo thinks.

“But it worked? At least sometimes?”

“I distinctly remember it working at least on two occasions,” Luke responds. “Which… I guess taking into account the sheer volume of nightmares I’ve had throughout my life, might not actually be your best bet. But worth a shot?”

Leo nods, clutching the blanket around his shoulders, and moves automatically to help Luke with breakfast. “Worth a shot,” he agrees.

FIGHTER TAG LIST: @whump-cravings , @afabulousmrtake , @crystalquartzwhump , @maracujatangerine , @pumpkin-spice-whump , @distinctlywhumpthing , @thecyrulik , @highwaywhump , @batfacedliar-yetagain , @finder-of-rings , @dont-touch-my-soup , @skyhawkwolf , @suspicious-whumping-egg , @also-finder-of-rings , @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump , @prodigal-zoe, @peachy-panic , @melancholy-in-the-morning , @urban-dark , @nicolepascaline , @quietly-by-myself , @pigeonwhumps , @whump-blog ,  @seasaltandcopper , @angstyaches , @i-msonotcreative , @mylifeisonthebookshelf , @anonintrovert , @whump-world , @squishablesunbeam , @considerablecolors , @whumpcereal , @whumperfully , @pirefyrelight , @whumpsday @whumplr-reader @lonesome--hunter

[ryttu3k]

Posting a list of Astarion-related plotbunnies I'll probably never get to so I'm setting them loose upon the internet.

If you decide to write any of these please let me know, I'd love to read them <3

1) Cazador gets sick of waiting for Astarion, and also what fun is being the Vampire Ascendant if you don't have anyone to subjugate? As Dufay feared, he gets scarred and used in Astarion's place for the ritual, and Ascended Cazador shows up in the middle of a bright sunny day at the Elfsong to try and reclaim his errant spawn, easily overpowering basically everyone. Gale, who's in the midst of a sweet slowburn romance with Astarion, basically goes, okay, look, we're currently the only ones who have a hope to defeat the Netherbrain, and you won't be Vampire Ascendant for much longer if mind flayers take over Toril. Side with us against it, and we'll give you Astarion after.

He's lying through his teeth and is very quick to tell Astarion that as soon as Cazador leaves, because once he has the Crown of Karsus :) he'll be able to take Cazador out :) no problem :)

The real struggle isn't just fighting a desire for power, it's fighting against something that will permanently change him but also give him the best possible chance to save his lover, versus giving up that power and staying Gale Dekarios, not losing his identity, but also now having to fight the Vampire Ascendant without all that power...

2) Astarion stays in the Underdark to assist with the spawn, and ends up striking up a friendship with Gandrel, who wants Astarion's advice on how to raise his spawn daughters. Fluffy slow-burn romance with his former enemy ensues. Could tie in with this delightful epilogue detail.

3) Short version: Astarion tries to do A Scheme only it backfires due to the fact that he's starting to experience Emotions like 'self-worth'.

Longer version: Astarion sets out to deal with (read: seduce) Gortash - gives him Ketheric's stone, says the others have gone off to fight Orin and get [x] back, and it'll be easy enough to get Orin's stone from them once they've done the hard work, telling Gortash that the others lack ambition or have other plans. Lae'zel wants to give the Crown to Raphael to free Orpheus, Gale wants it for himself, etc. Only Astarion can see Gortash's point - that they can run the Absolute cult, they can use the stones. Gortash, Astarion, and a certain Bhaalspawn who Astarion is fairly certain would be amenable…

His actual plan is to seduce Gortash, kill him when he's not expecting it, and take the stone and return to the others, because he's good at seducing people for a purpose, so why not just do what he's best at? Except he's suddenly realising that, huh, he actually doesn't want to just… be used any more, he likes the person he's becoming with resist!Durge, and it all feels a bit… icky, now…

4) Astarion + trust issues + being touch-starved for non-intimate touch. Astarion gets some kind of back injury (thorns or little shards of glass or splinters or something, not something terribly lethal but just painful to deal with) and has to confide in someone (Halsin would be good here) and let them see and touch his scars to help get himself fixed up. Bit of whump, bit of hurt/comfort.

5) "Oh, I tried them all. None of them answered." Astarion has Issues with the gods. Gale catches him vandalising the Open Hand Temple / Stormshore Tabernacle, and they talk about gods and their fickle attentions.

6) Astarion can't swim. Karlach offers him and Shadowheart swimming lessons (and promptly goes heart-eyes a bit over her white-haired elven boyfriend and girlfriend).

7) AU where Ulder isn't a Complete Garbage Person who disowns his teenage son, and instead accepts and helps Wyll as much as he can. The Blade of Baldur's Gate instead focuses on helping his city, and it's time to do something about that creepy gothic monstrosity known as the Szarr Palace…

[arealphrooblem]

Surrender Prompt Fill #4

I am slowly but surely working through the brilliant surrender prompts by @wither-wander-whump

Part One Here

Part 3 Here

This one is Star Wars Flavored! Generic Jedi x Sith

- a character who has no place to go, no last resort. They grit their teeth and hold out their hands to be bound, making the only choice they can make. But they still make the choice- it isn’t being made for them. They can still cling to the last shreds of their dignity. They keep their pride, even if they lose everything else.

To say the ship was compromised was an understatement. The hyperdrive had melted, shields totally obliterated, the emergency generator flickering with the last of their air supply.

The Jedi had crammed all the passengers into the tiny escape pods and shot them down to the nearest planet with a distress signal. They knew the Sith would not pursue them. Not when everything he wanted was still waiting for him on the ship.

The Jedi and the Holocron.

The weight of it felt like a black hole in their pocket, calling to them, tugging at their very soul.  They wanted desperately to be rid of it, but knew if they didn’t have it, the Sith would find it. As long as they held onto it, and resisted its whispers, the Sith wouldn’t be able to access the forbidden knowledge to horrible effect.

Some plan that turned out to be.

Their master didn’t need to be alive for the Jedi to see the eye roll and shake of the head. The You Should Have Known Better Than That frown on her face.

And then the Sith’s force signature crossed the border of the ship and suddenly it was all the Jedi could feel. It suffocated them, a hot pressure wrapped around their ribs. Rage and greed and yearning, swirling together in an intoxicating fog that fought to snuff out the Light of the Force.

The Jedi took a deep breath, braced their feet, and focused on the bright pinpricks of the Light, lit up inside them like a constellation against the black backdrop of the dark side.

They had nowhere to run. No Master to bail them out. No last minute Hail the Force to save the day.

It was surrender or death.

Or surrender and death, depending on the Sith’s mood.

They could feel as much as hear the footsteps of the Sith as they stalked through the small interior of the ship towards the Jedi in the cockpit.

There is no emotion, there is peace the Jedi thought against their feral heartbeat.

There is no emotion, there is peace

There is no emotion, there is peace

But there was emotion when the Sith finally appeared. A flood of it, encouraged by the holocron and the Sith’s own suffocating dark side presence. There was fear of the kind of suffering the Sith would inflict once armed with the knowledge of the holocron. There was anger at themselves at their inability to prevent it. There was grief at the sight of yellow eyes, so cold despite their fiery color.

And underneath it all was love for the person he used to be, for the boy they grew up with, for the young man the council should have fought for. A love impossible to erase so the Jedi just buried it.

The Holocron felt all these delicious emotions and feasted upon it, warm and pulsing in their pocket.

The room filled with a sudden red glow as the Sith cracked their lightsaber on. The Jedi pulled out their own saber but did not activate it. Instead they dropped it to the ground and stood with their hands behind their back.

The Sith just stared at them, eyes calculating.

“You expect me to believe it will be this easy?” he asked, voice dark and trembling and wholly unfamiliar in a painfully familiar face.

“I am not going to fight you,” the Jedi said. “There is no point.”

“No point? You’ve spent all this time playing keepaway with the Holocron and now there’s no point in defending it?”

“I’ve already lost it.”

It was the truth and they tried to be objective about it. The Sith snorted.

“I should be surprised but in truth you always did give up so easily.”

There is no emotion, there is peace

But the Jedi could not find peace in the fact that they hadn’t fought for the Sith either, when he started to turn. It haunted them, far more than the Holocron or the Sith himself.

“I don’t fight battles I can’t win,” they countered instead. “And I cannot stand against your hate. Take me or kill me. The choice is yours now.”

They sounded so serene on the outside, but inside their teeth grit together, their shaking fingers curled into fists. They wouldn’t fight but neither would they grovel. They would accept whatever fate the Force had in store for them.

The Sith continued to stare at them, his mind probing at the walls of their own. The Jedi made them smooth as transperisteel, glossy and high and impenetrable.

Then he flexed his fingers and the Jedi’s lightsaber jumped into them, like a Tooka with it’s master.

“Hold out your hands,” he said.

The Jedi obeyed. Cuffs encircled their wrists, the kind that dampened the Force. They could still feel it, but it felt muted and slippery. An awareness that could not be directed towards any significant action.

They swallowed thickly, the fear creeping up their ribs like icy fingers.

The Sith stepped closer, until the toes of his boots bumped against their own, until he flooded every sense the Jedi had. The warmth of him enveloped them in the cold of the dying cockpit, his eyes glowed in the gathering darkness. One hand reached around the Jedi to brace against their lower back, heat seeping through the layers of robes. The other slide with agonizing slowness down their ribs and to their pockets before pilfering the Holocron from them.

The Jedi felt dizzy with the touch but maybe that was from lack of air. The generators had finally flickered off. They wondered, dazed, if the Sith would just leave them here to suffocate in the dark.

“It’s not you I hate,” the Sith admitted softly to the dark.

Then, with a firm hand on the small of their back, the Sith led them out of the dead ship and into the unknown.

[just-a-silly-little-whumper]

Attention

Masterpost | Read on Ao3

Another side story! Based off of this piece by @crash-bump-bring-the-whump because I couldn't get the idea of a vampire party out of my head. This is (loosely) for @whumpril Day 12: Weak Pulse.

Lord Denholm hosts a party. All of his guests are enamored with Elze'ith. This ends wonderfully for Lord Denholm, and terribly for Elze'ith.

Contains: Vampires, intimate whump, captivity/gilded cage, blood drinking, bloodbag whumpee, blood loss, multiple whumpers, briefly referenced prior noncon, dissociation, dehumanization, mind control, lots of complicated emotions

~~~

“And where did you get this one, Milord?”

The noblewoman, dressed in a fine silk gown and ornate golden jewelry, regarded Elze’ith with a hungry look in her piercing red eyes. Elze’ith couldn’t quite meet her gaze, instead shifting barely closer to Lord Denholm and looking somewhere over the woman’s shoulder. The way Lord Denholm’s grip on him tightened in response was almost a comfort. Almost.

“Oh, he came to me,” Lord Denholm said, dark and pleased. “Was fleeing some nasty bandits, but they didn’t survive the journey into my Valley. My light, on the other hand, did, and decided to stay with me after I gave him a bit of help.”

The words grated against Elze’ith’s soul. It wasn’t a lie, and Elze’ith knew firsthand the way nobility danced around the truth the same way they danced around the ballroom floor. But hearing Lord Denholm tell his story, leaving out so much detail and context, not even mentioning Altair, just made his heart twist with so many emotions in a way he hadn’t quite expected. It shouldn’t have meant anything; that part of his life was over now, gone and abandoned, nothing but a memory of something beautiful but ephemeral. What did it matter if it was misrepresented, if he couldn’t tell his own story? What did it matter if the man who never came for him was treated as beneath acknowledgment?

His eyes slid to the young woman at the noble’s side. She was slight, and pale, and shaking. There was an emptiness to her eyes that haunted him with its familiarity. The fang marks in her neck stood out starkly against skin that clearly hadn’t seen sun in ages. Elze’ith wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Wondered, if he smiled at her, if she would afford him any response at all.

Not that he would have the chance, because the noblewoman’s gloved hand came up to grip his chin, forcing his eyes up to meet hers. The intensity there made Elze’ith swallow instinctively, feeling like a cornered animal despite the abundance of space in the ballroom. “Well, he is quite the catch, Milord. I hear he is magically inclined as well, is he not?”

“Indeed. My light’s healing abilities are unparalleled. He is extremely impressive in many regards, even beyond his magical prowess.” Though he couldn’t see it, Elze’ith could feel delight radiating off of Lord Denholm, completely unconcealed. “Watching him work is something I never tire of.”

“Beautiful and talented.” All Elze’ith wanted to do was shrink away from the predatory gaze, but he couldn’t, trapped as he was between Lord Denholm and his guest. “I can see why you like him so much, Milord. I have to say, I envy you. My current attendant pales in comparison.”

The pale, shaking woman flinched, shrinking in on herself. Elze’ith felt bile turn in his stomach as Lord Denholm laughed, dark and cold enough to send shivers down Elze’ith’s spine. He was sure Lord Denholm could feel them. “Oh, you flatter me, Lady Hawthorne.”

“I only speak the truth. He seems absolutely delectable.”

“He is indeed.” Lord Denholm’s hand ran up and down Elze’ith’s arm in what could have been a soothing gesture, had it not felt so possessive and ensnaring. “And I would hate to let you leave without sating your curiosity. It is what he is here for, after all.”

Blood turned to ice in his veins as Lady Hawthorne grinned, her fangs glinting in the magical lantern light. “You really are too kind, Milord.”

Somewhere deep inside him, the instinct to flee rose up, warring with the deeper urge to stay still and unobtrusive and compliant. Any decision was taken from him, as it always was, by Lord Denholm’s weight pressing against his back, and his voice, low and smooth in his ear. “Go on, my light. Hold out your wrist for our guest. Let her see how impressive you are.”

His arm rose of its own volition, extending out towards Lady Hawthorne like a humble offering. Gloved hands took his, and for a moment her thumb just traced over his wrist, right under the seam of his own glove and right over his pulse point. He wondered if she could feel his heartbeat pounding away frantically under his skin— wondered if she could hear it. She probably could; Lord Denholm always could, after all, and she was just like him.

Was she gentle in slipping off his glove and rolling up his sleeve because she wanted to be, or was it just because Lord Denholm was watching her intently? Elze’ith didn’t think he wanted to know. He almost wished she would be rougher; maybe then he would find the strength to fight back. Maybe then Lord Denholm would allow it.

But there was nothing he could do to stop her from lifting his wrist to her lips. He barely winced as her fangs pierced his skin; it was a familiar pain, after all, one he had felt countless, countless times. She drank slowly, as though he were a glass of wine she were savoring. He sank back into Lord Denholm, trying not to show his discomfort at the slow pace and unfamiliar fangs and the sensation that wasn’t quite right. The entire time her sharp, keen gaze never left him, as though she could learn everything about him by studying him in this moment. Somehow, it was better and worse than the feedings he was used to.

In the smallest of mercies, she pulled away before Elze’ith even began to grow dizzy. Her tongue swiped one last time over her red-stained lips, and it was only the fact that Elze’ith had seen his blood coat Lord Denholm’s mouth in such a fashion so many times that allowed him to keep his composure.

“Exquisite.” Her voice was awed, almost reverent. “Why, if he wasn’t yours, Milord, I would take him for myself. To think, you can have that whenever you like.”

“Mm, and more than that, too,” Lord Denholm hummed. “Like I said, he has many talents. A shame that you can’t experience all of them. He is so deathly shy, after all.”

Elze’ith’s face burned in mortification. That was the last thing he wanted to think about, and to have Lord Denholm bring it up so casually, to have him brag about it… All Elze’ith wanted to do was vanish back into his chambers and never come out again. Especially when Lady Hawthorne laughed, mirthful and vicious, and looked him up and down like she was imagining what was hidden underneath all of his layers. Elze’ith shuddered. “Oh, I can only imagine, Milord.”

It was a relief when she left. As soon as she was gone (and with Lord Denholm’s permission) he healed the punctures on his wrist, and though it still ached, at least he no longer had to hold it gingerly to avoid spilling blood on his clothes or the ballroom floor. Lord Denholm pressed a kiss to his temple, murmured soft words of praise for how good Elze’ith was at impressing his guests, and the gesture made Elze’ith feel warm and cold at the same time. He didn’t want to be impressive. He wanted to be safe. And he knew that was impossible here.

Because whether by conversation or the scent of blood or just the unquantifiable aspect of Elze’ith that drew so much unwanted attention, more and more of the guests were turning their gazes to him. He could catch whispers of conversation, spot eyes scrutinizing him completely unabashed. The party was continuing on as normal, and yet it wasn’t, because everyone had a new subject for their curiosity. Even despite all of the people in the ballroom, the familiar sounds of clinking glasses and shuffling feet, Elze’ith had never felt so out of place, so exposed. He would do anything to leave the party early, to find a corner to hide in, to be anywhere but here, but Lord Denholm’s grip on his arm and his mind was firm. And it only grew firmer as another man, dressed in ornate robes and flanked by two vacant-eyed servants, approached the two of them.

He and Lord Denholm might have exchanged pleasantries, but Elze’ith didn’t really hear them. The fear rushing in his ears at the way this man’s gaze kept flitting to him, keen and wanting, drowned out the conversation. It was going to happen again. And if it happened a second time, then…

A command settled over him, and Elze’ith was pulled from his frozen thoughts as his arm once again extended to the new guest. There was no precursor of gentleness in the way the nobleman’s cold hands grasped his wrist, nor in the wicked smile that exposed his fangs before he sunk them in. Though he bit his lip, the smallest of whimpers still left him at the burst of pain and the deep ache of being drained, this time meticulous and thoughtful and deep.

Neither of the servants that had accompanied the nobleman met his gaze. Elze’ith couldn’t blame them. He didn’t know if he would be able to stomach the sight, if he were in their position. That didn’t make it hurt less, didn’t stop him from craving even that slightest bit of connection, but he did understand.

When the nobleman pulled away, a drop of blood rolled down his chin. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. Elze’ith had to avert his gaze from the sight. “I thank you, my good Lord Denholm. This truly was a treat.”

Lord Denholm laughed again. More words were exchanged that Elze’ith didn’t hear. He just cradled his hand close to his chest, as though he could shield any part of himself from more pain. As the conversation continued, even though he knew it was risky, he took the opportunity to heal over the wound. He was sure Lord Denholm noticed, but there was no immediate reprimand, no order to stop, so he had to hope that it was okay. At the very least, he felt a vague sense of satisfaction from Lord Denholm, an emotion he clung to as he tried to collect himself.

Soon enough, the nobleman left. Vaguely, Elze’ith berated himself for not catching his name. It was so rude of him, to be so ignorant to a guest, even though he knew it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t the host of this gathering, and he would never get the opportunity to use the name anyway.

“You’re doing wonderfully, my light,” Lord Denholm murmured into his ear. Elze’ith’s shoulders rose towards his ears as he flushed. Just as before, the praise ignited a mix of emotions, yearning and disgust and contentment and fear all swirling within him. “Keep doing what you’re doing. We have many more guests to entertain.”

That promise, and the sight of a leering couple approaching them, made Elze’ith’s heart knot definitively with fear. Not even the soothing, coaxing presence of Lord Denholm in the back of his mind was enough to keep it at bay.

The night became even more of a blur than it already had been. Elze’ith lost count of the number of guests Lord Denholm took him to meet, the number of eyes that looked at him like they wanted to take him apart, the number of times he was made to hold out his arm in offering. Each time a stranger’s fangs pierced his wrist it somehow became more difficult, more painful, more humiliating. No one spoke directly to him, instead talking about him as though he couldn’t hear, even as those sharp smiles and keen eyes held him in their full focus. He had never felt less like a person and more like a curiosity, an exhibit, a bottle of wine being passed around.

And even though no one took all that much of his blood, even though he was used to being fed from, it grew harder to stand and move and focus as the night wore on. Was the dizziness Elze’ith felt because of blood loss, or because of the incongruence he felt at being treated so callously? Was it both? Did it matter? Either way, he was being used for the gratificationt of people who didn’t care for what he felt. Even Lord Denholm was savoring how he flinched every time someone new approached, how he wavered in Lord Denholm’s firm, all-encompassing grasp.

If he could speak, he might have asked to retire early. He could tell that he was approaching his limits, as the world spun and his magic flickered and his fingers grew cold. But even if he could have, Lord Denholm wouldn’t have listened. Not when he was enjoying his party, and Elze’ith’s role in it, so very much.

He almost swooned as another set of fangs retracted from his wrist. It was so hard to keep himself upright; without Lord Denholm there, he was sure he would be on the ground. The idea was surprisingly tempting as exhaustion weighed down his body and mind and soul. He even thought he heard the noble who had drank from him commenting on it, a mention of low supply and weak pulse filtering in through the dizziness and sludge in his mind. Elze’ith could almost let himself hope. The party had to be over soon, right? He just wanted to be done. Wanted to rest. Wanted not to have to give any more.

That hope only surged as Lord Denholm pulled him to the side, away from the center of activity in the still-full ballroom. All he could do was hope Lord Denholm understood the pleading in his expression through the haziness he was sure clouded his eyes. He felt so terrible, drained and wrung out and exhausted. He just wanted to go to sleep.

But instead of offering any reprieve, any solace, Lord Denholm took Elze’ith’s still-bleeding wrist (had he forgotten to heal it? How long had it been?) and lifted it to his lips. There was no hiding the whine of pain and fear that escaped from deep within his soul. Even though Elze’ith had nothing left to give, Lord Denholm still took. His eyes fluttered and his body shook and the world tilted dangerously, but Lord Denholm drank anyway, long and careful as though he were relishing every moment, as though each drop of blood was an effort to extract. It was agony, so much worse than anything earlier in the night had been. His lips parted, instinctively wanting to beg for it to stop, but instead his whine only got louder, more insistent, more pitiful. And all Lord Denholm offered in comfort was a squeeze of his hand, as though that meant anything at all.

Elze’ith didn’t even get the mercy of passing out. Lord Denholm pulled away just as the darkness began to close in. His thumb pressed against the wound; Elze’ith barely had the strength to wince at the painful pressure. At least the sight of his blood on Lord Denholm’s face was familiar, even if it wasn’t any less horrifying than the first time he had seen it.

Maybe. Maybe now, Lord Denholm would be satisfied. Maybe now Elze’ith could rest. Surely Lord Denholm had to see...

“Come dance with me, my light,” Lord Denholm said, and though Elze’ith barely heard the words, his fluttering heart clenched in fear as the command washed over him. “Let us give our guests one final show.”

[whumpetywhumpwhump]

hello!! came here to say I really like your posts, you're so amazing

and if it hasn't been asked yet... could you please do 8, 12, 13, 14 and 19 from that whump ask game you reblogged a while ago?

8. Opinion on whump without a whumper?

My favourite kind!!! I'm mostly an environmental whump kind of person/the sort of whump that can happen to ordinary people, mainly because of the fandoms I write for at the moment but also because I just really love sickfic! Having a whumper is great when you need a character to enact revenge on, but there's something great about not having that at all- about the loved ones of whumpee having nobody at all to blame and having nothing to direct their grief towards.

12. Favourite type of whumper?

When I do have a whumper, it's usually somebody close to whumpee who they don't realise is incredibly bad for them e.g a spouse, a parent, a friend etc. Especially for emotional whump. The angst hits ten times better when it comes from a source that whumpee doesn't expect.

13. Favourite type of whumpee?

Got to love a stoic whumpee- the sort of dependable character who usually doesn't let a hair fall out of place... making them drop out of nowhere is absolutely my favourite.

14. Favourite type of caretaker?

Friend-who-secretly-is-in-love-with-whumpee-and-whom-whumpee-is-in-love-with-but-neither-of-them-are-ready-to-confess-yet

19. Opinion on all hurt no comfort?

I can't consume hurt no comfort content a lot because it HURTS (the name is fitting lol) but every so often I'll be in the mood for it, and I have written it before. A lot of the time I have to cleanse my palate with some happy ending whump too though, and I can never imagine it as an AU/alternate ending/real ending lmao, it's just a brainchild that I birth and then never look at again because it makes me want to cry.

Thanks for the ask (and for the compliment!!!), and feel free everyone to drop a number in my inbox!

[whump-me]

Obscure: Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of Obscure, novel-length interrogation whump about a rebel leader who can erase memories with a thought, an interrogator who can see inside his subjects’ minds… and the connection they share that neither of them suspects.

Masterpost | the Mind Games universe | Read the completed novel on Patreon

---

Kirill

Kirill sank into the metal chair. He shifted as it dug into the underside of his thighs. He shifted again. It didn’t help.

The room smelled stale, full of yesterday’s sweat. Maintenance hadn’t bothered to clean it last night. Or maybe he was smelling Elias himself. How long had it been since the man had had a shower?

Elias had dark circles under his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping. Spiky dark stubble covered his face. His eyes, half-shut, glinted with poorly disguised desperation.

Kirill set a metal band on the table in front of him. It was thick and featureless, and small enough to hug a man’s slim wrist tightly. Elias eyed it, but didn’t ask what it was.

Elias spoke first. His voice was utterly steady. “I know you’re going to talk about him,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ve been practicing. I don’t think you’ll get what you want from me.”

Kirill didn’t speak. He simply stared into Elias’s eyes, his back ramrod straight, his face revealing nothing. Today he was playing the coldly intimidating interrogator. A classic. He had done it before, and he had seen it done. The inhuman iciness of his demeanor was good at squeezing out visceral fear—and memories along with it.

It also wasn’t what Elias would expect. As Elias’s words had indicated, the man would be expecting a direct emotional assault, like the one that had worked so well yesterday.

Or at least, it had worked well until Elias had turned it around on him.

All he had said about Kirill’s power making him vulnerable—it hadn’t been a bluff after all. Kirill would have to bring this up the next time Ramachandra questioned his motives in not wanting to interrogate one of his own kind.

Elias looked away first. Most people did. But when his eyes met Kirill’s again, his face was twisted in a smile of contempt. “You’ve tried out a few different personas on me. This is just one more.”

He did a good job at keeping the fear out of his voice. But a few scraps of memory leaked through. That dentist again. The afternoon he had spent frantically pacing through his house as he waited for the child to come home.

“You’re good at holding your emotions at bay,” said Kirill. “Even when it comes to the things that matter most to you. And you’ve gotten better at it, when it comes to the child. Or at least you’ve tried to get better. That’s what you meant earlier, isn’t it?”

“You left early yesterday.” Elias’s too-even tone was mockery in itself, because they both knew why Kirill had left early. “I had plenty of time to work on it.”

“Which is why I plan on trying something different today,” said Kirill. “No more cat and mouse, digging up emotional wounds only for you to slap a bandage over them. It’s time for a more direct approach.”

He leaned in, his face perfectly expressionless. A flicker of fear-memory from Elias rewarded him.

“We can hurt you here,” he said. “I imagine you already have a good idea of how You wouldn’t have worked so hard at keeping other people away, otherwise.”

A flash of memory. The one from yesterday, the corpse sewn shut down the front. Then a woman in Elias’s bunker, huddled in the corner, her arms striped with angry red burn scars.

Then the child. Elias’s voice calling his name in a crowded grocery store. Elias’s heart squeezing tight in his chest—Kirill felt it too.

Elias waving at the child as he walked onto the school bus, a forced smile plastered on his face. Watching him disappear into its yellow maw.

Then back to that afternoon—pacing, pacing, pacing.

Everything came back to the child. Even this.

Not the ghost boy this time, and not the fire. Only the child.

He didn’t understand why. But he could work with—

His vision went white. He opened his eyes onto an unfamiliar room. A stranger sat across the table from him, a stranger with tired eyes and several days’ worth of stubble. “Where am—”

His phone buzzed. He blinked at the reminder on the screen for a second, not understanding. Then it came back, with the now-familiar disorientation of a swirl of draining water in reverse, a tornado sweeping through and leaving his old memories in his wake. As always, everything felt slightly askew, as if when the memories had come back, none of them had quite landed in the proper place.

“I had a feeling you would try that again.” Kirill picked up the metal bracelet. He reached across the table and fastened it around Elias’s wrist, just behind the cuff. Elias tensed at his touch, but didn’t resist.

Then he pulled back his fist and punched Elias in the nose.

Bone snapped. Elias jerked back with a cry. Blood flooded from his nostrils, dripping onto his gray shirt, onto the metal table. On his shirt, it looks like a spill of ketchup or juice. On the table, it coalesced in discrete drops that gleamed red under the light.

Elias stared at him, dazed, uncomprehending. People didn’t tend to expect violence from Kirill. Not after he had spent hours doing nothing but talking. It was as if they thought violence was an either-or, a yes-or-no—a person like him either used it from the start, or not at all.

The fear-memories changed from a trickle to a steady stream, flowing out of Elias along with his blood.

“You’re just making me less likely to want to keep up this game,” Kirill said. “The initial capture team said you looked like you were trying to use a power at first, but the pain of our pyrokinetic’s fire distracted you.” He looked down at the blood on the table. “So I know there’s at least one way to keep you from using your power against me. I was willing to indulge you at first. No longer.”

He shifted his gaze to the metal band around Elias’s wrist.

Elias followed his gaze. “What does that do?”

“Try to blank my memory again,” said Kirill, “and find out.”

Another fear-memory squeezed out, some childhood monster from a nightmare, useless. Then Elias took another of his deep breaths, and the flow of memories cut off.

“I’m not the only Enhanced working here,” Kirill said. “Some of us have powers more suited to physical interrogation. On the whole, I think you’d rather talk to me.”

He had no idea whether what he was saying was true. He assumed it was. But he didn’t spend enough time here to know.

He hoped it was true. If it wasn’t, and Elias did require pain to motivate him, he would have to do it by hand.

He had done that kind of thing before. He knew how it was done. He didn’t do it often. It wasn’t what he preferred. Even now, his knuckles were sticky with Elias’s blood. Breaking bodies was messy. Kirill preferred working with minds.

Elias kept up his slow breathing, but another memory leaked out anyway. Kirill expected a memory of pain, since that was where Elias’s thoughts should have been focused. Instead, he was back in that grocery store, calling the child’s name.

Another memory. The child walked in the front door with a backpack hanging off one shoulder, his head hung low, a purpling bruise on his cheek. Elias’s stern voice, vibrating in Kirill’s chest as if it were his own. Who did this to you?

The child. Always the child.

And that wasn’t a memory of fear.

He blinked away the memory and focused on Elias’s face. There was fear there, yes. But less than he expected. The skin around his eyes was creased with what he had come to recognize from Elias as grief. Elias’s jaw was tight with anger.

Then Elias’s face went blank.

Kirill pressed the control button at his belt. Elias jerked back in his chair as a shock slammed through him from the bracelet. His eyes went wide and unfocused. His fingers clawed at the table. He gagged on the blood from his nose.

When the shock faded, Elias was panting. He stared down at the bracelet.

“I said you would find out what would happen if you tried getting into my memory again,” said Kirill. “For your own sake, I would advise not wasting any more time that way.”

Elias didn’t answer. He slumped over the table, his breath ragged. He looked up from under his eyelashes at Kirill. He narrowed his eyes in wordless defiance.

Kirill kept his face blank, his voice even. Being cold was simple. It was the next best thing to being nothing.

“Tell me about the child,” he said.

“You’re asking questions now?” Elias asked. “I thought you were going to take everything you wanted from my memory without bothering to ask permission.”

“I told you,” said Kirill, “I’m tired of that game. I’d rather hear you tell me directly. Then we’ll move on to the other questions I have for you.”

“Questions about my network.”

“Of course. What else?”

“Then why not start there?” Elias shook his cuffed hands, holding the bracelet out to Kirill. “You’ve already shown me you’ll hurt me if I don’t do what you want. Why not go straight to trying to shock the answers out of me?”

Because a man who can resist his own grief so well won’t flinch at physical pain.

Because you fear for him more than you fear for your own survival, and I’d like to know why. That could be useful to me.

He didn’t answer Elias’s question aloud. He only asked one of his own. “Is he yours? You never answered earlier.”

Elias held his gaze. His eyes were almost black now. “I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”

A trickle of memory. Anger, fear. The child was there, of course. Always the child. But the memories held nothing he could use. He let them fade into the background.

“The woman isn’t Laina,” he said. “Who is the child’s mother? Does Laina know you had a family before her?”

“If you’re thinking of getting to me through my first wife, don’t bother. She’s a stranger to me now.” But a sharp bolt of fear carried the grocery-store memory to Kirill on the wake of his words.

Kirill let it go for now. The wife wasn’t really who he wanted. Her disappearance would raise questions. Covering up Elias’s disappearance had been difficult enough for PERI.

“The memories stop after the boy reaches a certain age,” he said. “Nine? Ten? I’ve never been good at estimating children’s ages.”

Elias didn’t answer. His dark gaze threatened to swallow Kirill, like he was falling into the night sky.

Kirill stared right back. Keeping his gaze cold was as instinctual as breathing. “It must have been hard on him, being taken so young. Do ten-year-olds still cry for their parents when they’re afraid?”

Memory slammed in on on him. A birthday party. The dark-haired boy sitting sullenly in a chair, arms crossed, lip sticking out in a pout. Elias standing over him, face tightly creased in a frown he could feel on his own face. When you get a gift, you say thank you. You’re not a baby. Don’t act like one.

There were eight candles on the cake.

Kirill blinked away the memory. “Eight,” he said. “Thank you. I told you I was no good at estimating ages.”

“That was cruel.” Elias’s voice was even. He didn’t look away.

“You could have told me what I wanted to know. You didn’t. I used the tool I had at hand.”

“When you always carry a weapon with you, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to use it.”

“What weapons did the child have?” Kirill asked. “Did he have powers?”

Elias’s anger hadn’t faded. He knew because the flow of memory hadn’t stopped. As Kirill spoke, the memories shifted as Kirill’s words affected the flow of Elias’s thoughts.

The child swung on a swing set, younger and smaller than he had been when he was taken. He let go at the top, and hung weightless in the air. Elias’s breath caught in his chest. The boy hung suspended for an endless second, then plummeted to the earth. Even as Elias cried out in alarm, his chest released in a wave of relief.

A year or two later. Elias watched as the boy played with a friend, a blond girl in a long dress. As they argued, he watched for any sudden acquiescence on the girl’s part. He watched as they built a tall block tower, holding his breath for the tower to stay in place long after it should have fallen. Watching. Always watching.

“No powers,” he said. “But you were afraid he would have them.”

“I thought it would spare him,” said Elias. “I didn’t know about the blood tests yet.”

“You mentioned those when we met. Is that how they found him? A routine screening—something for school, maybe.”

Elias didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Eight years old. No active abilities. Caught in a routine blood test.

That would be enough.

He stood. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

As he left the room, a wave of fear-memories followed him.

---

Tagged: @cakeinthevoid @suspicious-whumping-egg

Ask to be added or removed from taglist.

[witch-and-her-witcher]

Chapter Nine

nessian | E | marriage of convenience, first hybern war AU, angst, whump, emotional slow burn

War brings them together, a bond binds them - but is that enough for two broken people to find love with each other?

Thank you @popjunkie42-blog and @wilde-knight for your beta reading and handholding. <3

Ao3 | Chapter 9/24

~*~

It’s closer to noon when Nesta follows the raucous sound of children whooping and hollering to the center of camp. 

She’s dressed in the loose trousers and open style tunic that ties along the sides that were left for her in a neatly folded pile —alongside a warm, thick quilted dress for Elain with a light fur collar that made her eyes pop — but it doesn’t make her feel any more a part of this community. Any of the Illyrians she passes eye her with distrust or open dislike. A few have spat “manyeo” at her and Nesta can’t help but smile viciously back at those ones.

There’s no endearing that will fix centuries of distrust. Let Elain hold onto that optimism, but Nesta won’t waste her time meeting hostility in kind.

Better to appear as a witch than weak.

But the sound of the laughing children warms her through. Children are rare, cherished for fae, even more so than in the human settlements. The children here are all four or older with the time the Illyrian legion has spent away, but their slower development leaves them still chubby and round in places human children would have outgrown at this point.

Nesta hopes the curiosity of childhood may earn her points as an oddity for them to poke and prod at the very least, so she can scoop one of the chubby things in her arm and squeeze their thigh rolls.

What she doesn’t expect is to find Cassian, kicking his feet and growling like some deranged beast with wings flared as children take turns making leaping bounds at him, half running, half flying to barrel into him.

She freezes, taking in the sight.

Cassian laughs freely between baring his sharp teeth and daring the “mighty warriors” to take him down. He isn’t going easy on the children either. Nesta’s heart catches in her throat when his bear paw of a hand swats one boy, an older of the bunch, away and careening towards the ground — only to catch him by the back of the shirt at the last moment. He tosses him onto a new course that gives the boy a chance to get the air under his wings again.

“No fair!” the boy yowls.

“Do you think the demon Bryaxis fights fair? Or how about the Weaver of the Woods?” Cassian pushes the boy’s reinvigorated new attempted attack away with two fingers to the kid's forehead. “Fair fights are for silly books that females read —”

“Says the great Illyrian warrior with seven siphons fighting … children?” Nesta crosses her arms over her chest, letting her hip cant to the side. “Surely you don’t need the odds so offset to feel confident in your fighting skills. What about letting a silly woman try?”

Cassian’s eyes spark with a fire that has nothing to do with the challenge Nesta has thrown down.

The hollowed out, pleasant pain between Nesta’s legs pulses mindlessly in reaction. She hurts, but apparently not enough to cull a response to him. To her husband, who has one of the smaller children slung on a hip while still easily defending off the stubborn boy’s swings and kicks.

Mate.

Mine.

She widens her stance and grins devilishly. Her mother is rolling over in her grave … But Nesta feels more alive than she has in so long. The cool air nips at her exposed skin, but it only energizes her more.

The children switch to chattering in their native tongue — had their mothers told them to do so in her presence? Nesta winks at a girl with nervously fluttering wings and sucking on a few fingers.

“I don’t know the creatures you’ve named, but I do know I faced those disgusting beasts and soldiers from Hybern without meeting the Mother.” Nesta curls a finger in invitation. “Try your worst, bat.”

read more

[aceofwhump]

Hey ace! I was wondering if you had any recs for me for a somewhat specific whump. I was looking for Good Omens fics where Crowley gets whumped post s2 while Aziraphale is in heaven. It's okay if Aziraphale still ends up showing up (I'd prefer it actually) but ideally Aziraphale is still more or less unaccessible to Crowley at first. Wips acceptable

Than you!!

I do have a few recs for you to check out. Not sure how much they fit what you're looking for but they are post season 2 Crowley whump focused. Most are emotional whump. Sad depressed Crowley. After watching season 2 when it came out I immediately went looking for hurt Crowley post season 2 fics lol. Here's what I've found:

So Someone With Your Eyes Might Come In Time by risetherivermoon Summary: Really, Crowley has changed since Aziraphale returned. He wasn't expecting any different, he expected that Crowley would never speak to him again, actually. He had been more shocked when Crowley had gone back to their old routine, but Aziraphale went along with it. He didn't want to push him, if that was how they’d go about it, then well…he’d wait another 6,000 years for Crowley to be ready. But, after the conversation today, Aziraphale understands more. Crowley is…scared.

If You Need To, Darling, Lean Your Weight On me by risetherivermoon Summary: Crowley doesn't think, he doesn't even question why he does so. But he's standing in front of Aziraphale’s bookshop, with not a particular reason as to why. Outside, on the sidewalk of the busy London street, he glances a bit around, folding his arms to his chest. It's cold, the middle of fall, about to be winter. He's never taken a liking to the cold, he's a bit sensitive to it if he's honest. He's tired, even though he doesn't need to sleep, he feels exhausted. He really could go for a good nap in the Bentley right now, but for some reason, he's standing here, on the sidewalk. He looks to the coffee shop, ‘Give Me Coffee Or Give Me Death!’ He can see Nina behind the counter, talking to a customer, the usual mildly pissed off expression on her face. She meets his eyes for a moment and waves politely. Crowley looks away, scowling at the ground. He glances at Maggie’s record store, and he doesn't see anyone inside, so he just shakes his head out, as if to shake any of the feelings left inside him. or; A post s2 ep6 fix it fic, with crowley coming into the bookstore after having a nightmare and aziracrow finally talk to eachother

the adventures of mr crowley and his new angel friend by enbymegumi Summary: Crowley doesn’t leave the sofa for three days. His mood gets suctioned into the weather and influences it to become a non-stop torrential downpour, lights flickering throughout all the shops on the street. Even the lilies Muriel had so lovingly decorated the bookshop with are wilting into messy heaps of rotting plant matter by the windowsills. “Anthony J. Crowley!” Muriel yells, on the morning of the fourth day. Startled out of his stupor, Crowley finally looks up from his pile of blankets. Muriel cracks a smile. “We’re having a holiday.” or, the author very violently and aggressively projects onto crowley, shakes him like a maraca and then holds him at gunpoint to find at least one other friend who isn't aziraphale. it works. kind of.

Meanwhile the World Goes On by lineslines Summary: Crowley looked at him. He was still wearing his suit, there was tartan in it, but it had become polished, the worn edges returned to pristine, boring perfection. He looked too prim. Proper. Perhaps this hurt most of all. (Crowley is on earth, Aziraphale is not. Meanwhile the world goes on. Plans, great and possibly ineffable, are set into motion. They are--always, inevitably--drawn back together. Long before reconciliation, long before they can bear it. The only thing they can bear less is staying apart. Oh, and Heaven seems to have misplaced Jesus.)

Growing Pains by hope_in_the_dark Summary: “So if he comes back, you’ll… what? Take him into your arms, let him back into your life? No questions asked?” Crowley grunted. The therapist — Mark, Nina had said — was sitting forward in his chair, looking at Crowley with a kind smile and wide eyes. He was what the humans would call ‘emotionally intelligent.’ Crowley was looking to tap into a little of that.————Crowley goes to therapy, because he needs it. This is a story of healing, learning, growing, and an eventual happy ending. Post-Season-2.

How's the View by Etheostoma Summary: “May I come in?” Crowley blinked. “No,” he declared, and slammed the door in Aziraphale’s face. “May I come in?” he mimicked, scrunching up his nose and raising his voice. “No you bloody well may not,” he yelled at the door, before dropping the glass to shatter across the unforgiving concrete floor.

Innocence died screaming (honey ask me, I should know) by dreadfullypanicked Summary: “Care about me? What a dumb thing to do, to care about a demon.” He grumbled, body going limp against the floor. Nina crouched beside him, attempting to look him in his serpent eyes. “We care about our friend, you dense fool. Demon or otherwise.” She stated, reaching up to grab the glass of water from the side table. Crowley’s head slowly rose to look at the group around him, taking in each of their worried expressions before turning to Nina. “Friend?” It was the only word he could force his blank mind to form. “Yes. Friend. Reverted to caveman days have we? Here, drink this.” Or, Soho residents try their best to make a local sad-boy demon learn how to live for himself before he sleeps himself into oblivion, but how will their efforts affect the ineffability of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship?

[sadcatjae]

Nothing Boy (Part 4) - Fight

Masterlist

Part 3

I finally wrote the next part ;u; I don't think it's any good and kinda light on the whump, but I'm setting up for the next part hehehehehe. Nix isn't getting much of a break, which i feel bad for but uhm he's just gonna be used as a punching bag for a little while ok? I've been dealing with a lot of stress ;u; . CW: Explicit language, torture, blood, stabbing, mysognistic slur, physical abuse, ptsd flashback, trauma induced panic attack, mental/emotional breakdown, forced insomnia, starvation, burning, blinding, humiliation, chains/imprisonment, forced labour, ableist language.

.

“Keep staring if you wish to lose your eyes.”

The greasy looking prisoner flinches at Nix’s threat and slinks off, giving the irate man a wide berth. Even though the warden is as shackled and beaten as he, this prisoner knows well the former’s terrifying reputation. Who doesn’t know of Lord Deimos’ loyal mutt who had indiscriminately destroyed countless souls at his master’s behest? The prisoner shudders and quickly falls into line with the others, oddly grateful for the warriors of lights’ presence. 

Nix stumbles over his chained feet, teeth gritted to the point of cracking. Being herded through the camp like cattle is bad enough, but the endless taunts and assaults from his fellow prisoners - his subordinates - wears down his paper-thin patience. 

“Curse and spit all you want, warden. You have no teeth here.” Another prisoner, one with a missing ear, jeers and kicks Nix’s leg as she passes, and he falls face-first into the ground. 

Pain blooms through his freshly-healed body, but the fall does no more damage than bruises and a hurt pride. 

“On your feet, prisoner,” a dour-faced priest snaps, grabbing Nix by his scruff and hoisting him to his feet. A hard shove has him stumbling back into line. The fresh scars in his back throb in protest. Nix keeps his head lowered, matted locks obscuring the jagged lines of fury. One step after the other, weighed down by heavy chains around his ankles and wrists. And for him especially, a unique gift from Oman (who else could it be but that hateful little bitch?). A collar fixed around his throat, constrictive and uncomfortable, and serving no other purpose than to humiliate. 

It’s been a week now of the same, mind-numbing routine. Wake up. Eat the gruel they call food. Do whatever mindless labour they assign. Eat the gruel they call food. Try to sleep. Wake up. And repeat. 

And no sign of Artemis, which Nix had expected. Whatever promises and sentiments the foolish priest may have made, he evidently had no intention of following through. Indeed, Nix may have simply been a vanity project - an exercise in charity to inflate the priest’s ego. The warden knows the type. He’s tortured many such men. 

And so it’s with a hollow bitterness that he regards his ‘good intentioned’ captor. Those rending words and deep brown eyes are nothing more than tools of entertainment. And Nix…Nix had almost fallen for it. 

Another stumble. A hard breath and moment to steady himself. 

He hasn’t slept properly this entire week. For whatever reason (again, probably that bitch Oman) the magical walls around his cell have lost their sound-proofing effect. Which of course means that while the other prisoners cannot hear him, he very well can hear them. Their foul, incessant vitriol keeps him awake every night, his torturers delighting in their new favourite activity (surely this retaliation is the sweetest kind). 

In a way, he understands. He himself had ruthlessly tortured every subordinate in that stockade, so there is no shortage of hatred festering against him. But in that cold hard rock in place of his heart, he silently cultivates his own seed of hate. In time, when it finally blooms, he will have his own revenge. 

Until then he’s relegated to the role of warden-turned-prisoner, and like with everything else in his miserable life, he endures. 

The warden straggles at the end of the line as the prisoners are given their morning gruel. 

Nix isn’t much to look at. A thin, pale creature with dark shadows under a pair of impassive blue eyes, glassy from exhaustion. His clothes hang off his malnourished frame in tattered rags, and if not for their prior knowledge of his countless sins, his captors might have felt a glimmer of pity. 

As it were, every single warrior of light knows of this warden's sins, each gruesome detail collected and recorded from Oman and the other survivors. None of the warriors have met evil like Deimos and his ilk - and Nix is the worst of them. 

“Next.” 

Nix holds out his hands for his bowl and instead, he’s given two handfuls of boiling-hot gruel. Molten agony shoots up his arms, but he keeps his hands still, trying to show no hint of weakness as he raises his head. 

The young warrior drops the ladle into the giant pot and gives him an innocent smile. “Anything wrong?” she asks, brows knitted in false concern. 

“Not at all,” Nix smiles back, coldly. “I was just surprised that you knew I preferred to eat with my hands.” He slurps the gruel from his filthy hands with relish, making sure to splatter some onto the young warrior’s boots. 

Disgust ripples through her features. She quickly grabs the empty pot and stalks off in a huff. 

The warden watches her go, licking the tasteless sludge from his fingers. It isn’t enough to soothe the gnawing pangs in his shrunken stomach, but he couldn’t complain or ask for more. How could he? When he’s guaranteed a vat of poison instead. 

It’s cold today. The kind of cold that burrows into his bones and makes every motion stiff and painful. After breaking his fast, he throws himself into his assigned work, hoping to chase away that terrible chill with exercise. 

The warden is tasked with unloading goods from a wagon and carrying them to the supply tent. Each crate weighs twice more than he does (at least it feels like it), and every trip leaves him trembling and gasping for breath. He’s not given a partner to assist him. All other jobs assigned that day are given to a pair of prisoners, but as usual, Nix is alone in his burden. 

He’s only halfway through unloading the wagon, when he finally hits his limit. 

Nix reels at the sudden vertigo and crashes into the side of the wagon. The crate slips from his numb hands. Smashes upon impact. Apples scatter in every direction. 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” a familiar voice barks from a distance. 

Shit. Here comes the bitch. 

Nix slumps against the wagon, panting. He leans his spinning head against the wooden side, cold sweat springing from every pore and soaking into his clothes. 

Heavy footsteps draw close. A large hand grabs him by his collar and heaves him to his feet. 

“Trying to sabotage our supplies now, are you?” Oman growls, black eyes hard like flint. He brings his spiteful visage a mere inch away from the other’s. “I should have known better than to leave a rat like you unsupervised.”

Nix blinks blearily at the irascible warrior. Nausea wells and churns his guts as the world gives a sickening lurch. “...accident,” he pants, trying to shove Oman away. The man’s built like a mountain and just as unmoving. “Let me go…asshole…” He raises his shaking hands to yank uselessly at his captor’s instead.

A sharp pain cracks against his cheek and his head snaps to the side. Fire corrodes his flesh. There’s a high pitched ringing in his ear.

He goes limp in Oman’s grasp for but a second, before he whips his head to glare at the smirking man. “You dare strike me?” he hisses, bloodshot eyes gaining a wild edge. “Think I won’t strike back? You may have me in shackles, priest, but I am still your warden and you my prisoner!”

Oman’s pupil shrinks. His face blanches a shade or two. Sure enough, scenes of his own horrendous torture under this man’s hands inundate him like buffeting winds, scouring away every inch of hardened skin until he’s left raw and bleeding, trembling in his shock. 

Nix laughs caustically, stifling a wince when he agitates his swollen cheek. “You see? No matter where you are, you will always be in those dungeons.” A jagged grin, dripping with venom. “Even if you kill me, I will never stop being your warden. I have placed my hands upon you and marked you as my own. That means that you will never be rid of me. Neither I nor Lord Deimos. You have become us.”

Nix barely registers the pain when he lands on the hard-packed soil. Pure, bone-deep exhaustion has long addled his mind, and he’s bordering on hysterical. He drags himself to his feet, laughing and cursing out the warrior, his voice wild and careening as though he’s gone insane. 

Oman draws his sword and white light erupts from the blade, humming and pulsing with lethal intent. 

The warden staggers back, grinning, grabbing the closest thing to a weapon he can find – a pitchfork. He meets the arcing steel with the prongs, and the impact judders up his arms. Sparks of ember spit from the metal as Oman pulls his sword through the prongs and slices the air. 

Nix finds himself with only half the pitchfork, wood cut clean through. Now it resembles an oversized stake, and he uses it to his advantage. 

Even a warrior like Oman, who had been admired by his peers for his combat prowess, would admit that he’s been blindsided in battle. Though these occurrences are few, they have been during combat with notable warriors, including his teacher. 

So to say that this mangy warden, who can barely keep himself upright, could ever blindside him – Oman would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of such a statement.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times when the warrior’s humour fails him, as Nix throws himself at Oman and his drawn blade, as though he were intent on skewering himself. 

He’s not sure why - perhaps because of his training under her light (or Art’s terrible influence) - but Oman instinctively lowers his sword to avoid impaling his ex-warden. 

In return, Nix barrels into him and stabs the stake into his chest, frothing and screaming like a madman. No, not like. He is a madman. The warden has gone utterly insane. 

Nix is lost in his tempest of madness. Nothing exists outside of this noise, this chaos, that assaults his every sense. He screams to make himself known, but his voice is lost to the howling winds, so he just screams and screams and screams until he’s coughing blood. 

He’s dyed red inside and out. There’s nothing, nothing, (he’s nothing), but the countless souls he’s ripped apart with his hands (bloodied), and suddenly (oh gods, what has he done, what has he done??) he knows terror. 

Countless hands grab him from all directions. Drag him off Oman’s blood drenched chest. He screams at them to leave him alone and what comes out is a ragged, torn sound. His throat’s ruined. He’s ruined. He curls into a tight ball, hands clutching at his face, trying to stifle the sobs that wrack his body. 

Those hands are unsympathetic. They force him upright, cutting his misery short, and drag him through the camp. Through the haze of blood and tears, he can see their faces. The same expressions that he’s so familiar with. Hate. Anger. Fear. He can replicate every line from memory, with the same confidence he knows that the sky is blue. 

…But Artemis doesn’t look at him this way. 

(Neither does Lord Deimos)

He’s thrown into another tent. Forced to stand upon his shaking legs. Tied to the post in the centre, so tight he can barely expand his lungs. 

The tempest lulls to a merciless blizzard, freezing all that it touches. There’s a featureless tundra that goes on eternally in all directions and blazing white light that sears his eyes. They leave him there, ordering him to endure her cleansing light and reflect upon his sins. 

Her light, he cries and groans, straining against his bonds in mindless desperation. Her light hurts. It hurts so bad, I want to die.

For this warden, there is no mercy. Not from death nor from oblivion. 

Minutes tick by. Hours. Days.

His eyes swell and go blind, retinas scorched by her holy light. Skin blisters and peels, and he loses all feeling in his body. He floats there, in the terrible, sickening whiteness, suffering a kind of torture that is far beyond his understanding.

His sins, presented before him one by one in a gruesome exhibition, until the entire stage is painted red. . Part 5

.

Taglist:

@shydragonrider

@whumpsday

@pale-is-the-prison

@whump-queen

@wolves-and-winters

@extrabitterbrain

@whump-blog

[synthapostate]

Another WIP list update

Because for some reason I think I'm capable of getting organized.

Resist Psychic Death - Possessed Newt. :(

Can't Control My Fingers - Newt makes a terrible mistake. (A comedy.) (Definitely coming up with a better title.) (Complete)

For Alien Syne - Five times Hermann Gottlieb got drunk and needed to hug the stuffing out of that infuriating little man. (Complete.)

Smut (it's not smut) - The morning after their first time. Turns out it's smut. It's not smut.

Like Cats and Dogs - Domesticity and possible pet adoption. Angst. Turns out it's smut.

The Tropes Nobody Asked For - A bodyswap AU. Comedy. Hurt/comfort.

I could be writing sweaty nerd sex like a normal person but no - Mostly a story about self-image. Angst. Fluff. There is no plot. Some kind of stream of consciousness BS. (Complete in the sense that anything can be complete given continuity of identity within linear flow of time.)

More tropes nobody asked for - A time travel AU. Drama. Comedy. (Complete)

Decontamination Shower - A lab accident makes things weird. (Still not sure where I was going with this but now everybody's naked, so.)

Fear of Flying - A deep dive into my aerospace engineering special interest, technically includes a lot of hand-holding. (This one's really taking off.) (Oh no, it's stalled.)

Heating Pad - A cat adopts Hermann.

Expectation vs. Reality - My take on their first meeting. (Complete but needs another pass to make Hermann more of a dick.) (I added a fourth chapter as an afterthought and it's the best thing I've ever written. I reread this and I cry genuine tears, WTF.)

Hermann's Ex - Newt meets Hermann's siblings and Learns Things he never knew before. (Complete but the last chapter really went off the rails.)

Thriller - The Shatterdome is kind of spooky at night.

There Was Only One Bed - We like tropes here. (This was supposed to be a trope subversion but I forgot where it was going, so I guess it's just the trope now.)

Miserable, Lonely and Depressed (Pathetic) - The return of Cool Uncle Newt. (He's not cool, he's possessed.)

Vampire AU - I mean obviously I had to write a vampire AU at some point. (Comedy.)

Whump - Was supposed to be about a car accident, but it turned into emotional hurt/comfort. With pie.

Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid of a Bomb - Newt tries to solve capitalism.

Retail Horror Stories - Newt and Hermann commiserate over the shitty jobs they worked when they were younger. (Maybe scrapped because honestly no one needs my nonfiction about MegaKaren.)

Ghost Story - Comedy, it was SUPPOSED TO BE A COMEDY Death of a major character. 50k word novella about grief APPARENTLY.

Nightmares - Ghost drift bleeds into their dreams.

Cold as Ice - Hurt/Comfort? Something. Contains no hurt/comfort and has nothing to do with cold or ice, but...it's...something.

Newt's Passion - A sex pollen fic. (No, it isn't.)

Other, Funnier Ghost Story - Will it be a comedy this time? Let's find out. It is a comedy but it's about vampires now.

Fever All Through the Night - Sick fic. All comfort.

Consent is Sexy - A team-building exercise leads to certain confessions that would not be made while sober.

Always On My Mind Some Sign to Pursue a Promise - Hermann overthinks everything. A story of missed connections. (Nearing completion.)

The Moon Turned to Gold - Newt is desperate to impress his old classmates. Good thing he has this amazing new husband to show off. (A comedy.) (Zine fic!)

Dinner With a Friend - Oh NO I DON'T WANT THIS. (Hermann accepts Newt's offer to meet Alice, and I lie awake at night trying to think of a way to get him out of it.)

Alternate PR2 - The biggest shitpost I've ever made. IT'S SO ANGSTY WHAT HAVE I DONE. (Complete, and maybe my favorite thing I've ever written. I might write a sequel. And a prequel. And do some art? Maybe write a song.)

Cold as Ice 2: Alaskan Boogaloo - Does have something to do with cold and ice.

The Worst Thing I Can Possibly Imagine - My genuine attempt to work through something, but then I thought of a punchline so now it's a funny little shitpost.

False Alarm - Their first meeting since their First Meeting.

Splash - A...feelings thing. The first tentative steps toward getting along.

Coffee Shop AU - I swore I would never write a coffee shop au, but...

Scrooge McDuck - Budgetary concerns.

Stop You Have Enough WIPs - Some silly fluff for these stressful times.

Shoes - Newt's past catches up with him. Hermann is intrigued.

Groundhog Day - Hey man, these sci fi tropes exist for a reason.

[whump-in-the-coffee-cup]

Squicks List

These are my squicks; please keep in mind of these before sending something in the Question Box, as well as the notes and quick answers I have at the bottom.

Pregnancy / Incest / Age differences. (Emotional angst is fine, but anything physical may not be written or interacted with; Anything involving minors will be warned explicitly)

Religious connotations (Non-human whumpees/whumpers are fine, but tying it all back to religion isn’t for me.)

Conditioning

Extreme slavery-related whump.

Domestic abuse.

Beastiality / Omega-verse

RPF / Reader-Insert.

Size whump.

Vore.

Medical whump (Specifically those that include surgeries.)

This list will be updated when I understand more about my personal whump references. I can still read them, but they may not give me whumperflies. And if it’s in my Question Box, I’ll probably answer with something short. If it’s a post, I may or may not reblog it as well. Though I will make it clear that I don’t write my squicks.

And just to add, these aren’t all a hard No. Others are more of a “maybe, if they are done well”, so do expect this list to be changed and updated as time goes on.

Quick Answers to some Questions:

Will you please tag __?

I would say yes, but to be honest, I won’t be able to do it for everything. I’ll do my best for common squicks and triggers and have specific CWs at the top of every post, but if it is specific, you may have to try a different method, or avoid my blog. (And I am absolutely open to police education in case I screw up on something.)

What about your AO3 fics?

I am better at extensively and accurately tagging on there, than Tumblr. Mostly because of the tagging system. But I will try my best to keep them both consistent there, and here because I do post both at the same time.

How about your Masterlists?

I will make it clear that any Masterlist I do may or may not have CWs, depending on the type and coverage. For writing masterlists, they will all go directly to the AO3 fic or original Tumblr post. While other kinds will be decided on, depending on my mood and schedule.  

[ailendolin]

Fluff Friday - 4 - BBC Ghosts

Title: Howling [AO3]

Characters: The Captain & Kitty, Alison & Everyone

Prompt: The Captain telling Kitty a bedtime story - Prompt by the lovely @right-amount-of-weirdness

A/N: The story the Captain tells Kitty in this is one of many my own grandmother used to make up and tell me when I slept over at her and my grandfather's place. It's very dear to me and I'm more than grateful that I asked her to tell it to me again when I'd grown up so I could write it down.

Prompts are open, so if you want me to write a story for you as well just send me an ask with the fandom, characters and your prompt. I’m writing for Ghosts, Yonderland, Horrible Histories and Bill at the moment.

Six Idiots Whump Wednesday / Fluff Friday masterlist is here.

————

Howling

“Katherine,” the Captain said in surprise. He was just coming in from his late night patrol and had not expected anyone to be still awake at this time of night, least of all young Kitty. “What are you still doing up? You must be tired after last night.”

Kitty gave him a miserable look. “I am but I just can’t fall asleep. I can’t get Freddy Krueger out of my head. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”

“Hm,” the Captain said, not happy to hear that. “Alison never should have told you to watch that film if it’s so scary.”

“It was,” Kitty said, her eyes wide with fear in the moonlit hallway. “It truly was. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep again.”

Her shoulders heaved with a barely suppressed sob and she buried her face in her hands, clearly distressed. For a second, the Captain faltered, not used to dealing with people when they were upset. It was one of the many reasons why he’d liked the military so much – there had been no room for emotional outbursts of any kind there. If any of his soldiers had ever cried, they surely hadn’t done it in his presence.

Unwillingly, he thought of Havers. Had he ever cried, the Captain wondered. Surely not at Button House – but at the front, perhaps? The things one saw there … they could be hard to stomach. The Captain might not know this from personal experience but he vividly remembered the nights he had lain in bed with his eyes wide open while his father screamed in his sleep because his mind had still been trapped in The Somme. He desperately hoped Havers had never been haunted like that; and if he had that perhaps the thought of Button House and his old CO had brought him some comfort over in–

Kitty sniffed loudly, bringing the Captain back to the present. He took in her shaking shoulders and hunched posture and wished he knew how to make her forget that dreadful film. Someone with such a radiant and beautiful personality as her should never cry like this.

“How about I walk you to your room?” he said, feeling rather helpless in the face of her emotions – something he would never admit to openly but also couldn’t quite deny.

Kitty finally lowered her hands. Her eyes were brimming with tears but her face was completely dry – one of the more deceiving side effects of their ghostly existence. “I think I’d like that.”

Relieved, the Captain offered her his arm. He didn’t say anything when she clung to it – simply offered her a reassuring smile and led her down the hallway and up the stairs. Once they reached her room, he turned to her.

“Do you think you can sleep now?”

Kitty shook her head. “What if Freddy Krueger finds me?”

“Well,” the Captain said, an idea striking him. “I suppose I could stand watch – make sure that man won’t haunt your dreams.”

“Really?” Kitty’s face lit up – and there was that beautiful smile the Captain had missed so much. “You would do that for me?”

The Captain cleared his throat. “If it’ll help you sleep, Katherine …”

Kitty nodded eagerly. “Oh, I think it would, Captain. Thank you so much!”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door into her room. The Captain tried not to think about how inappropriate this was – a man in a lady’s room, after midnight and with no chaperone no less. Not that he would ever proposition young Kitty in that way. She was, for lack of a better term, like a daughter to him, and he was, well–

“Father used to tell me a bedtime story when I couldn’t sleep,” Kitty said, interrupting his thoughts. “Not from a book, though – he always made them up in his head. His stories were the best.”

She sighed wistfully.

“My grandmother used to do the same,” the Captain admitted quietly, hoping that by sharing this he might distract Kitty from her past and the sorrow that lay there. “I sometimes stayed with her when my mother had to take my father to the hospital – his health was very poor, you see. She could paint the most incredible pictures with her words.”

He had never told anyone that, and for a moment he regretted sharing that dear memory. But then Kitty looked up at him and asked, very quietly, “Do you – do you think you could tell me one of her stories?”

The Captain hesitated. “I’m not sure if I even remember all the parts–“

“That’s okay,” Kitty smiled at once. “You can just make something up. Father used to say that’s how all great stories come to life.”

“Well,” the Captain cleared his throat. “Who am I to argue with the man who raised such a wise young woman?”

Kitty giggled at the compliment and patted her bed. The Captain slowly lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress. It might not be the most comfortable position to be in but it allowed him to see her face without invading her personal space.

“What will the story be about, Captain?” Kitty asked eagerly. “Dashing heroes, beautiful princesses and fearsome dragons?”

The Captain shook his head. “None of that, I’m afraid. It’s about a young wolf cub who grows up to be a leader.”

Kitty gasped. “Oh, I love it already!”

The Captain’s lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile as he began his grandmother’s story.

“Once upon a time, there lived a wolf pack in the forest. One night, when the moon was full, a young wolf was born into the pack. He was as dark as the midnight sky while all the other wolves were grey, and he was weak and very sickly. The pack’s leader took one look at him and told his mother to take him away.”

Kitty gasped. “Oh no. Did she really abandon him?”

The Captain nodded. “She had no choice if she wanted to stay with the pack. It was winter, you see, and prey was scarce. The pack meant safety for her.”

“But he was her son!” Kitty protested. “How could she do that to him?”

“The wolf mother asked herself the same question when she came back to the pack’s den later that day, alone,” the Captain said. “Try as she might, she could not forget her son’s beautiful face so that night, when the pack was sleeping, she sneaked back outside to find him. He was right where she had left him, lying curled up by a tree stump and shivering miserably in the cold.”

“I bet he was happy to see her,” Kitty said. “Did they go back to the pack and confront the leader?”

“No,” the Captain said. “They ran away, as fast and as far as they could until they found a different forest, one outside of their old pack’s territory. Being on their own wasn’t easy for them at first, but eventually they managed to find a den and also some prey. Hares and mice, mostly, and every now and then a struggling deer. Enough to get by if only barely. Winter eventually turned into spring and life got easier for them. The young cub grew and became healthy and strong. One day, he and his mother found a wolf cub by the riverbank. She was completely drenched and exhausted, and terribly alone, so they took her in. It didn’t matter to them that she was white as snow, or that something was wrong with her left front paws so she could only limp. She became a part of their family, and so did all the other cubs they found over the years, abandoned just like our young cub had been once upon a time. The pack grew and grew and with the midnight-black wolf as their leader, they thrived in their new home.”

Kitty smiled up at him sleepily. “And they lived happily ever after, howling at the moon.”

“That they did,” the Captain said softly.

Shifting around a little to get more comfortable, Kitty yawned. “That was a wonderful story, Captain. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

The Captain, feeling a little flustered, cleared his throat. “Do you think you can fall asleep now?”

Kitty nodded and closed her eyes. “You will still stay, though, won’t you? Just until I–?”

“Yes,” the Captain said. “I’ll be here.”

Peace settled over Kitty’s face then and her shoulders relaxed. The Captain turned away from her, giving her her privacy, and looked out of the window, his swagger stick tightly clutched between his hands. The moon was nearly full and he’d like to think that one of the countless twinkling stars around it might be his grandmother, looking down at him and smiling from very far away.

“Well done, lad,” he imagined the wind whispered.

“Captain?” Kitty suddenly asked, sounding on the verge of sleep.

“Yes, Katherine?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Alison made us into a family, didn’t she? Just like that young wolf and his mother did with all the abandoned cubs.”

The Captain swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. He hadn’t realised what sort of parallels he’d been drawing with his grandmother’s story but now that Kitty had pointed them out it was hard to deny them. For Kitty was right: they had all been lost in some way, hurt and a little bit broken, and somehow Alison had managed to turn them from a group of strangers into a family – one that squabbled and fought and rarely saw eye to eye, perhaps, but was always there for each other when it counted. Just like he was there for Kitty now, or how Patrick had been there for him the day before when he’d realised that the Captain had no idea how to build a shelter or get a fire going and hadn’t laughed at him for it.

Unconsciously, he reached up to touch the award Patrick had given him a few hours ago and smiled.

“She sure did, Katherine,” he whispered into the dark.

Kitty didn’t reply and one look at her confirmed that she had finally fallen asleep. The Captain allowed himself a small, fond smile before he looked back outside the window at the moon and the stars. He would stay a little longer, he decided; to make sure Kitty’s dreams weren’t haunted.

After all, that’s what family did.

[lumpofwhump]

12-16 :)

Thanks for the asks!

12. Favorite general whump trope?

Overall? The amount of hours I’ve spent daydreaming about or roleplaying rescue scenarios (whether breaking someone out of captivity, intervening in something horrible happening, or sheltering someone who’s run away) would make that my top choice.

13. Favorite physical whump trope?

I’m kind of squeamish where it comes to physical whump, but manhandling is usually a safe bet for me - hair grabs, face grabs, slamming against walls that you can vicariously feel the impact from the sound, all good stuff.

Electrocution is one that shows up a lot in what I write too, especially in the lab and interrogation whump settings I roleplay in.

14. Favorite emotional whump trope?

Here’s where it gets hard, because I fucking love emotional and psychological whump. One of the tropes I keep coming back to is a whumper playing one person (whumpee, reluctant whumper, or caretaker) against another whumpee. The first character’s betrayal can hit really hard emotionally, and self-sacrifice is even better.

15. Favorite comfort trope?

Protective caretakers are my thing. Especially in situations where the whumpee doesn’t expect to have anyone looking out for them.

16. Underrated whump tropes?

I swear to god I had an answer to this that isn’t my go-to for this earlier tonight or something, but now it’s not coming to mind. So, back to my usual: social outcast whumpees (for reasons related to the previous answer).