#and I do believe both of their insistence on being the eldest son at least partly stems from that or maybe it’s just Kendall idk. but like

[stewyhosseini-bf]

No but what’s so funny (sad but. Also funny) to me about Kendall and Caroline‘s relationship is that she’s so disinterested in him as a whole, the narrative doesn’t even care to dig into that. We know literally nothing about their relationship, there’s no like. Childhood-moments they bring up, like we get a lot with shiv, nothing about their present relationship like we see with her and Roman. It’s literally just. Kendall bores the shit out of mom, can we talk about this in the morning (leaves before he wakes up), can you maybe please not partake in my wedding events, your father/ my ex-husband doesn’t want to see you, are you sure you want to come here (to Barbados) after specifically asking Shiv to come though. She doesn’t give a fuuuuuuck lmao….

[kitkatt0430]

It's interesting seeing what the father figures in 90s Barry's life are like.

Henry Allen is a pretty stereotypical tv cop who favored his tv cop son a great deal and supported him in all things and, unfortunately for Barry, this son was Jay Allen. Who is now dead. He understood Jay because Jay was just like Henry, so it didn't exactly take a lot of effort on his part to connect with his eldest son.

Barry, however, was different. Scientifically minded. Every bit ad dedicated to justice and solving crime, but doing so in a different way than his father and brother.

Jay Allen was to Barry what Henry was to him. Except probably better. When the biggest bully in Barry's life is their own father, standing up for Barry over and over again to someone Jay otherwise loved and got along with well... that had to be difficult. We don't see a whole lot of Jay and Barry interacting in the pilot, but it's clear that Jay's been Barry's biggest supporter since they were kids and he wants Barry to feel confident in his career choices. And while he does question Barry's decision regarding dating Iris, it's out of concern that they're not right for each other... likely due to the off screen proposal that is heavily implied to have happened and that Iris said 'no' to.

Jay just wants to protect his younger brother and in doing so is likely the most constant and well meaning of Barry's father-figures, something Henry himself is just... failing at.

While Henry financially supported Barry through college, he clearly sees using science to process evidence and determine the facts of a crime to be a waste of time compared to 'pounding the pavement' and he just doesn't see what Barry does as real police work. And while he's impressed by - or at least interested in - the Flash, he has no idea that's Barry. Barry using science coupled with old fashioned police work to bring justice where it's needed.

And though Henry does come to understand Barry better during the situation with Hix, his insistence that he loved both sons equally rings hollow when he also claims that Barry was difficult to understand - as if that makes his favoritism of Jay somehow okay. No child is too 'difficult' to connect with or love; that's just an excuse made when someone doesn't want to make the effort. Am I being a little harsh there? Perhaps.

Then there's Ted Preminger, Barry's archeology professor in college. His course was a much needed refuge for Barry and his acceptance of Barry's intelligence a balm to the hurts his father caused him. And when Barry realized his passion for science lay in the present, not the past and he chose to pursue forensics - police science - instead... it got him neither his father's approval nor Dr. Preminger's. And Barry stopped visiting museums - or at least the one museum where Ted Preminger worked with - because he suddenly became persona non grata with the one person who'd previously encouraged Barry's love of science. All because Barry chose a field that Ted didn't approve of.

And yet Barry still found his niche. With Jay's support and later his friend Julio's, Barry established himself as a competent and dependable CSI. Most of the cops seem to see him as a peer. He believes in himself and his choices, he just wishes his father and Ted believed in him too.

It's interesting to me that he's so self assured, really, when his 2014 counterpart has much better father figures and yet doubts himself so much more easily.

2014 Henry Allen is a doctor and a kind man. He loves his son and praises Barry for standing up to bullies, even if he did run away afterwards. And Barry's belief in him, after Nora's death, is the lifeline Henry needed to keep believing in himself even as he pushed Barry away for what Henry perceived to be Barry's own good.

Joe West loves Barry and supports his scientific endeavors but... he was also constantly at odds with Barry growing up. Insisting Henry was guilty and tearing Barry down for believing in Henry's innocence and being fascinated by the unknown. It's difficult to learn self confidence when the people who love you most are constantly calling your perception of reality into question.

90s Barry had to learn, over and over, that he had to believe in himself or no one would. Jay couldn't be there for him all the time especially given the age gap between them, so he couldn't protect Barry from everything, even with their father. Barry had to learn to stand up for himself and move on when the people he looked up to let him down.

2014 Barry doesn't have that sense of self reliance - not in the same way 90s Barry does. He needs more external validation - after being disbelieved for so long, he needs to know the people he loves don't just love him back too, but that they believe in him.

Anyway, 90s Flash watch continues to be a lot of fun and giving me lots of feelings about all these characters.

[ilalos]

Worth it (Anthony Bridgerton x reader) Part 2/2

Summary: Your arranged marriage to Anthony seems fine, until it doesn’t.

Warnings: marriage, implied sex, angst-ish, fluff, pregnancy, crying, if you notice anything else let me know :)

Word count: 2.5k

The season passed in a blur with countless flowers and conversations that filled you with expectations about your marriage to the Viscount, you truly felt like love was around the corner for both of you and it was a matter of time for that corner to be turned. He was everything you had expected and more, you could tell he was wary about letting you in but didn’t want to push him so you let him open himself to you at his own pace. The had been some stolen looks, kisses on your knuckles that had lasted a little longer than they should and hand a bit lower than what was acceptable when you danced. To say the courting had been successful was the understatement of the season in your opinion, by the time the wedding day came you were counting down the minutes before you finally became Lady (y/n) Bridgeton.

Your wedding ceremony was short and the carriage ride to Anthony’s bachelor townhouse was even shorter. The wedding night had come with a surprisingly low amount of events, your virginity had been taken the sweetest of ways, with many kisses and whispered promises of pleasure that came true. By the end of the day, you were as happy as can be, laying on your husband's chest, feeling his heartbeat slowing down and smelling the sweet vanilla scent of his skin.

When you woke up the next morning the bed was empty and he had already left to work in his study back in the main Bridgerton home. He didn’t return until late in the evening and you were waiting for him so you could have dinner together.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” he said while taking a sip of his wine.

“It’s nothing, I like that we are finally spending some time together”

Anthony just nodded and continued eating in silence.

“How was your day?” You pushed for conversation, you had been alone all day and could really use some conversation with someone different than your maid, who was terrified of speaking freely.

“It was busy” he answered simply “how was your day?” He asked after seeing the face you made at his short answer.

“It was also very busy, I reorganized the books in the library, had the kitchen staff do an inventory on the pantry, and send the maids to the market to get some flowers for the table tops” you narrated proudly, hoping he might appreciate the way you ran the home.

“Good to see you’re settling in, darling” his small praise made you smile a little.

“You don’t mind that I changed some things?” You asked somewhat concerned by his silence.

“It is your home, you’re free to do whatever you please with it,” he said dismissively.

“It’s our home, Anthony, I want to make it perfect for you too”

After dinner, he walked you to the bedroom and after a couple of heated kisses you fell in his arms once again, the pleasure he gave you was addictive. Despite his cold attitude towards you in other aspects of your life, it was in the bedroom where you felt hopeful for a future where you both might learn to truly love each other, and then he would sneak out every morning making you feel like a worthless whore.

And so your days continued like this, every night was filled with passion and every day was lonely. You couldn’t even go to the Bridgerton home, you had been taught that a married lady was not to go out without her husband, so your heart slowly filled with sadness as you spent day after day alone in the townhouse. Anthony was none the wiser because he simply thought you enjoyed being by yourself, so it never occurred to him to invite you to his family’s home or anywhere else.

A month into your marriage you found out you were with child. You were extremely happy and Anthony had shown himself to be happy as well, but then that night he didn’t come home for dinner and didn’t make an appearance in your bedroom. He was more and more distant until four months had passed and he disappeared for two full weeks before you saw him again.

It was on the day of your birthday, and he had only gone to your room because the butler told him you had been very sick that day. When he entered the room he found you seating on the bed hugging your knees close to your chest, your eyes puffy from crying and silent tears still streaming down your face. You weren’t upset he had forgotten your birthday, you had never celebrated it so it didn’t matter he didn’t remember it.

“What happened? Is everything well? Is the baby-“

“Your child is quite well, Lord Bridgerton” you interrupted in the coldest tone he had ever heard from you “to what do I owe this joyous visit?”

“I apologize for my absence, I have been very busy” he answered measly.

“I figured out that much, husband” the word was said with venom.

“Are you upset with me?” He asked offended, you had never treated him so coldly.

“I am upset with myself” you started with a pained chuckle “I don’t need you to try and comfort me because you did nothing wrong, that is the reason for my anger” a small sob escaped your lips “I was taught to be a good wife, that my only job was to give my husband heirs and to keep the house running and I understood that and I didn’t fight it because at least I would have children to fill my life with love and a husband who at the very least would acknowledge me and my efforts”

“I-“

“I don’t want you to feel like you should change or apologize, this is not your fault, I feel miserable because I filled my heart with hopes and dreams of love but that’s just not how life is, at least not mine” you harshly wiped your eyes before finishing “I understand my place now, I’m nothing but a child-bearer for you and that’s fine because you didn’t even pick me in the first place” you got up from bed and opened the door for him “please leave me alone, I will be fine”

“I can’t just leave you here alone, have you even eaten today? In your condition-“

“Your child is perfectly well, my lord” your tone had turned icy once again “please go, I am tired and want to rest”

Unable to do anything else, Anthony left the room and went back to his family’s home. His mother had insisted for him to take you there that night, but seeing your state he didn’t even bother asking if you wanted to go. When he got there he was surprised to see the dining room fully decorated, his whole family dressed in their best clothes, even Daphne and Simon had paid a visit.

“Where is (y/n)?” Asked Violet.

“She’s not feeling very well” answered Anthony looking at the table that was filled with all his wife’s favorite food “What is happening? Why are you all here dressed as if you are attending a ball?”

“Anthony, please for the love of God almighty, tell me you didn’t forget your wife’s birthday!” Violet couldn’t keep his composure, how could Anthony be so clueless.

“I-I’ve been so busy lately supervising the building of the new house, it didn’t even occur to me that it was her birthday” Anthony felt terrible, as he should.

“It’s bad enough she doesn’t like us, son” Violet sighed, seating on the table “And now she thinks we don’t care for her birthday”

“Where did you get that idea, mother?” Daphne couldn’t help but ask “When she writes to us she says wonderful things about our family”

“Then why hasn’t she visited since the wedding?” This time it was Colin asking “Mother sent a tea invitation shortly after they got married and she never showed up, sent a poor letter apologizing but did not explain why she didn’t show”

“I might have an explanation for that” Simon spoke up “My aunt was a terribly strict mother, taught her that a wife was nothing more than a child-bearer and had no liberties like men do, for example: going out unaccompanied”

“Has she been out of the house since you married, brother?” asked Eloise, turning to face Anthony who was still frozen at the doorstep.

“I don’t believe so” he entered the room and sat defeated “I just thought she enjoyed being at home by herself, god!” he rubbed his hands down his face.

“I can’t believe it, the poor thing” lamented Violet.

“She hasn’t left the house in almost half a year” concluded Benedict.

“And here we were, refusing to visit thinking she had rejected mother,” said Colin.

“I would like to clarify, I never agreed with losing contact with her over one missed invitation” added Eloise, gaining the glares of everyone present.

“It matters not what we thought nor does it matter what has happened in the past” began Violet “right now I want you to go pick her up and bring her here, she deserves to be celebrated, especially after everything we put her through,” she told her eldest child, pushing him to stand and go to the door.

Anthony mounted the carriage and urged the coachman to hurry home and as soon as he got there he ran up the stairs to your room and burst through the door, jolting you awake.

“I am so sorry, love,” ha said kneeling on your bedside “I never knew you didn’t leave the house because you thought you couldn’t, you are free to do as you please, darling” he grabbed your hand and kissed your knuckles “I didn’t mean to make you feel trapped in your own home, and I am sorry if you felt like I abandoned you” he caressed your face and wiped some tears that had fallen without your notice.

“You did abandon us,” you said, trying to pull your hand from his grasp with your other hand protecting your belly.

“I was merely supervising the building of our new home, I was hoping I could surprise you before the baby arrived” he explained, now seating by your side “I can’t possibly ask my family to leave their home but I know how much you love that house, and so I chose to build a similar one not too far from here”

“You are building me a house?” You asked incredulously, hardly anything could justify his absence but this was in fact a reasonable explanation.

“Yes, love” he once again caressed your face “A home for our family” at that your eyes filled with tears, this time from happiness.

You sat up and wrapped your arms around his neck, crying with your face buried in his shirt. He wrapped his arms around you, kissing the top of your head and shushing you softly to calm down your cries. You spent a while holding each other until he suddenly broke you two apart, remembering his family that was still waiting for you both to show up.

“My beautiful wife, I must take you out of the comforts of your bed” he began, apologetic “My family is expecting you in their home to celebrate your birthday with a lavish dinner”

“Heavens! You should’ve started with that” you ran to your door and called out for your maid “I don’t think I have a dress for such occasion, non that would fit me now, that’s certain”

You opened your trunk and began taking out your chemise and all other items you had to wear under your dress in such cold weather. You took off your nightgown not caring Anthony was there, he had seen it all before, after you had put on your chemise your maid ran in and help you put on the rest of your garments and helped you squeeze your small baby bump in the dress you had worn for one of the first balls you attended when Anthony was courting you. She put your hair in a quick updo and even managed to coerce Anthony into putting on your stockings and your shoes while she did your hair. With all that rush and hard work, you managed to be ready in under an hour and still made it to the dinner at a reasonable hour (half past 9 is reasonable, right?).

At the Bridgerton home, you were welcomed with warm embraces and merry wishes on your special day. You all sat around the table and ate the feast that had sadly grown cold. Colin didn’t seem to mind as he devoured everything in sight, prompting Violet to chastise him softly. You, however, ate small bites because the pregnancy had caused your stomach to be upset easily and you didn’t wish to offend anyone by running out of the room to empty your stomach. Anthony watched you eat and held your hand atop the table, smiling as he watched you laugh and converse with his family.

“Is the food not good enough?” Asked Violet seeing your plate almost full.

“It is just perfect, my stomach has just been iffy since the start of the pregnancy” you answered smiling apologetically, Anthony choked on his wine because he realized at that very moment that he had forgotten to tell his family about your condition.

“You’re with child? Those are wonderful news!” Exclaimed Violet with a large smile “When did you found out?”

“Four months ago” you turned to glare at Anthony “I assumed your son had told you”

“How could you conceal such joyous information from your mother?” Violet then noticed her eldest daughter had become quiet, as well as her husband “Did you know, Daphne?”

“I was aware of it, yes” Daphne admitted ashamed “I too assumed Anthony had told you”

“You assumed my eldest son had told me about his wife’s pregnancy and I had decided not to mention any of it in our letters?”

“I-I’m, yes?” Benedict and Colin snorted with laughter hearing their sister’s answer.

Violet only shook her head with a small smile, her children were truly a wonder. Anthony was nervous that you’d get mad at him for not telling them, but one look at your laughing face told him he didn’t need to worry.

Later that evening you both laid in bed after yet another passion-filled encounter, your breathing slow and even making Anthony think you were asleep. He was caressing your naked back with feather-like touches, kissing your sweaty forehead every few minutes.

“I love you” you sighed, kissing his chest “You need not feel the same, I just want you to know how I feel”

He took a shaky breath before answering.

“I also am in love with you, darling” he placed a finger under your chin and tilted your head so you’d look at him “sometimes I’m scared of just how much I love you” he kissed you slow and deep, pouring all his love into the action.

The kiss was unlike any other you had shared before, this one was full of promise and hope. It filled you with love and certainty, you were now sure that no matter how difficult the road to Anthony’s heart had been, even if you didn’t want it at first, it had all been worth it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Hi! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. If you like it let me know.

Tag list:

@alaizaaa02

@awesomebooklover17

[flashflashhundredyarddash]

batkids and their relationships with their siblings headcanons. under read more because this got fucking LONGGG

dick

dick is the eldest so he doesnt want to bog down his younger siblings with his problems, but if he DOES, he tends to talk to jason about it

dick and cass start to really begin to bond when Cass shows up to dicks gymnastics class for 3rd-6th graders and then cass shows up all the sixth graders and they get frozen yogurt after lmao

dick and tim are Very much thick as thieves. tim is very much like bruce on the Emotional Suppression scale, so dick just really wants to make sure his little brother is safe and happy ALL the time

Duke and Damian are the only two really permanently at the manor anymore, so when dick drops by he tries to do something with both of them. duke frantically zoom calls dick every other week to help him with his his trig homework. dick shows up to dukes high school graduation with literally the BIGGEST SIGN

everyone insists damian is dicks favorite but he does actually genuinely love all his siblings equally, his relationship with damian is just Very different from the others because of the age gap and being dami's primary caretaker for a year. dick babies dami every chance he gets

jason

would sell Dick to satan for One corn chip

him and cass don't have the greatest start to their relationship because cass is very much Against Killing so it takes a while for jason to warm up to her and earn her trust. now, though, jason is competing with steph by showing cass all the classic American Teenager things she missed out on. steph is currently winning but jason is like 98% positive a crunch wrap from taco bell is going to push him over the edge

tim and jason are currently competing over who can solve the most cases in a month. tim is winning. that won't last long.

jason Loves to Big Brother duke its so embarrassing. duke will get out of school and go to his car and jason is SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT FRANTICALLY WAVING TO GET DUKES ATTENTION. JASON THAT IS MY CAR. signal has one (1) mission with arsenal and arsenal goes hey did you ask that girl to homecoming yet and duke is like I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU.

Damian is proof that Actually, Little Brothers are Pests. Jason fully believes that he was brought back from the dead PURELY to torment damian and he will fulfill this mission at any cost

cassandra

it actually really upset her when Dick didn't accept her at first. she knows her other siblings really adore dick so his lack of trust was really disheartening. it takes dick a while but once he Actually Accepts that cass is going to be a permanent part of their life and oh, wow, dick you really hurt her feelings he really hyperfocuses on bonding with cass for a couple of months which definitely improves their relationship

she really likes jason!! their relationship doesn't start well but because he's close with steph and tim who are cass's top two favorite people to exist ever, cass is like well i GUESS ill hang out with him more. jason is fun to talk to because he always tries his best to explain jokes and give context to what people are talking about (also tim took her to taco bell already but she didn't tell jason she just wanted to hang out)

cass LOVES tim. they just click okay. tim always seems to know when to give her space and when to push and come closer. Tim's "guest room" is just her room lets be real. tim and cass occasionally get mistaken for twins and Cass Loves it.

duke makes cass listen to metal once and cass loses. her. damn. mind. they bond over music a lot because they both Love Music to a degree the others in their family don't.

damian!! damian is her little brother!!! dami isn't As Hostile to cass at first because he is 100% aware cass has the edge in fighting and respects her. cass likes all of his instagram posts and they have a snapchat streak going

tim

tim Loves dick, dick was his first sibling!! he had Very strong hero worship when he first met dick but it mellowed out when tim got older because wow 17 is really not that cool and mature lol. tim has an open invitation to dick's apartment which he does occasionally take advantage of. tim has more than once scared the shit out of wally when wally comes over and wally is convinced they're being robbed (HA) for half a second. i mean. he's not wrong.

listen. tim understands that forgiving the guy who tried to kill you would be a Struggle for some people and it was! definitely! but also at least he can trust jason to, uh, be open about if he doesn't like tim. which is not an assurance he has with other people. so if the guy who tried to kill him tells him tim is cool now then like. maybe tim isn't that bad or annoying a person? also jason arrested a whole gang and won the cases competition but then it created a power vacuum that the whole batfam had to clean up the rest of the month. thanks, jason.

tim LOVES cass. you know how most of the time theres this empty feeling inside you and you just kind of ignore it because you don't know what will fix it or if you do, you know you can't fix it? cass makes that empty feeling feel a little less empty. they just click. tim always tries to travel with cass whenever she leaves gotham.

tim and duke. Tim is actually the sibling who duke goes to whenever he has questions he doesn't want to ask bruce or alfred about, like, life or vigilante-ing or school or college or whatever and Tim is always like yes!! i love Giving Advice and Solving Problems!! tim and duke and jason fill out their college applications together.

tim and damian. LMAO. ROUGH START THAT'S ALL ILL SAY. at some point alfred goes like fuck it. family therapy. and tim and dami are PISSED. tim and damian get along best when they have a common enemy to work against. their relationship gets much better when damian is older and they actually talk about their feelings like emotionally stunted bats. despite how bad their relationship was, tim will ALWAYS protect damian

duke

very much intimidated by dick at first. dick is so much older and has his own job and friends and life and is very much AN ADULT. dick likes to take duke out to do lots of cool stuff (paintball, lasertag, tech exhibitions, concerts, etc). also, dick PERSONALLY introduced duke to superman and is dating THE FLASH. 10/10 awesome big brother.

was intimidated by jason for 0.5 seconds before jason actually opened his mouth and started speaking. jason is literally. So Embarrassing. which is weird because nobody else really seems to feel that way about jason but duke knows he's 100% in the right here. like yeah jason is also An Adult and does Adult Stuff but he's also at the manor like every other weekend???? and he always complains about bruce but always seems to be in the same room bruce is in????? like okay jason. they bond over literature!! jason and duke and alfred will spend literal hours talking about books and duke loves it. duke is the only one who doesn't think jason is funny and jason gets so upset about it lmao.

cass has this one week where she gets really into photography and by virtue of being nearby (and also not nocturnal), duke becomes her victim subject. duke prints out all the pictures and hangs them up in his room (his favorite is one he took when he stole the camera and took a really bad selfie of them together).

tim is closest in age to duke so duke tends to hang around with him a lot. tim introduced duke to his young justice friends and duke is like yes!!! meta-friends!!!! tim really helps duke out with his powers because tim is always like wow i wonder if your powers would work if we did This? can you see farther than other people? is your visible spectrum of light different than other humans? Bruce does the same thing but bruce is boring about it lol.

damian and duke live in the same house and will be in the same room and just send each other social media posts back and forth. they follow each other on instagram and will, OCCASIONALLY, make tik toks together because they're tik tok fiends. each of his siblings have visited his parents once or twice but damian routinely comes with him.

damian

damian gets a special bullet point to say that it took him. forever to come around to the idea of having siblings. he very much believed that he was Bruce's Blood Son and everyone else were just tagalongs or allies. it took him ages to acknowledge that dick, jason, tim, and cass were his siblings, so when duke came and like a week later damian was like Ah, Yes, this is my brother Thomas everyone else was like dude wtf

listen. LISTEN. Obviously. Richard is very highly skilled. and also Father values him highly. and also Richard will listen to Damian complain about his schoolmates. and also Richard is much more patient with Damian than other members of his family. listen....,,, (all this to say damian kind of fucking adores dick lmaooooo this kid).

Todd is kind of unbearable but damian has been informed this is both a normal feeling when it comes to Todd and also big brothers. damian was an only child for ten years so yes, Father, if Todd attempts to tickle me I WILL break his fucking nose. yes i WILL put money in the swear jar but I want you to know i don't regret it. they always try to sneak up on each other but mostly fail.

DRAKE!!! but no lol once damian grows up and is like I Apologize for attempting to murder you it was wrong and you are just as much a son to Father as I am tim is like UGH i guess its cool since ur being so emotionally mature and all. also im 2 for 5 on siblings trying to murder me so im definitely going to win trauma bingo and damian is like i take it back you are insufferable. When Will My Older Siblings Stop Joking About Their Trauma.

CASS!!! listen. cass is cool. Cass Gets It. They have a special Bond. also damian really likes it whenever cass is home because 1) he gets to hang out and do something cool with cass and 2) he feels significantly safer with cass in the house because Nobody will be able to hurt any of their family if Cass is there. ALSO he tries to call her cain but everyone is like DONT DO THAT and he doesn't want to call her wayne bcus theyre ALL wayne (dick adds it on as a middle name but also Richard John Wayne West-Grayson is just. the lamest name ever so dick needs to reconsider it before his upcoming nuptials)((dick will not reconsider it except maybe whether grayson-west would work better)) and so he tries cassandra but cass is like :) call me cass and damian is like cassandra is more formal and respectful and cass is like :) and finally damian just has to give in.

Duke! him and duke actually live together so they get the Most Bonding Time and have a bunch of inside jokes as a result. (is it bad i wanted to laugh because inside jokes... joker... i'll see myself out). they're eating breakfast together (and also alfred sits with them IM NOT A MONSTER ALFIE'S LIKE 70 NOW OKAY) and duke laughs and bruce is like what are you laughing at, son? and duke is like oh damian just showed me this funny meme and then he shows the phone to bruce and bruce grabs it (both the boys groan) and after WAY TOO LONG is like "i don't get it" and so now duke and damian have to try and explain the comedic intricacy of bob's burgers

[faulty-writes]

This is a little different than most of my other works, but I'm trying to branch out and write for more of the secondary or minor characters. I actually adore the Todoroki family, especially Fuyumi and Natsuo. So I hope you guys enjoy this little appreciation piece featuring Natsuo who no doubt deserves more love considering he's a very interesting and complex character, at least in my opinion.

[ Natsuo is known as 'the nice guy' on campus despite also being recognized as a "Todoroki" and many knowing of the relation he holds to the number one hero, Endeavor. He's had plenty of experiences where people have used him because of this, but the latest one leaves him a tad heartbroken. What other choice does he have but to run to you? ]

The sound of his abnormally thick tears landing on the tiled flooring of the hallway faintly echoed as he continued on his way. Ignoring all the looks and obvious gossip that would come with the fact he was so shamelessly crying in the middle of a school day.

A sniffle came as Natsuo reached up and with some force, wiped his right eye with the end of his signature gray hoodie sleeve which he normally wore on campus. The very campus he had grown to love over the past year and the one Fuyumi had insisted he go to in order to study medical welfare.

It was funny, he could still hear her words echoing in his head, ‘Leave our family circumstances to me and go do what you want to pursue,’ and that he did. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that his sister offered to take the brunt of their family problems and encourage him to do what made him happy.

But at the same time, Natsuo hadn’t originally wanted to leave his sister or youngest brother behind. He didn’t trust their well-being with ‘Endeavor’ around, despite his mother having long since recovered from the mental and physical abuse the so-called "number one hero" put her through.

Since the death of his eldest brother, Touya. He couldn't shake this protective and anxiety-ridden feeling that had been slowly growing inside of him. He'd be damned if anything happened to his remaining siblings, even if it meant he'd experience more emotional trauma in the long run.

Much like today. College was supposed to be a fun time, and while Natsuo understood that some enjoyed ‘experimenting’ and partying rather than studying. He was never much of the party type and while he knew he was attracted to other genders, he never outwardly acted on it.

Knowing how his father treated his mother was the one thing that drove him to desire a true romantic relationship and that was what he thought he had. Unfortunately, there was a cruel reality that came with being the son of Endeavor, and while he should be used to people trying to get close to him when they found this out.

He never thought they would sink so low as to try and date him on the off-chance they'd get to meet the number one hero. His fingers sunk into the front of his hoodie, twisting the fabric as a soft ache coursed through his chest.

Which he could only describe as a broken heart and despite wanting to go back to his own room, bury his face into a pillow, and hide under his covers. There was one person he wanted, no needed, to see. It wasn’t his mother or sister, not even his youngest brother. It was you.

Strangely, since the start of his first year in college. He seemed to gravitate towards you, at first he believed it was only due to the fact that you were also studying something related to the medical field. But as your friendship continued and he got to spend more time with you, he realized that he genuinely enjoyed your company.

The fact he found himself telling you things, secrets that he wouldn’t have thought of sharing outside of his family was a pleasant surprise. Maybe you were just easy to talk to? He wasn’t sure, but he did know that unlike most.

You weren’t going to use him just because of his relation to Endeavor, though he knew you were interested in hero studies. There was no worry in his mind that you’d use him for some hero-related advantage.

Another sniffle came before he reached up to once more wipe away his tears, even if his effort was in vain considering more just came. He took a deep breath, trying to both collect and center himself. ‘Man, this backpack feels heavy,’ he thought as he clenched his jaw and focused his attention on the floor.

Counting the familiar shapes in the tile that he knew would eventually lead to your room. The logical reason for his backpack feeling so heavy was due to the fact it was filled to the brim with various textbooks and a few notebooks that were scribbled with his writing.

He could feel the slight bitter sting of frost beginning to grow on his tear-stained cheeks which he ignored for the moment. Still, he wiped his eyes once more before picking up his pace. He soon began to speedwalk which turned into a jog which eventually led him to frantically running and accidentally stumbling into your door.

Once more, he seemed to get stares from the passersby. But in a way, he couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t even sure how he looked slumped against another student's door with his arms stretched above his head and his hands closed into fists.

His forehead was pressed against your door and his tears continued to slowly fall. His eyebrows came down and for a moment, he wondered what he was doing before the door suddenly opened. “Hel-” your sentence came to a stop when the white-haired boy stumbled forward and your hands instantly grasped his arms.

Your stance stiffening as you unconsciously seemed determined to stop him from falling. One of your legs was bent back, and the other bent forward. An awkward silence filled the air before you heard the soft sound of something hitting the wooden floor of your room.

It reminded you of water and a few seconds later, Natsuo lifted his head. You instantly noticed those tears and felt his hands curl into the front of your shirt, funny you hadn’t noticed or felt the pressure of his hands there before.

But in a way it made sense, Natsuo was always very gentle. Even when handling the few people who volunteered to pretend to be "patients" during his medical welfare classes. In fact, it seemed he was downright cautious when it came to others.

Never necessarily wanting to cause trouble and sometimes acting rather shy unless you happened to bring up a topic he didn’t like. You had long since learned the reason why he preferred to keep the topic of ‘family’ out of conversations.

Yet, you wondered if Natsuo was crying because of something related to just that. But you knew you shouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet. Still, you couldn’t help but look into those blue orbs of his. The look of hurt was clearly visible, not only in his eyes but also indicated by the way his face was twisted.

Then he leaned forward, allowing a soft whimper to escape in the process. Partly burying his face into the front of your shirt as he lifted his leg up. Then without warning, he slammed his foot against the floor. Which caused you to jump, but you didn’t dare release Natsuo.

Especially as his tears soaked into the fabric of your shirt, unlike most Natsuo's tears were always cold. You assumed it was due to his quirk, but before you could say anything the sound of Natsuo’s cracked and broken voice caught your attention.

“D-Damn it,” the stuttered words filled the air and you frowned, wanting nothing more than to run your fingers through that white snow-like hair of his before you glanced back up. Noticing a few people staring into your doorway, you honestly didn’t know why they were staring or why they weren’t minding their own business.

But you did know that something was clearly wrong with Natsuo and whatever that something was caused this reaction. You shot the bystanders a glare before focusing back on Natsuo. You opened your mouth to speak, but were interrupted by the sound of his voice once more.

“I...am so sick of this,” his words, of course only confused you. What was he sick of and how did it relate to his current state? You managed to straighten out your legs, however, Natsuo continued to cling to you.

His tears hadn’t ceased nor those soft almost desperately gasps for breath. “I’m sorry,” he suddenly said before he turned to look over his shoulder. His hands remained curled into the front of your shirt as he looked at the many people staring at the two of you.

Some seemed curious as to what was happening and others amused to see the almost grown man crying in the arms of his friend. With more strength than he intended, he once more lifted his foot and slammed your door shut.

The noise it created echoed through your room and though Natsuo felt guilty for having treated your door in such a manner, his chest was already aching profusely. When he turned back to face you, the fact he had small bits of ice underneath his eyes and on the skin of his cheeks didn't go unnoticed by you.

Your hands left their position on Natsuo’s forearms to gently cup his face, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he was cold to the touch. You knew that was yet again another semi-harmless side effect due to his quirk, despite the fact you had never actually seen him use it.

Part of you wondered why that was. Still, you couldn’t help but allow your thumbs to run over those specs of ice stuck to his moist cold cheeks and the desire to get a warm hand towel to clean his face was strong.

You weren’t sure if you wanted to ask what happened first or calm him down enough so he would tell you with as little of a fight as possible. Your touch was welcomed as Natsuo reached up and laid one of his hands over yours.

“Do you...want to sit down?” you questioned and Natsuo looked momentarily confused before he glanced away as if he were thinking about something. Sometimes when he acted like this, it annoyed you. You knew how guilty Natsuo could feel over things that he either shouldn’t or weren’t even his fault.

He was here crying into your arms, but you knew somehow he'd make up a reason to feel guilty about it. ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen today,’ you thought as you released his face and reached down to take hold of one of his hands.

Even though they too were always cold, you couldn't help but find some odd sense of comfort when you were holding him by the hand. Despite the fact, Natsuo was significantly larger than you. But, you assumed that was only due to the fact that he physically took after his father.

The fact he went to the gym daily only added to that overall intimidating stature of his. Regardless, you squeezed his hand in reassurance as you guided him towards your bed. He made no move to resist your guidance and once you had him sitting down, you gently laid your hands on his shoulders.

Those tears were now single drops that slowly slid down his icy cheeks and you'd be lying if you stated it didn't hurt seeing Natsuo like this. You took a deep breath. “Stay here,” you instructed, “I’m going to get a warm towel, you have ice on your face,” Natsuo seemed rather surprised and reached up to touch his cheek.

Using his thumb to glide along the skin and sure enough, he could feel the smooth surface of the small patches of ice. “Oh…” he said before a sniffle came. “Sorry,” though most would know not to apologize for something beyond their control.

Still, he couldn’t help but fold his hands into his lap. Squeezing them between his thighs. His feet were nervously tapping against the floor, creating a rhythmic pattern and if one listened carefully enough, they’d recognize it was the pattern of a standard heartbeat.

In a way, it was amazing how much subconscious knowledge you could obtain. Natsuo failed to notice the rhythmic pattern, but you could hear it clear as day even from the bathroom where you proceeded to ring out the warm hand towel.

A soft groan escaped him, and his thighs were the only thing keeping his hands in place. Else he would be running them through his unusual spiky hair and possibly pulling it out. ‘What am I even doing here man?!’ he frantically thought.

‘Y/n...is always the person I run to, I keep bothering them but I’d rather be like this than…’ his jaw clenched when the thought of Endeavor entered his mind and a soft growl rumbled in his throat before he heard your footsteps which prompted him to raise his head.

You noticed he was looking at the wet towel you held with an expression only a curious and slightly confused child would make. “Mm,” once more he looked away, feeling the guilt continue to build as you sat down next to him and laughed.

"Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty again,” you stated, and not to your surprise, Natsuo turned his head to look at you. His tears seemed to be completely dry and you wondered if that was because he was here with you or that he simply overworked his tear ducts.

“Sorry,” he muttered, still focused on the towel you held and the small amount of steam that seeped from it. “I...get it's kind of crazy for me to keep running to you but-” you shook your head, quickly interrupting him.

“But nothing,” you replied as you leaned forward, “that’s what friends do and you and I have been friends since the start of our freshman year,” that had to count for something, right? You reached over, cupping one side of Natsuo’s face.

“Now stay still, I want to get that ice off your face, and then you can tell me what’s bothering you,” the words left your mouth almost like a friendly command. But like most of the time, Natsuo didn’t seem to take offense.

He simply nodded and gave you a look that you knew meant he understood. Very gently, you pressed the towel to his face. Applying some pressure to ensure the bits of ice chipped off and sure enough, you could see the clear cold pieces slowly begin to melt.

When you began to wipe his opposite cheek, you couldn’t help but raise the question. “Hey Natsuo,” you began, effectively catching his attention and the soft, “Hm?” he responded with. “I’ve never seen you actually use your quirk,” you pointed out.

“Is there a reason for that?” a gasp came when Natsuo suddenly jerked his head away from you. “Uh…” blinking once or twice. You lowered the wet towel to your lap and grasped onto it. Twisting the fabric between your fingers to allow the now lukewarm droplets of water to soak into the pajama bottoms you were wearing.

Maybe you crossed a line? Did this have anything to do with his family? As far as you knew, his mother possessed a rather powerful ice quirk. Was that the reason he never used it? You weren’t sure, but usually, when Natsuo acted in this closed-off manner it was related to his family.

“Sorry,” you said, “I didn’t mean to pry, I was just curious,” the explanation was simple and you hoped Natsuo would believe you. He took a deep breath and let out a sigh before bringing his hand up, running his fingers through his hair.

“It’s fine,” he replied, though you could tell his voice was a little strained before he turned to you. That’s when you saw the frown on his face and his eyes looked misted over as if he were going to cry again. You really didn’t want that.

“Natsuo are you-” though the answer was obvious, he wasn’t okay if he had come running to you in tears. But even so, Natsuo nodded. “Yeah…” he reached out, grasping the wet towel that you were previously holding before he got up.

You wanted to ask where he was going, but it was clear he was only heading to the bathroom. “It’s just…” you heard the wet plop of the towel landing in the sink before Natsuo walked back out and once more took his seat on your bed.

You reached out, laying your hand on his thigh. “You don’t have to tell me,” you offered with a kind smile, but Natsuo shook his head. “It’s fine,” he repeated yet again before allowing his hand to rest by his side.

“Big bro Touya and I used to play around with our quirks, but Touya was always so serious about his,” you watched as his expression grew dark and a clear hateful glance appeared in his eyes which seemed distant at the moment.

This was more than likely due to the fact that Natsuo was picturing his late brother alongside his father. “Uh…” you glanced down and watched as the hand that laid by Natsuo’s side began to curl into a fist, though you knew he would never actually raise that fist or cause harm to you.

It was just shocking how the subject of his family brought out this side in him, but you remained quiet and continued to listen. “Because of that...bastard and I hated seeing Touya like that!” he suddenly exclaimed, leaning forward as his fists began to tremble, and without much thinking, you laid your hand on his back.

"Natsuo…” you said, hoping your voice would bring him back out of the hateful moment he was in. His jaw was clenched and a shiver ran up your spine when you felt Natsuo’s trembling hand take a grip on your upper arm.

But there was still that familiar gentleness to it which indicated to you that even when Natsuo was temporarily blinded by this hatred, he was still aware of his surroundings and those that were important to him.

This was only confirmed when he lifted his head to look at you with a smile, though it was small. It was still present and seemed to put you at ease for the moment. “I’m okay but…” he once more turned away from you and a sigh escaped him.

“I convinced big bro to have fun with our quirks instead of doing what the old man wanted him to, but since he...died. I...I couldn’t bring myself to use my quirk again and I’m sure sis feels that way too,” your frown deepened, ah so that’s why.

Maybe he fears he’ll lose the memory of his elder brother if he were to use his quirk again? “What else happened?” Natsuo looked back at you, confused for a brief moment before, “Oh...right,” he said as if he had almost forgotten he ran to you in broad daylight with tears streaming down his face.

He turned, bending down to slip his shoes off before he slid his backpack onto the floor. Then he proceeded to climb onto the bed or rather proceeded to crawl over to your pillows and plop himself down.

Being surrounded by your familiar scent eased him as did the fact he could stretch both his arms and legs out. You looked at him all sprawled out and comfortable. ‘Well...I guess if it makes him feel better,’ you thought as you watched Natsuo stare at the ceiling.

His face twisting with a variety of emotions that made you wonder just what caused him to cry in the first place. He didn’t deserve that, or at least not in your opinion. “She broke up with me,” he suddenly said, his voice somewhat quick and you barely understood what he said.

“Who?” you questioned as you got onto your knees and pressed your hands into the mattress, looming over Natsuo much like how a dog or loyal companion would. "My girlfriend…” he muttered as he once again looked to the side, you assumed it was an attempt to look away from your gaze which was a mess of confusion.

“Why did she break up with you?” It was said that getting your heart broken was hard to handle, but there had to be more behind this. You sat on your knees, placing your hand on your hip as you looked down at Natsuo who slowly turned his gaze back to you but seemed to avert it just as quickly.

Despite his overall twisted expression that laid somewhere between sad and angry, you also noticed the faint pink tint to his cheeks. Was that from anger or embarrassment? You honestly couldn’t tell. But Natsuo normally didn’t get embarrassed around you and you knew he knew he could tell you anything.

‘It must be from anger,’ you concluded as you continued to wait patiently for his answer. “I’m so tired of it,” he said in a soft voice which prompted you to lean closer. “Tired of it?” you repeated, clearly not understanding where that was coming from.

“I’m sick of being recognized just because of the old man's last name!” he exclaimed once more, though his voice wasn’t raised too high. It still caused you to jolt back, then again you should have realized this whole thing had something to do with his family.

Natsuo turned to you and impatiently pressed his hands against the mattress so he could sit up. His jaw was clenched again and his eyebrows slit in anger and the way he kept his eyes locked on you made you feel a little uncomfortable despite the fact you knew his anger wasn’t directed at you.

Then a sigh came and Natsuo’s head dropped. You saw this often when he was trying to collect or calm himself down. It honestly worried you that he was always going between emotions, trying to keep himself in check for the sake of others.

His eyes were closed, but when he opened them once more you could see the absence of anger. “I wanted to study medical welfare to actually help people…” he confessed as he brought his legs up to his chest and you watched as he wrapped his arms around them.

Those long sleeves of his hood concealing the contraction of his muscles and biceps. He seemed to stare off into the distance once more. “I wanted to make a difference in the world so the name Todoroki could actually mean something to me, unlike the tie it has to that bastard,” he hissed and like a switch, that anger was back.

You could even hear that soft rumbling of a growl threatening to admit from his throat. “I don’t want to be recognized as a Todoroki just because of him!” you opened your mouth to speak, but all thoughts and actions escaped you when Natsuo turned to look at you.

Once more sporting that angry expression which was terrifying in its own way. But then, it slowly began to fade into sadness and he lowered his arms. Allowing his hands to fall back onto the mattress, you couldn’t help but glance down when you felt his fingers brush against yours before you looked back up.

“I don’t want people trying to get close to me because of him either,” Natsuo stated and you gasped when you felt his cold hand engulf yours, taking firm grip as if he was silently gesturing to you that he needed some form of physical comfort.

“But that’s exactly what she did,” you felt that hand begin to tremble and you quickly gave it a reassuring squeeze. “She used you to get to your father?” you questioned, a little confused but still showing an effort that you wanted to get the story correct.

Natsuo nodded. “She’s an inspiring hero I guess," he said with a shrug, "and wanted to get close to me so she could have the chance to speak to my father,” his tone sounded like he had given up as he tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling.

That ache in his chest returned, but somehow your touch prevented it from growing any further. “Guess I was more interested in caring for her that I didn’t see it,” he commented before tilting his head back down. “Just tired of it,” he repeated.

"I wouldn’t introduce my father to anyone I’m with...they deserve better than to be exposed to him!” you could imagine that’s how the rest of his story went then. His ex-girlfriend trying to pressure him into introducing her to Endeavor only for Natsuo to express his concern and reasons for why he couldn’t.

Then from there she must have gotten angry and confessed the truth. The whole situation was unfair and you could feel your own anger brewing, using people was one thing. But using them for your own personal benefit, pretending to love them?

That wasn’t exactly forgivable in your book. No wonder he was crying. “I’m…” would saying you’re sorry even do anything? You knew Natsuo wouldn’t take offense, but it seemed unfitting for the current situation. Instead, you found yourself leaning over.

Releasing his hand in order to wrap your arms around him, nuzzling your head against his shoulder as you embraced him. Natsuo while not overly shocked at your friendly gesture, crossed his legs and wrapped his arms around your waist before pulling you even closer.

Though your back slightly hurt, you didn’t mind. Natsuo, while not completely touch-starved, still melted into anyone’s affection. You felt his stiff body finally relax and the cool touch of his cheek against your ear as he nuzzled the side of your head.

“Thank you,” he whispered, despite the fact, there was no one else around to hear you two. “I know I keep bothering you whenever-” you reached up to tug on the back of his hair.

“You’re not a bother,” you said in a stern tone, “and you should be happy that girl is now your ex, you didn’t deserve what she put you through,” your arms tightened around him just before you pulled back and grasped his shoulders.

Making sure he was looking at you before you continued to speak, “No one deserves that, you’re a wonderful person Natsuo and I know there are others that won’t care that you’re a Todoroki or that will help you make it into a name you can be proud of,” you assured him and watched as the faintest expression of hope washed over his face.

Just that alone meant the world to you and while you knew Natsuo didn’t need any protection, you still wanted to try your best to be there for him. “Come on,” you insisted as you crawled over him in order to reach the opposite side of your bed.

Though Natsuo took up most of the space, you managed to lay down and offered him your hand. That smile of his seemed to grow and as expected, he gently grasped onto your hand as he laid down by your side.

“You can stay here if you want, it’s still daylight and I don’t have any more classes for today,” you insisted and hoped he’d take the bait because you didn’t exactly trust he wouldn’t get emotional again later.

Natsuo always seemed to overthink things and maybe that’s where his sense of guilt came from. “Hm?” he glanced away and you were quick to speak. Taking a firm grip of his hand, you slipped your fingers between his and gave him a stern expression.

“Don’t let your guilt tell you that you’re going to be a bother, I want you to stay,” your words were accompanied with another reassuring squeeze, and once more his gaze was directed back on you.“...Okay,” he replied, you smiled and turned your attention to the ceiling.

Allowing your intertwined hands to remain nestled between you. Your mind was free of any thoughts, unlike Natsuo who was debating how he could even thank you for everything you did for him. Just listening to him was enough, but you went the extra step to dry his tears and invited him to stay for however long he wanted.

Was it that you knew he found comfort in you, your scent, your presence? Is there any way he could express his gratitude? Suddenly his own words came back, echoing like thunder inside his head. ‘I...couldn’t bring myself to use my quirk again,’ he held his breath and slowly lifted his free hand, turning it so he could gaze at his palm.

The sound of his and Touya’s laughter now softly echoed alongside his words. ‘It’s been years,’ he thought before he turned to glance at you, but ended up flinching when he realized you were already looking at him.

“Are you okay?” you questioned, now that everything was off his chest he should be, right? Then again, you have been wrong before. Natsuo almost seemed to be in a trace, though his eyes hadn’t left yours and his hand remained lifted in the air.

‘Would I even know how to control it? I can’t risk hurting Y/n but if this proves how thankful I am to them then…’ he finally seemed to make a choice and he slowly turned on his side causing the bed to shake along with his movements.

“Can I see your other hand for a moment?” he questioned, knowing that if anything did happen to go wrong with his quirk that he could use the basic knowledge he learned from his medical welfare classes to hopefully undo any damage.

“Hm?” you seemed a tad confused by his request and why he was holding his hand up, but once more you reminded yourself that Natsuo had no ill intentions. You maneuvered yourself on your side much like him and slowly held your free hand out.

Natsuo smiled and carefully connected your fingertips, then he took a deep breath. Channeling his long-forgotten quirk to the center of his palm, though he could feel the cold rush. It came as a surprise to you. In fact, the sudden drastic drop in temperature coming from Natsuo's hand was an utter shock.

Even knowing quirks existed, this almost seemed impossible. “N-Natsuo?” you worried something was very wrong when you felt it, the cold rough texture of tiny ice crystals growing across your skin. You almost wanted to pull away as there came a slight pulsing pain with the bitter coldness that was Natsuo's quirk.

But instead, you looked to your hand, your jaw was clasped closed and your eyes were wide. Too focused on those ice crystals that continued to grow and slowly frost over the top of your fingers. You stared in amazement.

“I...b-but you…” your words were all jumbled together and you almost missed the fact that Natsuo’s palm was covered in a thick lining of ice and how red the skin surrounding it was. Still, even if this brought him some minor discomfort.

He couldn’t help but smile as he watched your reaction, the small feeling of heartache numb for the moment and replaced with a small dose of happiness. Partly due to you and partly because he was relieved he could in fact control his quirk even after years of refusing to use it.

“I just wanted to say thank you for being there for me,” he stated and though still astonished, you glanced back at him. Even though the small mishaps would more than likely continue to happen as well as people that would attempt to use him for their own personal benefits. You somehow knew he was going to be just fine.

[watermelonlipstick]

Dean’s Jeans 2

What better day to post a sweet little family oneshot than Mother’s Day? This is the same setup as Dean’s Jeans, just a different late summer afternoon on your cul-de-sac with Dean, Sam, your daughters, and their cousin DJ. I already have bare-bones drafts of a few other installments for these cuties, especially considering this one got a little deeper than I had intended. Stay tuned!

Title: Dean’s Jeans 2

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 5561

Summary: Spending the afternoon working on the driveway with Dean, Sam, your daughters, and nephew.

Warnings: fluff, some family angst, minor injury, little dollop of smut at the end

           It was a big day for driveways and garages.

           You had been sitting in the apron of Sam’s drawing loopy pastel paths with DJ and your eldest daughter for your youngest to roll her cousin’s old matchbox cars down, watching adoringly as everyone’s palms and knees got covered in chalk dust. When the concrete was relatively full and the older two started getting a little antsy, you decided to try to stave off any bored bickering ahead of time.

           “Babe, is our garage unlocked?” you called over to Dean where he was trying to snake an extension cord out of Sam’s front door and down the porch.

           “Should be. Why, what’s up?”

           “I thought maybe DJ could take Picasso here over to the park to break in her new bike.” You turned to your nephew, sitting with his arms resting on his knees. He was just barely starting to fill out around the delicate Winchester features that had made him such an angelic looking child, the angle of his jaw seeming to sharpen every day, growing rapidly though you might still be able to throw him over your shoulder in a pinch. Hopefully it was a sign that he wasn’t destined for the late puberty you knew had frustrated Sam so much when he was younger; at least he could have one gift from his other parent, lost otherwise to the wind without as much as a periodic birthday card. Not the time for that thought, you reminded yourself, refocusing on the child’s glossy hair, carbon copy of his father’s with sun-lightened tips this late into summer. Dean would’ve taken him to get a haircut about a month ago, but as you and Sam both reminded him: not his hair, not his kid. It made you smile and likely made Sam proud that at his age, where so many kids were rebelling against their parents, DJ didn’t mind looking exactly like his dad. Somehow you had a hard time believing Sam would want to rush that process of teenage rebellion along. “What do you think, Deej?”

           Your elder daughter squealed and threw her arms around his neck, nearly tackling him onto the driveway. “Please please? Maybe Sarah and Davey can come too.” Her inclusion of the Fiore siblings into the mix was smart. They lived between your cul de sac and the park and were pretty similar in age to DJ and your older daughter. You suspected she thought on some level that DJ was on the cusp of being too cool to hang out with his baby cousin, but hanging out with the Fiores as a group gave them a little more social grace. Hopefully she’d realize, as you had, that DJ absolutely adored her and would likely rather catch some flack from his peers than drift apart.

           “Yeah but I’m not carrying your bike up the hill if your legs get tired,” he grinned at his cousin, who immediately took off across the street to get her bike from the garage.

           Sam and Dean had to move their whole setup from in front of Sam’s garage door so DJ could get his own bike out, the step ladder, extension cord, and electric drill going into the lawn next to the rest of their project, the basketball hoop. He almost got to the end of the driveway, swinging his leg over the seat, before Sam stopped him. “Nice try. Helmet, please,” he called out after his son, who reluctantly dropped the mountain bike onto the pavement and trudged back into the garage to pull a sticker-covered helmet out of a box and throw it on his head. By the time he made it into the street his cousin had done the same, yelling out over her shoulder for you to Mommypleaseclosethegaragethankyou as she tried to pump petite legs to keep up.

           You were thankful that your youngest seemed to be fully engrossed in the chalk patterns on the driveway and hadn’t seemed to notice the other kids’ leaving, not interested in having an argument about whether she was too little or not to go with them alone. Trusting the older kids or not, she was small and curious in a way that led to her sometimes running off to explore, and you didn’t want to add that into the mix. After a while, she picked up the green again, moving up the driveway to draw a picture of a dragon and immediately swipe hair out of her face, covering it with fluorescent dust. She got to her feet, and the amount of colorful powder on her made you beyond thankful that it was Dean’s turn to give her a bath that night. Crossing the driveway in a few skittering steps, she wrapped herself around Dean’s legs, practically leaving a silhouette imprint of herself on his jeans as he ruffled her hair. The way they had worn out and lost much of their dye over the years highlighted the contrast.

           “Daddy, come look! It’s a dragon!”

           Dean and Sam exchanged a smirk and Dean winked at you. “A dragon? Sounds scary.”

           “No, he’s a nice dragon,” she insisted, grabbing his hand and dragging him down the driveway, leaving Sam to drill holes into the wood above his garage door.

           “A nice dragon, huh? What’s his name?” Dean asked, grinning as he let her lead him.

           “Maurice,” she said, so matter of fact it made you laugh out loud. Sam did too, pulling the drill out of the wall to keep from wiggling the holes. “Can you do the fire?”

           “’Course I can, princess. How big are we talking?” He eased down to sit cross-legged next to Maurice The Dragon, accepting when you offered him yellow and orange sticks of chalk. You leaned back in the afternoon sun with a lap full of matchbox cars listening to the radio Sam had brought out to the porch, the chalk scratching on the concrete, and the rhythmic drilling of holes into siding for a few minutes.

           “Dean?” Sam asked, backing down the step ladder.

           “Got it,” he answered, putting a little flair on a lick of fire that went around Maurice’s nose and handing your daughter the chalk. “I need to help Uncle Sammy for a minute but I can come right back, sound fair? Your mom is better at scales anyway.” The girl seemed to consider it for a second then pouted her lips out in agreement, tilting her head to the side just like her dad did all the time. Dean got up creakily and brushed off his hands on his back pockets, the orange joining the other stains like an abstract painting.

           “You guys need any help?” you called over to Sam, who was trying to stabilize the hoop with long arms and struggling a little bit to keep it balanced in the light wind, powerful muscles rippling in his forearms and impressing upon you how heavy it must truly be if even he was having trouble with it.

           “Actually, yeah, that would be great,” he chuckled, jerking his chin to Dean to suggest his brother help him hold it up. He did, grabbing one side and having to reach up to his tip toes to match Sam’s stretch.  They were both standing on a kind of bastardized stool Dean had thrown together for this purpose, a few planks of wood balanced on some huge cinderblocks that had been in the garden holding up one of Sam’s compost setups. “It’s just those 12 screws, holes should already be lined up.”

           You climbed up on the ladder with the drill, having to crane to reach over even with the added height. When the last was in, the Winchesters carefully removed their hands. Seeing that it didn’t immediately fall, Dean grabbed the bottom corner and tried his best to rattle it to no avail. “Good job, babe,” he said, lightly smacking your ass as you backed down the ladder.

           “Watch out,” Sam said over your shoulder, and you saw him walking backwards a handful of steps down the driveway, being cautious to avoid his niece and her drawings.

           “Dude, there’s no way you can—” Dean started, cut off by Sam taking a running jump and leaping into the air, catching the rim of the hoop like nothing and doing a baby pull-up on the metal.

           “Can what?” Sam cackled, punching Dean’s arm playfully as he dropped to the pavement. “Don’t be jealous, old man.”

           “Jealous of Sasquatch? You can practically reach it standing, Lurch.”

           “Yeah, okay. Let me know when you can get up there without a stool and a trampoline.”

           You were giggling as Sam and Dean started putting all their tools way when DJ’s bike came flying around the corner. Neither he nor his cousin were wearing helmets, and she was wrapped around his chest like a novelty monkey backpack, her legs circling his waist and her arms clinging to his neck. He had to arch around her to see, but you could tell from the half-block length away that he was saying something to her. By the time they got close enough to get reprimanded for the lack of helmets, or for one of their dads to ask where the other bike was, you could hear the crying.

           Sam crossed over to his son in long, purposeful strides, holding his handlebars so he could dismount without letting go of your daughter. “What happened?” he asked, taking the girl from DJ’s arms and smoothing her hair back with a soothing palm. As he turned, you could see the blood trickling down her raw knees and elbows.

           DJ was visibly rattled, trying hard to calm his breathing down and tensing his bottom lip when it began to quiver. “Davey and I went down that big hill and, she—she was going too fast, and, um, she fell—I, I told her we could practice later but these guys were saying only babies couldn’t do it, I swear I didn’t know she would—” and then his voice broke, fat tears finally breaking through and crashing down his face. Sam nodded to you and Dean, murmuring some comforting things to your eldest as he carried her up the porch steps into his house. At the exact same time as if practiced—that same rapid, implicit communication they’d had on hunts now used to coordinate hugging their children in tandem, you thought to yourself—Dean wrapped his nephew up in a big bear hug, cradling the boy’s head and sweeping his hand up and down his back.

           “Hey, come on, you’re okay. She’s okay, she’s just shaken up, kid. Shhh shhh shhh, hey, come on, deep breaths. You’re okay,” he hummed into DJ’s hair. He gave you a tight nod over the kid’s shoulder to keep drawing with your daughter. Only a few steps away, you could still hear him as he continued. “I’m so proud of you, Deej. Got her all the way home on your bike, that’s pretty badass.” He waited for a few moments of silence until his nephew caught his breath a little. “Probably scared you, right?” he asked, his voice low and calm as DJ nodded through tears into the growing wet spot on his uncle’s chest. “That’s okay, chief, I would’ve been freaked too.”

           You noticed he was rocking a little, almost like he did when he was trying to get the girls to sleep as babies, and it really emphasized the way that no matter how wise DJ seemed or whatever signs of puberty he might be showing, he was still a child, still the same baby you’d fallen in love with when Sam had gotten that call however many years ago. It took a few more minutes for the crying to subside to hiccupping breaths and seeming to sense that the moment had passed in some way, your baby girl grabbed your hand gently. “Mommy, is DJ okay?”

           “Yeah, sweetie. He was just scared for a minute.”

           “That’s why he needs a hug?”

           “Exactly. Everybody needs hugs sometimes.” Just as she had before when considering your ability to draw cartoon scales on a dragon named Maurice, she tilted her head and pouted in agreement. When you realized what she was about to do next you almost had to wipe a quick tear away yourself, watching her get up to hug DJ and sandwich him between herself and Dean.

           “It’s okay, DJ,” she whispered, the high tender pitch of her voice like one of those unsettlingly extreme medieval harmonies with her dad’s but so much sweeter, the bright welcome sting of lemon juice in a dense poundcake.

           A moment later, Sam came out onto the porch with his eldest niece. One of her knees was wrapped in gauze but the other and both elbows had what looked from the driveway like a collage of Spiderman band aids. Sam appeared to have a matching one on his forehead, and both of them were giggling, though her eyes still looked a little puffy and red.

           Dean looked up and turned DJ to see both of them, cradling the back of DJ’s head in one palm. “See? She’s okay, just needed a couple band aids.”

           Sam winked at his brother as he walked over and patted his son on the back, taking the band aid off his forehead as he went. “Buddy, we’re going to go grab the bike and your helmets. Is there anything else you think you left at the park?”

           His son shook his head up at his dad and leaned back from Dean’s embrace to rub his eyes. “Are you mad at me?” he croaked.

           “Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?” Sam asked, crouching down to a squat to look up at DJ. You had noticed he tended to do this in sensitive moments with all the children, trying his best to seem less looming. The first time you’d identified it, it made you a little sick to your stomach, realizing it likely wasn’t part of how inherently good he was with kids but because he knew what it was like to have an angry man towering over you. Thinking of it now had the same effect, especially compounded by the emphasis Dean had put on telling DJ he was proud of him even if his daughter had gotten hurt, that he too knew a protective kid was still just a kid.

           DJ sniffled hard once more, finally able to take a truly deep breath. “I didn’t wear my helmet home because I couldn’t see arou—”

           “Aw, DJ. No way am I mad at you.” Sam hugged his son and stood up, planting a kiss on his forehead. “I’m proud of you for getting both of you guys home safe. That was really smart, to get her on the bike with you like that.” You caught DJ’s tiny smile of pride at his father’s praise, watched it deepen a touch as Sam kissed his hair again. “So just the helmets and the bike?”

           He nodded and rubbed his eyes before peeking around Sam a little bit to see your daughter. “You’re really okay?” he asked, as though he didn’t trust the adults to be telling him the truth and would have to ascertain her safety for himself. You wondered if Sam and Dean would find that nice or insulting, that ultra-fierce, trust-but-verify loyalty.

           She nodded sort of sheepishly. “Sorry I didn’t listen about the hill, DJ.”

           “It’s okay.”

           The moment seemed a bit heavy for a half-second before Sam wrapped a big hand around your daughter’s shoulder with a reassuring smile. “Let’s go find that bike.”

           After helping Dean get his wheels back inside, DJ went up to his room. You had to resist the urge to follow him, cuddle up with him like you used to when he was small enough to tuck into your lap. If he wanted to be alone, he was old enough to decide that for himself. Dean put the rest of the tools and things from putting up the basketball hoop away and walked over to you where you were laying on the ground so your youngest daughter could trace your body with chalk.

           “I think we need a pick-me-up around here. How do you feel about i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m for dinner?”

           You smiled, knowing you only had a bit longer of these spelling secrets left as your baby got closer and closer to proficient reading age. “Works for me. I think we have 2 or 3 kinds in the garage freezer.”

           He smirked down at you. “Can you bring him over in about 15 minutes? They should be back by then.”

           You tossed him a thumbs up and watched him walk across the street, the way the denim draped around his bowed legs as he went.

           It was only five or six minutes later when Sam came up to the driveway, jogging alongside your daughter with DJ’s helmet in his hand. Of course Sam would know that she needed to get back on that bike right away, and of course he’d come up with something to make her laugh all the way home, even if that meant he had to run the entire distance on a late summer afternoon. He was slightly out of breath when he helped her dismount in the driveway.

           “My kid okay?” he asked, taking the other helmet so your daughter could go back to what was becoming a pretty spectacular chalk surrealist piece spanning the driveway.

           “He’s in his room, I think he will be. Your brother’s got a very Dean style plan for dinner in a few minutes if you’re hungry.”

           Sam looked down at his watch. “Yikes, I didn’t realize we were even close to dinnertime. Let me go wash my hands and grab DJ then we can go over together?”

           “Sounds perfect to me. And hey—Sam? Make sure he knows everyone thinks he did the right thing.”

           He nodded, and you watched his Adam’s apple jump in his throat as he swallowed hard. Sam reached down and squeezed your hand, saying thank you without reopening the situation in front of the girls.

           They came out a few minutes later, Sam in a fresh t-shirt and DJ looking a little more cheerful coiled into his dad’s side. You bundled up the girls and walked over to your house, tipping your head in thanks as Sam opened the door. The girls were the first to see the spread and took off squealing into the kitchen, where Dean had effectively set up a tiny ice cream shop on your kitchen island. Sprinkles of all different kinds, those 3 tubs of ice cream you’d been right to remember were in the freezer, syrups and whipped cream and cherries and bananas and even chopped up peanut butter cups and Butterfinger bars from the stash Dean hid from the kids. He was already handing out bowls before you got into the kitchen.

           “Ah, ah! Hands need to be washed before anyone gets ice cream,” you insisted, shooting Dean a look of teasing reprimand.

           He rolled his eyes to your oldest daughter, sending her giggling conspiratorially to the kitchen sink. DJ, presumably having already washed his hands at his place, helped your youngest daughter reach by picking her up to the faucet when her sister was done. You crossed over to Dean, kissing him on the cheek and grabbing his hands for inspection. “Babe, you’re literally covered in chalk.”

           “You should be happy about me getting some extra calcium,” he winked, sticking out his tongue at you as you grabbed his ass on the way to the sink. “Mrs. Winchester!” he said in a faux-scandalized voice.

           As you washed your hands Sam manned the ice cream scoop, doling out much bigger bowls than he would normally, seeming to know as Dean did that a little levity might help the events of the day pass faster. After all the kids doctored up heaping mounds of ice cream and toppings to beat the band, you and the Winchester brothers stood around the island while they piled onto the couch to find a movie they could all agree on.

           “How’s our champ?” Dean asked, keeping his voice low.

           Sam shook up a can of whipped cream as he spoke. “He’s okay. Just feels guilty, I think. He says he should’ve stopped her from going down the hill.”

           “You think any kid of hers would’ve let someone tell her she couldn’t do anything?” Dean ribbed, accepting the gentle elbow you hit his side with.

           “I know that, but you know what it’s like. I think once he sees she’s really okay and no one blames him then he’ll be fine.”

           “Poor guy. Feels like that Winchester ‘weight of the world’ thing must be genetic.” You were partly joking but also partly not and they both knew it, looking pitiful and pitying for a beat before trying to cover with smiles. “He’s a great kid, Sam.”

           “Pretty much feels like you guys raised him as much as I did, I should be thanking you,” he murmured, drawing a lattice of butterscotch syrup over his whipped cream.

           You snaked an arm around his waist and gave him a sideways hug. “No, we’re lucky you let us know him.”

           Sam bent over and pressed his lips to your hair. “Seriously, thank you. I’m—I don’t know where we’d be if we didn’t, you know, I mean if we—”

           “Don’t strain yourself, Sammy,” Dean smiled affectionately, giving Sam a merciful out. “Tell you what, I sure wouldn’t have made it in damn Themyscira without you two around.”

           Sam chuckled down at the counter while you disentangled your arms. You took the chocolate sprinkles from in front of him and scattered a few in your bowl. “Themyscira? The hell is that?”

           Dean set down his ice cream exaggeratedly and rolled his eyes so hard he put a backwards bend in his spine, holding onto the island to keep his balance. “Babe. Themyscira. Home of the Amazons? Wonder Woman?”

           “Riiiight. I forgot I was married to such a dork.”

           “As long as you don’t forget how this ‘dork’ makes you screa—”

           “Dude, enough,” Sam groaned, exasperated. Dean waggled his eyebrows at you as his brother followed into the living room with the kids, taking the opportunity of temporary privacy to slip his tongue along your neck where it sloped into your shoulder.

           “Dean,” you hissed playfully, pushing his chest away from you. “They’re in the other room!”

           “You taste like chalk,” he smirked, before holding your gaze for a gooier beat than you would’ve expected. His eyes softened and he glanced down. “Thank you for letting me—letting us—take that, today. I know you’re better at the Mommy Dearest stuff or whatever, but it sometimes feels like, ah, getting a redo?” He cleared his throat where it had gotten a little thick. “You know, um, like proving that it doesn’t have to be the same?”

           It was a specific vulnerability he doesn’t often let you see, but you could tell by the softness both he and Sam had with all the kids, how they beat themselves up for days if they raised their voice for even a second, that they both thought about it all the time. In so many ways they were still those same little boys who wished they could’ve drawn on driveways with their parents, that their dad could’ve given them Spiderman band aids and told them everything was going to be okay.

           He didn’t have to explain further, and you gripped his hand to tell him so. “They needed you two, not me. For what it’s worth, I think you guys were a pretty great team today.”

           Dean smiled, and it was almost like the sleepy thankfulness he had on those nights when he got home and you’d charitably done a couple of his chores for him. He closed his eyes in invitation and you leaned forward, meeting his lips with the smell of ice cream in the air. “So come on, Super Dad. Let’s go watch a movie with these great kids everyone keeps talking about.”

           The ice cream had gotten put back in the freezer immediately to keep it frozen, but the toppings had all been left out during School of Rock. Sam and DJ had left a bit after the movie, playing a round of LIFE that had been pretty ambitiously started, considering the time, and ultimately abandoned when all the kids’ yawns started to sync up. You came downstairs after trading with Dean for bath/shower duty to get out of cleaning up all the sticky dishes, the girls falling asleep too quickly for a bedtime story after you’d made sure they were thoroughly scrubbed clean and any wet gauze was replaced.

           He was rinsing some bowls in the sink, the majority of the toppings slid to one side of the now wiped-down island. You sauntered up behind him, putting your chin on his shoulder. “Your jeans are still covered in chalk,” you sighed into his neck.

           “Your kid was practically using them as a napkin, so I’m not surprised.”

           “Like father, like daughter.”

           You felt the rumble of his laugh through your chest where you were pressed up against his back. “Can’t argue with that. They asleep?”

           “You’d think I drugged them.”

           He chuckled again, putting down the last bowl in the sink and shutting off the water before drying his hands on a dishtowel deliberately. When he turned around, his face was inches from yours. “Is that right?” he asked, and his voice was as smooth and silky as any caramel drizzle you could’ve eaten that night. You nodded into a smile as Dean slid a washing-warmed hand to the nape of your neck and wound into the hair there, pulling you into him where he leaned against the sink and slipped his tongue into your mouth. He tasted like maraschino cherry and chocolate and you pushed up into his kiss hard, jamming him into the counter in a way that made him groan into you, tug that hair tighter. “Careful, baby. Been thinking about scandalizing the mother of my children for hours,” he growled, smirking through a voice rough like the sandpaper calluses of his hands.

           You bit his bottom lip and dragged it back, leaning away from Dean just enough to reach over to the island behind you, finding the whipped cream and starting to shake it fast. “That’s funny, because I’ve just been thinking about sundaes,” you purred into his ear, nipping at his earlobe before tipping back. Dean’s eyes practically glittered as his pupils blew wide. His shirt was off so fast you almost didn’t see it, feeling like you blinked and opened your eyes to him already yanking his belt open to shuck off those chalk-covered torn jeans. Before he could, you turned over the whipped cream on top of his collarbone, dripping a stream of white foam down his chest and letting it drift for a second, melt down his skin then lapping it up with a tongue flattened wide.  You shook the can again, draping a strip onto Dean’s stomach that trailed to his belly button and laying a palm on his chest, leaning him back to the counter on his elbows to watch as you licked the whipped cream with lazy swirls until you were at the hem of his boxers, sinking to your knees and taking them down his legs along with his now-opened jeans. He was already hard as rock when you took him in your palm, laying one last spray of whipped cream along the length of him and humming in delight at the “holy shi—” that punched out of Dean and fizzled into the ether when you sucked it off.  

           It was only a few minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore, bending down to kiss you rough and dirty, tongue darting out to get the little dribbles of cream around the corners of your mouth and dragging you to your feet. With one hand Dean flicked open your jeans, using the freed slack to dive into your panties, middle finger dipping into you as he held your jaw with the other palm. He breathed hot and sticky along your jugular. “Not even close to how wet I want you.” The viscous pour of his words onto your neck sent goosebumps spreading over your skin in a delicate fan and you couldn’t help but smile as he scooped under your thighs and lifted you easily onto the island, slipping the denim off your legs as the same time he stepped out of his. You relaxed onto your elbows, watching those long eyelashes drift open and closed as his kissed a path down your abdomen, gripping handfuls of your t-shirt to get to skin. A lazy hand offered Dean the can of whipped cream.

           The smirk he gave you, bare shoulders between your thighs as he kneeled on the kitchen floor, might as well have been through a time machine for the way it made you see the cocky playboy you’d first met over a decade ago, before the faint wrinkles of years in sunny cars and staying up nights with colicky babies that accessorized his big doe eyes now. It had the same effect on you in a t-shirt that was older than DJ as it had when you were pounding through shots with eyeliner artfully smudged by the power of hangovers: pooling all the blood in your stomach and making you lightheaded. He slowly bit his bottom lip. “You taste way too good to be adding anything,” he rumbled, and when you threw your head back in a shaky laugh his tongue reminded you exactly why smudged-eyeliner girl was ready to drop her independence, jump in the Impala and follow that mouth to the end of the world.

           Dean built the earth up and cracked it into pieces beneath you twice perched on that kitchen island before grabbing the counter edge to haul himself up. “Were these tiles always so fucking hard? Feel like I just took a hammer to the kneecaps.” He shook out each of his bare legs, spring of his erect cock as he did looking silly and out of place with the glisten of his lips and chin, the sultry cast of his eyelashes on angled cheekbones. The juxtaposition made you laugh, breathy as it was with muscles that had been turned to jello, thrown in a blender, and scattered about the room by the deft movements of Dean’s tongue and fingers.

           “You’re thinking about your knees right now?”

           “That’s how hard these fucking tiles are,” Dean chuckled, deep and still sexy somehow, bending forward to catch your lips. When you reached down to stroke him, a hand wrapped around your wrist. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, I’m nowhere near done with you,” he murmured through kisses, a shade of playful challenge in his throat.

           You giggled, leaning back as he dragged a wet path of suction down your neck. “I don’t want to torture those legs, old man.” Running a hand through hair you’d sent spiking in all directions in your writhing, you dragged Dean’s head back on his neck, giving you a chance to meet his eyes, still the same dusted olive they’d been since that first wink. Long past the honeymoon stage when it was appropriate to do that kind of thing, you’d been content to spend hours searching them, cataloguing every spindly muscle of iris for posterity, trying to gather up every grain of him for when he inevitably was lost forever to a hunt or the solitude of the road.

           But here he was still.

           Here you were still. Living a life—living two selves—you never thought you’d get, lucky to have grown in and around each other like mangrove roots. Those eyes still every inch as beautiful, every spark of that electric heat still there now cloaked in layer after layer of what you’d built together: the complete trust and fanatical admiration he had of you flowing out like fountains of sunlight, strong enough they streamed through any raunchy waggle of his eyebrows.

           No time to think about it now with a hungry coil of desire tightening in your stomach. You traced the length of him with your fingertips, feather-light and teasing. “If you give me fifteen seconds to get my sea legs back I’ll show you who’s got tougher knees.”

           “All right, that’s it,” Dean said. He tipped his head forward and bit your bottom lip with that impossible pressure that made you whimper. “I’ll show you how old these knees are.”

           Before you could react, he’d put his shoulder below your sternum and thrown you over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. When you squealed he smacked your ass. “You’re going to wake up the girls,” he buzzed, starting toward your bedroom without a stitch of clothing on, you draped over his back.

           “Dean, Jesus Christ,” you giggled. “Get the clothes at least!”

            “Don’t need any jeans for what I’ve got planned—quit—squirming—or I’ll give you something to squirm about,” he continued, lowering his voice to a lascivious whisper and giving one of your upper thighs an impish bite as he headed up the stairs.

-

Thanks again for reading! If you liked it, check out my Masterlist or send me a request!

Tags: @sams-sass​ @vxnderlindes​ @deanwinchesterswitch​ @akshi8278​ @itsjensenanddean​ @flannellover67​ @weepingwillowphoenix​ @tj-drinks-tea​ @whatareyousearchingfordean​ @winchest09​ @winchestergirl2​ @samwisethegr8​ @nurse-sarahrn​ @lovers-in-japan-reign-of-love​ @deanwanddamons​ @stressedoutkitten​ @winchestershiresauce​ @tatted-trina6​ @percico-heronstairs​ @downanddirtydean​ @queenoftheunderdark​ @lyarr24​ @wonder-cole​ @that-one-gay-girl​ @fairlyspnfanfic​ @treat-winchesterswith-kindness​ @mimaria420​ @jensengirl83​ @zooaliaa​ @superfanficnatural​ @deangirl93​ @cockslut-padalecki​

And as always, if you want to be on my taglist, were on the taglist and changed your handle, or I lost track of it, please let me know!

[dodo-begone]

See's Dodo and anons reaction to last ask.

Me: externally blushing like crazy. Internally AAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHA *squealing noise s*

Well you know what they say the show must go on.

Wilbur was the first of the royals to really notice, after all most of his time with you was spent inside in the library since he had convinced his father to allow him to teach you instead of hiring teachers, but you never had less than two layers of clothing on even when indoors you had a large shirt and coat on. Even if it was winter now you were first brought to the castle in summer but you attire remained the same a shirt two sizes too big and a coat also large on you it was a small wonder you didn't suffer form heat stroke, maybe it was a case of those being the only clothes you owned well that wouldn't do it would be a poor showing if visiting diplomats thought they treated their (new sibling) guests with such little care and honesty buying you a new wardrobe didn't even make a dent in his personal finances. Still it was strange that both you and Tommy insisted on your new clothes being a size or two too big and also made of lighter cloth not the wool that was so common for winter attire but at the very least your and Tommy's insistence meant that he got to choose the colours of the outfits in return. Of course the main colours were white and a navy blue you were a member of the Royal (family) Court now it was only right you wore their colours, still the insistence on lighter materials for your clothes did worry him a little the winters were harsh he didn't want his (sibling) little brothers friend getting sick maybe he should bring this up with the others maybe they would know why you never took off that coat.

Techno hadn't noticed the whole coat issue until his twin pointed it out but now that Wilbur had he couldn't stop noticing it. Even when you spared with him you didn't take off the coat heck you never wore armour saying that armour only slowed you down, you had even balked, gone pale when he offered you enchanted iron armour turning down the gift and walking swiftly away. At first he and chat had felt rather rejected (sibling rejection arc, pog, e, e, Technosad) after all you had even if reluctantly accepted Wilbur gift of a new wardrobe but you were rejecting his gift, he had wanted to give you armour so he could teach you his style of fighting but you didn't want that apparently. Though now he thought about it your and theseus's apparent insistence on lighter fabrics and the rejection of the iron armour might not be as coinsidental as he might have thought, after all he had seen you shivering a few times when you thought he wasn't looking but you had refused the much warmer wool for cloth so it wasn't just you being stubborn did, did you have some sort of skin problem or other ailment that caused you pain or irritation if you wore heavy clothes or armour. Oh of course you would go pale at the idea of wearing iron armour if that was the case plus it would explain the constantly wearing a coat since you probably didn't want them to know out of misguided fear of their reaction after all he had seen how superstitious some peasants could be about such conditions from his time training new soldiers. Theseus would know you did have such a condition after all you were practically joined at the hip, but it was getting very late, tomorrow he would find Theseus and ask if he knew the reason why now he needed to find his father.

Tommy most certainly did know the reason why you never wore armour and always had a coat on. He was currently sat on your bed, both of your backs to the door, preening the reasons why you letting out quiet chirps as he helped straighten and re-aligh your feathers, after all your wings didn't exactly appreciate being covered by your coat the whole day he couldn't even imagine how much worse your wings would have been if Wilbur hadn't listened and just gotten a heavy wool coat. He remembered when your wings first came through a few years ago when your friendship was still new, you had been complaining about a rash that had suddenly appeared on your back a few days prior only to fall to the ground in pain mid sentence, he was honestly grateful that his family didn't keep track of their potion supply considering how many regen potion you needed when your wings came out leaving rather large exit wounds on your back, if he wasn't able to get those potions he didn't even want to think about what could have happened to you. Now you were here though and he couldn't let anyone know about your wings if even a servant or stable boy saw it would trickle back to his brother and his dad if Philza found out he would never let you leave, you would become as trapped as him maybe even more so due to his dad's instincts. Unfortunately since both of your backs were to the door neither of you spotted the winged watcher peering through the cracked open door.

Philza was on his way to his newest (child) guests chambers after his eldest two had come to him with worrying news about their newest ( family member) permanent. Wilbur told tales of light clothing even in winter while Techno quiet shared his own worries of them being ill and hiding it from them but to him those weren't the signs of illness no they were signs that you were like... no he should get excited it was probably an illness after all his investigations had shown that it wasn't just bandits that ravaged his nation but hybrid hunters a particularly disgusting breed of bandit that targeted hybrids to sell as pets or in the case of winged hybrids to harvest their wings as decorations. That infuriated him after all he had founded this nation to be a safe haven for hybrids but due to his own negligence they were hunted down, if you were like... him it would be a small miracle that you hadn't been taken by those hunters. Reaching the room in question open a crack he went to knock when he heard a soft chirping pausing he looked through the crack to see his youngest preening his (baby bird) guest's wings, rushing back to his own chambers he could just hear chat cawing ( baby bird, dadza, dadza, protect, keep, baby bird) he couldn't keep the massive grin off of his face as it all came together. Of course you didn't wear heavy clothing you had been hiding your wings it would mangle your feathers if you wore heavier clothing over them, the iron armour was rejected because you couldn't wear it full stop even with your wings out your bones wouldn't be able to take the weight since they were partly hollow, oh he had a little bird to teach flying and how to properly preen. His emotional high crashed though as he realised that you ran your farm alone, were you alone when your wings came through, its was the worst pain on could feel wings slowly ripping their way out of your back plus you could easily bleed out or get an infection if the open wounds weren't taken care of properly, oh you poor dear no wonder you were so attached to Tommy he was the only flock member you had. No longer though he would look after you he knew his sons had grown to care for you as much as they had Tommy, his more bird like instincts rejoiced at the thought of a fledgling joining his little flock.

Ender-anon

This is quite a bit longer than I thought it would be also first time writing hybrid reader.

sorry i took so long to answer this!! This just rlly intimidated me and anxiety went brrrr- but anyways lemmie get into this ask!!!

YOU FUCKING DESERVE THE RECOGNITION MAN UR STUFF IS SO FUCKING POG

god i rlly love royalty aus, did i ever mention that??? i just lOVE- ANYWAYS

So Wilbur's curiosity about your clothing choice only lead him to believing that what you wore was all you could afford in your previous life. He wasn't exactly wrong. And even with the new clothes you got when you moved into the castle, you refused to wear them. It was rather peculiar. Wouldn't you want to get out of those nasty and worn rags you called clothes? But you were new to the castle. He went with the presumption that the shock from the change was frightening. You must've kept your previous clothes as a safety blanket of sorts. Though after a few nasty looks sent your way over your apparel and your very obvious discomfort about it, he decided to take the executive decision to give you clothes that fit your taste and the taste of the court. Your choice to have oversized clothing confused him, but Tommy's insistence just made him presume you were self conscious of your body. To be fair, he wasn't half wrong but he was.

At the rejection of his gift, his and chat's disappointment were more than evident. Was his twin better or something? Like you accepted his gift, although reluctantly. But you still accepted it. And yet you didn't accept him. Looking back on your fear of the armor, he thought more into it. Yes the skin issues was definitely something to consider, but maybe trauma? No, trauma of armor would be strange, right? Maybe you had a family member who wore armor yet died in front of you despite their armor being worn to protect them. Or some other fear. Yea, the skin issue would be much more reasonable, actually. He'll just bring it up with father, let him know of the possible issues with their new family member.

One of the activities you two did on the daily was straighten out your feathers at the end of the day or when they were bothering you. Though the latter only happened when you two were in private. Nobody could know your secret, after all. It was for your protection and to preserve your freedom. At first, when your wings were coming in, he was absolutely terrified for you. What the fuck was going on? This isn't normal! Oh god oh fuck what is he suppose to do?! With an oversupply of potions thanks to the paranoia of attacks on the family and accidents during training, it was beyond easy to take what he needed for you. If anyone was questioned about it, he could easily say that some trainees took some.

OMG ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FUCKING CRY WITH THIS PHILZA PART?! BEACUSE I WILL CRY THIS IS SO MF CUTE- I JUST CAN'T I LOVE SO MUCH- I CAN'T ADD ANYTHING TO THAT PERFECT- I COULDN'T RLLY ADD ANYTHING TO WHAT YOU SENT ME AND I APOLOGIZE. I JUST LOVE AAAALLL OF THIS

[tenthgrove]

500 Followers Celebration!!!: Part 1 (La Squadra Backstories)

Hey! Thank you so much for 500 amazing followers! Every single one of you mean so much to me!

Part 1 of this celebration is, as the title suggests, my headcanon backstory for each of La Squadra. As some of you know I was at some point in the process of writing a full multi-chapter fic on this, but since that unfortunately never came to fruition beyond the first couple chapters, here is a shortened version of the stories that were originally planned.

Part 2 is going to be a little something I wrote a while back but never felt brave enough to send to more than a few people. That will be seeing the light of day soon. ;)

Risotto

Risotto Dante Nero was born in a small, poor farming village in Sicily, somewhere in the vicinity of Catania. His parents were a young, dysfunctional couple who weren't ready for a kid in the first place. Seeing their newborn son had 'evil' eyes was the last nail in the coffin for them, and they gave the baby up to his paternal grandmother when he was only days old.

Despite being shunned by his family over the aesthetic defect, Risotto was able to form a close bond with his older cousin, Domenico, who would eventually move in with him and his grandmother after being disowned by the family himself. Domenico helped Risotto find friends, and was the main reason why the next few years were the happiest in the young boys life.

Unfortunately, Domenico was struck and killed at age just 19 by a drunk driver, a millionaire from Milan who on top of his intoxication, was driving incredibly fast. Risotto never recovered from the grief; his personality was altered drastically and he eventually dropped out of school. His grandmother indulged him in his revenge fantasies, believing that he would never seriously carry them out. This proved the biggest mistake of her life.

At age 18 Risotto left home to hunt down Domenico's killer. Despite the years of preparation he was in way over his head and was eventually forced to make a deal with Passione for the resources he would need to break into the mansion and not get caught. But the newly initiated mafioso found that revenge did nothing for his grief. Now, he simply had nothing to work for.

Risotto fell into a deep depression for the next two years, doing his duties as a low-ranking soldato for Passione but feeling utterly empty inside. It became so dire that after becoming injured in a fight with a stand user, he welcomed what looked to be his impending death.

But Risotto did not die that day, being saved by an associate of the gang and rushed to hospital. After hearing word that Risotto had defeated a stand user, Prosciutto became interested and approached Risotto for help with a hit he had been assigned to. Risotto agreed and Prosciutto developed a liking for the young man. A few months later, when Prosciutto was tasked with forming a specialised squad for assassination, he remembered Risotto and requested he become the team’s captain. Risotto was put through at once for receiving a stand, and was seated at the head of the brand new La Squadra di Esecuzione.

Prosciutto

Maiale Crepuscolo was born the daughter of a powerful Don in Naples, and his much neglected wife. Raised in luxury, he came to resent his callous father, especially when the man continued to behave adulterously despite his wife’s failing health. The death of Mrs Crepuscolo was a huge blow to her 16 year old son. It was around this time that Maiale discovered his male identity and chose a new name for himself: Prosciutto.

Mere months after the death of his wife, Don Crepuscolo married his pregnant mistress, a young woman by the name of Loreta. Despite the circumstances, Prosciutto and Loreta got on very well together, and the young man confided in her about his transgender identity, to be met with her full support. Any faith that Prosciutto may have had in his father before was immediately lost when Loreta was thrown out onto the streets by her new husband, along with their infant son Pesci. His sole reason for doing this was that he had become tired of her, and the baby's crying.

Without his father’s knowing, Prosciutto continued to wire Loreta and Pesci money through his hefty allowance, and counted down the days until he could graduate highschool and become eligible for his mother’s inheritance. The very day he gained access to it, he cut his father off for good.

The next few years of Prosciutto’s life were the best. He went to a prestigious university to study politics and afterwards found work as a journalist. With his father no longer an issue, he medically transitioned and upped the money he was giving to his half-brother and former step-mother. Everything was going perfectly.

At age 24, Prosciutto received a visit by members of Passione, who informed him they had annexed his father’s gang and killed him. As much as Prosciutto insisted they had been estranged for years, the men maintained that Prosciutto was still considered a threat, and could only be allowed to live if he joined the gang. Worse, they threatened him with Pesci’s life. Prosciutto knew he had no choice.

Over the next few years, Prosciutto worked his way up. By age 27 he was granted the privilege to develop a stand, and was quickly pushed into the assassination business as a result of its deadly power. At that time, Passione had no designated assassination team, and individuals ordered to carry out hits had to go running around for volunteers if they needed help on a mission. This is why Prosciutto had sought out Risotto.

When the order to form a hitman squad was given, Prosciutto was initially primed to become the captain. However, he was strongly against taking this role, as Loreta was starting to show signs of chronic illness and Prosciutto wanted to make sure he could still take care of Pesci if it became necessary. Tasked with finding an alternative, Prosciutto initially approached his old friends Sorbet and Gelato, who had been part of the squad sent to confront him after the death of his father and had kept in touch out of pity. The pair were cleared to join the team, but were not trusted by the team’s superiors to become captain. And so, Prosciutto turned once more to Risotto.

Sorbet and Gelato

Sorbet and Gelato could not have been born in more different circumstances, the former in absolute poverty, and the latter in comparative privilege.

Sorbet’s mother was by no means a bad woman. It was just the case that through her crippling addictions and mental illnesses, she was in no means equipped to care for her 6 children, forcing Sorbet, the eldest, to pick up the slack. Though he loved his siblings the young Sorbet resented this role and was easily tempted by a street gang at age 12, who offered him escape from his miserable life through drug peddling. Sorbet began to drift from his family more and more. He soon disappeared from school, and became completely estranged from his mother and siblings.

By age 17 Sorbet had developed a reputation in the gang for ruthlessness, and was approached by its leader to carry out a number of assassinations. He soon became the group’s designated hitman, and was paid generously for the role. He was still however, functionally homeless.

Gelato was born to an upper-middle class family in Minsk, Russia. The youngest of four boys, his parents had been hoping for a girl, and their resentment only grew when it became clear the young Gelato was both autistic and ADHD. He suffered from extreme emotional neglect.

When Gelato was 13, the family moved back to Italy where his mother was from. Though he preferred it here, the problems with his family continued and Gelato was eventually kicked out at just 17 years old.

Following the word of a friend, Gelato made his way to Naples and found work running an illegal bar for a street gang in exchange for a room to sleep in. The same gang, incidentally, that Sorbet was working for. The two first exchanged words when Gelato found Sorbet beating up a patron who had been abusive to him, and decided to join in. Within weeks, they were lovers.

One night, while Sorbet and Gelato were asleep upstairs, the police raided the bar. In a panic, Gelato shot two, and Sorbet took out a third. The fourth got away. Knowing they would be hunted, the pair begged refuge from their gang but were denied. They were not a powerful enough syndicate to deal with something of this size. And so, with only each other, Sorbet and Gelato fled Italy.

They were on the run for two years, passing through just about every country in Europe at least once. As a means of surviving, they took on assassination contracts from local gangs and became very skilled, but of course this only turned up the heat to catch them. Eventually, it got too much, and in a final desperate bid to avoid capture, the pair went back to Italy to plead their gang to reconsider.

What they found now in charge of Naples was not their gang, but Passione. A capo by the name of Pericolo listened to their story, and agreed eagerly to dissuade the police from pursuing them in exchange for their loyalty to the new gang. Sorbet and Gelato agreed at once, and developed stands soon after.

Formaggio

A Naples Boy through and through, Formaggio was born in the central city to a large, loving family. Owing to their poverty, all the aunts, grandparents and cousins lived in one house. Although many were part of the mafia, it was always stressed to the children they were under no obligation to choose such a life. Nonetheless, many of them still did.

One night, Formaggio’s eldest brother Miguel sneaked off from the house, telling nobody but Formaggio. His goal was to seek initiation into Passione. The young Formaggio pleaded to come as well, but was told he was not ready yet. Miguel returned a couple of hours later, carrying a metal arrowhead. He told his brother that something unexpected had happened, and he needed to go now, but it was vital Formaggio told nobody of this meeting. He promised it would all be worth it in the end.

Years passed, and Miguel did not return. Then one day- a hastily-written letter, addressed solely to Formaggio. In his final message, Miguel apologised for the absence and announced that he did not expect to survive the next few hours. However, if Formaggio wanted the answers to all that had transpired, all he needed to do was recover the arrowhead that he had last seen Miguel with all those years ago. Most likely, it would have been returned to where he found it, address enclosed. Saddened and eager to understand what had happened to his brother, Formaggio followed the instructions and broke into a heavily guarded warehouse. He found the arrow, just as Miguel had said, but failed to understand how this could solve his problems.

Formaggio looked for a way out of the warehouse, and was suddenly set upon by the guards. He ran for the exit and tripped, impaling himself on the arrow. Little Feet came forth at once, stunning the guards. Not wanting to deal with whatever that was, they called in Risotto and his newly built execution squad, based nearby, to deal with it.

Fortunately, the assassins’ skills were not needed. In spite of the circumstances Formaggio met the assassins with charm and cooperation. Risotto phoned his superiors to see if killing the man was really necessary, and they agreed it wasn’t, provided Formaggio became Risotto’s business. An agreement was reached, and Formaggio was inducted into the hitman squad. It would take two more members for Formaggio to piece together what had happened to his brother.

Ghiaccio

Ghiaccio was dealt an awful hand in life. Poor, and with parents that hated him, he had little respite as a child. He was autistic, but never diagnosed, and had visual impairments that were never addressed. His fondest memory was of a bizarre couple he met as a child, a dark-haired, dour man and his blond lover, who kept him company after his mother walked away from him in anger at a shopping mall. She came back, unfortunately.

When Ghiaccio was 15, a frantic knock sounded at his door while his parents were out. Answering it nervously, an equally frantic man stood on the other side brandishing an arrow-head. He introduced himself exhaustedly as Miguel and begged for shelter- he was being chased.

Before Ghiaccio could answer a squad of men burst onto the porch and attacked Miguel, dragging him out of view. Ghiaccio was thrown to the ground and told in no uncertain terms to speak of none of this to anyone. It wasn’t until later he realised the arrow had accidentally slashed him.

At that time, Ghiaccio’s soul was not fit to manifest a stand, but it was close. And so, Ghiaccio began to suffer the slow, agonising fate that some in his position fall victim to, his half-manifested stand slowly sucking the life from him. His parents didn’t even have the heart to call a doctor.

Two months into this agony, Ghiaccio heard something outside his room. His parents. They were talking about what to do if he died. He’d had enough. He snapped.

And so, Ghiaccio’s soul reached the point where it was strong enough to bare a stand fully, after having already partially manifested one. This unheard of situation created a stand with no physical form, but unspeakable power. A surge of ice broke out around the house without Ghiaccio even meaning it to, killing his parents at once. His sickness gone, Ghiaccio got up from the bed. What the hell had just happened?

Convinced he had lost his mind, Ghiaccio fled, but left a trail of unexplainable events behind him. Realising they were dealing with an unaccounted stand user, Passione had Ghiaccio hunted down and propositioned to join them. Terrified and with no other idea of what to do, he agreed. With a stand like this, there were only 2 options: La Squadra and La Unita. La Unita had no interest in an impulsive teenager, so Ghiaccio was sent at once to La Squadra.

The group was reluctant to house a teenage boy as an assassin, but took him in nonetheless. Formaggio was grateful for the crumbs of information Ghiaccio could give about the fate of his brother. Sorbet and Gelato couldn’t shake the feeling they’d seen the boy before somewhere.

Illuso

He was an only child. There was nothing particularly wrong with his relationship with his parents, but nothing particularly right either. There just… wasn’t a connection. They were a middle class family, well to do but nothing special. An arrogant boy, Illuso struggled to make friends, though he did become somewhat close with a boy in the year below him named Formaggio, for a short time.

When Illuso was 15, his parents came to him with a proposition. A distant relative of theirs was in possession of a large castle, but could not pay for its upkeep any more. The man had asked if Illuso would be interested in becoming a live-in caretaker, to be paid less than industry standards but still a lot by the standards of a 15 year old boy. Illuso agreed at once, and moved out of his parents home in a matter of days.

At the castle, his loneliness only grew. The place was closed to visitors and had no inhabitants apart from his new employer, who even then only lived in the castle 4 days a week. Illuso thought he was okay with this life, but the effect on his psyche was indisputable.

Then one day, the castle had a break-in. Illuso was accosted by a young man named Miguel, who had been squatting in the cellar for days and believed the castle was abandoned. The pair came to an understanding, and Miguel proposed that in exchange for his silence, he would give Illuso something amazing. He pricked him with the arrow.

Thrilled with his new power, Illuso agreed to keep Miguel’s existence a secret and the pair co-existed for many years. Illuso learned that Miguel had stolen the arrow from a gang named Passione, after discovering its power and making the decision to take it on impulse. Passione is still hunting him, hence the need to hide.

But eventually, they found him nonetheless. Illuso and Miguel tried their best to fight but it was an uneven battle. Miguel fled with the arrow, chased by one half of the attacking squad, leaving Illuso to deal with the other half.

But against all odds, Illuso survived, using his stand to eliminate the attackers one by one. Eventually the last attackers gave in and fled, The next people sent to confront Illuso came with a deal: join Passione, and all will be forgiven.

Despite his stand’s power, Illuso’s superiors disliked his attitude. After a few months of being thrown between teams, he was saddled with La Squadra.

Melone

The middle of three children, Melone was born to an upper-working class family in Florence. His parents were eccentric-academic sorts, who encouraged Melone and his sisters to act without regard for social convention. Though intelligent, Melone was never quite top of the class due to his inability to stay on task. Still, he got into a decent university and had plans to become a gynaecologist.

In his second year, Melone was approached by a poor couple seeking antenatal care for their pregnancy. As they explained, they were in a gang and could not go into public care for fear of their identities as criminals being discovered. They pleaded Melone for whatever rudimentary checks he could provide, just so they could have some assurance their baby was okay. Melone agreed, and met with the couple several times.

Over the course of the next year, Melone gave similar services to a couple more women who were recommended to go to him by the first patient. It was only a matter of time before the university discovered what he was doing, especially once he started stealing equipment to improve the quality of his examinations. Melone was expelled and referred to the police, but one of his patients got Passione to bribe away his charges. Unfortunately, this put him in their debt. Melone told his family he was simply going away for a while.

Melone languished around in Passione for a while. Though he did receive a stand, its lethal capabilities weren’t immediately clear, and so he remained in the lower ranks. His main respite was the bar scene, in which he got to mingle with many of Passione’s members from different squads. It was through here that he met Illuso, Formaggio and Ghiaccio of the execution team, and formed a friendship. Through them he even formed links with the group’s leader, Risotto.

The team were eager to help Melone advance to a better position, and aided him in exploring his stand. Eventually, he discovered how lethal baby face could truly be, outshining everyone’s expectations. Risotto was pleased to welcome him into the team.

Pesci

By the time Pesci was 13, it was clear his mother’s illness was terminal. Initially reluctant to involve him around the team, Prosciutto increasingly allowed Pesci to stay with them while his mother was at the hospital, since there was nowhere else for the young boy to go. As much as everyone tried to comfort him, he was terrified.

Two years later, it was clear Loreta was in her final weeks. Pesci dedicated as much time as he could to being with her, sleeping at her bedside more often than not. It was here that he first felt the strange occurrences begin. It would be subtle at first, the peculiar feeling of his mother’s heartbeat in his hands as he drifted off to sleep. It was comforting, then. It assured him his mother was still alive. Then, it got weirder, a long string extending from his fingers and into his mother’s chest. He thought he was just sleep deprived.

When the fateful day came and Loreta’s heart monitor stopped, Pesci felt a surge of panic. Desperate to find some proof this wasn’t really happening, his stand burst forth from his body and shot its hook into Loreta’s chest. Unfortunately, it was all for nothing. Loreta was dead.

As Pesci held the rod in his hands he realised this was far too real to be a hallucination. He could sense everything, the fading metabolism of his mother’s body and the vibrations in the floor. As the nurses confirmed the death, they could not see it. Why couldn’t they see it?

Prosciutto came into the room. With one look, Pesci knew that his brother could see the rod as well. He panicked and ran.

Prosciutto tried desperately over the next couple days to get in touch with Pesci. He knew exactly what had happened- clearly the boy had summoned a stand from the anguish of his mother’s death and had freaked out in confusion. That’s all completely understandable, but if Pesci isn’t informed of what his new power means soon, he could get himself into serious trouble. Especially if Passione found out.

And so, Prosciutto set off with Risotto to hunt Pesci down, eventually finding him at a run down park near his childhood home. Prosciutto comforted him and explained he knew what was happening, but if everything was going to be okay, he had to go with them.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Prompt: LQR/NMJ fuck or die, whether literally or socially

Without a Path - Chapter 1 - ao3

Warnings: adult content - please mind the other tags on Ao3!

-

These discussion conferences were getting less tolerable by the year, Lan Qiren thought as he trudged up the steep steps that led to the little house on the top of the hill. It was only two years ago that Sect Leader Nie had died, his place among the five Great Sects taken by his eldest son, and it was as if without his steadying (if irreverent) presence the other sect leaders had completely lost all sense of restraint.

Just last year, Jin Guangshan, who had been hosting, had set some late afternoon meetings in a “wine shop” that had almost predictably turned out to be a brothel, and he’d even taken the further step of paying the ladies of the establishment in advance to accompany them for the evening. A number of the smaller sect leaders had taken him up on the offer, carousing gleefully in the main room, but in the luxuriously laid out room reserved for the Great Sects, three of the five of them had stubbornly refused to partake – Lan Qiren on account of his sect rules, Nie Mingjue on account of his mourning, and Jiang Fengmian on account of his wife.

The entire evening had been unbearably awkward as a result: the ladies continued to make advances, even after having been rejected, and Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan only pressured them all the harder the drunker they got, both with a girl on each leg and one rubbing their shoulders. At one point, when Nie Mingjue had gotten up to leave, utterly disgusted – Lan Qiren couldn’t blame him – Wen Ruohan had even reached out to catch him, using his superior strength to pull him off his feet and onto his couch.  Nie Mingjue had recoiled as if he’d landed amidst a bed of poisonous snakes, leaping up and storming out, and Jin Guangshan had nearly burst something laughing.

And now there was this year, Wen Ruohan was hosting, and he’d decided to do some sort of fancy winter night-hunt set up, encircling an entire mountain valley in the north for their use. There were a half-dozen houses in the foothills for all the sect leaders to stay in as their disciples conducted the hunts, excluding only the leaders of the Great Set, who were invited to walk up an unnecessarily steep hill to stay in the house up there. Fancier, more prestigious, with a better view…really, Wen Ruohan probably just wanted to rub all the smaller sect’s faces in the Great Sects’ glory, by which he meant his glory, again. Lan Qiren was most definitely not impressed.

The house might be better positioned, but it was inconvenient.

It was located on vein of power that boosted cultivation considerably but made flying by sword difficult – meaning they could only walk up, not fly – and the house itself was more elegant than it was spacious, meaning that once all the servants Wen Ruohan deemed essential were included the rest of them could each bring no more than two attendants. It was distant from the other houses, including the ones where their remaining sect disciples were being housed, and that in turn meant that someone would need to make the trek in between the two on a regular basis to bring them news of their own sects’ successes or failures in the hunt.

Moreover, it had already begun to gently snow, which meant they didn’t even get the benefit of the supposed view!

No, Lan Qiren was most certainly not impressed.

He entered the house, which was at least properly warm, and nodded at Jiang Fengmian, who was sitting with Jin Guangshan and receiving a cup of tea – he looked minorly pained, but that could just be proximity to Jin Guangshan and his idea of acceptable small talk – and it wasn’t long before Nie Mingjue arrived, habitual scowl on his face as he stalked in, flanked by his own two attendants. He was probably least comfortable out of all of them, it being no secret that he believed Wen Ruohan had had something to do with the death of his father – no, that was too polite. More accurately, he believed Wen Ruohan to have murdered his father, and Wen Ruohan had only barely gone through the motions of denying it, yet there was nothing anyone could do about it without starting a war that no one was ready for.

This was the first discussion conference he had to attend as Wen Ruohan’s guest. Lan Qiren felt a stab of sympathy and nodded to him; Nie Mingjue’s scowl softened, fading slightly as he nodded back.

The two of them were more familiar than most, and not only because the Nie and the Lan were long-standing allies. Nie Mingjue himself had spent some time in Gusu at one of Lan Qiren’s early lectures, back when he was still figuring things out – he had been a good student, thoughtful and hard-working, and he had become friends with Lan Qiren’s eldest nephew. That had been a friendship Lan Qiren had sought to encourage, thinking it would be good for them when they would both be sect leaders in the future; it was only that he had not expected Nie Mingjue to become sect leader so fast, so early.  It was in many ways deeply strange to think that one of his students was now his peer and equal, even though Lan Qiren acknowledged that that was simply how inheritance worked.

(He wondered a little, sometimes, at Nie Mingjue’s age – the Qinghe Nie were unusually secretive on such matters, had always been. He’d never known the boy’s age when he had been his student, only that Nie Mingjue had grown tall at an advanced clip compared to the other boys, suggesting that he was perhaps older than he appeared. The Nie sect hadn’t objected to his ascension to the role of sect leader, suggesting he must be at least close to being of age at twenty, but really there wasn’t any polite way to ask. Not that that had stopped Jin Guangshan from trying to pry, though naturally Nie Mingjue had rebuffed all such queries.)

“Wonderful view,” he remarked, seeking to ease the mood, and Nie Mingjue briefly almost smiled.

“If you like dull white,” Jin Guangshan sniffed, completely missing the implied criticism. “But then again, I suppose that is the Lan sect’s preferred taste.”

“We generally prefer clouds to snow,” Lan Qiren said, not rising to his bait. “Where is our host?”

“An excellent question. One typically expects a host to be present to greet his guests,” Nie Mingjue said in agreement, his voice low and hot with seething rage.

“He was here, but was called away unexpectedly,” Jiang Fengmian said, acting as the peacemaker as always. “I have no doubt he’ll return shortly.”

Another ke passed before Wen Ruohan strode in, his shoulders slightly damp with snow that turned into condensation from the heat of his cultivation – a waste of spiritual energy, really, but quite in character for him. It occurred briefly to Lan Qiren that for there to be sufficient snow to make such a performance meant that the gentle snow must have gotten stronger since he had entered earlier, but then Wen Ruohan was opening the meeting and he had to focus on more important things. These discussion conferences might officially be held out to be social events, a way for the cultivation world to come together to share knowledge and trade pointers, but for the sect leaders, the Great Sects most of all, it was also an opportunity to do business. Interactions between the great cultivation sects was an especially cut-throat business, each move, even those of allies, being filled with traps, and that meant Lan Qiren had to be paying full attention at all times.

Wen Ruohan seemed especially enthusiastic for business that day, the agenda for that afternoon’s meeting being more filled up than usual with contentious subjects that required significant debate. The meetings on the first day always ran long, a shichen or more, but this one ran past two and was nearing three by the time they started to near the end – they’d even worked through dinner, servants flitting into the room with trays that they placed in front of each sect leader’s seat and communal dishes carried around, a set-up that suggested that Wen Ruohan had anticipated such an over-long meeting from the start.

An attempt to finagle some benefits through driving them all into exhaustion, perhaps? He would have had the advantage of being here for several days in advance, while the rest of them had only just arrived. A cheap trick, if that’s what he was up to, and not successful; if anything, the pressure put them all on their guard.

“I think we’re just about done,” Wen Ruohan finally said, which was a relief. “It’s too late to have the entertainment I planned with our dinner, but I’ll have them bring out some wine to accompany us.”

Lan Qiren suppressed a groan.

Jiang Fengmian cleared his throat. “I had planned to go check on how my disciples were settling in,” he said apologetically, and Lan Qiren was just about to agree that that was a marvelous idea when Wen Ruohan broke the sound-suppressing arrays that had been protecting the room they were in and they abruptly heard the rattling sound of intense winds.

“A storm?” Jin Guangshan asked with a frown, and they all went out to look – it was indeed a storm, the snow from earlier having intensified into a blizzard. It was impossible to see more than a few zhang out, even with eyes sharpened through cultivation; it would be inadvisable weather to fly in even if such a thing were not already made difficult by the dense qi of the hilltop, and of course the stairs would be impossible to navigate. “Ah, well. Such things are impossible to predict.”

They weren’t, actually, Lan Qiren thought with irritation, and Wen Ruohan should have put some more effort into trying to predict it before insisting on this ridiculous winter hunt. Perhaps he’d even deliberately planned for something like this to increase the difficulty level for their disciples, who would not be expecting it – the man’s pettiness and need for victory truly knew no bounds.

“I suppose it’s time for the entertainment, then,” Wen Ruohan said with a smirk, clapping to summon in the dancers. Scantily clad ones, to Jin Guangshan’s delight and everyone else’s growing misery, and Lan Qiren couldn’t help but think grumpily that he wouldn’t have considered dancers ‘essential’ enough to take up space that could have been used by adding in additional attendants.

Luckily, a glance at the candle clock revealed that it wouldn’t be long – enough time to burn an incense stick or two, no more – before he could plausibly plead out on the basis of his sect rules regarding the right time to retire for the evening. It wasn’t an excuse that always worked, unfortunately, as the other sect leaders knew that the rules of hospitality took precedence, but in this particular instance when he tried it Nie Mingjue made some noises about wanting to take advantage of the mountain spiritual vein and winter storm to cultivate and Wen Ruohan for once acted the gracious host, allowing them to retire without raising too much of a fuss. Jiang Fengmian stayed behind to continue watching the dancers, his posture clearly appreciative and more interested than usual, but Lan Qiren had no doubt that he’d be following them soon enough; with a wife like his, he’d soon conclude that the momentary pleasure of watching the admittedly beautiful and well-trained women wasn’t worth her reaction should she hear of it.

He himself settled into his room with a sigh, dismissing his two attendants to go to their own beds. It was already hai hour, the time for sleep according to the Lan sect rules, and by all rights he ought to be fading off to sleep as well through sheer force of habit.

Unfortunately, sleep did not seem forthcoming. He felt restless and confined, hot under the collar with suppressed inactivity – still full of adrenaline from the high-pressure tension that always accompanied the business parts of the discussion conferences, the often vicious arguments that always danced on the very edge of a war he was no longer certain he could say that no one wanted, and, worse, because of the ice storm battering the windows, he could not take a walk to burn off the excess energy.

Sleep seemed far out of reach.

At least he had his duties as sect leader to keep him busy. Lan Qiren occupied himself with taking down notes regarding the results of the meeting at once, lest he forget and have his forgetfulness used against him, and with a meeting that went on so long there was a great deal to record and plenty of information he would need to obtain from his disciples once connection was reestablished in the morning.

A shichen later, he was still awake, writing out one final set of instructions, and he was just about to finally retire for the evening and try to go to sleep, however unsuccessful he expected that endeavor to be, when there was an unexpected knock on his door.

Frowning, Lan Qiren rose to his feet and went to open it.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he said, surprised. “What brings you here this late?”

“Can I come in?” Nie Mingjue asked, and Lan Qiren would have refused if he hadn’t noticed that the other man appeared unusually upset – although the room was lit only by flickering lanterns, Lan Qiren’s cultivation was high enough to make his night vision excellent, and he could see the tightness in Nie Mingjue’s eyes and the bulge of his jaw as he ground his teeth together.

“Very well,” Lan Qiren said, and stepped aside, allowing Nie Mingjue to enter. “What’s the matter?”

“Have you been feeling unusual this evening?” Nie Mingjue asked, voice abrupt. He was standing especially straight, his hands behind his back. “Uncomfortable, or – overheating?”

Lan Qiren frowned.

“I have,” he said slowly. Now that he thought about it, he could feel sweat on the back of his neck, which could not be explained merely by the braziers and conductive array keeping the room warm – not in the face of the ice storm right outside. He did not like that, nor did he like the implications of Nie Mingjue coming to him late at night with the question. “Why?”

“I found this in the kitchen,” Nie Mingjue said, and he stuck out his hand with a jar with herbs in it. “It was – I think they put it in our food.”

Lan Qiren accepted the jar and examined it, his lips twisting into a scowl of his own as he realized what it was. “A consequence of our refusal to participate in the planned entertainment last time, no doubt,” he said, his voice tight, thinking that this was truly intolerable behavior. They were sect leaders, not schoolchildren; such a prank went beyond the mere unseemly into the inappropriate.

He noticed that Nie Mingjue’s expression had only grown more anxious, however, and sought to reassure him. “It’s not poison,” he explained. “At least not in the traditional sense – the drug is a powerful yin stimulant, with amatory properties.”

An extremely powerful aphrodisiac, in other words.

“Although it has some legitimate uses, it is best known to be used in the more dubious forms of dual cultivation. The effects cannot be simply filtered out with a golden core, but are easy enough to blunt with an infusion of yang energy.”

That was, of course, the basis of the prank, stupid and infantile as it was: for a man, it was generally not difficult to infuse one’s core with yang energy. Although it would of course be easier and more beneficial to accept an offer from one of the undoubtedly specially selected female dancers to engage in dual cultivation, a man could always utilize his own hand to stimulate the appropriate effect, even if it would take longer. Wen Ruohan – and Jin Guangshan, no doubt – would undoubtedly laugh themselves sick, dallying the night away with the dancers while the rest of them were forced to abuse themselves for hours just to have some peace.

Bastards.

“Fuck,” Nie Mingjue said vehemently, and Lan Qiren found to his surprise that his expression looked, if anything, even worse, his face having gone a ghastly shade of pale. “I can’t – do that.”

“Why not?” Lan Qiren asked, bewildered. Surely the former sect leader Nie had given his son the most basic education – Lan Qiren truly hoped he would not be called upon to explain the cultivation mechanics of masturbation, although he would grit his teeth and endure if necessary. “It may take several repetitions to flush it out entirely, but the drug itself will assist with – with the, uh, motivation – physically – for the infusion, that is –”

“You don’t understand,” Nie Mingjue said, and his face was now flushed, red at the cheeks as if he had a fever. “It’s not – I know what an infusion of yang energy is. It’s just – it’s not…”

He closed his eyes tightly. He was actually shaking, Lan Qiren noticed, his shoulders trembling – he was clearly very distressed by the whole thing.

“He knows,” he finally muttered. “He must have…there’s no other explanation. This was intentional, all of it. Wen Ruohan knows.”

Something about Nie Mingjue’s tone – almost fatalistic, defeated and resigned, as if he had lost some great battle that he had not even known he was fighting – made a hard tight ball of anxiety in Lan Qiren’s stomach.

“What does he know?” he asked cautiously.

Nie Mingjue laughed dully, a short bark of sound that was all bitterness. “That I can’t generate that type of yang energy on my own, Sect Leader Lan. That I’m misaligned.”

The implications of that hit Lan Qiren with all the impact of an avalanche.

Misaligned. It was one of those strange Qinghe Nie traditions, along with not disclosing private information such as the year of one’s birth – they believed that it was possible for the reincarnation wheel to err, for a man’s soul to be born in a woman’s body, or a woman in a man, or even in some cases a nebulous sort of existence that recognized neither. The substance of what they were wasn’t important, not really; the term was all-encompassing, meaning only that the physical body and the ephemeral souls and spirits did not match.

But for Nie Mingjue to say that he couldn’t generate an infusion of yang meant that the body he had been born with was that of a woman – yin-aligned, not yang-aligned, even though his stature and bearing suggested that his eight characters were likely to be heavily tilted towards yang, if not entirely yang. For a woman, giving in to the aphrodisiacal effects of the drug would aggravate the effects, not cure them; for a woman, ingesting such a drug in sufficiently large quantities could even be fatal, with the effects of the excess yin unbalancing her qi, causing –

Causing a qi deviation.

The former sect leader Nie had died of a qi deviation only two years ago. His father had died of the same.

Nie Mingjue, with his only heir a child under ten, could not risk one.

If they had been at home – if they’d been anywhere more civilized, Nie Mingjue could have summoned some doctor to help flush out the effects through a manual infusion of yang, using drugs, purges, the transfer of spiritual energy, that sort of thing. Without one, the only way to obtain a yang infusion of the strength necessary to keep the effects of a drug this powerful at bay would be through dual cultivation.

Through sex, specifically. Sex in which he was penetrated by a man.

And that, itself, was the problem. The Qinghe Nie recognized the misaligned, and some of the cultivation world followed their lead, but the majority did not. If it was ever publicized that Nie Mingjue had the body of a woman, and that he had, moreover, lost his chastity – it would be a crippling loss of face for the Nie sect, not unless he subsequently married the man who had dishonored him.

“Who can you ask?” Lan Qiren asked, his heart sinking. Between the ice storm that he’d thought had been an oversight on Wen Ruohan’s part, the tall hill with its barrier to flight, the restricted number of attendants they were able to bring, and the application of the drug in such quantity that it could affect a cultivator as strong as Lan Qiren so quickly…there were too many coincidences for this to be anything but what Nie Mingjue suspected it was: a trap designed to ensnare him in an impossible situation. “Perhaps…your attendants? You were allowed to bring two –”

“I wanted to bring people I could trust,” Nie Mingjue said dully. “With such a small number…”

Lan Qiren understood. Nie Mingjue was young, still new to his role as sect leader even after two years – there must be plenty of people both in and out of the Nie sect waiting anxiously to see him fail. For a situation in which he would have to be at close quarters with the other sect leaders, he would have wanted people that he believed would support him unreservedly.

He would have brought family.

“Too close?” Lan Qiren checked, and grimaced when Nie Mingjue nodded. Obviously engaging in incest would only make a bad situation worse, even if Nie Mingjue were willing to order such a thing, which he very obviously wasn’t. “In that case, there’s only…”

His voice trailed off.

“Servants,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice very tight. “Servants, or another sect leader.”

He swallowed, hard. Then, suddenly, before Lan Qiren could do or say anything more, he knelt down before Lan Qiren and pressed his forehead to the floor.

“Sect Leader Lan,” he said. “Please help me.”

Lan Qiren stared down at him in horror, quickly crouching to pull Nie Mingjue up again. “Me? You can’t be serious!”

“It has to be you,” Nie Mingjue said. “Fucking another sect’s servant while they were still in their employ would be as good as saying that my sect was only good to be servants themselves, and of the sect leaders…there’s no one else. Jiang Fengmian is married to a vicious shrew that would castrate him if he even thought about anyone else, Jin Guangshan is a notorious whoremonger known for his cruelty to his bedpartners – and Wen Ruohan…”

He looked up at Lan Qiren, tears glinting in his eyes.

“Sect Leader Lan, please,” he whispered. “Please. It can’t be Wen Ruohan. It can’t.”

Now it was Lan Qiren’s turn to swallow.

“I am faithful to my sect’s traditions,” he croaked. There was no rule against engaging in sexual relations in his sect, only against promiscuity, but among those who were the most faithful to the traditions of their founder, those like Lan Qiren who sought to model themselves on Lan An, such things were taken very seriously. This situation fell nowhere in the list of acceptable exceptions that the young used to explore their inclinations and manage the hormones of adolescence and early adulthood; for Lan Qiren, at this point in his life, he wished only to go to bed with the woman who would become his wife.

The one he would walk to on foot without a path, as Lan An had done, bringing gifts and an oath of eternal loyalty, binding their hands together with his forehead ribbon in a promise that would never be broken.

His dao companion, his one, the other half of his life.

Not this.

Not like this.

“I know,” Nie Mingjue said, and he sounded truly wretched. “I know what I’m asking of you. I know I have no reason to expect anything from you, much less something that may affect the rest of your life. But – please. I beg of you, please. I know what a drug like this can do, especially if combined with certain others, and I just know he’ll find a way to get those to me, too. He won’t let me have the chance to just wait it out and hope for the best – I’ll enter delirium and be unable to resist, and then I’ll wake up and find myself bound to marry the man who murdered my father. Teacher Lan, please!”

Lan Qiren’s shoulders shook. Nie Mingjue was a proud man, and rightfully so, powerful and righteous as he was; it was abominable that he should be begging on his knees for Lan Qiren to violate him because he feared the all-too-plausible alternative more. And at the end he had slipped up in his desperation and called Lan Qiren ‘Teacher’, as if he was still his student, not his peer, still that boy from not so long ago.

The worst of it was that he truly could not think of another option.

If he refused, and he knew he was well within his rights to refuse, Nie Mingjue would try to submit himself in desperation to someone else – Jiang Fengmian would reject him, claiming that Wen Ruohan would never do such a thing even though it was patently obvious that he would, and to submit in such a way to Jin Guangshan was very nearly as bad, given his greed and treatment of women. Faced with such a rejection, with his only other options being intolerable politically or personally or both, Nie Mingjue might try to leave this place contrary all reason, heading into the snow and ice and the steep steps that had been treacherous even without a blinding blizzard, but that might kill him.

He might prefer that it kill him.

“I will help,” he said, because the alternative was unthinkable, because Nie Mingjue had been his student and he couldn’t abandon him now. Nie Mingjue looked up at him, eyes wide as if with disbelief, so he repeated himself: “I will help you.” He hesitated, but only briefly. “Come to bed.”

Nie Mingjue rose to his feet unsteadily and followed him obediently to the bed.

(From his daydreams and the admittedly minimal exploration that he had done in his youth, Lan Qiren knew that he liked obedience in his lovers. He enjoyed pampering them, caring for them, but most of all he liked having them wholly yield to him and trust him, as Nie Mingjue was doing now. He liked it best when the submission was worthwhile, when it was someone brave and bold and smart and powerful, and in another time, another place, a person very much like Nie Mingjue would have been just what he wanted. But he was only doing him a favor – had only been sought out in desperation, not desire – he should not think of such things, nor of how beautiful Nie Mingjue was in the flickering candlelight.)

“Have you done anything before?” Lan Qiren asked, and was unsurprised when Nie Mingjue shook his head. “Anything at all?”

“With another person? No.”

Lan Qiren nodded, accepting it. “You should – probably get undressed.”

Nie Mingjue nodded. His gaze was averted, but his hands were sure and straightforward as he removed the various layers of clothing he wore, the visible markings of the sect leader of the Nie sect; underneath, he was as tall and broad as might be expected.

Lan Qiren put a hand on Nie Mingjue’s thigh. He flinched.

“You’re going to have to relax,” Lan Qiren said, trying to be kind. Nie Mingjue lay back on the bed and clearly made an effort, shoulders settling and muscles unclenching through sheer willpower. Lan Qiren would like very much to blame the fact that his cock hung heavy and hard between his thighs entirely on the drug he had consumed, but he wasn’t that ignorant of himself. “Would you like me to…?”

“Just get on with it,” Nie Mingjue snapped, and then amended to add, “If you would.”

To his shame, Lan Qiren’s cock twitched.

He ignored it and reached forward to touch Nie Mingjue’s body, which shivered invitingly under his hands: his shoulders, his hips, the hard planes of his belly and the surprising softness of his chest – Nie Mingjue flinched once again at that, and Lan Qiren moved away immediately – before dipping a hand down between his legs.  

It was probably the drug that made Nie Mingjue warm and wet for him, he reminded himself, and the expression of surprise and the way his hips jerked up when fingers slid over his cunt was simply inexperience. And the way he bit his lower lip and tried to force himself to grind into Lan Qiren’s hand –

“Stop that,” Lan Qiren said, and Nie Mingjue obeyed at once, cheeks pinking with embarrassment. He sank back onto the bed when instructed and spread his legs wider, and Lan Qiren wanted to eat him out until he cried. The effect of the drug, he hoped. “Tell me what feels good to you.”

“It mostly feels strange,” Nie Mingjue confessed, even as Lan Qiren worked a finger into him. He was unsurprisingly tight as a vise, so tight that Lan Qiren was starting to have doubts that he would be able to fit himself inside – he was not small by any measure – but after a few moments either the drug or the sensations started to do its work and Nie Mingjue softened around him. “I don’t normally touch myself in there.”

“Can you show me what you normally do, then?”

“Is that really necessary?” Lan Qiren gave him a stern look. “…yes, Teacher Lan.”

Lan Qiren could have done without the self-knowledge that he liked being called teacher in bed, especially by a blushing former student – who was of an age to be his nephew’s dearest friend, no less – but he was stuck with that now.

Just like he was stuck with the knowledge of what Nie Mingjue looked like when he touched himself, of hearing the muffled grunt he gave when his fingers rubbed against his clit, how he arched his back and raised his hips as he pressed down on it. How tight and wet he was when Lan Qiren gave him another finger, how he hissed at the stretch and then furrowed his brow when Lan Qiren crooked his fingers, rubbing him from the inside. The way his thighs trembled.  

“Are you going to fuck me at any point?” Nie Mingjue asked, a little plaintive.

“I’m not sure you’re ready,” Lan Qiren said, but he pulled open his clothing – it hadn’t occurred to him to get undressed, even if Nie Mingjue was, and the little inequality jarred his sense of righteousness even as it turned him on – and took out his cock, pressing against it Nie Mingjue’s slick cunt.

It didn’t go in.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Nie Mingjue, who had been staring at the ceiling and bracing himself, said, and pushed himself up onto his elbows, craning his neck up to look down at where they were failing to join. “Oh, well, see, that’s the problem right there. I’d assumed that I’d invited a man into my bed, not a horse.”

“My bed,” Lan Qiren reminded him, though he wasn’t quite able to keep his lips from twitching in amusement. “It might be easier if you reached completion first. It would relax you.”

“Oh, sure. No problem. Because the prospect of imminent impalement is so very sexy,” Nie Mingjue grumbled – Lan Qiren did not laugh, but it was close – and reached down, closing his eyes as he started touching himself in earnest.

Lan Qiren ground his cock into the bed as he waited, two fingers still inside and steadily stretching, his mouth dry as he listened to the slick, rhythmic sounds, as he watched Nie Mingjue’s face go steadily more slack – too slack, actually, and when Nie Mingjue opened his eyes he looked dazed. Maybe it was simply how he reacted to pleasure, or maybe it was the second drug he’d suspected that he’d been dosed with, perhaps, something to make him less vigilant.

Lan Qiren hoped it was just pleasure, but he knew that it didn’t make a difference either way to what they had to do.

Lan Qiren waited until Nie Mingjue’s hips finished shuddering – one foot twitched and nearly kicked, and he caught it with one hand and pressed it back down – before pulling out his fingers and pressing his cock up against the young man’s entrance again. It was still tight, but he was able to force it in, squeezing himself until the head had gone inside.

“Fuck,” Nie Mingjue said. He sounded half-drunk. “That’s so weird. You’re – inside of me.”

“Not yet,” Lan Qiren said, and pressed himself forward slowly, bracing himself against the bed for leverage as he did. He managed to get about halfway in before Nie Mingjue whimpered. “Are you in pain?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said. “More like – pressure. Heat. I don’t know. I can feel you.”

“Focus on cultivation,” Lan Qiren advised, which was very good advice except for the fact that Nie Mingjue said, “Yes, Teacher Lan,” and Lan Qiren’s hips involuntarily jerked forward, making Nie Mingjue groan and getting him almost all the way in.

He forced himself to slow down again, to stop. His arms were trembling where he was holding himself up, and it wasn’t with the strain – as if someone raised in the Lan sect, with their habit of handstands and other such exercises, would feel strain over something like this – but rather from the effort of restraint.

He was not going to grab Nie Mingjue by the hips, bend him in two, and start fucking him into the bed until he shouted for mercy, but it was – more difficult than he liked to admit to stop himself from doing just that. This was not a type of restraint that he was familiar with.

“I feel like I should be doing something with my hands,” Nie Mingjue said.

“You may touch my shoulders,” Lan Qiren said, and felt Nie Mingjue’s hands settle there a moment later, fingers gripping the cloth tightly. A moment later, he could felt the spiritual energy inside of Nie Mingjue starting to circulate, and he nodded, impressed that Nie Mingjue was able to find his focus even in such a situation. “Well done. Good boy.”

Nie Mingjue’s legs had ended up slung over Lan Qiren’s hips at some point in the process and he abruptly tightened them, before releasing the pressure just as abruptly a moment later.

“Would you prefer that I avoid saying that?” Lan Qiren asked, desperately trying to focus on starting his own cultivation instead of thinking about Nie Mingjue’s reaction.

“…no,” Nie Mingjue muttered, and turned his face to the side. He was blushing again. “It’s fine. You can – I like that.”

Lan Qiren put one hand on Nie Mingjue’s hips, and pulled himself halfway out, then thrust back inside in a sudden motion, making Nie Mingjue cry out in surprise.

“Cultivation,” he reminded him as he started moving his hips, more cruelty than anything else because he was having some considerable trouble thinking or focusing himself.  “You can do it. You’re a good boy for me, aren’t you?”

“Y – yes, Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said, his whole body shifting with the force of Lan Qiren’s thrusts. Amazingly, somehow, he really did start to cultivate, and then Lan Qiren finally got his act together and did the same, and suddenly their spiritual energy was intertwining, yin feeding into yang and yang spilling into yin, and it wasn’t long before that metaphor became a reality, Lan Qiren gripping tightly onto Nie Mingjue’s hips as he came. He reached down between them and rubbed Nie Mingjue’s clit, mimicking the actions he’d seen him take earlier – a little rough, circles a little careless – and a few moments later the dual cultivation did its work, pulling Nie Mingjue along, his hips jerking up again as he hit his peak once more, squeezing him from the inside.

“Fuck,” Nie Mingjue said, with feeling. “Fuck.”

“A good start,” Lan Qiren said. He was still hard, even after he’d finished inside of him. That was definitely the effect of the drug. “Make sure to draw the yang energy into your dantian. Use it to cleanse your core. Would you like to try another position for the next round?”

“Huh?” Nie Mingjue asked, the daze he was in earlier having clearly deepened, so Lan Qiren pulled out of him – Nie Mingjue whined at that – and helped him turn over so that he was on his hands and knees, his hair having fallen out of some of its braids, though not all, and falling down over his shoulders and back. “Oh, I see. Is this right?”

Lan Qiren was able to push back inside much more easily, whether from the earlier stretch or the new position. “Yes, very good,” he praised, and Nie Mingjue shivered underneath him. “Spread your legs a little more – good, good. Start cultivating again. I’m going to fuck you.”

Nie Mingjue’s cunt tightened around him when he used the crude language. Anticipation, not dread, he hoped, and matched action to word.

Having gotten the edge off with the first round, the second round took longer, Nie Mingjue reduced to shuddering and gasping almost despite himself. The new position also made balancing easier, as Lan Qiren could rely on Nie Mingjue’s own body to steady them both, and that gave him freer use of his hands: he could run them up and down Nie Mingjue’s sides, could press a hand to his belly as if he were trying to feel himself there inside. Could reach up and touch that tempting softness at his chest – this time, Nie Mingjue did not resist, too lost in sensation to really notice, although Lan Qiren did not linger – could slide his fingers down so that he could finger Nie Mingjue’s clit. Could trace around the place where they were connected, the slick dripping out and smearing across Nie Mingjue’s thighs as he fucked into him with wet sounds.

The cultivation aspect was also improved: their spiritual energies recognized each other better now, and for all its faults this mountaintop house was in fact an excellent natural source of spiritual qi. Lan Qiren could feel the energy being drawn throughout his body, strengthening him much faster than meditation or playing guqin or swordsmanship usually did, the ecstasy of spiritual pleasure accompanying the physical sensations besieging him.

Nie Mingjue begged me to do this, Lan Qiren thought hazily, his balls tightening in anticipation of another orgasm. He wondered if he could get Nie Mingjue to beg him again, although maybe this time it would be for his cock or for permission to come.

He suddenly wanted to see Nie Mingjue’s face again, currently hidden in his folded arms with his ass in the air like some bitch waiting to get bred. He wanted to fuck him for a week, never resting, until he couldn’t walk any more, and then he wanted to take him home and do it all over again. He wanted to see Nie Mingjue bent over the low table he used in his study at the Cloud Recesses, hands held obediently on his wrists behind his back, calling him teacher like the good little student he’d been as he used his body to milk Lan Qiren’s cock dry.

One of those, at least, he could have.

He pulled out again, even though he was starting to get close. “Turn,” he ordered, and Nie Mingjue did. “Hold your legs open – no, use your hands. Put them under your knees.”

Nie Mingjue obeyed. He looked obscene in that posture, as Lan Qiren had expected he would: his face was red and sweat was dripping down his forehead, drool at the corners of his mouth and eyes glassy with tears that occasionally rolled down his cheek.

Lan Qiren put his cock against him, but did not go in, just rubbed up against his cunt, marveling at how slick with his juices his cock was. “Are you in pain?” he asked again, an echo of his earlier question when he’d actually meant it as a serious question rather than a tease. “You’re crying.”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, then stuttered, “Yes. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just – a lot. Don’t stop.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t want to hurt you –”

“Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue whined. “Please fuck me already.”

Lan Qiren clicked his tongue. “So impatient,” he said, but he was already sinking in, their spiritual qi at once twining together again, and it wasn’t hard to reach in and tweak it, making Nie Mingjue’s hips jerk and his mouth fall open slack as he came once again. His whole body tensed, and then relaxed, and Lan Qiren used the moment to fuck him hard, hips pistoning as he thrust in and out, using his own hands to keep one of Nie Mingjue’s legs up – he’d released them when he came, hands dropping to grab at the bedding instead – and it wasn’t long before he was coming himself, buried deep inside.

Nie Mingjue was crying in earnest now, but not unhappily – tears spilling down his cheeks, but enthusiastically participating the whole while – and Lan Qiren pulled out and pressed their bodies together.

“It’s going well,” he assured him, reaching for his own cultivation to encourage his cock to recover faster. “Once or twice more. You can do it.”

Nie Mingjue nodded

“Good boy,” Lan Qiren said, enjoying the way it made Nie Mingjue both blush and pant at the same time. “Your teacher is proud of you.”

Nie Mingjue covered his face with his hands, but Lan Qiren was inside of him again by that point, and he could tell from the way Nie Mingjue bore down on him that didn’t really object to it at all.

Still, the pleasure and joy of their coupling – the physicality of sex, the way they unexpectedly suited each other in temperament and in cultivation – was tempered by the reality of their situation. After his third orgasm, or possibly fourth, Nie Mingjue started to succumb to delirium as he’d predicted at the start, and by this point there was no denying that the daze he kept slipping into was pharmacological in origin.

They had both been dosed with the aphrodisiac, that much was clear, but somehow Nie Mingjue had also received a dose of something else, something that made his eyes go increasingly vacant even as he curled his limbs around Lan Qiren, trying to increase the amount of bodily contact between them. Whatever the secondary drug was, it clearly increased his pleasure, which was good, but Lan Qiren disliked the dullness of his expression, the way that it was increasingly obvious that Nie Mingjue no longer recognized what exactly he was doing or with whom. If he’d refused to accede to Nie Mingjue’s request…

Best not to think on that, he told himself, and set himself to the task of reaching his own peak once again as quickly as possible. As much as he was repulsed by the idea of bedding a man who was clearly no longer sober, he knew that it was only through more of his yang energy that Nie Mingjue would pass through this night unscathed.

“Truly it is as they say,” a voice drawled from behind him, and Lan Qiren froze mid-thrust even as Nie Mingjue whimpered and jerked up against him. “The quick-footed ones climb up first, the early bird catches the worm – however it goes. Sect Leader Lan, I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“Sect Leader Wen,” Lan Qiren said, voice stiff. “You are not welcome in my room.”

Wen Ruohan ignored him, walking forward until he was standing by Lan Qiren’s side, looking down at Nie Mingjue lying senseless on the pillow.

“Lovely girl,” he said idly, and reached down to tuck some of Nie Mingjue’s hair back behind his ear. “Do you know, I had no idea she was a woman until she fell into me at last year’s discussion conference? Her breasts pressed up against my arm, my knee between her legs – the Qinghe Nie really do play their cards close to their chests.”

“By the traditions of his clan, he’s a man,” Lan Qiren said icily, or as icily as he could with Nie Mingjue still squirming on his softening cock. “Wen Ruohan. Leave.”

“Have some shame, Sect Leader Lan. It’s my precious jade that you pilfered, after all,” Wen Ruohan scolded lightly. He skimmed two fingers down along Nie Mingjue’s cheek before pressing into his mouth, pushing down on his tongue before starting to move them in and out in a familiar motion – fucking his mouth with them. Nie Mingjue’s eyes were completely blank as he sucked on the fingers of the man who he believed killed his father, who only a shichen or two earlier he had begged on his knees to avoid. “And here I thought your Lan sect had a rule against illicit sex.”

“It isn’t illicit if I’m willing to marry him,” Lan Qiren said. His entire body was tense with rage: he hadn’t expected Wen Ruohan to admit that he’d been planning this at all, much less so causally, as if there was nothing anyone could do about it.

He was right, though. There wasn’t. Even if Lan Qiren could bring forward proof of this atrocity, no one would join hands with him to enforce any type of punishment other than the Nie sect, and the Nie and the Lan by themselves could not hope to shake the power of the Wen sect.

It was as pointless to try to make something over this as it had been over Lao Nie’s murder.

“Marry?” Wen Ruohan echoed, and then laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Tell me, is there any chance you’d share her?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Wen Ruohan asked, and he seemed almost genuinely curious. “Sect Leader Jin and I shared one of the dancers earlier; I assure you, it’s a very enjoyable experience, and most beneficial in increasing your strength.”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Lan Qiren said, his teeth grinding together painfully. “But he hates you.”

He wanted nothing more than to stand up and reach for his sword to run Wen Ruohan through for his presumption, but his cultivation, however powerful, had always been centered in music, not swordsmanship, and at any rate Wen Ruohan’s own cultivation level left his own far behind. As it was, he didn’t even dare pull out of his intimate embrace with Nie Mingjue no matter how vulnerable the position made him feel – he half suspected that if he did, Wen Ruohan would take it as an invitation to simply push him aside and replace his cock with his own.

It can’t be Wen Ruohan, Nie Mingjue had said at the start, tears in his eyes. It can’t. Please!

He stayed where he was.

“I’m not sure why you think that matters,” Wen Ruohan mused. “That bit about killing her father, hmm? Look at her, Sect Leader Lan. She wouldn’t say no even if the man fucking her was her own father.”

“Because you drugged him.”

“Because I drugged her,” Wen Ruohan agreed. “The second one was in the incense in her room, if you were curious. Why do you think I was so willing to let you two off the hook earlier? If everything had gone according to plan, she would’ve absorbed it while meditating and then succumbed to the temptation of getting herself off before retiring for the night, and after the first orgasm or two her rationality would have started slipping away. By the time I arrived, she would have been begging for me to fuck her. Me, and anyone else I chose to invite.”

Jin Guangshan, probably, Lan Qiren thought to himself, white hot fury filling his head.

“Don’t look so offended. I would’ve invited you, too.”

That was worse.

“It could have been a bonding experience,” Wen Ruohan said, then laughed. “You’re the one who’s always talking about the importance of creating ties between the Great Sects, so as to better forestall a war between us – I’m not sure what could be better than having us share our very qi with each other.”

“Sharing,” Lan Qiren said flatly. “Is that what you call gang-raping an innocent young man? Who’s probably your son’s age?”

“Younger than Wen Xu, I expect, though of course with Qinghe Nie you can never really be sure,” Wen Ruohan said, utterly indifferent. “Girls mature faster than boys, don’t they? And anyway, it’s rather hypocritical of you to raise such a protest; you’re the one balls-deep inside of her.”

Lan Qiren hadn’t thought about that, though now that he did he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had always assumed that Nie Mingjue was older than the other boys that had been his students, that the distance in ages between him and Lan Xichen was larger than might be expected, but that had been based on the fact that he was growing so fast – but Wen Ruohan was right. Because Nie Mingjue’s body was a woman’s, the growth spurt he’d had at the Cloud Recesses wouldn’t have signified that he was in the middle of his adolescent years, but at the start of them; he might have been even younger than Lan Qiren had thought, younger than his peers rather than older.

He’d already felt like an old cow eating young grass, but the feeling was abruptly magnified, and no matter that Nie Mingjue had asked him – had begged him – to do what he was doing.

“If you feel so strongly about it,” Wen Ruohan murmured, his voice too close to Lan Qiren’s ear for comfort, “I won’t even insist on having my own turn. I’d be happy with just her mouth – look at how well she’s taking my fingers.”

Lan Qiren didn’t mean to look, but he did. Wen Ruohan’s fingers were shining with spit as they dipped in and out of Nie Mingjue’s mouth, his lips swollen. Tears dripped unconsciously from his eyes.  

“You could always just tell her that she needed more yang energy than you alone could provide…”

“What I do is of no concern to you,” Lan Qiren said harshly, cutting him off. “You asked if I would share; I told you that I would not. Do you intend to start something over it?”

Wen Ruohan paused.

Lan Qiren waited, his nerves strung tight. He couldn’t fight Wen Ruohan personally, one-on-one, and he had no authorization from his sect to start a war over this – nor any assurance that they would back him if he did, even though the ethics of the moment seemed clear. He was instead gambling on Wen Ruohan’s past: the other man was older than him, and remembered the wars of Lan Qiren’s grandparents’ generation. There were stories passed down about those battles, about how they had begun, how they had ended, and the role played therein by the contemporaneous members of the Lan sect. The five Great Sects had not been so at odds back then; Wen Ruohan would know the same stories.

He knew about Lan Qiren’s brother, too. He knew that the same madness of all those years ago still ran true in at least some of the current generation.

“Very well,” Wen Ruohan finally said, and withdrew his fingers entirely. “You Lan sect and your ‘one’ – tell me, was your sect founder’s wife as inappropriate a choice as you all seem to land on?”

“Lan An was a monk,” Lan Qiren said, keeping the irritation and tightness in his voice to avoid letting on his relief. “I suspect any ‘one’ would have been inappropriate. Now, as much as I enjoy discussing matters of sect history…”

“You’re somewhat otherwise occupied?” Wen Ruohan chuckled. “Yes, I suppose so. Well, let me not further encroach upon your happy time, Sect Leader Lan. I wish the two of you much joy, both now and in the future.”

From anyone else, that might have been sincere. From Wen Ruohan, it was a threat to watch themselves carefully in the future – that he hadn’t yet changed his mind about what he wanted to obtain, because he never did, not really; he only postponed the date in which it would fall into his hands. He believed all things in the world belonged to him, his acquisition of the object of his desires an inevitability, and he behaved accordingly.

Lan Qiren would have to instruct Nie Mingjue not to agree to any one-on-one meetings with Wen Ruohan in the future, however awkward conveying such a message to a peer would be. Wen Ruohan had already been daring enough to plan out the gang-rape of a fellow sect leader; he would not hesitate to try to take Nie Mingjue by force in the midst of a conference if he thought he could get away with it.

But those were concerns for the future; for the moment, he was content with Wen Ruohan leaving the room with a final chuckle and a crude suggestion about what Lan Qiren ought to do to Nie Mingjue on Wen Ruohan’s behalf – a suggestion he would not be taking.

Nie Mingjue had stopped struggling at some point in the conversation and was lying beneath him, insensate and shivering; Lan Qiren dropped his hand onto his stomach and began transferring spiritual energy directly, hoping to help counteract the effects of the drugs he’d been given.

After a while, Nie Mingjue started to stir, responding again – as much to the spiritual energy as anything else, he was obviously exhausted – and Lan Qiren was able to finally rouse himself as well. His movements this time were slow and gentle, their bodies rocking together and spiritual energy comfortably circulating between them, and when Lan Qiren finally shuddered to completion once again he could feel Nie Mingjue drawing in his energy and letting out only clean, untainted energy in return.

Lan Qiren exhaled in relief. He was more than a little exhausted himself.

“Sleep,” he instructed Nie Mingjue, who blinked at him and nodded. He grunted when Lan Qiren pulled out of him, but didn’t make a sound when he wet his sleeve and ran a few rough swipes over them both to clean them. “We’ll discuss more in the morning.”

[preciousthingsareprecious]

Around the Carousel

Catch me joining Damian Wayne Week after it started with some impulse fics. This is for day 2 (I almost made it to actually posting on the 14th my time). I selected the: Undercover prompt.

Summary: Bruce and Damian go undercover at a school fair. They're supposed to be investigating, instead they stop to enjoy themselves.

AO3 Link

~

Bruce tucked his hands into his pockets and smiled down at Damian as the boy adjusted his hat. It was the third time he’d done it in ten minutes as the wind kept pulling at it, trying to tease it off his head.

It was a windy night for them to be out. A steady breeze blew through fair stalls, kicking up banners and tablecloths, and threatening to blow papers and smaller items off of tables. It cut the late Spring heat in a nice way, making the night mild and perfect for a school fair. Which, was exactly where they were at.

“If you’d like, I can carry that for you.” Bruce said.

Damian dropped his hands and looked up at Bruce, “I am fine, Fa--Uncle Matches. It is not bothering me.”

“Alright, whatever you say, kiddo.” Bruce smiled, “You wanna adjust those glasses while you’re at it?”

His son frowned, his nose wrinkling, and sending the glasses sliding a little further down it. It was unreasonably cute. Bruce held up his phone and snapped a photo of his son. The flash went off and when Bruce dropped his phone Damian was looking surprised.

“For posterity's sake.” Bruce explained, examining the picture, it had caught Damian’s expression perfectly.

He attached it to a text and sent it to Dick, anticipating a response of jealousy from his eldest. Dick was in Bludhaven, working his own case, and had to bow out of joining the Matches boys as they went undercover.

“Uncle Matches, are you planning to spend all night looking at your phone or are we to explore the fair? You promised to examine my entry for the art exhibit.”

How Damian had managed to get a piece in an art exhibit at a school he didn’t even attend Bruce was still figuring out. Apparently he’d had Oracle hack into the system and create a profile and enrollment information for one Matthew “Matches” Malone. Damian’s art was set up under the moniker Lil’ Matches, and even thinking about it made Bruce smile.

“Of course, lead the way.”

Damian nodded, the action shaking his glasses loose again. Bruce bit back a smile. It was Damian who’d insisted on going the Clark Kent route with glasses and selecting clear ones to help obscure their identities, instead of the normal shades that paired with the Matches persona. It would be hard to defend sunglasses at a fair that took place mostly after dark.

It had been a good call, so far no one had recognized them in their suits and glasses, and they’d been able to enter the fair and purchase game tickets with ease.

His kid adjusted the glasses again, turned on his heel and began to lead Bruce. He followed at a leisurely pace, enjoying the lights strung across stalls, the smell of food frying, and the calls of students manning games and trying to get them to use their tickets to purchase sketches or experiences.

“I believe our target is one of the art students. Most have been asked to spend time by their pieces at the exhibit.” Damian explained as he walked.

“What time is their slot?” Bruce asked, eyes catching on a bottle toss game.

“He should arrive in approximately an hour.”

“An hour you say?” Bruce hooked an arm around Damian’s shoulders and spun him back towards the bottle toss, “Then why don’t we spend some time enjoying the fair, my dear nephew?”

Damian stopped and looked up at him with open surprise, “But we are on a case?”

“At a school fair. The likes of which I don’t think you’ve ever properly attended. Didn’t the one at your school get interrupted?”

“No.”

Bruce frowned, “You didn’t go, I remember that. What happened?”

His son looked down at the ground, fascinated by the way dust coated his shoe, “There was a Scarecrow attack the night prior. I--was incapacitated by it.”

He remembered now. Damian had taken a dose of toxin for Tim when his brother’s mask had cracked. Both of them had been down for a while, but Damian had been exposed longer than Tim by the time Batman and Spoiler had arrived. He’d been shaky and sick for days after.

Bruce squeezed Damian’s shoulder, “All the more reason to enjoy this one.”

He tried not to think about how Dick would have remembered right away and not pushed the subject, or how even if he had fallen in this pit he’d have figured out how to cheer Damian right away, “We can afford some distraction, you don’t want to be bored for an hour do you?”

Damian hummed, and glanced up, “I would not be opposed to trying a game or two.”

“Perfect, let’s start with the ring toss.” Bruce smiled.

They traded in some tickets for both of them to get a chance at the ring toss. The operator pointed at some green rimmed bottles, “Get at least three rings on the green and you’ll win a prize. If both of you get three onto green you can get one of the big ones or two smaller prizes.”

They had four chances each. Bruce glanced at Damian. He was focused, feeling the weight of the rings in his hands, and eyeing the bottles like he was doing the math in his head calculating what it would take to get them perfectly in place.

After a moment Damian tossed the first ring, it caught at the edge of one of the green bottles and slipped off. He frowned at it, nodded, and then tossed his remaining three in quick succession. All three landed around bottles.

Bruce grinned, and looked up to see the surprise on the operator's face. His son was extraordinary, and Bruce loved seeing him show off.

He took his own time tossing his rings, landing three as well, and missing his last. He shrugged, not minding missing one. They still met the requirements for the big prize.

“Well, kiddo, what do you want?” He asked.

Damian looked up at the racks of plushes hanging from the top of the booth, considering. He pointed at two of the smaller ones. One was a dog dressed as Batman, with a little cowl and cape, and the other was a duck wearing a green deerstalker cap, with a small magnifying glass attached to one of its wings.

The operator handed Damian both animals with a smile, “Good choices, looks like you’re a fan of detectives.”

“Yes.” Damian said, “I am, as is my brother. He will enjoy the duck. Thank you for the diverting game, and best of luck with others.”

As they walked away, Damian handed Bruce the duck, “I trust you to keep an eye on this.” he said, “If you lose it Timothy will be terribly disappointed. I cannot miss bringing him a souvenir twice in a row.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him, “It’s not for Dick?”

“Tt, I would have selected a different animal for him, perhaps an elephant or bird.” Damian fiddled with one of the ears of the cowl on his dog, “I promised Timothy a prize if I won one last time, it was supposed to be in exchange for driving Jon and I. Even though the event did not happen, he might still enjoy one from here.”

“I’m sure he will.” Bruce said, resisting the urge to tug Damian into a tight hug, “What would you like to do next? That didn’t take us very long.”

His son looked around the fair, “Perhaps we could try one of the rides? Is there one you particularly enjoy?”

Bruce looked up around them, the fair had a variety of rides. The school had managed to hire a good selection, including a carousel. Bruce pointed at it, they could just see the pointed top from where they were.

“The carousel, you’ll love it.”

This time Bruce led, with Damian close by his side, as they walked, Bruce gave into the desire to reach down and take Damian’s hand in his own. When the boy looked up at him Bruce smiled, “It’s normal for families to do, especially in a busy place like this.”

The crowd wasn’t so thick Bruce was worried about losing Damian, but the move felt natural. He’d held his other children’s hands at events like this before, even Tim’s, though they’d gone well after the boy was the usual age for hand holding when wandering around an event. Damian didn’t seem too upset, in fact he gave Bruce’s hand a squeeze.

“That makes sense. As my Uncle you would be concerned for my safety and wish me to stay close.”

“Of course.” Bruce nodded.

Soon they reached the carousel. Bruce watched Damian with a close eye as they approached. Damian’s face went from cautious and curious, to delighted. There was something about being at the fair and undercover that seemed to let his son react a little more openly than he might if they were somewhere else. Bruce contributed it to the magic of the night.

“It has animals?” he asked, looking up at Bruce.

“Yep, different types. Carousel horses and animals are actually a really unique type of art. There are some horses that have sold for tens of thousands of dollars.” He explained, “And some artists who spend their whole lives making just horses for them.”

Damian’s eyes had gone very wide now, his face open with childlike delight, “And we are allowed to ride them?”

“Most yes, this one probably isn’t as fancy as some, but if you’re interested I’m sure we can visit a few of the more famous ones. I bet Dick’s seen some really cool ones from when he was younger.”

The look on Damian’s face, of excitement and anticipation was enough to melt Bruce’s heart and say yes to anything the kid might ask. Bruce tugged him forward.

“Come on, let’s get in line.”

They didn’t have long to wait, just until the ride stopped and emptied off. From there, they traded in a few more tickets for a chance to ride. Damian wandered the whole of the ride before selecting a white horse with gold trimmings. Bruce took the brown one beside it. They’d taken so long selecting, that almost the moment after they were settled, the ride began to move.

Damian’s laugh when the horse he was on began to rise and fall along with the forward momentum of the carousel was like music. Bruce wanted to take him on every carousel in the world to keep hearing that laugh and seeing that smile.

“May we go again?” Damian asked, the moment the ride stopped.

“Of course.” Bruce told him.

After the second ride, they stepped off and back into the crowd. Bruce checked his watch, they still had some time to spare before they had to be at the art display. He glanced around and caught sight of some food stands.

“Have you had a funnel cake before?” He asked, elbowing Damian.

His son shook his head.

“Then we’re getting one.” Bruce declared, “They’re the perfect mix of fried dough and toppings. We’ve got enough time to enjoy one before getting back on track.”

Damian looked less excited by the prospect of fried dough, but agreed to try it. Soon, the two of them were seated at a picnic table with a funnel cake between them. It was topped with powdered sugar, chocolate, sprinkles, and even some whipped topping. Damian gaped at the concoction, but Bruce passed him a fork with confidence.

“You just have to go at it.” he explained, “Dig in and enjoy.”

His son snorted, “That sounds like something Richard would say.”

Bruce grinned at him, “It should, he told me the very same thing when he introduced me to funnel cakes.”

Together they managed to eat the entire funnel cake. As Bruce set his plastic fork down, he thought finishing it off might have been a mistake even if they weren’t in the middle of an undercover operation. His stomach felt heavy with grease, sugar, and bread.

“That was--a lot.” Damian said, finishing his bottle of water.

“Yes.” Bruce said, wiping at his fake moustache, “It was. But I think we’ll be fine. It’s about time to head over to the exhibit.”

He wanted to get there early enough to see Damian’s piece. The kid had been very secretive of what he’d been working on for it. Taking the project as seriously as he would have as if it were for his own school fair. Bruce wanted to be able to enjoy it before they disrupted everything.

They were here to catch one of the students in the act of trying to blackmail a teacher. Damian had gotten news of it from his friend Collin, letting him know that strange things were going down. After some research, Damian had found some discrepancies in grades with a few of the students, and noted one teacher withdrawing large sums of money on a regular basis. Not enough to make a kid rich, but enough to placate a teen who’d watched too much television.

Damian had brought the case to Bruce, and together they’d worked out that this would be the next best place to find the kid and teacher interacting in a public location. From what Bruce could tell, the teacher hadn’t done anything against his students, instead he seemed to be in the middle of an affair with a seperate teacher. The plan was to bust the student, or at the very least record the exchange and get it in the hands of the administration.

The teacher in question? One of the art instructors.

They tossed their trash into a bin and Bruce let Damian lead him over to where the art exhibit was put up. It was tucked in one of the further corners of the fair, out of the way of chaos, but on a busy enough route that plenty of people were stopping by to look at the art.

“Which one is yours?” Bruce asked.

“Ah, it is this here.” Damian led him to a painting hanging up on a temporary pillar.

It was a painting of the garden outside Wayne manor. Done in bright beautiful colors it looked like you could step right into the painting. Portions of the paint were raised up to create texture and shadows, like the petals on flowers. In one portion, Bruce could see Alfred the cat sleeping in a patch of sun.

“It’s gorgeous.” Bruce said, “the detail is incredible.”

Damian was blushing, “It is nothing, a quick painting.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, I know you were working on this for hours.” Bruce told him, “Do you get to bring it home?”

“Yes.” Damian said, “I was not sure what to do with it.”

“We’ll hang it up, of course. There’s a spot in the library I think will work well. Some greenery in a very brown room.”

At this point, Damian’s ears had gone red, “If you are sure.”

Bruce nodded, “I am.”

They spent a little longer looking at Damian’s painting before they shifted to look at some of the other pieces on display. There were quite a few that were really good, and a number of interesting ones. Some looked as if they had been submitted just for a grade, but all in all it was enjoyable.

Bruce was busy looking over a self portrait when he felt a small sharp elbow jab him in the side. He looked up to see Damian staring at another young man. Probably about sixteen, who’d just walked into the display area.

“That him?” he asked.

Damian nodded, “Let us wait to see if he approaches Mr. Franklin.”

Bruce slipped his phone out of his pocket and played with it, as if he were taking general photos.

“Matches, why don’t you stand by your painting? I want to get a picture of you with it.” he said, affecting a delighted uncle voice, “I’m sure your dad would love to see it.”

They moved over to the painting, and Bruce aimed the phone as he walked. Mr. Franklin was situated just behind the pillar with Damian’s painting on it. He snapped a few pictures of Damian, directing the kid to smile and pose, before slipping the phone’s setting over to video. He shifted slightly so that Franklin was in frame and hit record.

After a moment, the other boy approached him. Bruce inched forward to make sure he could get sound, and glanced over at Damian. The kid was hurrying away, off to find a separate teacher to bring over and hopefully stumble on the blackmail scene.

The exhibit was a good place to meet as Franklin was in charge of it and there wasn’t any reason for other teachers to wander over unless they were just checking things out. Most were too busy for that, with their own booths and class exhibits to care for.

Thankfully, Bruce did catch the conversation clearly from where he was. He hoped that no one would notice he’d stopped recording his kid, and started just recording the area. If he had to, he’d just say it was b-roll for a home video or something.

It wasn’t very long before Damian came back, a teacher at his heels. Bruce shifted the camera subtly back towards Damian’s painting.

“And here is my Uncle Malone. He can vouch for my skills if my piece does not convince you.” Damian was saying.

The teacher opened her mouth to say something, and then suddenly the boy speaking to Mr. Franklin shouted, “This is not what we agreed on!”

“I’m sorry--” she said, “Matches, Mr. Malone I’ll be right back.”

With that, she split from them to intervene on the argument. Bruce stopped his recording, and sent the video to Oracle who was going to forward it to the school.

“Well, that should take care of that.” Bruce said, turning to Damian, “How about we enjoy the rest of the fair? We’ve still got tickets, and there’s some rides we haven’t tried yet.”

Damian nodded, “That sounds acceptable. This fair has been, quite fun. And I am enjoying spending time with you.”

Bruce grinned, and tugged Damian into a hug, “Me too.”

“We should do the carousel again.” Damian said, stepping away to take Bruce’s hand, “And after that there is something that apparently spins you at such a speed you are stuck to the wall.”

“Oh? Well, lead the way, we’ll go until I feel like I’ve had a full patrol.”

Damian grinned at that, and Bruce felt his heart soar. He was going to have to figure out other ways of getting them undercover to things like this. Or just take Damian out to fairs more often as father and son.

[a-libra-writes]

hiya! i just wanted to say that the way you write ramsay is fantastic!! if you're up for it, would you mind writing hcs for how he'd treat a stark!reader in a similar position as sansa (that he's attracted to)? thank you!

so ... I feel like this would have to work in a very specific way? Just stay with me here for a sec, I had some thoughts.

Reader would be the oldest Stark, or at least Robb’s fraternal twin. She’d be Catlyn’s unspoken favorite, and quite the lady of the house. Sansa would absolutely idolize her. She’d get along well with Robb and Jon (and Theon!), Aray would love her but would hate being compared to her (making for some complicated feelings), and Bran and Rickon would alternate between being bratty little brothers and asking her for stories. Typical cute sibling stuff.

The issue of matrimony always hung over. Catlyn was very serious about arranging a proper match, but thus far no one met her high standards. Ned wasn’t pleased about marrying her off, of course. I feel like if she looked like Lyanna, it’d be even harder. He knows it’s a woman’s duty and all that but... He wasn’t even happy to marry Sansa to a prince (Joffrey’s awful attitude notwithstanding). He doesn’t want his girls to grow up :(

So Arya and Sansa go to King’s Landing while R stays behind to help attend to Winterfell and wait for her mother to make a match (ugh). The year passes. The terrible news comes. The war comes. And she has to make a choice. She marches with Robb, either to be his strategist or fight alongside him. 

So here she is, stressing about her brother. About her sisters. Then the terrible news comes: Theon’s betrayed them. The Theon she grew up with as much as Robb, and he’s done something terrible. Unspeakable. She could have been there. She could have held Winterfell, could have been there with Bran and Rickon, but she insisted on staying at the front lines with Robb...

That would just destroy her as much as it did Catlyn and Robb. The pack is getting smaller.

The wedding plans for Robb and later Edmure are just a haze. There’s talks about her marrying a Frey, and that’s when she finally has the energy to speak out. It’s so hard to have energy and hope these days. It’s so hard to keep going. 

The Red Wedding comes. She’s captured, but not before her wolf rips open at least a dozen men. She and it huddle together, refusing to be separated, because the pack has gotten smaller. Roose decides to take the both of them as prisoners guests of the Dreadfort. 

He tells her about a ‘deal’ that would be worth her consideration. He has a son in need of a wife, and the Dreadfort needs an heir. Perhaps, if she’s agreeable, her children might have Winterfell back.

Now, there are Northern houses that still quietly, secretly, wish for the Starks to return. There’s her half-brother at the edge of the world. There’s Arya and Sansa - somewhere, Gods help them - she could make this work. She could wait it out. She could plan ...

It’d be easier if Roose Bolton’s bastard wasn’t so attached to her. And I mean attached. I think right away, Ramsay would have something of a complex about a Stark reader. She’s highborn, the eldest of Eddard Stark, a lady through and through. While Sansa was a hostage with a ruined reputation and Jeyne was in disguise, this would appear to the North as the most legitimate, especially if Reader was already establishing herself as a leader during the war.

So he feels inferior right away. Roose already does a good job of making him feel that. So perhaps, when they first meet, and their first month together, he comes on... very strong. 

Notably, her direwolf is a source of protection. It can’t stand Ramsay, his hounds and their strange smells. He knows better than to attack the beast, but it annoys him. Gets in his way. Keeps him from being as close as he wants to. And the way she coddles and hugs it - he’s jealous. He’s so jealous.

He alternates between playing at the attentive husband or angrily demanding attention, or trying to impress her with his many strange ‘hobbies’. He knows better than to threaten or mock her - the direwolf - but she also seems distant. Tired. Sad. She isn’t paying attention. She just tolerates whatever foolishness he’s doing, maybe only speaking up when he tries to hurt a servant or kill a guard. Maybe he’ll do that more often to get her to come running.

Any attention is good. Any attention. Even if it’s negative. He’s very needy, you understand. There wasn’t a lot of attention when he was younger. None of it was positive. When she calls off her wolf and lets him hold or touch or cling, he takes full advantage of it. 

I think a turning point would come in the form of Theon, oddly enough. Once she figures out it’s him, once she realizes what’s been done to him. He hoarsely whispers the truth: Bran and Rickon are far away. He couldn’t find them. He’s sorry. That’s when some light returns to her eyes.

Ramsay notices she lets him be closer, and she’s more indulgent, she spends more time. He assumes it’s because he’s finally “won” her over, he’s proven something. There’s no point in correcting this. Let him believe it.

This obsessive and excessive need for attention and desire wouldn’t be exclusive to a Stark!Reader, but it’d certainly be more pronounced. There’s never any taming him, but perhaps she’d be the best at reeling in control, especially when Roose fails or refuses to. At least keep him from angering the neighboring Houses, or the entire North. Maybe if she bides her time, plays her cards right, she can get out of here - she can take her family’s home back. ... ... Unless she’s begun to develop a reason to stay ... 

[josefavomjaaga]

Metternich on Napoleon’s family

This is taken from “Mémoires, documents et écrits divers”, Vol. 1:

Napoleon had a great weakness for his family. There is no doubt that many of the sovereign' s moves were due to the desires of his brothers and sisters.

Not all members of this too large family were equally ambitious, however. Napoleon's mother loved only money. Neither her mind nor her tastes led her towards social advancement. She had an immense income, and, without her son's precise orders, she would have thought only of investing her funds. When her children took the liberty of ridiculing her extreme thriftiness, she said to them: "You don't know what you are doing; the world does not always go in the same direction, and if you all fall on my hands again, you will be grateful for what I am doing today.

In 1814 Madame Lætitia had amassed a large sum of cash, which she had buried in a hiding place covered by the portrait of her late husband. The fact, and the place where the treasure was deposited, were denounced to Napoleon, who went to his mother and had the money removed. She may have taken with her from France a fortune of about six million francs.

I never knew either Joseph or Lucien Bonaparte personally, so I cannot express an opinion on their behalf. Napoleon had a favourable opinion of Lucien's mind, but he never ceased to accuse him of excessive and misguided ambition.

In an interview which Lucien had with his brother in Milan, he offered as a token of reconciliation a declaration by his wife giving, of her own free will, the assurance that she did not wish to impede her husband's fortune. The Emperor, on leaving one of their conferences, said to the people gathered in his anteroom: "Lucien does not want to give up his little rascality; he wants to prove to me that he has a hard head, I will prove to him that I have a harder head than he has. - And there was no further question of mending fences from then on. It is indeed known that in consenting to leave his wife he insisted on the recognition of his children. His conduct in 1815 provided the true measure of the severity of his republican principles.

Napoleon has often depicted Joseph to me as a gentle man of character and spirit, but incapable of undertaking a career which would require vigour.

Louis was placed in the family like an outsider. Injustice alone could have found fault with his moral character.

Jerome was gifted with a lot of spirit. The depravity of his morals, an exalted vanity and his mania for imitating his brother in every way, covered him with ridicule.

Two of Napoleon's sisters were remarkable for their wit, the third for her great beauty. Elisa, the eldest of the sisters and at the same time older than Napoleon, had a male spirit, and in character as well as in figure a great resemblance to her brother. Ambition was her dominant passion, and had not the low extraction of her husband, Baciocchi, and the latter's complete lack of intellectual faculties been an obstacle to it, there can be no doubt that this branch of the family would have risen to a high fortune. Of the three sisters, this was nevertheless the one who had the least power over Napoleon, who feared her and knew how to resist her.

Caroline combined a lovely appearance with an uncommon spirit. She had studied her brother's character thoroughly and was under no illusion as to any of his faults, nor as to the risks which his fortune ran as a result of his excessive ambition and domineering spirit; she also knew perfectly well the weak sides of her husband, and she would have led him, if he could have been led.

Aww, Clemens. Still fuming over 1814/5, are we?

Murat was only a soldier, but a soldier of the Revolution and endowed with a certain instinct for domination which I have always seen as the prerogative of the Jacobins. Caroline had great power over her brother's mind, and it was she who held the family together. Her ambition was to create for herself and her family an existence placed as far as possible beyond the reach of Napoleon, and even beyond the chances of his fortune, a fortune which she judged to be compromised by every excess arising from his insatiable lust.

Pauline was as beautiful as it is possible to be; she was in love with herself, and her sole occupation was pleasure. Of an affable character, gifted with an extreme benevolence, Napoleon devoted to her a feeling different from that which he bore to his other parents. He cited her as a unique example in the family. Pauline," he often told me, "never asks me for anything. The Princess Borghese, for her part, used to say, "I do not like crowns; if I had wanted them, I would have had them; but I have given up the taste for them to my relatives." She had a veneration for Napoleon which approached worship.

Josephine had exercised a long reign over Napoleon; she was gifted with a benevolent character and a peculiar social touch. Her mind was not great, but it followed a good direction. Her excessive taste for spending often led to painful explanations between her and her husband. It would be unfair to put any of the failings caused by Napoleon's ambition on her shoulders. If she had been able to do so, she would undoubtedly have stopped the wagon onto which, however, she had contributed directly, in the beginning of his fortune, to place the future Emperor.

Gifted with more wit and a far greater measure of ambition, his daughter Hortense never ceased to play a part in Napoleon's career. He loved her, and his condescensions for her were the cause of perpetual and active jealousies between her and her sisters-in-law. More than one friction in Napoleon's personal situation and even in the course of business was due to this cause.

Cardinal Fesch was a singular compound of bigotry and ambition. A devotee in good faith, he was not far from seeing in Napoleon an instrument of heaven and an almost supernatural being. He believed his reign to be written in the book of fate and regarded his deviations as decrees of God.

Napoleon knew all the individualities of his family, and he did not conceal from himself the fault he had committed in abandoning himself to the spirit of domination and the insatiable greed of some of them.

He said to me one day, in 1810, on the occasion of a long interview in which he had just told me the story of his life: "I have obscured and hindered my career by having placed my relatives on thrones. One learns by walking, and I see today how wise and necessary is the fundamental principle of the ancient monarchies, to keep the princes of the ruling house in great and perpetual dependence on the throne. My relatives have done me much more harm than I have done them good, and if I had to do it all over again, my brothers and sisters would have palaces in Paris and a few millions to spend in idleness. The fine arts and charity would have been their domain, and not kingdoms, which some do not know how to run, and in which others compromise me by parodying me.

Napoleon was careful to place a man of confidence with each of his brothers and relatives. The fortune of M. Decazes dated from the position he held as secretary of the commands of Madame Laetitia.

There’s so much I would love to answer to that, dear Metternich ... But mostly I find it rather funny to hear Napoleon go all judgemental over other people’s ambitions. Particularly as he had to coerce both Joseph and Louis to even accept their crowns, and as he did not even succeed with Lucien.

Also of note: Both of Napoleon’s adopted children, Eugène among them, are not even listed as “family” here.

@joachimnapoleon: I think the first two volumes of Metternich’s published papers might be of real interest to you!

Clemens Wenzel Lothar Prince de Metternich: “Mémoires, documents et écrits divers”

Volume 1

Volume 2

[rax-writes]

Amicable

Fandom: Game of Thrones

Pairing: Willas Tyrell x Reader

Warnings: So disgustingly cute and fluffy that you might gag a little

Notes: I’ve been thinking recently that my dear Willas doesn’t get nearly enough love, and I wanted to help fix that. // Based on the prompt “How do you always manage to look so captivating?” from this list.

You were no stranger to love. More of an acquaintance though, really. You had seen it many times, as well as heard it described in songs, and read about it in books. But you had never personally met love. Truthfully, you didn’t think you ever would.

You’d been told from a young age that your husband would be chosen on the grounds of whoever would provide the most beneficial alliance for your family. In other words, you wouldn’t marry for love; you’d marry for political reasons. Because of this, you’d long ago come to terms with the fact that you’d most likely never find love. Deep down, however, you craved it more than anything in the world.

Your dreams were filled with fantasies of a man who was gentle, kind, and intelligent. Someone you could hold invigorating conversations with, someone who cared about you. Someone who loved you more than anything, as the songs and stories described.

Yet all the proposals you received were from men who were loud, brash, and dull as could be. They all seemed to think that you’d fall head over heels for them the moment they flashed a smile at you, or if they won a tourney in your honor. You wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, and you vehemently opposed each proposal.

The pressure on you from your parents to agree to a match was steadily increasing with each proposal you rejected. Their insistence was the only reason you agreed to meet the heir to Highgarden, but you assumed that you’d dislike him just as much as all the rest. You knew that you’d likely have to marry him regardless of whether or not you were fond of him, because your pool of suitors was almost entirely depleted.

The absolute last thing you ever expected was to fall fast in love with Lord Willas Tyrell – but it was the best thing that ever happened to you.

You had been less than thrilled about meeting – and ultimately, potentially marrying – Willas, but you went along with it, as you didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Your mother tried to compensate for your lack of enthusiasm by being extra cheery that day, but it had no effect on you.

When you entered the courtyard of Highgarden, you were instantly overwhelmed by the staggering number of flowers. Every color imaginable was exhibited by every type of flower imaginable in that garden, all combining to create a lovely floral aroma. Vines climbed up the surrounding walls of the castle, and birds sung happily atop the trees. It was a few minutes before you returned your eyes to the people around you, and when you did, your gaze instantly fell upon Lord Willas.

All of the air left your lungs the moment you locked eyes with him. He was far more handsome than you had ever anticipated, with a mass of beautiful brown curls atop his head, and a warm smile. You had been told that he had a crippled leg due to a tourney accident as a boy, and that he was a good man, and far more astute than the other men you’d met – but no one had mentioned that he was so attractive.

You were so busy staring at him that you nearly ran into your mother, whom you’d been walking behind, as she stopped once she reached the table where Willas and his company stood. You didn’t even hear your mother introduce you, but seeing her give a slight inclination of her head as a greeting managed to break you from your trance, and you followed suit.

After taking a seat at the ornately carved wooden table at the center of the courtyard, began the obligatory friendly chatter, followed by discussion of marriage arrangements between your mother, Lord Mace Tyrell, and Lady Olenna. You did your best to pay attention, although you mainly remained silent. You were primarily occupied by attempting to steal glances at Willas, but each time you did, you quickly looked away after finding that he was already looking at you, that same warm smile on his lips.

Once their discussions died down, they left you alone with Willas, so that the two of you could have the opportunity to talk privately. The two of you sat in silence for a few moments, before Willas became the first to speak, a very serious expression on his face.

“I suppose this is where I should attempt to smooth-talk you into agreeing to marry me. I’m not very good at smooth-talking, so I won’t bother. I will say this: I know that I’m not any woman’s ideal husband. No woman dreams of marrying a cripple, who spends half his time with his nose in a book, and the other half with his animals. I’m not some well-known, handsome knight like my brother Loras, and I’m not a skilled swordsman like my brother Garlan. Those are attributes that most women hope for in a husband, and although I am none of those things, I like to think of myself as a good man. I hope that fact is enough to persuade you to at least consider the proposal.”

You allowed his words to sink in before responding. Truthfully, you wanted to laugh, but you knew that he would likely take it the wrong way.

“You consider yourself to be the last man that any woman would wish to marry, yet you’re the very man I’ve dreamed of since I was a child,” you began, and Willas’s eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. “I’ve had countless proposals from men who fit the description of what you believe to be a woman’s ‘ideal man,’ and I disliked every one of them. I’ve always wanted a husband who is kind and intelligent. Someone who describes themselves as a good man, who often has his nose in a book, seems to be exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

Willas’s smile returned as he let out a laugh, and you found yourself momentarily admiring the way his smile lit up his golden brown eyes.

“Well, you certainly seem to be the type of woman I’ve always wanted as well: beautiful, with a kind heart and horrible eyesight,” he joked, and you laughed lightly as you shook your head in disagreement.

The conversation flowed easily from there, and you found yourself completely losing track of time. It seemed that only a half hour or so had gone by, but when your mother and the others returned, they noted that several hours had passed. The grin on your mother’s face as she saw how much you’d been enjoying your visit with Willas was somewhere between overjoyed and relieved.

“It seems that we’ve finally discovered a man whose proposal you will accept,” she remarked, hope filling her voice.

You glanced at Willas, and the two of you shared a smile before you said, “Yes, it seems we have.”

-----

Years later, you found yourself looking down upon that same courtyard, in which three children were playing a game of tag. Your spot on the third floor above gave you an excellent view. Their jubilant laughter filled the air as they chased one another through the ornate garden. You were so busy watching them that you didn’t hear your husband walk up behind you.

“How do you always manage to look so captivating?” Willas inquired, leaning on the window ledge beside you. You smiled, feeling your cheeks and ears burning slightly.

“Even after eight years, you still manage to make me blush,” you said, and he only grinned before kissing your temple and wrapping an arm around your shoulders. You rested your head on his shoulder, and both of you admired your children.

“They’re certainly enjoying themselves,” Willas observed, just as the eldest, your son, screamed in mock agony when his younger sister tagged him – after he slowed down to allow her to do so – before she sprinted in the opposite direction, as fast as her three-year-old legs could take her.

“Have you any idea how maddening it is to have gone through the struggles of carrying and birthing three children, only for each of them to look like a replica of their father?” you teased, looking down at the three mops of curls weaving between the rows of flowers, and Willas chuckled.

“They all have your personality, though. And I’ve always thought the youngest resembles you more than me, albeit with my hair,” Willas countered, and placed another kiss on your temple, squeezing you gently with the arm around your shoulders. “It’s moments like these that I’m reminded that I’m the luckiest man in the world. I have a beautiful wife, and three perfect children. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“What about a fourth?” you asked softly, glancing at Willas from the corner of your eye.

He looked as though he nearly gave himself whiplash from turning to look at you so quickly, his eyebrows raised so high that his forehead wrinkled slightly.

“Are you…?”

You nodded, and he let out a joyful shout before pulling you into a tight hug.

“Three perfect children, and counting,” Willas corrected, laughing happily. He pulled away from you so that he could cradle your face in his hands, those golden brown eyes you fell for so long ago shining as the sunlight hit is face. “I love you – more than you’ll ever know.”

“And I love you more.”

-------

@whoabrekker​ @billy-batson @v-writings @pizzaplanethq @myfriendmagislit 

[swiftlymoniquesblog]

Only You: Dean x Reader (Requested)

Requested by: @littlemissmoxley: I was hoping for a Dean x Reader please? I’m fairly new to the fandom so I’ve only seen 3 seasons so far lol. I was hoping for a story where the reader feels like she is constantly compared to Cassie in Dean’s eyes even though she is a hunter too and she confides in Sam but Dean overhears the conversation and tries to convince the reader that he appreciates her for who she is and is sorry if he made her feel differently

A/N: Welcome to the family! We hope you enjoy your stay! I like comparing this fandom to the song Hotel California because like they say “you can check out any time you like but you can never leave!” lol don’t worry, that’s meant as a joke. It’s a very fun and very loving family so I hope you enjoy it!

Had to jump all the way back in season 1 for this and Dean gave me MAJOR feels throughout but totally worth it!

Also I don’t think this is my best work but I did my best

Warnings: Angst, swearing, angry!Dean (that’s a sexy warning) fluff, slight mention of sex but very light

Word Count: 2,752

Taglist requests are open! 

Supernatural Masterlist| Masterlist of all Masterlists

You had been living and working with the Winchester Brothers for the past year after they called on you for a little help with a case. You knew their Dad sort of well at one point in time after he saved you from a rather sticky situation with a vengeful spirit. At the time, you were working late and had gotten off of work when the attack happened but it ended up working out where John came to your rescue and made sure you were okay until he moved on to his next case. However, before he left you, he called his sons and had them come and stay with you longer because you were injured. John Winchester was not a man who would stay behind for an extended period of time to help some civilian but what he failed to learn but Sam and Dean stuck around to learn, was you weren’t a civilian; you were a hunter too. When they got to your apartment that night, you threw them for a loop.

“So what did our Dad say attacked you?” Sam, the youngest brother you found out, asked you.

“He said some kind of mental subject high on meth or something? Some total bullshit if you ask me. I know I was attacked by a vengeful spirit,” you say nonchalantly. 

Both brothers just gave you a bizarre look, like they were freaking out over how you knew what was going on. No one needed to lie to you because you were aware of what was happening and that was unusual to the brothers. 

“Wait, our  Dad told us you were a civilian?” The eldest brother, Dean, asked.

“Yes that’s what he told you but see boys, your Dad didn’t stick around me long enough to know the truth; I’m a hunter too. I guess it was pure luck your Dad was close by when I was attacked because I knew I was getting myself into some shady shit when I had to dig out some corpse to stop a track of killings in Tucson but I wasn’t expecting more than one spirit to be involved here,” you explain, smirking as the tension was drawn away from the brothers. 

A big part of every hunter's existence was to keep the job a secret from civilians; no one usually believes you anyways. So always having to come with an excuse for what happened when civilians almost died is exhausting. Lucky for the Winchesters, they didn’t have to worry about lying with you. After staying with you for a few days to make sure nothing was still trying to come after you, it was Dean who decided to have you live with them. He insisted on it due to how severe your injuries were but it didn’t bother you; you liked his company. Not that he really took care of you, he was just concerned. It was Sam who really took the time to care for you and that was how you and he had gotten so close. In fact, you confided in Sam about everything that was going on in your life so when you started doubting your relationship a year later, you went to him.

“Hey Sam, I need your advice on something,” you asked, going to see him in the War Room. He was currently sitting at the Map table behind his laptop, looking intently at the screen in front of him.

“Hey (y/n) sure, what’s going on?” He asked, eyes leaving the screen and landing on you.

“Well it’s about my relationship,” you say and Sam grows more concerned. 

“Dean’s not hurting you, is he?” He asks, jumping to one of the most extreme scenarios. You had started going out with Dean a few months after you 

“No, no, of course not. He’s been nothing but a gentleman but something seems a bit off.” 

You and Dean started dating a little while after you agreed to go with them on their hunts. It was actually really great and you liked him a lot, but lately, you began to question everything about your relationship.

“Off? Like how?” Sam asks, motioning for you to sit down across from him. 

“Well, he uh, did something odd,” you say, a bit hesitant on sharing what happened. 

“What did he do?” Sam pressed you.

“Well, uh, we were making out the other day and he said another girl's name,” you say, cheeks turning bright red but you knew you could trust Sam. He’s not the kind of guy to make fun of you or tease you that often; he was sweeter than that. Unlike his brother of course, who thrives off teasing you.

“Who’s name did he say?” Sam questioned.

“Cassie? I-I don’t know who she is or where that came from but it was weird. And when I confronted him about it, he blew me off and wouldn’t say anything about it. Not to mention, he won’t even come near me,” You explain everything that happened. 

“Oh….shit,” Sam said, knowing exactly what was going on. 

“Sam? Who-who’s Cassie?” You ask. 

“Cassie was Dean’s, first love. He was crazy about her and we ran into her again about a year ago. She called him because her Dad was killed by some racist truck that was driven by another vengeful spirit,” Sam explained his brother’s odd behavior. 

“Oh, well that explains a lot. He-he probably has been comparing me to her this whole time! And I think I’m failing,” you say, an expression of realization on your face. 

“No (Y/N) that’s not…” Sam tried to call after you but you left the room and went out to the motel lobby.

“How can I help you?” The young girl behind the front desk asked you. 

“Yes, I need to get a room. I’m not sure for how long yet but I can pay for one and I need one as far away from room 113 as possible,” You say, sliding the fake credit card over to the lady.

She quickly took down all your information and put it all through her computer, verifying you wanted a room farther away from Sam and Dean’s room, before she finalized a few things, sliding your card back to you and a room key, bidding you a ‘pleasant stay.’ You walked back to get your belongings from your shared room with the boys and before walking in the door, you scoped the surrounding area to ensure you wouldn’t run into either brother and when you were sure the coast was clear, you frantically start packing your bag, making sure to get in and get out as fast as possible. Zipping the bag, you scribble down a note to Dean, and set it on the table by the front door, and head out. Making your way to the opposite side of the property, you find your room, unlock it and let yourself into your new home for as long as you and the boys would be in town investigating. 

Dean’s POV

“Hey (Y/N/N), Sam, where are you guys?” I called out for the others living in the room with me to see if someone could help me with these groceries and take out what I bought. 

“Hey Dean, let me grab some of that for you,” Sam says, grabbing some of the bags out of my hands and placing them on one of the counters. 

“Where’s (y/n)? She said she was getting hungry earlier and I got her favorite food,” I say, excited to surprise my girl.

“Um, she’s not here,” Sam says, a hint of hesitation in his voice.

“Well, where is she?” I ask.

“She left,” Sam kept his response short.

“Sam, I need a much better explanation than just that.”

“There’s a note for you on the table by the door,” he says, unloading the bags of groceries. 

I walk back to the door and there is, in fact, a note with my name on the top.

Dean,

I think it’s best if we part ways for a while since...well you know what happened; the incident. I talked to Sam about it and he told me who she was. I get it, Cassie was your first love and after just seeing her recently and hooking up with her again, I’d probably say her name too. 

I’m not mad, in fact, I understand. I just think it’s best we aren’t in a romantic relationship since you’re not over her. Makes me wonder if you’ve been comparing me to her this entire time and I believe I fell short. I did a search on her and she is stunning in every way and I simply am not. 

I’ll stay to help you and Sam with the remainder of this case but afterward, I’ll head back home. I know this may seem surprising to you but ultimately, it'll be ideal for all involved. 

-(Y/N) 

“Son of a bitch!” I said, crumpling up the note and throwing it at the floor. 

“What’s wrong, what did the note say?” Sam asked.

“She left me, Sam. We were making out the other day and I said Cassie instead of (y/n) and now she thinks I’m still hooked up on her and that I’ve been comparing her to Cassie this entire time!” I yell, throw punching the wall. 

“Well, she couldn’t have gone too far, she hates being by herself,” he says, trying to add some comfort to the situation. 

“I can’t believe she thinks I still give two shits about Cassie! I haven’t even thought about her in the last year except for that one time,” I say, feeling shitty about this whole thing. I should’ve been more careful and paid better attention to (y/n). She probably thinks I don’t even care about her at all since we’ve been so busy lately with this case. 

“I gotta find her Sammy,” I say, feeling helpless about everything but I at least needed to get started finding her and explaining to her where I’m coming from.

“Let’s go up to the front desk and see if she left anywhere,”  Sam suggests,  making me remember why I’m lucky to have him. I wouldn’t have thought of that on my own.

We head up to the desk and are met with a girl who looks like she’s just fallen in love. Guessing she finds us attractive by the way her eyes travel up and down both of us. 

“How can I help you, boys?” She asks, smirking at Sam. 

“We’re looking for a girl, about yay high, (y/e/c), (y/h/c) she goes by the name (y/n/n)? Have you seen her anywhere?” 

“Oh, she checked into another room,” the girl says and I sigh in relief; she’s still here.

“Great, what room is she in?” I ask.

“I can’t tell you that, Sir,” she says to me, rolling her eyes and popping a bubble with her gum. 

“I’m Agent Ackles, this is my partner Agent Padalecki, (y/n/n) is our partner and we need to know her whereabouts as soon as possible. We believe she might be in danger,” I say, flashing my FBI badge, Sam following my lead, and the girl quickly jumps to the computer and pulls up your information.

“She checked into room 2 earlier this afternoon,” the girl says.

“Where is room 2?” Sam asks, knowing all the rooms we’ve seen have been in the hundreds. 

“On the opposite side of the property; those are the single-digit rooms.” 

“Thank you,” I say, folding the badge and putting it away.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Sam asks.

“Nah, I got this. I’m hoping to work this out with her and if we do well,” I say and smirk, Sam immediately knowing what I was implying.

“Right, well thanks for that. I’m going to head back to the room then and you just call if something doesn’t go as planned,” he says and heads back to our room. 

I follow the directions the receptionist girl gave me and after a surprisingly long walk, I find room 2. That girl wasn’t kidding; it really was on the opposite side of the property. I go over to the door and raise my fist to knock, pausing just a moment to gather my thoughts before finally making contact with the door. 

“Just a minute!” She calls from the other side of the door and then she goes quiet for a while. “What do you want, Dean?”

“Look (y/n) I got your note, can we talk about this please?” I say, almost pleading for her to open up. 

“I don’t have anything more to say to you,” she says.

“But I have plenty! Come one (y/n/n) please, let me explain.” She opens the door and looks pissed off. 

“And why would I do that?” 

“Because you love me,” I test, knowing we haven’t said that to each other yet.

“And how do you know that?” I can tell she was affected by the comment but she kept fighting me.

“Because I know you and if you didn’t care anymore, you would’ve left.” 

“Fine,” she says and steps aside, allowing me into the room.

“Look, (y/n) I’m sorry okay? I don’t know what happened that day. Maybe I was thinking about her subconsciously but I promise you, I am crazy about you and only you.” 

“But you told her about our work; she obviously means a lot to you,” 

“Meant a lot to me, yes, but YOU are the one who means more to me than, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but more than Baby.” 

Her head snapped over to look at me, she wasn’t expecting that one and neither was I.

“I mean more to you than your prized Baby?” She asks, cocking an eyebrow to see if there were any signs of deceit but I was sincere.

“Yes, sweetheart. You are my girl and I’m crazy about you. You’re the first person I want to see when I wake up in the morning and the last one I want to see before I fall asleep at night. I want to be there when you’re not feeling well so I can cuddle you and tickle you until you feel better again. I want to cook you meals and I want to be able to binge-watch Scooby-Doo with you. I want to play with your hair and see you fall asleep with your head in my lap because you’re so incredibly beautiful and I cannot believe you are mine. I am so sorry you thought you weren’t good enough for me or that I’ve been comparing you to Cassie this whole time because I haven’t been. I’ve been pinching myself every single day I see you and get to kiss you because I’m still thinking I’m going to wake up from a dream and it’ll all be gone. I hope that isn’t true and that this is all real. After all, I can’t imagine my life without you in it because I love you. That’s right, I love you (y/n) and I don’t care who knows it! I am so in love with you that I was going to go insane if I hadn’t told you,” I fully express all my feelings, in a non-Dean way. 

She keeps quiet and just when I think the worst happens, she makes her way over to me and grabs my head, bringing my lips to hers in a kiss. Instinctively, I grab her hips, holding her tight, and push her against the nearest wall. She’s completely trapped as my lips make the kiss more passionate by traveling down to her neck and over the tops of her breasts that were kind of spilling over by her pajama tank top. Just before anything gets too heated, I pull away to make sure we were on the same page, that she was okay with whatever plans I had conjured in my head and when she didn’t seem to hesitate and she lifted her shirt over her head and threw it on the floor beside her, I knew she was all in. I’ll admit, I forgot what I was doing for a minute as I pictured her lying under me as I do some rather fun things to her, but she snaps me out of it and I go out to put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door, slamming it and locking it behind me. Yep, she was my girl again. 

Taglist: @calaofnoldor @thinkinghardhardlythinking @tloveswriting @akshi8278 @baby1967impala @deansmyapplepie @marvelfansworld @spnjediavenger

[skvaderarts]

Hiraeth Chapter 62: Exploration

Masterlist can be found Here!

Chapter Sixty-Two: Exploration

Note: I'm enjoying getting so many longer chapters in. Feels good!

(-~-)

The temple was comprised of a menagerie of different corridors and rooms, all of which possessing their own highly specific use case or purpose. Intricate engravings and pictographs adorned almost every visible wall, betraying the truly ancient history of such a grand structure. And although none of it was easily understandable to the average person, It was still more than enough to be able to admire and respect the historical contribution that works like these could pose to the people of this kingdom, and to the rest of the world by extension if they knew anything about it. But perhaps it was best that it stayed as it was, guarded and untouched by the people who it belonged to. In an unknown state. While it was true that some history belonged in a museum, was it truly history if the people who created it or took part in it its creation were still protecting it? Still dying for it?

In some places the walls were painted, but most laid bare, the markings adorning them being the only thing that made them stand out as opposed to a simple stone wall. And that was appropriate considering the fact that most of the walls were still bare, a few spots in the process of being worked on seemingly being abandoned part of the way through. Or maybe that was how they were supposed to look? It was hard to say. He was no anthropologist, and he'd never seen anything like this before.

But it's fascinating as all of them was, and is right as Lucia have been when she said that he might appreciate her people's culture more than his brother probably would, the eldest of the Dark Knight Sparda's twin sons have to admit that they were nothing more than a pleasant distraction in the midst of what would otherwise be a complicated and dangerous situation. Well, it would be if Lucia hadn't been there. She seemed to navigate the retrofitted temple with relative ease, whereas he found himself considering routes or options that were ostensibly the worst possible method to get to where they needed to go. 

And that was the other issue: He had no idea where they were going. 

He was so used to what he was looking for being straight ahead of him in one way or another that he hadn't even really considered it. And with nothing in the way of a challenge to do battle against within the walls of the building, he just found himself sort of quietly following along behind her, taking in the sights and attempting to not seem like the fidgety child that he felt like at the moment. 

It had been a while since things had gone this…  smoothly. It wasn't that things had been easy, it was that they had been relatively straightforward. They made sense. And while the cacophonous and winding always reminded him of the demonic tower that he had helped raise so long ago, this was clearly an entirely different set of people in an entirely different setting. Its craftsmanship easily rivaled that of the tower, but there was just something decidedly more exotic about this location. It was almost exciting. A part of him genuinely enjoyed it, at least for the time being. He was still quietly waiting for something to go horribly wrong. But at this point, was that anticipation, or a self-fulfilling prophecy? Were his very thoughts causing him to carry out actions that would lead to the negative outcome that he was imagining, or was he actually that unlucky most of the time? A question for the philosophers.

"Am I to assume that we are headed to an antechamber of sorts?" It was a good guess based on the structure's presumed layout.

Lucia looked back at him, her red hair blowing behind her as a small gust of wind tossed it about. Little shoots had been cut into the sides of the ceilings in some places, allowing air to pass into the chambers without having access to windows of any sort. It was a clever bit of ventilation considering when the building must have been constructed. And it was probably the only way that most demons could get in, which explained why a lot of them were so small and why they had encountered so few of them.

"Correct. Each of the Arcana is kept in a different portion of the temple behind its own unique protections. We're almost to the one that houses the Arcana Spada."

Placing the torch that she had lit when they had entered the structure in a notch in the wall, She fiddled with a slot in the wall nearest to her. Moments later, a sliding door of sorts opened, rolling out of the way and allowing a second door behind it to lift up out of the floor into the ceiling. It was an ingenious bit of engineering, and Vergil was admittedly curious as to how it functioned. Being alive during the period in which many of these sorts of structures had been built must have been interesting. What could they have learned from these long-forgotten civilizations? The technology used to build this structure seem to be leagues ahead of where it should have been at the time, and much could be said about the Temen Ni Gru. Had their dealings with demons allowed them some sort of knowledge in regards to these sorts of matters that he was unaware of? It seemed that technology had taken a massive step backward after the Hellgates had been closed. What an interesting if not unfortunate circumstance.

Following the young guardian into the antechamber that was hidden behind the doors, it occurred to Vergil that unlike seemingly every other structure he vented, this antechamber was actually located off to the side in an innocuous room instead of in a grand hall in the center of the building. It seemed that they had taken a few clues from some other ancient civilizations in that regard.

Nothing specific came to mind, but he could remember some civilizations doing things that were similar to this in a bid to keep grave robbers away. Some even went as far as booby-trapping what would otherwise be the central area of the tomb or temple just to punish those who attempted to actually break-in. A devious plan that he wholeheartedly approved of. At the very least, you should be allowed to have peace and rest undisturbed after death. There was a special place in hell for grave robbers. He should know. He'd probably seen them when he was down there.

"And what is the significance of this specific Arcana? Why would someone steal it? I assume that it is ritualistic in nature? But it has a secondary use, does it not? Something that causes it to stand out in comparison to the others?" He followed her up the steep, well-worn ramp, noting the abundance of colors and pictographs as he hurried along. Everything that he was now seeing was better preserved than the rest of the temple, which was saying something when how well the structure was kept up was taken into consideration.

Obviously taking a moment to consider what he had just asked her, she paused momentarily to looked around the room, torch in hand. She then stepped forward and began to light some of these sconces along the edge of the wall, eliminating a pillar in the center of the structure. What seemed to be a skylight bloomed over them, but it was currently closed by a large stone dome, so there would be no natural light tonight. The structure was interesting and seemed reminiscent of an altar of some sort.

"You are right. The Arcana is special. While the others were contributed by different groups of our people, the blade was contributed by your father. Its composition is different, and I would not be surprised to learn that he had crafted it himself. The materials seem to be demonic, and have properties to match. The same essence, in a way of speaking.” She gestured towards the room they were in. In the center was a pedestal with some sort of intricate holding apparatus. That must have been the blade’s housing apparatus. “My mother might know more about that, but it would be invaluable in a ritualistic setting. I believe that it is no accident that it found its way into your son's body."

Vergil nodded. That made sense to him, unfortunately. Demons were always after artifacts that his father had either helped create or had at one time owned. His wards and spells had a strong hold on much of the demotic world, and as such getting a hold of something that he had created were used to create something else was generally considered a fable use of time. He didn't need to know the precise secondary use case of the blade to know that if it had been created by his father then it should not fall into the hands of the devil prince.

Upon entering the room himself, a wave of what he could only describe as heavy familiarity hit him. If nostalgia had a sensation, it would be this place despite never having stepped within it before today. The feeling that had been outside in the courtyard was amplified by several dozen times in here to the point where it was almost suffocating, and yet he didn't feel threatened by it or even uncomfortable. Lucia seemed to be somewhat puzzled by its presents, wish she was otherwise undisturbed. 

There was no mistaking it: this had his father's influence all over it.

(-~-)

The Ludwig family had acted swiftly upon receiving his phone call, coming to his location with clearly supernatural speed. They had taken the young adjudicator into their care immediately and had insisted upon doing the same with V in order to ascertain the status of his curse. He had taken little consideration as to his own well-being in the adrenaline field panic that he had been in, and both his admittedly minimal injuries and his slowly progressing curse had been put to the wayside for the time being.

It had been decided that they would hold him until the morning. Magnolia and Flora would be returning to his home anyway, so if this was to be the outcome, then he could easily return with them at that point in time. Perhaps they would get lucky and Sirrus would recover by then? It was probably wishful thinking on his part, but he desperately felt the need to do something, anything to help his companion recover. He had done the same for him. It was the least he could do given the circumstances. He didn't like seeing people who were kind to him suffer.

But upon arriving and being seen by a physician, there had been quite the commotion. He hadn't caught the specifics of the details, but it seemed that they were something extraordinary about Sirrus's blood loss that required an extra amount of care and attention to be shown to it. It was something nebulous from what he could tell like a shortage of a certain blood type, or something equally as strange. Whatever the case may be, it seemed that his blood was not compatible with anything that they currently had on hand and that his body's ability to regenerate its own supply had been hindered somewhat. Stabilizing him had been hellish and troublesome, but after something that he had not been able to see clearly had been administered orally in the form of a liquid powder, he had seemingly started to recover although he had not regained consciousness.

In a strange way, it was good to know that he was not the only one who had these sorts of issues. Though he had never experienced that specifically, his friend's extraordinary abnormality made him feel somewhat secure in the knowledge that he might actually not be quite as odd as he thought he'd been all this time. This was going to be quite the story to tell the rest of his family once they all met up. But for now, he would remain at Sirrus's bedside, awaiting the moment that he would awaken so that he could thank him for everything that he had done and to just see if he was alright in general.

For a brief moment in time, he had considered the possibility of asking some of the Ludwig girls with a significance of his gift had been. It was clearly enchanted to some degree, so finding out what the bracelet did specifically was fascinating to him. Still, it was not the time. As soon as Sirrus was doing better, then he could bother with that sort of thing. No, until he awoke he would just sit here and fiddle with it quietly, allowing Shadow and Griffon a much-needed rest. Maybe he would read his book while he himself was attended to by the wonderful young woman that worked in that wing. 

He'd refused to have his injuries treated by what little staff that they had till Sirrus wounds had been brought under control. He wasn't that badly injured, and he couldn't in good conscience sit there and take up viable resources when someone else needed them more. His temporary discomfort was more than warranted as far as he was concerned. And that's how he found himself sitting there being treated in the room next to him, not nearly within range of cross-contamination, but still within the same general vicinity. 

They had put up some sort of protective plastic barrier between them for that exact reason, but it was indeed helpful to help keep things sanitary. A few bandages and a little bit of disinfectant later and he was basically fine. A bit scuffed up and with several bruises that were sore, yes. But he was alive, and although the curse had indeed spread, he only felt slightly weak as a result. He was admittedly just happy to be unharmed for the most part. The fight could have gone much worse. It normally did.

Realizing that he desperately needed to talk to somebody about what had happened, he spared a glance at his resting companion before making the decision that he could temporarily step out of the room. He didn't want to leave long, but he did want to make a phone call, and it would be rude as far as he was concerned to make one inside of the room where he was. And even if he didn't have that issue, there wasn't a phone in here. He'd have to go and get one. Maybe he should buy one?

Quietly standing and hoping that the chair he was sitting on didn't creak as he did so, he made his way over to the door, opening it and stepping through before closing it quietly behind him in a manner so slow that he wasn't entirely sure that it was necessary. He then looked up and down the hall, wondering if there was one on a table in the breezeway or something. He didn't actually know if they really had a lot of phones in this house. It was lucky that they had picked up when he had called. Almost as lucky as he'd been when he realized that he'd remembered the number.

Making the executive decision to just go and ask someone about where he could make a phone call, he headed into the main hall, sure that someone would be still awake at this time of night. But as he headed through the doorway, he ran face to face with someone that he wasn't expecting to see still up at this hour. He'd assumed she'd gone to sleep after what had happened.

"Good evening, Willow."

She stopped, turning her attention to him for a moment as she seemed to be taken slightly by surprise. A somewhat perplexed look crossed her face as she obviously considered something. But a moment later, she nodded. "Likewise. I was actually just coming around there to see how things were going. Has he awoken yet?"

V couldn't help but notice that she seemed uncomfortable, her hands clenched together in front of her in a manner that betrayed what he believed to be actual, genuine worry. She had been walking in the opposite direction, so he had probably taken her by surprise. What a shift in behavior considering how displeased she had been to see the young adjudicator the last time they had visited, at least initially. Perhaps it was guilt for what she had said to him when he'd been here last? Either way, he shook his head to indicate that he hadn't woken up yet. She did a decent job of hiding her obvious dismay, but not good enough to go unnoticed.

"Oh... I see. Well, do you keep me in the loop if you can? I'll send someone to come and check on both of you soon." She shifted her stance slightly, turning more to face him than she had been before. She unclenched her coupled hands, putting them slightly behind her back on either side of her body before more than likely bunching them into uncomfortable loose fists. There was no anger, only discomfort." Did you need anything? I can't imagine you're just wandering the halls so late at night searching for a sense of clarity."

At the risk of seeming unpleasant or possibly even rude, V decided to make the executive decision to have a meaningful discussion with her for a moment. He had nothing to gain by lying. "I was wondering the very same thing about you, though it may not be my place to. You seem anxious… and you don't seem like the sort to wander anxiously through your own home. But to answer your question, I was looking for a phone. I wanted to call someone. I suppose I just need to get something off of my chest."

Willow stared at him quietly for a moment, seemingly thinking about what he'd said. For a moment, V was concerned that he had upset her before she nodded and something akin to a soft smile spread across her face. It seemed that she understood what he meant by that statement and wasn't upset by it. He was strangely relieved by that fact. He didn't know her enough to have a concrete reason to be worried about what she thought of him, but either way, he didn't like being an ungrateful guest. 

"Are you sure you're your father's son? I don't believe he's ever worded anything in such a thoughtful manner in his entire life. He cared little for causing me upset, but I suppose I did cause quite a bit of grief myself." She seemed to drift off for a moment, thinking of a bygone time and her youth with what we're clearly nostalgia glasses. He got the impression that his father and this woman probably didn't view that memory the same way. Actually, knowing Vergil, he probably didn't remember what she was thinking about in the first place. He'd noticed that his father seemed to have a habit of not recalling things that were important to others because they had meant very little to him at the time. Fleeting moments in an otherwise negligible experience. But he couldn't really fold him for that. It wasn't really a character flaw so much as it just wasn't a lack of awareness of what other people were paying attention to. That was a common enough thing for people to do.

Something akin to a small smirk graced his lips for a moment. "Perhaps it's a product of not meeting him until later in my life." He couldn't be sure why he'd felt the need to divulge that, but it almost felt good to get that off of his chest. There was a strange sort of tension that came with the moments when people asked him about his childhood or his past, not realizing how drastically different it probably was from what they assumed it to be. But he wasn't ashamed of that so much as he just wasn't entirely ready to talk about it to other people. But even given that fact, there was something about this moment that allowed him the levity to speak his mind.

The look of genuine surprise that crossed her face was admittedly unexpected on his part, but she nodded in solemn agreement. He remembered Magnolia telling him that their mother and father had passed away when they had been teenagers. Perhaps he had brought up a memory or a feeling that she could relate to. After all, it had seemingly torn their family apart at the seams. "I suppose that makes sense... There's a phone over here. Feel free to borrow it. Though you can't walk off anywhere with it. It's a landline."

He nodded in agreement, appreciating her assistance. She then gave him a small smile and turned to go back to what she was doing, bowing as if to dismiss herself. It seemed that once again he had dismissed her original assumption as to the family structure of another person that she knew. He wondered where that came from with her, but he couldn't say that he was bothered by it. He didn't really care enough to be. 

But with that in mind, perhaps it would be best to go and use that phone now. There was no telling when Sirrus would wake up, and he genuinely needed to talk to Nero. With the difficult time that he was having right now, he felt like perhaps his little brother was the only person that would truly understand. He just hoped he wasn't disturbing him. After all, it was late. The last thing that he wanted to do was wake the children or their long-suffering parents. Kyrie and Nero deserved more than that.

(-~-)

For a moment there I actually thought that today was Friday. Lol, nope! It's Tuesday! See you on Friday, and the new readers who have joined between now and the last few chapters! It's always wonderful to have new people around and to answer any questions that you all have! Hope to see you in the comment section, and I'll see you all again on Friday! And if you see any errors, let me know! I went over this twice, but I still feel like I might have missed a few little things.

[storiesforallfandoms]

riding alone ~ robb stark;game of thrones

part one

word count: 2249

request?: no

description: after meeting the starks, she gets to spend some alone time with her husband to be

pairing: robb stark x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist

(Y/N) was awoken the next morning by her maidens. The moment her eyes were open, they were pulling her out of bed to dress her. The maiden that had taken care of her the night before had spread the news of Robb’s plans to the others and the moment they had all woke up, they hurried to get (Y/N) ready for her day with her husband to be.

After some arguments, (Y/N) managed to convince her maidens to put her in a simple slip dress instead of a fancy, royal one like they had wanted. They were just finishing dressing her and brushing her hair when there was a knock at the door. Simultaneously, the girls gasped with excitement, causing (Y/N) to giggle at their reactions.

She stood to answer the door to find Robb standing there, also already dressed and ready for the day. He smiled at (Y/N).

“Good morning, (Y/N),” he said. “I hope you slept well.”:

“I did, thank you,” (Y/N) responded and curtseyed slightly to him.

Robb chuckled. “Please, you do not need to use those formalities with me.” He offered her his arm. “Breakfast is almost ready. My family has already gathered, and they are eager to meet you.”

(Y/N) began to feel anxious as she took Robb’s arm. The night before was the first time she had ever even seen Lord Stark in person, let alone meeting the entire Stark family.

Robb placed a comforting hand over hers that was placed on his arm. He could feel her tense. “You needn’t worry about my parents, or my siblings. Father may seem serious to the public, but he is a good man when he is with family, and mum is just excited to have another daughter.”

“I just have never been in the presence of the Stark family before, and now my first time meeting them is as their soon to be daughter-in-law.”

“Just be yourself, they’ll love you,” Robb assured her.

Even with his reassurance, (Y/N)’s heart was still beating fast as they entered the dining area. Lord and Lady Stark were sat on either ends of the table while their children lined the sides. There were two empty chairs, one beside Lord Stark and one beside his wife. (Y/N) mentally claimed the latter.

All attention turned to them as they entered. (Y/N) tried not to seem as scared as she was.

“Everyone,” Robb addressed the room, “this is (Y/N). (Y/N), this is my father, Eddard, my mother, Catelyn, and my siblings, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, and Jon.”

(Y/N) curtseyed as Catelyn rose to her feet. She wrapped her arms around (Y/N), taking her by surprise but she happily accepted the gesture.

“Please, no formalities,” Catelyn told her. “We are about to be family.”

(Y/N) looked over at Robb, who was attempting to hide his smirk. He and his mother were very alike.

Catelyn lead her to the seat between her and Arya, which (Y/N) was very grateful for. Robb sat at the other end of the large table between his father and his eldest brother, Jon.

Eddard looked different than he had the night before. He looked relaxed, and not as scary as (Y/N) remembered.

“Welcome to our family, (Y/N),” he said to her. “We are pleased to have a lovely young woman such as yourself marrying our boy.”

He clapped Robb on the shoulder, earning him a proud smile from his son.

“What does your father do that made him have to steal?” Arya asked, looking at her with curiosity.

“Arya!” Catelyn scolded the young girl.

“It is alright,” (Y/N) said. She addressed Arya to respond, “He is a fisherman. It is just an off season currently, his catches aren’t worth as much as they once were and he has many children to provide for.”

“Does not mean he had to steal,” Sansa muttered.

“It does not,” (Y/N) agreed. “It was a lack of judgement on his part, and I truly appreciate what you have done for him, Lord Stark.”

Before Eddard could respond, Sansa spoke again, “I think he should have been imprisoned. He is a thief, and I do not feel comfortable with the child of a thief being a part of our family.”

“Sansa!” Robb snapped before his mother could. His face was red with anger as he glared at his sister. Sansa glared back at him before shooting (Y/N) another look and turning to the food that was being placed in front of her.

(Y/N) sunk back into her seat as a way to away from the attention of anyone else. She was starting to feel the weight of the family’s titles versus her lack of one. Maybe she really did not belong there, maybe Robb’s parents would change their minds and send her home so they could find a better suitor for Robb.

The rest of breakfast passed in silence. (Y/N) wished nothing more than to disappear back to her room and to never have to cross paths with anyone else in the Stark family, besides Robb. At least not until the wedding.

“Father,” Robb said, breaking the silence, “I would like to take (Y/N) on a ride to give her a tour of our kingdom. I may be gone for some time.”

“That is quite alright, son, you can take whichever horse you like. I will send two guards with you - ”

“I would prefer to go alone, if that is alright.”

(Y/N) looked up at Robb in shock. Even she, just a commoner who was new to the royal life, knew that it would be a better idea for the future ruler of Winterfell and his soon to be wife to travel with at least one guard. Just because the Starks were royalty did not mean they were untouchable. There were quite some people who wanted to seriously harm the family, if not completely kill them all.

Eddard did not look pleased with the idea, but instead of insisting upon sending guards, he said, “Alright. But be careful and be aware of your surroundings.”

A pleased smile grew on Robb’s face. “Of course, father, I always am.”

“Maybe you should bring a guard,” Sansa spoke. “Just in case the thief's daughter wants to mimic her father’s crimes.”

“Sansa!” both Catelyn and Eddard hissed as Robb rose to his feet. A look of fear passed on Sansa’s face as she shrunk back into her seat, watching Robb intently.

“You speak another ill word about (Y/N) and you will regret it,” Robb hissed. “She is more a lady than you will ever be.”

He looked to (Y/N) and she rose from her seat as well. She was yet to finish her breakfast, but she knew she did not want to be there with Sansa for much longer. Especially not if Robb was deciding to leave right that moment as well.

(Y/N) followed Robb to the stables in a tense silence. He explained to the stable boys that he was taking (Y/N) out on a ride and would not be back for a long time, but if they did not return by nightfall to alert the king. The stable boys helped (Y/N) onto the horse behind Robb.

“Have you ever ridden before?” Robb asked her. She shook her head in response. “Hold on tight then, love. I like to ride my horses fast.”

(Y/N) wrapped her arms around Robb’s middle and held tightly as he signalled to the horse to go. They took off towards the nearby forest.

Robb was true to his word and rode so fast (Y/N) was terrified to let go. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her head against Robb’s back. She felt him vibrate as he chuckled at her reaction, but still did not slow down.

It was not long until Robb was pulling on the horse’s reigns to get it to stop running. The horse slid to a stop and (Y/N) waited a moment before raising her head to look around. They had stopped on a peak that was high above Winterfell and looked down on Robb’s house, which looked small enough to be inhabited by mice from this high up.

(Y/N) let go of Robb as he dismounted from the horse. He extended a hand to her to help her down. As (Y/N) tried to swing her leg over, her dress was caught in the saddle and she found herself falling from the horse’s back. Robb was quick to duck under her and to catch her before she hit the ground.

“You must be more careful, love,” he told her as he helped her to stand up. “The last thing I want is for you to hurt yourself trying to get down from my horse.”

“I guess I just need some practice with horse riding,” (Y/N) responded, her fact heating up with embarrassment. “This place is beautiful. You can see all of Winterfell from here.”

“Maybe not all,” Robb said. “It is a big kingdom, but you can see most of it.”

(Y/N) was taking in the view when she felt Robb gently touch her on the small of her back. She turned to see him looking at her, and expression on her face that she could barely read.

“I am so sorry for my sister,” he told her. “She is...well, she is very proud, for a lack of better words. She made sure to be raised as a proper lady, and takes her title as such far too seriously. She is set to marry King Baratheon’s boy, Joffery, when she starts to bleed and can provide the Baratheon family with their next heir, so she believes she should act higher than everyone else, even mum and father.”

“She does not seem to trust me,” (Y/N) said, looking down at the ground. “And I cannot blame her. I am just a commoner, the daughter of a thief who was only betrothed to you so my father could be free to provide for our family. If you father was not so kind hearted, I would never have even crossed your path.”

Robb cupped her chin and gently lifted her head so she would look at him. “Of course we would have crossed paths. I do not believe this betrothment happened by accident. I believe, maybe, I was meant to meet you.”

(Y/N) chuckled and tried to pull away from Robb’s hand. “If we had met, it would have been with me becoming your maiden, not your wife. You would have been betrothed to a powerful woman, a princess or a Lady like your mother, or to a woman who would help bring more gain to your family and to Winterfell, not to the normal daughter of a fisherman.”

Robb was silent. (Y/N)’s eyes searched his face but could not get a reading on him. She wanted to back away then, an apology on the tip of her tongue. She was terrified that she had angered him, and what the consequences would be for angering a Lord.

Before she could speak, Robb’s arm came around her waist and pulled her to him. He pressed his lips on hers without hesitation, his hand moving from her chin to her cheek to gently caress her face as they kissed. It was the first time (Y/N) had ever kissed anyone, and it felt as magical as her mother had always promised her it would.

Her hands slipped around his neck, and she tested the waters by pressing herself against him. Robb’s arm tightened around her waist, as if approving of the gesture, as he pressed his lips harder against hers. When he finally pulled away, (Y/N) swore she was seeing stars before her vision returned to normal and she could look at him.

“I do not care what your title is,” Robb told her. “I do not care if you are betrothed to me, I care only for you. I know we barley know one another, but I believe there is something about you that makes you special to me. And I want nothing more than to explore whatever that could be, to make this marriage not something you are being forced into, but something you wish to do. But only if you feel the same way I do.”

(Y/N) couldn’t help but smile at Robb. “I do feel something as well, something I believe could be love, but I, too, would like to get to know you better and to explore this feeling before we are to be man and wife.”

Robb’s smile was so bright (Y/N) swore it was brighter than the sun. He kissed her again with so much passion, (Y/N)’s head spun. She giggled as he pulled away, but kissed her forehead once more.

“I would like to come here more often,” she told him, turning in his arms so she was facing the view. Robb wrapped both arms around her and held her close, pressing his body against hers and resting his head on her shoulder. “It is beautiful here.”

“Then we shall come here every day until you grow tired of the view,” Robb told her. “This can be our special spot.”

(Y/N) smiled. “I would love that.”