#and the work is not alone either they are in intimate whispering union with one another

[textualviolence]

well. i DO know how joan of arc felt.

[orangepeelshortbreadcookies]

Oceans Away 

She lifts her head up to look at him, directly into his grey, lunar eyes. There is something so dear about him, so ancient and intimate to her, yet at the same time, he feels oceans away. Untouchable. The sensation makes her heart ache.

He is dying to shed her veil away to claim her lips with his own. It would not be proper, he halts, reminding himself that he is a gentleman. He must settle for admiring her through the sheer and in the half-light, letting his imagination fill in the details.

‘Who are you?’ She asks him, her voice barely above a whisper.

OR

A chance encounter between an incomplete Elf and a Fairy who doesn’t remember.

OR

When the prompts of the day are so perfect my brain vomited 5k of glitter.

Benophie Week 2023.

Day 3.

A fairycore!Bridgerton fanfic.

@sophiamariabeckett​ senpai please notice me.

@inksuvich​ Thank you for this amazing collage of Sophie Baek. Your amazing work has inspired this. This story could not exist without you!

There are five million nine hundred seventy eight thousand magical realms in the known universe. Oftentimes, the realms float peacefully about, separately in their respective dimensions, quite static, stewarded by their own celestials, enlivened by their own solars. Occasionally, beings of certain means and fortunes traverse from one realm to another, seeking out companies or knowledge. These events are quite rare.

Even rarer still are when the realms themselves collide. Every five hundred years, two neighbouring realms would drift ever so close, that the silken fabric of their respective realities would touch and meld into one another, if only briefly. The pitch-black veil of their barriers would lift, revealing truths and wonders. Cosmic sparks then fly like two lovers’ kiss, open-mouthed. The Secrets were privy to a few, but the spectacle alone was one to behold. And so across realms, every star reader, Sterndeuter, jyotishee and zhanxing jia or mnajimu awaits a Collision with bated breaths. When it happens, well, what could be more worthwhile a cause for celebration?

That was how the newly crowned Queen of the Gumiho Foxes finds herself in the court of the High Fae Queen Charlotte. A great ball is held on the Eve of Collision in honour of the union between Lord Bridgerton of The House of Fae and Kathani Sharma of The Merfolk of Indian Ocean. The Fox Queen and her delegation are participants in this event. 

From the edge of the ballroom, the young Queen admires the scene with satisfaction. Her first diplomatic mission has gone off without a hitch. Despite her self-perceived inexperience, she has handled the delicate game of politics with grace and dignity. The bond between realms were established, and now that the hard part is over, she watches gleefully as immortals of different shades and ages glide about across the ballroom, either mingling, dancing or drinking. Starlight swirls in the dome above them. Around the room, little pixies hold their own celebration, in the windows, behind the silk lanterns, in the vines and among the branches. Their little voices and the featherlight sound of their wings are only audible to The Fox Queen’s sensitive hearing and she giggles at their silly conversations. Occasionally, they would turn around and gasp in astonishment at the affairs of the bigger folk underneath, as if seeing them for the first time. In a sense, they are, for there is only so much space for memories in their little bodies.

In the middle of the dancefloor, the happy couple, beautiful and in love, bedecked in wedding jewels, gaze adoringly at one another. The groom’s elven glow emits a light blue hue, while the bride’s oceanic scales gleam in rich golden flickers. Sitar, shehnai, cello and piano honour their matrimony. On the highest seat, The High Fae Queen Charlotte holds court, seeming pleased with her subjects. Her ladies-in-waiting kneel in rows at her feet, dutifully braiding her endless curls. No one is paying attention to The Fox Queen, not even her own delegation. Now is the time for her to slip away.

As much as the festivities excite her, they are not what she came here for. No, she came for The Collision itself. When the two walls touch, when the heavens open one of their countless eyes and the sky thus becomes a mirror, there she would find her answers, this she believes with unshakeable conviction. ‘Few are lucky enough to gaze at the event and comprehend what it means. Most do not discover revelations,’ her professor had said, in a gentle and comforting tone. ‘Despair not, chance you find not what you seek, your Majesty.’ Yet the young Queen guarantees that the old scholar, with his boundless patience and wisdom, has worried for nothing. The Collision, this Collision in particular, is made for her. She knows this, deep in her heart, with divine certainty, as her excited steps carry her deeper into the forest, the earth warm and soft under her bare toes.

Someone is already there before her. In the middle of the lake, over on a little island, she can make out a masculine outline and scent with a mop of dark hair. He sits with his back to her, lounging lazily against pillows of moss. He seems to look up at the night sky, as the translucent shell of the other world approaches the one they are in ever so slowly. There is something about him that stops her in her tracks. Her entire body goes on high alert, as if a sudden course of lightning just runs through and charges every fibre of her being. And yet it is not out of fright that she reacts so.

‘Who goes there?’ He turns around. Their eyes meet.

He is the most beautiful being she has ever seen. He is Fae, perhaps an Elf by the shape of his ears. The ceremonial robe, that is customary of this realm, is haphazardly draped about him and deep blue in colour. Yet, he does not glow like the others of his kind. Perhaps that is what she finds strange about him. Defined, expressive features. The Fairy Fox wonders how he would look when he smiles. His pale grey eyes shine like the moon, and she finds in them a familiarity that makes her heart ache. Perhaps it was the veiled sadness in his eyes, a poetic melancholy that is characteristic to the allure of certain Fae folk, so she has been told.

For a brief moment, she considers giving in to her baser instincts. She can naturally shift into her fox form, sneaking away from his sight and go find a different location for her singular observation. None will be the wiser. It is not proper for two unattached beings to be alone together after all. She might have, however, had a few flutes during the fete, and the fermented fruit of the vines might inflate her boldness. ‘Why must I leave?’ she thinks stubbornly. She is a proud Queen of her own realm, and in her kingdom, where The Enchanted Foxes rule with freedom and wild independence, no one bothers with such frivolities. She wants to watch The Collision on that island over there, it is important to her, and whoever that Elf is can do well to respect that if he was a gentleman. And so, emboldened with the heat in her cheeks, her desire to see her plan through, the aristocratic pride that she recently has come to possess and her own curiosity regarding the mysterious Fae, she stands straight in her human form and faces him. 

‘It is I.’ She answers. Secretly she is grateful for her veil, a delicate work of spider silk, morning dew and chrysanthemum. It shrouds her, from her head to her ankle, in a misty sheer, thus preventing the other from discovering her hesitation. 

He leans against one hand, amused. A lazy grin creeps up his face, boyish and crooked, the corners of his eyes crinkle with mirth and she gasps, praying he doesn’t notice. He does have a beautiful smile. She knows he would.

‘And who might you be?’ He asks.

‘A lady.’ She says simply, gently reminding him of his courtesy and conceding very little about her identity.

He seems to understand her implication.

‘Good evening, my Lady.’ He tilts his head in her direction in greetings. ‘Happy Eve of Collision to you.’

She gives a small curtsey in response. 

‘Perhaps you are lost. The wedding is that way.’ He points at the direction whence she comes helpfully. She can still hear the music swelling.

‘I assure you I am not lost.’ She feels her defences rising. How dare this Fae, or whatever he is, assume she does not know her way. Foxes are never lost. ‘I seek not the wedding.’

‘Pray tell, what seek you, my Lady?’ 

‘I believe it is not any of your concerns.’ She crosses her arms petulantly.

He narrows his eyes at her in contemplation. Then his grin grows even wider.

‘Naturally it is a concern of mine. You, my Lady, are standing in my territory. I am the Lord of this lake here, you see.’

‘That’s a lie!.’ She exclaims. She has done a thorough investigation on this realm prior to her mission. ‘There is no mention of a Lord of a tiny, nameless lake.’

‘Tiny?’ He looks around the place in mocked offence. ‘It is not tiny. Dwarfish, perhaps.’

If she were to reveal her tails this moment, all nine of them would bristle up in protest. ‘It is a lie and we both know so!’

‘Do we now?’ One of his eyebrows quirks up. ‘Yet this lake is not what you declared, my Lady. It is not tiny, merely little. Nameless, it is not either. Why, the name of it is written right there.’

‘Where, sir?’ She looks around herself. ‘I don’t see any-’

‘Right there.’

Suddenly, he is right in front of her on the shoreline. He is very tall, she notices. One of his fingertips glows like ember as he hastily scrawls something in the air right above her forehead. For a second she can feel his breath shifting through her veil and the spot where his finger almost touches her cheek burns at the near-contact. Then just as sudden as he appears, he is gone. Back to his little island in playful arrogance.

As her wits settle back into her body, The Fox Fairy looks up. Hung in the air, written in glimmering, pretty Elvish writing, are the words: ‘My Lake’.

‘Very clever, sir.’ She rolls her eyes, even when he can’t see it.

‘I thank you.’ He nods.

‘It is not a complement.’

‘Nevertheless, I have decided to receive it as such.’

‘From whence I come, one would say the skin on your face is rather thick.’ She exclaims.

‘Another complement! I thank you again.’ He seems destined to rile her up. ‘You flatter me, my Lady.’

She stomps her foot. 

‘You, sir, are aggravating!’

‘Only in such pleasant company such as yourself, my Lady.’ He says, then turns his back to her.

In silence, the young Queen reflects on her own actions. Whatever has compelled her to behave so? Perfectly curt and unreasonable in front of this stranger. Like a thoughtless little cub snarling and bearing its teeth at perceived danger. There is no regal dignity to it. Her feet fiddle on the ground, embarrassed. She must admit that she is still in the process of reconciling the two versions of herself, the Queen and the Gumiho. The latter manages to manifest itself in new and at times, quite worrying ways to her still. A hundred years of a reign are still quite green for an immortal, after all, even when one is curiously prodigious at the job.

It is why witnessing The Collision is so important to her. Behaviours and knowledge in her possession that she cannot explain, she desperately wants to understand them. She knows she ought to view the event here, she was summoned to. And now perhaps she cannot anymore, all because she has proceeded, for no reason whatsoever, to antagonise this stranger. Like a fool.

Admittedly he has provoked her, but it is no warrant that she responds in such an unseemly manner.

‘You are not a babe anymore.’ She reprimands herself, before straightening up her back. She will resolve this conflict with grace and diplomacy.

‘Pardon me, sir.’ When he turns around again, she gives an apologetic bow. ‘I can see I have offended you. Please forgive my impertinence.’

She wills herself to not flinch under his gaze. It was her own wrongdoing. Even if he decides to mock her, as long as it does not cross the line, she will take it with dignity.

But he smiles at her. Earnestly.

‘Only if you forgive my insolence as well, my Lady. I am afraid I have overstepped your boundaries. I should have not teased you.’

Civility is an improvement.

‘Very well.’ She tilts her head. Her ear twitches the slightest bit in excitement. ‘You have my forgiveness.’

‘And you mine.’

It takes another minute before she gathers enough courage.

‘If it doesn’t bother you, sir, may I join you on your island? I imagine The Collision would look quite arresting from there.’

He agrees, and she thinks she might jump up and down with joy.

The Fae sensed her presence when she walked up to that shore.

It was the most peculiar feeling, as if his heart sped up and slowed down at the same time. As if he might perish if he did not see her. How strange, to feel so, so, so mortal. He has not felt that way in hundreds of years. 

Yet as he almost touched her cheek and saw her eyes widen in surprise through her veil, he realised how much he has missed that sensation.

He watches in fascination as she gathers up her skirts and practically runs across the lake toward him, weightless above the surface, the water kisses her lovely feet. Her sleeves are so long and wide, she looks like she is sprouting wings as she runs. Her attire cuts an exotic silhouette, more layered and less meticulously tailored than the fashion of his court. The emphasis instead is put on the very fine weave of the silk itself, if the luxurious shine of her skirt is any indication. Embroidered lotus bloom about her in great detail, the artisanship so stellar and liberal, it would make any lady of Queen Charlotte’s court green with envy. She is a vision, even with the silky veil flowing down from her garland about her like a waterfall. It ripples as she moves, enveloping her in a silvery shimmer.

She leaps to his island and sits down, limbs folded neatly together until her silhouette resembles a soft, shapeless cloud. As endearing as it looks, she has decided to remain an appropriate distance from him, and the Elf tries to rein in his disappointment. There is a wildness to her that he finds both alien and intimate. She might be a forest-bound spirit, like him, surely from a different realm. Her movements are graceful, weightless, ethereal, with a hidden ferocity to them, almost feline-like. It has delighted him, drawing that ferocity out of her, when he has watched her huff and stomp her feet against his teasings. He chuckles to himself as he, in his mind, links the image of hers to that of a very crossed, very regal kitten.

Above them, the curve of the neighbouring world inches ever closer, its surface favours dark ocean waves.

He notices her gaze on him, even as she tries to be innocuous.

‘Are you entertained, my Lady?’ A smirk plays at the corner of his lips. Her head turns immediately away. He imagines she blushes. He knows she is curious. Everybody is. It is so very obvious.

‘Pardon me, sir. ‘It is just…’ She says, looking down at her feet. ‘I have never met an Elf like you before. One who…’ She stammers.

‘Without his light?’ He finishes her question.

‘My apologies.’ She says.

‘There is no need.’ His voice is casual and benevolent. Truly, he does not mind. He looks at the palm of his hand, and then the back. He supposes sometimes, he should miss being lit from within. ‘I am aware it is quite strange. I lost the light centuries past. The dimness has become natural to me.’ His brows draw together. ‘That is the reason I am here.’

‘Are you set out to regain it?’ At some point, they have forgotten the honorifics. ‘The light?’

‘No.’ He cuts her off. ‘It’s just,’ He pauses, trying his best to resurrect the memory. ‘I lost someone. A mortal. She brought my light with her. And this,’ he gestures at his unglowing being. ‘Is what is left. The Mark of Death.’

‘Does it hurt?’ she asks.

‘Not at all.’ He lies. It is agony. ‘I cannot bring myself to regret that loss.’ This is the truth.

Fae folk do not die. The dimness and pain from the Mark of Death is something they must carry for the rest of their endless existence. And the Elf bears it with pride. True to his words, he does not rue the loss of his gift. For whatever can be a more potent proof, a stronger testament to his love affair?

He continues with his tale, his heart opens like a flood gate.

‘I followed her in her incarnations. She never lived long, even for mortals. Her lives were rarely happy.’ He looks up at the sky. ‘We have lived for the briefest moments of joy. She would reincarnate, I would find her. Repeat. And now,’ He sighs. ‘I cannot find her anymore.’

‘Do you seek her? In The Collision?’ The question flows out of her mouth before she can stop it. She does not want to know the answer. As unwise as it is, The Fox Queen cannot help but feel a pang of jealousy against this mortal soul. Who was she, to be worth being loved by him, over and over again, even at the cost of losing her over and over again, as well as forsaking his own Elfhood?

He turns to look at her. At some point, they have drawn closer to one another. The curve of her cheek is made even softer, almost ghostly by the silver veil. Her eyes, the shape of elegant brush strokes, the ends slightly lift upwards like a comet’s tail. He feels them bore into his very soul, and suddenly it is harder to speak about his past love in the present. In her presence. His hand itches with the need to lift the material up and reveal the creature underneath. To make certain she is not a mirage.

‘She is free now.’ He has made sure of it. He looks up at the sky again. ‘Perhaps she has forgotten. Perhaps her soul has dissipated and become one with the universe.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’ Rings the melodic, soft voice of his companion.

He shrugs.

‘I miss her. Deeply. I do not suppose I can ever stop. However, as urgent and selfish as my desire to be reunited with her might be, I care more to see that she is content. Happy. In whatever form she takes. The Firmament knows she deserves it more than any.’

Silence dawns.

Then the Elf leans on his hand and regards The Fox Fairy.

‘How about you? What do you wish to find in The Collision?’

‘There are empty spaces in my memories.’ She traces her fingers along the lines of her lips in thoughtful contemplation, a little action he finds equal parts hypnotic and familiar. ‘Spaces I yearn to fill. I can’t recall my childhood. One day I just woke up, armed with all these knowledge and powers and I don’t know how they came to be. Only a fool would assume they are natural gifts. One does not simply navigate a political court without extensive training. And then I was crowned Queen by my people. I accepted the role. I am uncertain whence I have such confidence, or perhaps entitlement.’ Both of her hands draw up to cup her cheeks. ‘It is quite frustrating. I am haunted by dreams I cannot recall. Of twin moons. I wake up nightly in my chambers with tears on my face and I don’t understand why.’

‘Perhaps it was something quite painful.’ He suggests. ‘Perhaps it is your consciousness’s way of protecting you.’

‘I thought so at first.’ She says. ‘But if it were something I have decided of my own accord, I doubt I would have grown so restless over it.’ Her voice is steadfast. ‘Something was taken from me, I know it deep in my bones. You must think me quite mad, but these shadows in me, they leave footprints.’

‘Footprints?’

‘Yes!’ She exclaims, her eyes bright. ‘Emotional footprints. I cannot recollect the events, but the sensations are true. I remember heartaches. Pain. Death. But there is beauty too. Desires. And love. So much of it.’ Her eyes glisten with unshed tears as the emotions resurface. ‘If my memories are meant to be lost forever to protect me, why take away all the good things too? Why entrust me with all this wisdom without the means to understand it? Why lead me here at all?’ She gestures at the approaching Collision. ‘If not for answers?’

He studies her for a long moment.

‘I believe there is some wisdom to what you said.’ Truly. Certainly she does not sound madder than himself.

‘A part of my desire is fueled by my nature as well.’ She concedes. ‘Foxes cannot stand not knowing.’

‘You are of Fox-kind?’ he ponders the new information. It makes perfect sense, he supposes. Her initial shyness and wariness. Her unadulterated excitement.

‘I seek to understand more of myself. I must admit the relation between my nature and my role still remains somewhat… obscure.’ She shrinks into herself. ‘They come into conflict at most inopportune time. My behaviour earlier on the shoreline…’ She silences abruptly, realising what she has just let slip.

The Elf notices it. Interesting, he thinks. 

‘I was wondering - what have I done to have incurred your animosity…’ He presses on, deciding to be ungenerous by not letting the matter rest. He is still Fae, after all. And now he is curious, too.

‘I… was so afraid to ask if I could accompany you on your island.’ She lets out an exasperated sigh. ‘This is most silly…’ He can hear her blushing, her voice is so expressive. ‘That I intended to scare you off. So you would go away.’

‘Scare me off?’ A humorous smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. ‘With what?’

She blushes even deeper. 

‘I have no idea.’

He breaks into a fit of laughter.

‘It is not funny!’ She exclaims, both of her hands cover her flushed cheeks, shielding her face even further from him. Nine big, silver, fluffy fox tails sprout from her back, holding her small frame in their embrace, until she bears a striking resemblance to that of a great cotton ball. The sight is so adorable, it makes him laugh even harder. 

As his laughter subsides, she feels him lift from his place and move to kneel in front of her. She imagines him reaching out his hand to touch her and she holds her breath. He decides against it, however, instead opting for calling out to her, in such a soft, gentle tone, it melts her bones into honey.

‘May I see you, please? My Lady?’

Her tails retreat, yielding under his voice. She lifts her head up to look at him, directly into his grey, lunar eyes. There is something so dear about him, so ancient and intimate to her, yet at the same time, he feels oceans away. Untouchable. The sensation makes her heart ache.

He is dying to shed her veil away to claim her lips with his own. It would not be proper, he halts, reminding himself that he is a gentleman and in the presence of a Queen. He must settle for admiring her through the sheer and in the half-light, letting his imagination fill in the details.

‘Who are you?’ She asks him, her voice barely above a whisper.

He chuckles nervously, feeling humbled under her gaze.

‘I am merely a younger brother of the groom, My Lady.’

‘I do not believe that is all that you are.’ she says kindly. ‘There is nothing ‘merely’ about you.’

He bows, still looking at her. 

‘I thank you.’

The sky rumbles. The Collision is approaching. The Fox Queen and the lightless Elf break away from their eye contact, hurriedly settling back into sitting side by side, no longer looking at one another. She dries her palms on the mossy ground. He lays down, his hand rests easy on her sleeve.

She hears the music change. A familiar, more sombre melody of koto and free-reed flute, played by the Skylarks of her court. According to the tradition of her realm, they are playing The Reception of the Collision, aptly named. The Fox Queen brings out a gourd from her magic pouch. An intoxicating, floral scent permeates the air when she removes the small nub. She drinks the liquid inside, then harmonises with the distanced musicians, using the gourd itself as her instrument.

‘That is a lovely melody.’ He compliments her.

‘It is ceremonial.’ She explains. ‘The Universe brings its own music in The Collision after all. It is an echo from the callings of all those who walked before. Even the ashes have their own resonance. It is only fair to give something back. At least it is so to my people.’

‘That is very interesting.’ He says. ‘I do not believe to have heard any music during the occurrence. Nor knowing any of my kind who did, for that matter.’

‘How do you Fae folk see the event then?’ She asks.

He ponders over her question.

‘Lightning would strike from the contact. Over there,’ he points at the steadily unfolding skyline. ‘Imagine a light that does not cast any shadows. A Fae sees all the colours in existence in that light, be it a High Elf or a simple pixie. All the stars in the sky would gather about it, and one would experience the sight of a tree growing backwards, all the leaves and flowers would return to the embrace of the branches from divinity. We elves believe we are allowed a glimpse into the Garden of The Firmament.’

‘It sounds very beautiful.’ She says.

‘It is truly a fascinating sight. There is no music however. Purely a visual sensation.’ He turns and smiles gently at her. ‘I do wonder how you experience it.’

She pretends to contemplate the offer.

‘Well, you must not play the tune.’ She says, her tone cheeky. ‘It is quite hard to master, and Fae folk tend to be… unsubtle with aerophones.’ She smiles back at him. He rolls his eyes at her small jab.

‘But you can drink the wine.’ She offers him the gourd, her voice grows beguiling.

He takes the gourd from her, his touch setting little fires to her skin as though his fingertips are still glowing. He brings it to his lips, tasting distilled peaches, cherry blossoms and winds shifting through wild grasses. She watches him intently, attempting her best to minimise the significance of their actions: how in her realm, only betrotheds and spouses drink wine from the same container. ‘It must not mean anything here.’ She thinks to herself, tearing her eyes from him, failing to vanquish the irrational spark of hope in her chest.

The Collision commences. 

The skyline splits open to welcome the foreign dimension. Every star in the sky is stretched and distorted in the new celestial lens. They are renewed, rejuvenated in front of his eyes and he watches The Tree drawing its children home. She hears cosmic music. Transcendental beings of the past, present and future, all glowing in light-made bodies, all join in a magnificent orchestra. She sees into others and into herself, her lives, in centuries before, as the sky opens one of its many eyes and becomes a mirror. Soon enough, they realise they are both observing the same story:

It was a tale of a poor cub, an anomaly, born to a Fairy Fox Queen and a mortal man. Her nine magical tails, the source of her powers, were cruelly sheared. Thus was she exiled from her kingdom, accursed to die many mortal deaths, trading a hundred years of sufferings for each of her tails.

And so for eight hundred years, her spirit walked the earths under ephemeral identities, all of them ending in tragedies. Yet, during her journey, she was not alone. A beautiful, ageless man with chestnut hair and moonlit eyes was her shadow. Be she a maid or a princess, a blue blood or a bastard, a scholar or a general, a king or a pauper, he loved her. All of her incarnations, identities, material sexes, he loved them all. They were friends, confidants, spouses. The times they had together, of which he referred to as ‘brief moments of joy’ as they spanned but a fraction of the long eight hundred years, were lifetimes of bliss to her mortal minds.

His last sacrifice disrupted and completed her cultivation, and as a result, the dusty cloak of her mortal experience was stripped away from her. She passed the turbulent threshold into her realm, returning one century earlier to her people as the rightful heiress, seemingly unburdened with the thought of him. 

Yet the memories only laid dormant, never were to be erased. She is always meant to seek them out. She is always meant to find him.

They look at each other now, without fears or reservations. She remembers him, everything about him. He has haunted her dreams. He is so close to her, so close she can feel his breaths on her cheeks, smelling of sandalwood and the wine she has given him. Her featherlight veil suddenly becomes too dark and heavy.

‘May I?’ He whispers, his hand tracing the fabric.

Instinctively, she clutches the veil tighter to herself. One feeble attempt at maintaining the last shred of their current, fading reality, before embracing the change. His large hand covers hers and her fingers uncurl from their grip, pliant under his touch.

She consents to his request with the smallest of nods. 

He lifts up the veil over her face, slowly, and she takes him in, now with clear vision. His face. His eyes. His mischievous elven smile. The sound of his voice. She misses him so much she can cry.

She is as marvellous as he imagines she would be. As he remembers she was. He brings his hand to her cheek and the part of him that is still tense with anxiety breathes a sigh of relief as he comes into contact with soft, warm flesh. His love. Of past and present.

 Before bridging the final gap between them and once again tasting heaven on her lips, he searches her beautiful eyes. He imagines a star has landed there. Or perhaps he seeks not a star in their watery depths, but his own light, the beam that she has not so much stolen, but he has willingly parted with.

Bathed in the light of The Collision, the copulation of The Universe, two ethereal lovers, both marked by mortality, uncover the mask of time between them and recognise the soul they have spent centuries seeking. Their joy is insurmountable, and they call one another by their true names as their happiness is, at last, eternal.

‘Benedict’.

‘Sophie’.

.

.

.

.

Author’s Note: *reverse UNO card* surprise it’s also a Reunited fic.

[dreamingofaizawa]

Powerful Ch. 3

Yakuza! Shouta Aizawa x Fem! Reader

*Mafia AU*

Warnings: Misogyny (not from Shouta), a dagger, kinda fluffy

Word Count: 3k

Author's Note: This took too damn long but here we are. Definitely coming out with another part or two, but the next one is gonna start at a huge timeskip so yeah. That'll be fun.

Anywho, Enjoy~

For Reference, this is the dress I describe in here.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 4

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For your second night with Shouta you find yourself lost in thought, staring out at the stars. The stress from before the meeting never disappeared, only delayed. Now it’s all catching up, and your brain is struggling to sort everything out.

Shouta could be on the receiving end of some very misogynistic and traditional clans’ anger very soon. You’re relieved that your future husband is nothing like them, but the backlash he could be getting just by bringing you to a meeting so soon after the announcement is frightening, not to mention some irrational clans may decide to split off and find a rival Yakuza to adopt them. Even so, that’s probably the worst of the outcomes. It’s unlikely you’ll have to worry about either of your safety, though there is still a small chance.

For the second time Shouta wraps his arms around you, surrounding you with his scent and body heat.

“I hope this won’t become a habit, little one.” He presses his cheek to the side of your head, kissing your temple gently. His presence is calming, helps your overactive brain slow down.

“I just needed space to think.” He hums, the sound reverberating through your body.

“What could you be thinking about so late at night?” You don’t really want to tell him, but you figured it’s better than keeping it all in.

“I just worry about the backlash you’ll be getting after the meeting today. This organization is a traditional one, and women have always been kept away from the violent and criminal side of it for centuries. To suddenly name an onna-oyabun, and a woman that previously held a low rank at that, you’re bound to feel some sort of repercussions.” He squeezes you gently, kisses your temple again.

“That’s what you’re worrying your pretty head about? I’ll be fine, little one. Let’s go to bed.” He’s right, you suppose. There isn’t a lot that can affect him or his position, so there isn’t a lot you need to worry about. You nod, taking your weight off of him to go back to the room. You’re a little surprised when he picks you up again, scoops you off your feet and carries you to bed. He tugs you into him just the same as the night before, and once again you fall asleep to the soft thrum of his heart.

The next morning you’re woken by Shouta again. This time you don’t immediately pull away, instead choosing to bask in his embrace a few moments longer. It feels like you’ve known Shouta for years rather than hours, having seen some of the most intimate and private parts of him, and all you want to do is dig deeper. But of course, there’s time for that later.

“Come on, little one. It’s time to wake up. We’re going to see your parents today, and then we’ve got another meeting to attend.” You hum lightly then push off of him, taking a glance at his handsome face before getting out of bed to prepare for the day. You choose a dress you hadn’t worn in a while, one that felt like it would fit today’s events, a flowing black sundress with a halter neckline. Simple black heels pair nicely with it, as well as a small black clutch purse.

You aren’t anxious about Shouta meeting your parents. They aren’t as traditional as most, ideals and views closer to Shouta’s. All parties involved gave their bows in greeting, even Shouta, and brunch went by without a hitch. It wasn’t the usual cringey romcom scene where the parents ask ‘why do you love our daughter’. In fact, they know that the marriage is strategic. Of course, Shouta had made his thoughts clear, that he intends to ensure the union is enjoyable for the both of you. His honesty made a small smile worm its way onto your face, though you managed to hide it well enough.

Soon you’re on the road again, en route to the second meeting. You aren’t too surprised that Shouta already has two scheduled meetings back-to-back after the gala, he is a busy man after all.

The venue is another restaurant, this one not quite as high-end but just as beautiful, the entire massive building shaped like a circle and a koi pond around the perimeter. A bridge is all that connects the sidewalk with the building. You and Shouta are guided through by a host, and out a back door where another bridge connects to a separate island in the extended pond, the structure enclosed with sheer beige curtains.

Again, conversation abruptly stops when you enter. You’ll have to get used to it, you suppose. You sit, and the meeting begins. The subject is mostly territory disputes, bargaining for territory extensions or swaps with the others, all of them trying to work out strategies that benefit not only themselves but other clans as well. You keep silent throughout, listening carefully and learning, taking information and analyzing it. There must be someone Shouta doesn’t like in the meeting, because when the most important details are worked through, he excuses himself to the restroom once again.

You wonder, briefly, why he’d choose to play the same trick a second time in a row. If he does it too often his plan would become transparent, though one could argue not doing it enough would be just as easy to read. You don’t know how often he excuses himself from these meetings, so you decide to leave it in his hands.

Fortunately for you, it would seem no man here is willing to speak about your presence. It’s been almost ten minutes and none of them has said a word to or about you, choosing instead to discuss territories a bit further. Though you were beginning to question why Shouta hadn’t yet returned. Surely one would get suspicious, and one did, glancing toward the main building. It was then you all shifted your attention to Shouta, who stood at the opposite end of the bridge speaking into his phone. So that’s why he’s taking so long.

And unfortunately, that meant these men were relatively safe.

“So what’s the woman doing here?” It was barely a whisper, but you could hear it even over the sounds of the pond. A glance up shows the blonde to your right had leaned over to the man next to him. He’s much younger than the man from yesterday, maybe in his mid-late twenties, his hair clearly not natural. The one he’d whispered to flicked his gaze up, catching your own, and shouldered the blonde who subsequently looked to you. He cracks a cheeky smile, a poor attempt to cover himself really.

“Ah, Onna-oyabun, it’s good to finally see the Black Dragon’s wife-to-be.” It would seem news travels fast, and the blonde is much less bold than the older man. You crack your own smile, a sickly sweet show of teeth that hid a venomous bite.

“The woman has a name. Please, do not be afraid to use it in discussion. And I will tell you exactly what I told the previous oyabun who questioned my presence. I am here because Shouta wants me to be.” His smile doesn’t falter, but his eye visibly twitches at your response. It’s almost amusing to see his composure slip. It’s less amusing when he glances back to where Shouta is still on the phone.

“With all due respect I’m not afraid, I simply do not feel the need. And my question was not directed at you, but at my associate here.” He loops an arm over the shoulder of the man he’d asked, the dark-haired man wide-eyed and nervous. You aren’t sure how to answer his quip without rising tension, but Shouta made it clear you’re to be commanding a room just as he does, so you choose to strike a nerve and stir the pot. For added effect you let your face drop into a deadpan, tilt your chin up just a hair and glare.

“Most would feel it necessary to use a person’s name or title when discussing anything regarding them, especially in their presence. Therefore I can’t help but feel you may not have any respect for me when you clearly should.” You could see the muscles in his jaw clench as he ground his teeth, his nostrils flaring with his anger. You nearly let a smile crawl onto your face at the satisfaction of knowing you’d angered an asshole like him with only your words.

“Maybe I don’t respect you. What are you going to do about it?” The man still under his arm stiffens, a hand slapping the blonde’s chest, his eyes locked on the entrance to the room. Shouta stands there, but the blonde seems to either not notice or not care. You aren’t given time to answer his rhetorical question.

“Nothing. You can’t do a thing about it, because you hold no power over me.” He’s elbowed this time, the dark-haired man trying harder to get the blonde’s attention off of you and onto the man he should be fearing right about now. To be fair, Shouta stands almost behind the blonde, who sits to your right, so it isn’t hard to believe he doesn’t see him. You just let him dig his own grave.

“And you hold no power over me because you’re a woman. A woman out of her place and on the wrong side of business, let alone holding a rank much lower than mine.” The man beneath the blonde’s arm had given up, choosing to bow his head down and stay silent. It’s Shouta who speaks next.

“I believe it’s you who holds a much lower rank than her.” The blonde’s face goes pale, his shit-eating grin dropping faster than a sinking stone.

“In case you hadn’t heard the news yet I’ve assigned her a title, and I expect you to use it. She may have asked you to use her name, but you should address her as Onna-oyabun any time she is brought up in discussion, regardless of whether or not either of us are present.” He strides up behind you and places a hand on your bare shoulder, just like yesterday. You can’t help but feel his positioning is on purpose, physically placing you in front of him.

“Are you ready to go, little one?” You nod, rising from your seat and taking a small bow signaling your leave. Shouta lets a hand rest on your lower back, guiding you out, but you overhear the same blonde whisper under his breath. You’re definitely not meant to hear it.

“The Dragon can’t always be around to save you, brat.” You both freeze in your tracks, Shouta’s eyes wide and nostrils flaring with anger. Before he can turn to react you lean in and whisper in his ear.

“My turn.” He raises an eyebrow at you, then nods, crossing his amrs and leaning against the beam at the entrance. You pivot, pinning the blonde in place with a glare. If looks could kill, he’d be in a casket. Slowly, you begin a steady pace around the table.

“I do not rely on Shouta to help me in these situations. In fact, I could just as easily take a piece of your tongue myself.” You’re on the opposite side of the table now, still taking long, slow strides and glaring down at the man.

“But it is so glaringly obvious that you lack the same level of intelligence I hold, and therefore I would feel guilty to rob you of a muscle that you clearly haven’t learned to use properly,” you stop, standing stock still behind the blonde, “However.” In one swift movement your dagger is stuck in the wooden table directly in front of the blonde, your manicured fingers curled around the handle delicately.

“Should I hear another demeaning or degrading word out of your mouth, I will not hesitate to stain my fingers with your blood.” He doesn’t seem to be reacting at all, whether he’s afraid or not you can’t tell, but you don’t let that affect your performance. You lean in, your lips nearly grazing the shell of his ear.

“You probably wouldn’t even get to taste my blade, but I don’t mind taking my time if you want to savor the tang of steel.” You yank the blade from the wood and sheath it, straightening your posture.

“Had Shouta chosen another woman for his wife you may have been able to actually hurt her feelings with your childish words.” You turn, striding back to where Shouta holds his hand for you to take.

“Unluckily for you, I’m just as volatile as my other half. Be grateful that either of us are merciful. You get to keep your tongue. For now.” It’s cathartic, letting out your anger like that. It’s unlikely that the threat will get you any sort of respect, but fear works just as well in your favor. Respect is something hard to find and even harder earned as a woman in a man’s world, but fear works better against an enemy that dreads change. You can’t help but smirk as you walk away from the chaos you left behind, and as you glance up you see the faintest smirk worming its way onto Shouta’s face.

____

His chest swells with something akin to pride as he waltzes away from the restaurant. He was wrong to assume you were averse to violence, had taken your level-headedness and cool temperament to mean you are not a violent individual. To assume you were either incapable of violence or unable to handle the intensity was obviously a mistake on his part. Watching the blonde freeze up and pale under your hard gaze was extremely satisfying, and he had to admit seeing such controlled rage and sharp words pour from you was enjoyable and, among other things, wildly attractive.

Shouta thinks he should let you handle these situations more often, let you have your fun, maybe even plot to have you purposely go just a little too far and have him reel you back in. Maybe then people may start to understand that you aren’t to be treated lightly, you aren’t just a means to an end, just a glorified housewife. No, you’re much more than that and if it takes bloodied words and bloodier actions to get it through some thick skulls, well, he’s sure you know he’s willing to go there and farther.

But for now, he’d settle with the occasional threat of taking a body part.

____

Once again you stare out at the stars, thinking about the day’s events. You’re almost bouncing on your feet, adrenaline still flowing through your veins. You feel light now, knowing you can take control of an escalating situation. Whether or not you can do it all on your own isn’t a real question. Of course you could do it without Shouta present. His existence alone is enough to ward off any violence directed at you. But it’s your own actions that determine how people will perceive you.

You let Shouta control the first meeting incident, mostly because you had no clue what was going on and no information to work from. Now that you know Shouta is listening and that there’s a purpose behind his absence, you can use it to your advantage and weed out the worst of the bad apples. With that information, and confidence that Shouta will not reprimand you--but will in fact support you--for getting mouthy with said bad apples, you could let loose some of the rage that made your blood boil. It’s freeing, taking entitled men off their precious pedestals and knocking them down a bit.

Shouta wraps his arms around you for the third time, burying his face in your neck and breathing in your scent. He kisses you lightly, feather light presses of his lips against your skin. It really does feel good, being so close to someone.

“I thought this wasn’t becoming a habit.” You sigh and lean into him.

“I’m not quite tired. Honestly I’m thinking about today. I’m still on an adrenaline high just replaying it in my head, the thrill, being able to finally get a word in.” He chuckles, squeezing you a bit tighter to him.

“I’m going to assume you’d never really been allowed to do that sort of thing before.” You nod, a small smile curling your lips. Up until now you lacked any sort of standing or power, and the rush is amazing, for lack of better words. Shouta hums then nips at the shell of your ear, his voice sultry and deep.

“Well if you’re looking to burn energy I think I could help you with that.” Your breath hitches, not prepared for such a suggestion. For a second you believe it, believe he’s really suggesting what you think he is, but you can feel his hands moving and before you can react he’s digging his fingers into your sides, making you giggle uncontrollably.

He’s laughing with you, enjoying watching you try to squirm from his grasp. He releases you, and you run over to the bedroom and duck under the blanket in an attempt to hide, but he only laughs.

“You silly girl, now you’re trapped!” He finds your waist through the thick blanket and doesn’t relent until you’re gasping for air and crying for mercy. He stops, finally, and pulls the blanket off your head. Your face is flushed, your hair splayed wild over the sheets and your chest heaving for oxygen. For a moment his mind drifts to dirtier thoughts of a similar expression he’d like to see. He pushes those thoughts away as you beam up at him, your smile reminding him of sunshine. Rough fingers brush away the hair that had fallen over your face.

“Are you ready to try sleeping now, little one?” You lean your head into his hand, nuzzling your cheek into his palm. The way he’s gazing down at you now, you know you’d never felt so adored in your life.

“Let’s sleep.” He lies down and you get comfortable on top of him, resting your head in the crook of his neck and wrapping your leg around his waist. His arms lock around you, holding you in place and he kisses the top of your head.

[lastxviolet]

Madripoor is for Lovers (Zemo x F!Reader) - Ch. 3

Summary: Y/N is a SWORD agent recruited to help Sam and Bucky track down Karli and the super-soldiers. When Helmut Zemo joins the team, he takes a special interest in her. The friendly union is wrought for disaster, but then things take a turn for the worst when Y/N is taken as collateral. Will Zemo keep her forever? Does she even want to escape? And what happened in Madripoor that made the whole thing so complicated?

Warnings: 18+ / smut / oral sex / f receiving

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32878015/chapters/81589774

The hypnotic bass and Zemo's enthusiastic dance moves almost got you carried away. But over the bouncing crowd, you saw Sharon, Bucky, and Sam on the stairs, looking for you.

“Shit,” you mumbled, breaking the trance. “We gotta go.”

Zemo followed your line of sight and turned to lead you back to the group in silence. You try to hide the disappointment on your face.

“We found him,” Sharon yelled over the music upon your approach.

The five of you went over the plan for tomorrow back in Sharon’s suite. You doubted that even with your experience, you could’ve found Dr. Nagel without Sharon's help. In the states, it was easy to pick a needle out of a haystack, because you always knew what you were looking for. But here, everyone was a criminal. Uncharted territory where you had to find the sharpest needle amongst thousands.

“You good?”

Sam’s voice cut through your thoughts. You looked up and noticed the dissipating group. Sharon showed Bucky to his room, and Zemo sat with his eyes glued to a book on the couch. Only Sam remained standing in front of you, looking like he was about to pass out.

“I’m fine,” you assured him. “Go get some sleep. You look terrible.”

He chuckled and nodded in agreement. “We gotta get the hell out of here. Madripoor has aged me at least ten years.”

“Me too. I miss places where being a criminal makes you the odd one out, not the other way around.”

“Goody two-shoes,” he teased before turning to find his room.

Sharon waved him on from down the hall and they got back into it about her pardon and what she’d missed in the states.

Your attention shifted to the only other person in the room. Zemo’s eyes wasted no time abandoning his book and landing on you as soon as you were alone.

“The Odyssey,” you asked, pointing to his book. “I didn’t take you for someone who enjoys fiction.”

He smiled at the attention and made room for you on the couch.

“I often find that there are elements of truth in every fantasy. The human spirit is sometimes better examined by poets than by professors. This, for instance, is a brilliant study on heroes.”

“Hmm, studying heroes? An attempt to know thy enemy?”

He laughed and turned to you with his elbow up on the back of the couch, bringing him less than a foot away from your face. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the lights down the hall go out. There were no interruptions, or easy outs, now. All that was left was you, and the only man who’d ever made you truly nervous.

“Y/N, if you were in Odysseus’s place, content and immortal, would you give it up to go back home?”

“You’re asking me if I’d abandon my legacy and family to shack up on an island with some mistress?”

He chuckled and nodded in approval. “Very wise. But what does he gain by leaving? Struggle? Hardship? Mortality?”

You tilted your head to match his. “Are you telling me that you’d stay on the island?”

His expression shifted for the first time since you’d stepped foot in Madripoor. The overconfident, smirking Baron dissolved into a man.

A man who hid the sense of riotousness that he carried with dramatic flair. A man whose charm and wit seemed fabricated.

This man now, fighting off sleepy eyes and grappling with the moral quandary posed, seemed burdened. You wondered if his quest for justice would ever get to be too much. After all the destruction he’d caused, could he still see himself as the exactor of fairness? Were the Avengers still his enemy? Were you?

“No,” he confessed looking down at the copy in his hands.

Your lips twitched but you didn’t smile. “You’d make the hard choice — the hero’s choice if it came down to it.”

He looked almost somber at your words and nodded.

“In another life…perhaps.”

His voice wavered, almost as if he regretted saying it out loud. The briefing that Sam and Bucky had given you about him flashed in your mind.

A hero's choice was the right thing to do; the hard thing to do. You knew that he was a soldier before everything happened. Just like you.

Was that not a hero’s choice?

He tore the Avengers apart in an attempt to stitch up his own heart. An eye for an eye. Avenging his country because its destruction had been glossed over by the world. His loss fueled his anger but he was more capable than most. A man without armor, or mystical abilities was able to wreak havoc on those who had wronged him.

Was that heroism?

If losing those you love didn’t permit revenge, you weren't sure what did.

He broke the silence by tapping his knuckle on the book.

“It is the perfect testament to the valiance of heroes,” he continued. "But, I must say that the wisest thing Odysseus did was marry his wife.”

You laughed and nodded, remembering how she saved the day. Without her, Odysseus’s homecoming would’ve been much more perilous for him.

“I often find that behind every great man is an even better woman.”

He smirked and didn’t miss a beat. “Like you with…your Avengers.”

“I stand beside them,” you corrected.

He raised an eyebrow and waved a hand. “Semantics."

You gave him an eye roll in return.

He smiled then, wider than you had ever seen. It almost made him seem shy. Perhaps it was because he was making a genuine point, masked in humor.

You were well aware of your importance to this mission and yet burdened by the fact that it didn’t make you a member of their special club. When this was all over, you wouldn’t be an Avenger, or anywhere close. You’d go back to S.W.O.R.D to wait until called upon again. It hadn’t occurred to you before, but there was a pang of sadness there where the thought rested. It’d be a mistake to let Zemo know but it seemed to be too late.

“You’re making fun of me.”

His hand brushed yours. “No. I am merely expressing my concerns about your allegiances.”

Still aware of the small amount of alcohol left in your system, you looked away from his quirked moving lips.

“Enlighten me, Baron. What wrong decisions do you think I’m making?”

Frozen in place, you let him brush his fingers along your wrist to your arm. He took his time, tracing patterns on your skin and inspecting his work with an unwavering gaze. Only when his thumb caressed your cheek, and his hand landed on your neck did he look you in the eyes again. The air in your lungs was gone and your body betrayed you with a furious eruption of butterflies.

“Living a hero’s life,” he said somber-eyed and serious.

Your heart rate quickened. As if you’d learned nothing in S.W.O.R.D about manipulation, you were back to watching his lips. They parted slightly, as if he had something else to say but thought better of it.

A hero.

You didn't feel like one.

A sidekick, maybe. But even then, no one knew your name. No one sang your praises at home or breathed a sigh of relief knowing you were out there in the world fighting evil. It seemed that the only one who thought of you as more than an assistant was Zemo.

Your heart felt heavy then. The two of you were impossible. An inconceivable pair brought together by chance.

But that didn’t make his dark eyes any less enticing or his words any less intoxicating.

That didn’t make you any further from his lips.

He was a breath away, but so was your own destruction.

In another life, the island might tempt you.

“Look,” you said glancing past him to find something to change the subject. “It’s a full moon.”

Without sparing him another glance, you crossed the floor in four quick steps to the large windows. Never one to give up easily, you heard him follow close behind.

He beat you there and pushed open the glass door before gesturing towards the balcony in silence.

You looked down at your feet until the skyline drew your eyes. The plan to diffuse the tension had not worked in the slightest. The moonlit balcony overlooking the beautiful city had only made it worse.

You heard him stop a few feet from you and then settle on the lone armchair. The reality of the situation hit you like a train. Away from the windows, you had privacy. This high up no one would see you and everyone else was in bed. You'd meant to creep out of the lion's den but instead, you'd locked yourself in.

“The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to,” Zemo mused from behind you.

“Carl Sanburg,” you confirmed, so he knew you didn't think he'd made it up.

Both of you were silent then. Swaying in the tension you'd built. Sanity pulling you back inside, inexplicable hope keeping you planted in place.

“Are you lonely, Baron?”

The words fell from your lips more delicate and intimate than you had meant them to. You let slip that you cared about his answer. That you might even care to cure him of the ailment.

“Me? No.”

You turned and scoffed.

“Liar. You were in a cell for years and you hardly talk to anyone now that you’re out.”

He leaned back in the chair, arms on either rest and a leg crossed with the ankle of his right knee. His demeanor was harmless in the same way that a predator poised to pounce was. Elegant, still, and ready for the kill.

“Not true,” he corrected. “I talk to you.”

“One person isn’t enough,” you said, taking a step closer.

Were you walking into disaster? Or being pulled? You couldn't tell the difference between his seduction and your own reckless desires any longer.

“The right person though…can be,” he half-whispered. “And you, Y/N, are more than I deserve.”

He gazed up at you from the chair. Kings throughout history, in war-won golden thrones and elegant capes, paled in comparisons to how regal he looked. Anointed with a crown of moonlight, ruling over whomever he pleased.

Your eyes widened with the admission. “Baron — ”

“Helmut, please.” He stood then and met you near the railing, his hand grazing your hip. “Only if for tonight.”

You shook your head, knowing this was a bad idea. His hand made its way to your waist regardless. He pulled you against his chest before searching your eyes for any signal that you were going to run. You knew he’d find nothing. You knew you mirrored his look of lust with blown pupils and flushed cheeks.

“Have I gone too far,” he whispered, bringing his other hand to brush loose hair behind your ear.

“No,” you sighed, letting him pull you closer and brush his lips to your cheek and jaw.

“Tell me if I do,” he whispered again before finally capturing your lips with his.

You uttered no complaints as his tentative kiss turned bruising and possessive. His arms wound around your waist, crushing you into him. But you needed to feel closer. He grunted as you sprung to action, flinging your arms around his neck, deepening the desperate kiss. He tasted like whiskey and something sweet. A cool breeze brushed against the exposed parts of your body. You let your hands wander beneath his coat, chasing warmth and proximity. He let you do as you please, only insisting that his lips stayed on yours.

You let out a whimper as his hand explored the front of your dress. He stopped to press his warm hand against your breast, before holding your face.

It was then that he pulled away, steadying your searching lips with a grip on your chin.

“Ich esse nicht,” he sighed, kissing a pattern to your ear. “Ich schlafe nicht, ich tue nichts anderes, als an dich zu denken.”

His teeth grazed your pulse point, leaving you gasping for air.

“I don’t speak German,” you managed to stutter out.

A hand slid up the back of your dress, gripping the zipper before undoing it in one swift motion and the fabric fell to the floor. The cool air seized your naked torso for only a moment before Zemo pressed himself against you again. The coat you’d complained about before, now provided warmth and security. You tipped your head back, almost over the edge of the balcony as he continued worshipping your neck and chest.

“I don’t eat, I don’t sleep,” he said between wet open-mouthed kisses on your breasts. His hot mouth left purple spots that cooled instantly in the chilly night air.

“I do nothing but think of you,” he finished before toying with your hardened nipple between his teeth.

You moaned then, louder than you should’ve, and let your eyes flutter open. The world was upside-down but you made no motion to move. You were making Madripoor proud by being pressed up against a balcony by an international criminal.

Utterly pleased with himself, Zemo raised his face back towards yours, leaning you both over the edge.

“Shhh liebling,” he cooed.

He pulled you back over, kissing your shoulder before removing his jacket and draping it over you. Each brush of his lips feeling more improper than the last.

“We would not want your friends to see you like this.”

In the next second, he swept you off of your feet and hoisted you into his strong arms. You watched the world sway around you and then settle when he placed you on the lounge chair, letting you get some warmth back from the coat and cushions.

He draped one of your legs over an armrest, exposing you to him except for a thin pair of underwear.

“Not with you spread open for me,” he growled. He towered over you for only a moment before kneeling between your legs. The man whose stature made him the tallest amongst giants; the most important in any room he chose, knelt before you.

“What would they say,” he mumbled in a trace. His hands gripped both of your thighs, causing an eruption of goosebumps across your whole body. “If they saw you like this, with me?”

He looked up at you then, raising an eyebrow, and tracing the inside of your thigh with his thumb.

You answered him breathlessly. “They’d tell you to stop.”

“And what would you say to that?”

His voice sent shockwaves through your system. Dark and sultry, with a hint of danger. You threw your head back again, barely able to keep a single thought straight. Your body shuddered but you couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or the need for his touch. When you looked back to him, he was surveying your body with the hunger of a starved wolf.

“Would you want me to stop?” His voice was gentle and sweet then, asking in earnest.

“Meine Liebe," he taunted you for consent as he flashed a smirk and pulled something from his pocket.

Cold metal grazed your thigh. A moan escaped your throat as he unsheathed a serrated knife and caressed your skin with the dull side.

“I wouldn’t want you to stop,” you gasped, almost vibrating with anticipation. “I don’t want you to stop — Helmut — please don’t stop.”

He chucked again, before focusing his attention on the area between your legs. You bucked slightly as the icy knife slid underneath the fabric. He made one strong slash upwards and you felt the fabric fall away from your wet core. One of his hands gripped your ass, but only for a second before he tore the rest of the fabric from your body.

“How could I ever withhold something from you, liebling?” His nose grazed your inner thigh, inching closer and closer to where you needed him most. It was only a moment before you felt his breath between your legs.

“How cruel it would be,” he growled. You moaned and slapped a hand over your mouth as he kissed your sensitive bundle of nerves. “To not give you everything.”

His tongue swirled against you in a tantalizing pattern, stroking you deliciously. He licked you methodically like he was reading the blueprint of your body right then and there. He held each thigh in a punishing grip, pressing you deeper into the cushions as he made a meal of you. The stars above your head blurred and the universe shifted.

If this was your destruction then it was illustrious. You'd do it over and over again until you landed in a cell right next to him.

“Helmut,” you whined with a heaving chest.

“Tell me what you want,” he mumbled between flicks of his tongue. “And it is yours.”

You would’ve begged him to let you cum but he beat you to it, making your back arch and mouth fall open in ecstasy. You trembled beneath him, over and over, but he didn’t let up. Your legs strained from being extended by his unflinching hands. You tried to stutter something out to him but no sound came except for content sighs and haphazard gasps. But his eyes remained closed regardless of the noise.

Without his mouth on you, he would’ve been mistakable for a good Christian, deep in prayer. Brow's furrowed in focus and devotion; lips moving in silent divine appeals. Only he could make you feel worthy of an alter. You couldn't picture anyone ever worshipping you in the same way again. It was his, you thought. I am his.

Lost in pleasure and shock, you reached up to run your nails against his scalp. Only then did he release you, and raise to meet your waiting lips as they trembled.

“You,” was all you could manage to whisper. “Only you.”

He pulled you from the seat, to wrap your legs around him. You brought your forehead to his and let him pepper you with chaste kisses.

“When I have you,” he said, before pulling the coat around you again. “It will be in a proper bed.”

You stared at him, confused and overwhelmed. The space between your legs ached with a longing to be filled but he let your legs fall away, and stood up.

“We can’t…I mean not now — they’ll hear.”

Zemo smiled and nodded while looking for something on the ground. After a moment of searching, he picked up the torn pieces of the red underwear you had been wearing. Before you could retrieve it, he pocketed the shorn fabric and stared you straight in the eyes.

“Worry not, Y/N,” he purred, reaching a hand out to help you up. “We have all the time in the world.”

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

hello~ i saw you’re taking fluff ABC requests! can i get comte with C H J L S Y please? i hope thats not too much (if it is then just the first 3 will be fine), thank you!!! :)

Hiya friend! You absolutely may, not to worry, I love writing about Comte!! You’re very welcome, and I hope you enjoy my rambles :D 💖💖💖 Below a cut for length!

Fluffy ABC headcanons listed here for requests!

C = Cuddling (how does he like to cuddle?)

His favorite way to cuddle tends to be with her in his lap in any permutation of that position. Usually she’s sitting on his thighs with her legs over the arm of a chair/on the other side of the couch, or she’s all curled up between his legs (she feels guilty about being too heavy and making his legs fall asleep, no matter how much Comte protests). She’ll lean against his chest and close her eyes, or hug him around his shoulders and snuggle close to his neck while he wraps his arms around her waist. From time to time his hand might fall to her thigh, stroking gently, or he might drop a kiss to her forehead/shoulder--anywhere he can reach, really. Either way, it’s a very comfortable position for both of them; he’ll always have a blanket ready to drape over her in the winter time since she often falls asleep that way. He loves it because he can watch over her and soak in some quality time at his leisure, no demands being made of him and no chaos to resolve. Just the quiet, the crackle of a hearth/fire perhaps, and the rhythmic sound of her breathing--beating heart steady. She’s safe, she’s warm, she’s cherished, and she’s content; what more could he ask for? (She loves it too because she just loves being wrapped up in the scent of him and in his arms, falls asleep so readily because of how comforted she feels ;-;).

He also loves having her legs around his hips when she’s in his lap--but that usually leads to sexy times, and this is fluff hour, my darlings ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

H = Holding Hands (when/how does he like to hold hands?)

Literally the only time this man would ever say no to hand-holding is when he has to actively use his hands for something else. (Basically sees her empty hand and sees his own empty hand and is just the “Is for me? 👉👈” meme). Otherwise he would die before saying no. That being said, he tends to be pretty practical and chill about it. Out on the town? Likes to hold her hand to keep her close, likes showing off his favorite person in the world, loves the feel of her hand against his own--warm. (From time to time his thumb will drift to her fluttering pulse along her wrist and he’ll sigh blissfully; it reduces his terrifying intrusive worries about losing her suddenly to mere background noise.) 

Usually it’ll just be her hand in his, but when it comes to sexy times he’s more partial to their fingers being intertwined ;)

J = Jokes (does he like to joke around with or prank her? how?)

Okay but this one made me laugh, only because my first thought was “he’s a clown s2g”. What I mean to say is that he’s a huge tease; really enjoys gently flustering his love. He’d never cross boundaries or do anything appalling, but he will ask her to do things that make her bashful because he thinks it’s absolutely adorable/endearing to see her out of sorts. Seduction is the name of his game, and he intends to see both of them have fun along the way (he’s a lovable rascal). Will ask her to undress him after a long day to enjoy the blush on her cheeks in the privacy of their room, or ask her to kiss him goodbye at the door if he has to go into town to run an errand. They will be simple little requests, or even observations sometimes~

One surefire way to surprise him/get him back though is to respond to his teasing with utterly serious love--it makes him freeze in his tracks every single time. If she anticipate his moves, he will be completely baffled for a moment. For example, say it’s his usual tea time and he’s really absorbed in his work (or he’s pretending to be). “MC would you mind--” Be one step ahead of him, hold that macaroon up to his lips like “Don’t worry, sweetheart, leave it to me--say ah~” And he will literally scream internally and die; he won’t ever see it coming. 

Note: this will lead to rigorous love-making in one way or another (either that moment or later that night) so be forewarned if she seeks to thwart him HAHA 

Beyond that, though, I think he and his MC are also a naturally light-hearted couple; they find fun wherever they are and joke around easily. Whether that means teasing each other, or just snickering over puns/nonsense.

L = Love (how does he show her he loves her?) Take two! I did another one with a different spin on it without realizing because I’m literally too in love with him to stop

If I’m honest? I think Comte’s biggest indicator of genuine, abiding love is vulnerability. He is always overcompensating, always acting to make other people comfortable; always a little too giving. If MC can encourage him to be greedy, to let down his guard with her--to be less than polished and perfect and magnanimous to the point of self-silencing--that is the greatest way he can show love. It means he trusts her to see him for all that he is, hiding nothing, and isn’t afraid that doing so will mean losing her forever. People can rely on him too much, ask for too much, and while he does love answering people’s needs and seeing them happy, at the end of the day he can neglect himself sometimes. She coaxes him out of his protective isolation slowly by showing him that he’s safe and loved even when he gets a little needy for affection, a little needy for reassurance. When she shows him that he’s still adorable and sweet and precious when he asks for help, he is like putty in her hands. Fair warning to MC though--if she does this she better be prepared to be spoiled tenfold in return; he can’t help himself!

S = Secrets (how open is he with her?)

Comte is a slow burn through and through my friends; he needs time to really open up. It’s not that he thinks MC will betray his trust or regard him with indifference; rather, he doesn’t have much confidence others will like him in his more vulnerable state. (And honestly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people have toyed with his weaknesses in the past. Yes, Vlad, I’m looking at you.) He just assumes he’s a lot of baggage, that the truth of who he is and how he thinks is just too depressing. He tends to hide his more overwhelming feelings and loneliness, tends to hide what he wants; he doesn’t want to impose on others or burden them. That being said, if one pays attention to his tells, if she shatters the illusion of his composure with confident concern, he will begin to share what he’s thinking more and more. He will give up the facade slowly, reach out to her more consistently as she offers him a safe, sensitive place to rest. (I feel like his biggest indicator is sudden silence: if he doesn’t know what to say it’s usually because he’s either caught off guard or overwhelmed by emotion, and he needs a second to conceal it). 

I don’t think he’ll ever be completely open with his feelings like that in any kind of public setting. He needs the comfort of privacy, the truth of who he is hers and hers alone; it is a privilege that belongs to his beloved. He will share bits and pieces of himself outside, snapshots of what he’s truly like, but the entirety of his selfhood will be concealed only between them two. 

Y = Yes (how would he propose to her?)

Haha, this will actually come up in his MS and a future event, so look forward to it! But there are some big points to hit home when it comes to his proposal process. 

First and foremost, he doesn’t give a single fuck what others think. He considers marriage and everything that comes with it secondary to the truth that lies between him and his cherished one. Does she want to stay by his side, and is she ready for that level of commitment? Before he ever goes public with the depth of their ties, he needs to know that they are on the same page without equivocation in private. And more importantly, what her comfort zones are. Does she even want marriage? Does she want it to be a public affair, or would she prefer less fanfare? How does she want to go about this?

He thinks marriage in and of itself is a cheap promise for eternal creatures; it’s too lodged in social convention and cultish religious tradition to mean squat to him. He will take their bond seriously, and he will absolutely respect her feelings about marriage, but he wants something more timeless and equal between them--something not easily severed. He will wait as long as he needs to for her to be ready for that. Marriage to him is more of a universally acknowledged symbol of their union; a way for other people to recognize that they’re devoted to someone else, and a way for him to express deep romantic feeling openly. As long as he knows at the end of the day that they’ll always be together on their own terms, side by side, that’s really all that matters to him.

His proposal will begin in private; it will be an intimate, fairly solemn moment between them. Is she ready to become a vampire’s bride? Can she accept that kind of future, and everything that comes with it? He doesn’t want her to be socially pressured by a crowd or even himself and the other residents of the mansion--he wants this to be her choice and vow, through and through. This isn’t about getting her to agree, this is about gauging where she is emotionally. If she needs more time to be sure, he’s happy to give it (but when he proposes he will have paid very careful attention to her potential receptivity; it is unlikely he would jump the gun and risk frightening her).

He will take her to a little church at midnight, well into the darkest hours of the night. Each breath will hang like a whisper in the air, swallowed by the cool and amplified by the quiet. He will try to provide a dress for her, but if she’s partial to one she already has, he won’t protest (he will just pout because he LIVES to buy her dresses and this is a special occasion, one he intends to remember forever ;-;). He’ll take a moment at the altar where a ceremonial binding would usually happen, and pause. 

He looks more serious than usual, his expression penetrating. He’ll take her hands in his own, squeeze them gently as her gaze finds his. The silence is gentle, but anticipatory--charged with what’s to come. He speaks slowly and softly.

“I’ve asked you before, but I’m going to ask one more time, here and now; a vow between us. Will you stay by my side, a vampire’s bride, for as long as this life gives us? Will you marry me someday?”

They’ve talked about the prospect before, and she’s already proved her mettle--she has expressed no intention of letting him go. Even if that means becoming like him in the future to stay together, even if that means facing the grief of losing human friends and family. She knows what it means to agree to this bond, and she’s thought it through; she knows this is what she wants. She dreads a future devoid of his presence so much more than any necessity to forfeit her mortality.

“Of course I will,” her answer is equally soft but firm, every bit the woman he fell in love with; sensitivity lined with steel. 

The next second she’s leaping into his arms and he laughs, melting into the delight of her certainty, relieved to know he isn’t alone (and won’t be alone ever again), more in love than he ever thought he could be. He holds her tight for a moment before letting go, pressing a kiss to her left ring finger--one he fully intends to adorn with a proper ring of his choosing (he was having it made to suit her so it would take a little longer to be ready, one of a kind).

That being said whenever she’s ready (or wants) to have a public ceremony, he’s ready with bells on! He will listen very, very carefully to the customs she recognizes as binding and the kind of wedding she wishes for, and will essentially ensure that the process reflects a balance of their mutual desires (as always, leaning into what she wants a little more). He’s also a hopeless romantic, so despite his private feelings about marriage, he will enact all the cute little traditions he’s picked up along his long, long life that express earnest wishes/prayers for a bride's happiness. If it makes her smile--and sometimes cry happy tears--then he thinks it simply makes all those years he waited for her to enter his life worth it.

[thran-duils]

When the Truth Comes Out (P.1)

Title: When the Truth Comes Out (Part 1) Summary: Reader/Professor Novak. The reader is in graduate school and has fallen into a surreptitious relationship with her married professor. Professor Novak is educated, handsome, and fascinating. But he has an issue of drawing healthy boundaries for him and the reader. And it all comes to a head when their secret is found out and everything has to change. Words: 2,143 Warnings: Smut, ***ANGST***, infidelity, emotional abuse, eventual happiness(?idk if it’s super happy but lmfao)

Chapter Two || Fanfic masterpost || Masterpost (mobile)

Professor Novak’s hands moved up your sides, lips smashed together. His arms wrapped around you, holding you close as he drove up into you.

You leaned back, biting your lip, feeling him inside. Your hand finding a pile of papers that slid out from beneath your weight, causing you to yelp as you started to fall back. Novak’s grip tightened instantaneously on you, jerking you back up.

“Your desk is a mess,” you teased breathlessly, rolling your hips to him.

“I think we are looking at the culprit for that,” he husked in return, his lips finding yours again.

You smiled against his kiss, your hand finding bare desk this time to avoid another mishap. It was true; you had been bent over his desk only moments before and you had succeeded in knocking over his pens to start with when your hands reached out for grounding. Now his papers, whatever they were. He would collect them later.

A vacuum started down the hall and he froze, fully seated inside you.

You turned your head, just as shocked as he was.

“Shit, it is Tuesday, isn’t it?” he hissed, drawing your attention back.

“What does that mean?”

“Janitor is in the building on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.”

“They probably have headphones in,” you tried to reassure him, running your hands down his arms.

Novak shook his head. “That’s not the problem. How are you going to get out of here without being seen? It’s damn near eleven o’clock.”

“I’ll crawl out of the window,” you whispered, a hand coming down to grip his ass. You just wanted him to continue.

He shot you an annoyed look, “We are on the third floor. Nice try, Y/N.”

“We’ll figure it out after,” you pouted, rolling your hips to him again, sighing softly feeling his cock brush inside you. “Please.” You batted your eye lashes, giving him doe eyes.

It worked; he fell into your rhythm. And soon he had you laying back on your back as he plummeted into you. His hands held tight as they cupped underneath your thighs, his eyes hooded with lust watching your breasts bounce. You touched yourself, biting your lip at him sensually as he locked his gaze on the movement. When your back arched as you saw stars, you whimpered, trying to keep quiet.

Novak followed and his hands planted on either side of you on the desk as he held himself up from collapsing onto you after he had emptied himself. You lazily reached up, running your fingers gently through his hair. He hummed in approval and you massaged softly, helping him to come back down.

He leaned down, giving you a long, deep kiss. “You are lovely,” he breathed.

“You flatter me,” you whispered in return, a grin despite yourself.

Pulling away, he told you, “I mean it.”

You knew he did. He was risking a lot sleeping with you, stealing kisses and time with you when he should be at home. Let alone the scandal it might cause that he was with a student, no matter if you were in your mid-twenties now, in grad school. You had really nothing to lose reputation wise; you would not face the bigger repercussions. He had reminded you time and time again to be quiet about it, saying he did not want you to betray him.

Sitting up, you suddenly took notice that the vacuum sounded more distant.

“Hmm, seems the janitor went upstairs. See? They were wearing headphones.”

“Yeah, luckily it is Tuesday and not Thursday. They come in to vacuum the offices then and that would have put us in a very precarious situation.”

“Truly,” you agreed, sliding off his desk and reaching for your clothes. You dressed quickly, knowing that this was the opportunity for you to sneak out of the building. He was doing the same, gathering up his things.

You bent to pick up his papers and he waved you off, “I’ll do it in the morning. Don’t waste time.”

Shrugging, you straightened back up and went to go snatch your purse off the ground by the door. When you stood back up, Novak was by his desk, holding out a bill towards you.

“Take it.”

“Are you… paying me now?” you asked, unable to think if you should feel offended or amused.

Novak looked unamused himself and he told you firmly, “I saw you eating ramen in the dining hall.”

Realizing he was giving you grocery money, your annoyance melted away. You stepped closer, “You ‘saw’ me?” He said nothing and you smirked, imagining him watching you. You knew he kept an eye on you and happened to show up where you were at times. You had caught him before, giving him mischievous smirks across the green, across the room, to let him know you saw him. He had told you he needed to watch out for you, that you were at risk of being swept away from him. You had laughed when he told you that, but you knew he was serious; he had accused you once of taking a boy back to your dorms from one of your classes; he had seen the two of you leaving the student union, walking close together. He had been actually envious. You knew it was frankly unfair he would be upset about it if you had since he was married. But, you enjoyed the way he coveted you too much.

You still had not taken the bill – you could see it was a crisp hundred though. Squaring your shoulders, you asked, “What if I just like ramen?”

“I don’t care,” Novak stated. “You should be eating better. And I know the refund checks aren’t coming for another week.” You narrowed your eyes slightly, still not moving. You loved teasing him, knowing you could get under his skin. All that power was intoxicating at times. He rose his eyebrows and ordered, “Y/N, take it.”

Sighing dramatically, you said, “Fine” as you grabbed it from him. “Thanks. I’ll be sure to buy some broccoli and spinach to go in my ramen.”

“Y/N,” he warned, and you grinned widely at him as you stuck the money into your pocket

“Yes, dad, I’ll eat better.”

“’Daddy’”, Novak corrected you, his lip upturned into a small smirk.

You chortled and said, “Yes, ‘daddy.’ I’ll make sure to stay healthy for you.” You added playfully, “You know you’re only 35, right? I mean, technically, you could be a daddy but –”

“Enough,” Novak cut you off, ushering you towards the door. He needed to go with you to lock the building door behind the two of you. “They are on the next floor. We need to go before they come back down.”

As you opened the door, you smiled to yourself, knowing he did not want you to tease him for his kink. He followed at your back, locking the door behind you, and ushered you forward again in hushed tones. You smiled, feeling the danger of the situation. The two of you slinking around in the dark to escape the building, hiding your midnight tryst.

<> <> <>

Castiel texted you while you were in class, asking you to come to his office at 3:00pm. When you had seen the text, you were confused. It was the middle of the day, so unless he had gone off his rocker, it not a booty call. You did not have a class with him, so it was nothing to do with academics.

Walking across campus, you racked your brain thinking about what could be going on. His father was sick. You prayed nothing had happened with him, that would devastate Castiel.

You two had been seeing each other – still in secret, of course – for over a year and a half since that night escaping from the janitor. That put you at almost two years counting the time before then. What had started out as sex had blossomed into something deeper. The first time you had called him by his first name, it was real… the dynamic change in the relationship was real. The declarations of love came next. The two of you confided in each other, sharing intimate things. It was hard to explain to your roommate why you never brought anyone home from the bar.

Knocking twice on his door, he beckoned from the other side to come in. You moved into the office, cheeks flushed from the chill outside, hair windswept. Closing the door, you blurted out, “What’s up?” as you turned back around to look at him.

Your face fell for only a few seconds before you composed yourself again; he looked wrecked. His sweater was wrinkled – so unlike him – and he looked like he had not slept. You thought the worse, your mind going back to his dad.

“She knows.”

Forehead creased in confusion, you asked, chuckling nervously, “Am I supposed to know who ‘she’ is?”

“My wife. She knows. About us.” Your face fell immediately as the gravity of the situation fell on you. He exhaled shakily, rubbing his hands up his face roughly, pulling at his hair at the end. He shook his head and said, “She suspected something, she said. So, she looked at my phone.”

“She knew your password?”

Castiel shot you a reproachful look that made you want to recoil. “We’re married, Y/N. We know each other’s passwords.” The way he said it made it sound like you were stupid. “Not sharing that with her would have been suspicious.”

“Sorry,” you muttered, avoiding eye contact. “I just didn’t know.”

Castiel sighed again and said apologetically, “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just…” he trailed off. He paused before saying, “Thankfully she doesn’t know who you are. She didn’t see any of the pictures. And I don’t have your name saved as the contact.” You understood that; you had his number under an alias as well. “She just saw…. our texts. From two days ago. She didn’t even read them all… she said she couldn’t. She only saw a few. But… me saying ‘I love you, night’ confirmed everything.”

You swallowed sharply, not knowing what to say. He was waiting for you to say something though, he was staring at you.

“So. What happens?”

“I fix it. I have to… I can’t leave her, Y/N,” Castiel told you, sounding strained. He could not keep eye contact with you. You felt like you had been hit by a freight train, staring at him in shock. He exhaled sharply at your expression and said exasperated, “Christ, Y/N. Don’t look at me like that.”

“How do you want me to look at you?” you snapped, trying to hold back the tidal wave of emotion welling up inside of you.

“She told me she was pregnant!” Castiel barked, and then closed his mouth, knowing he was being louder than he should be. There were so many people in the building, including in offices nearby. You could not help your mouth fallen open though. They had been trying, but she had not gotten pregnant for years. “She was saving it. The surprise.” There were tears forming in his eyes as he shook his head, letting out a small laugh void of humor. “We’ve been trying for so long. And… it has to all happen like this.”

“’Like this’,” you echoed, catching his attention. “So, that’s it then? We’re just…”

You trailed off, not being able to finish.

Castiel stood up from his desk now, coming around it to you. His hands cupped his face and as much as you wanted to shove him away, you did not. You craved his touch, you wanted to be comforted.

“No. I mean, I don’t want that,” Castiel told you tearfully. “We just need to… back off for a little bit.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, Y/N. I-I don’t know.” He looked at a loss. Choking back tears, you looked away from him. “Hey, look at me.”

Shaking your head, you shoved him away. He looked shocked, his jaw going slack. You wiped angrily at your eyes, trying to hide all evidence of tears threatening to spill over.

“No,” you told him angrily. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to ask me to just wait around for you to get your shit together.”

“Y/N, now don’t—” There was an edge to his voice, a switch in his demeanor. He was going to try to persuade you to be docile about it, as he always did, but you were not hearing it.

Turning around, you flung the door open and stormed out, leaving it open behind you. You did not know if he called out after you because all you could hear was a roar in your ears, just wanting to get out of that goddamn building and be back in your room.

~~~

CASTIEL FOREVER TAGS: @willowing-love @perseusandmedusa @greenappleeyes @afanofmanystuffs @earthtokace @shikaros-blog @marisayouass @splendidcas @stixnstripesworld 

[darthlorddiamond]

Armitage Hux Fluff Alphabet (Part 1)

This is the fisrt part of this alphabet, you can find here the second part.

Armitage Hux One Shots MASTERLIST.

Black Diamond´s Story MASTERLIST.

Activities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

Although you have many different activities during the day, Hux will always look for an opportunity to try to be close to you during the workday, either accompanying you while you´re on the Command Bridge or taking you where you need to go.

When you´re alone, you spend most of your free time together, be it cooking, reading or chatting.

Beauty - What do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

Hux is an extremely noble person and is something you greatly admire about him. The way he´s committed to his work seems extremely remarkable to you, apart from that, he´s also a very affectionate person with you, a gentleman and is always attentive to anything you need, and you consider that everything he does for you is quite tender (Completely leaving aside the fact that he´s a completely radical person at work and nobody could tell that he´s like this with you).

Regarding Hux, the fact that you´re such an affectionate person with him means everything, from how you caress his hair, to the fact that many times it´s you who ensures that all his uniforms are impeccable, no matter how long you have been together, he never will understand why you´re like this with him or what he did to deserve you.

Comfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

All the time, although most of the time it´s Hux who comforts you.

When Hux feels bad, it's usually because something didn't go the way it should or because he had some sort of run-in with Ren that put him in a very bad mood, but never allows work problems to enter your quarters.

However, it´s more common for you to have some type of emotional problem, almost always related to the Force and the feeling of being pulled into the light and this is when Hux comes to comfort you. He always has the right words to make you feel better or failing, he knows quite well how to keep silent to listen to everything you have to say.

Dreams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

You don't think much about the future, all you want is for things to go well and for Hux to stay safe, however, Hux does think about the future with you by his side. To this man, you´re his complete adoration and all his world outside of all First Order work, so being by your side after a difficult day is what he desires most.

Equal - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

Most of the time, your relationship is fairly equal. Both of you divide the housework of your private life quite well, there are nights that you will prepare dinner and he breakfast.

However, in the sex aspect, you´re the dominant one, I share the links of my NSWF alphabet part 1 & part 2 so that you know more about this topic.

Fight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

Very rarely do you get into an argument, but when it happens, most of the time it's because of Ren.

You spend a lot of time with Ren, either training or on a mission, and there are times when Hux can get quite jealous about this and that's when an argument begins.

They are almost always extremely heated discussions, where you can end up mad at each other for a couple of days but one of you´ll always end up apologizing.

Gratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

Always, all the time.

You always show gratitude to Hux for all the details he gives you and for the patience he has in dealing with your bad character, while Hux will always feel eternally grateful just for having you by his side.

Honesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

In the beginning, you kept enough secrets to Hux, you didn´t share with him everything you knew or who you were. Talking about your past was a complete taboo, but little by little you began to open up more to him, although sometimes it still takes a little work for you to talk about who you were before entering the First Order.

On the other hand, Hux is 100% honest with you, he has never hidden anything from you or lied to you about anything, from the beginning you knew who he was and all the problems he went through at the Academy and with his father.

Inspiration - Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?

Meeting Hux changed your life. You never thought that you could share your time or your life with someone and the fact that this man will show you affection made something inside you change, at least in private. Hux has inspired you to trust someone more fully and to be able to show what you feel.

For Hux, well, you are everything to him, so many things he does, he does with you in mind.

Jealousy - Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

Hux isn´t a very jealous, but if any man, especially Ren, approaches you, he´ll immediately lose his temper. If it´s some other member of the Order, he´ll approach you and put one of his hands on your waist, but if it is about Ren, the matter will end up being a discussion between you.

In the meantime, you aren´t jealous at all, you know that Hux is with you and that he wouldn´t notice or care for another person.

Kiss - Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

In the beginning, Hux and you didn´t get along well. You were Ren's apprentice and therefore, Hux felt an aberration for you. Your first kiss and those that followed were under this hate/love situation. On one occasion you were in his office, discussing plans to locate the resistance, and began to discuss which options were best. The discussion continued to escalate and when you least realized, you´re already on top of each other, in a kind of "hate kiss but keep doing it".

Your kisses most of the time are quite intimate caresses, mostly by Hux, but there are also times when both try to dominate the other through a kiss.

Love Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

Hux was the first to say it and it was after a few months that you started dating and both were already beginning to feel very comfortable and confident with each other.

One night, after an intense sex session, Hux prepared a bath for both of you, placed himself behind you, so that your back was pressed to his chest and while you were in the tub enjoying the hot water, he kept caressing your skin and kiss your neck and head, until at one point that he only whispers to you "I didn´t understand what I had done to deserve you, to you be with me. You´re everything I always dream, I love you so much and I would never allow something bad to happen between us".

Marriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

Not to mention it.

As much as both cannot imagine your life without the other, it´s very difficult to commit marriage.

For Hux it would be a dream to be able to marry you, however, he´s a General and you´re a Sith, so your union within the First Order is more than prohibited.

But aside from this small inconvenience, both agreed to stay together, perhaps you didn´t organize a wedding, but in private you expressed votes for each other.

[5lazarus]

Anders in Autumn Ch. 5

inspired by and answers @cozy-autumn-prompts Ch. 5, in which I find a plot--I mean: At the clinic, Anders tries not to hear a large group of dockworkers and a mysterious Dalish woman talk over what to do about all the workplace injuries the laborers have been suffering. Fenris arrives, sent by Varric to drag him to a party, and to Anders' surprise, Fenris knows far more about the injustices the dockworkers suffer than he does--and he is far more involved. And yes, toes are cold.

read the rest here.

Autumn is the springtime for big cities: Tabris told him that, at the first Wintersend party Mahariel threw as arlessa of Amaranthine. Though it wasn’t Wintersend, Anders corrected himself, the two of them called it something different. Kirkwall was bleak in winter, smelly in spring, and downright dank in summer. Autumn, though, gave the city a bit of a blush. Kirkwall’s usual drab limestone cliffs and houses were brightened by the pepper-tipped trees, and Anders particularly savoured one whose leaves turned a deep royal purple. He took a leaf that fell and pocketed it, and pinned it to a wall on the clinic. The kids who lingered around his clinic took to it and started bringing leaves, and over the course of one crisp afternoon, they had the whole facade decorated with the brightest leaves they could find. Anders wanted badly to enchant it to last, but Varric couldn’t pay off Cullen forever. He had to let it leave. A messenger came by while he was mourning the nature of decay, one of Varric’s runners. Varric was having a party at the Hanged Man and expected him to come, or else he’d send Fenris drag him. Anders made a face at that: Fenris. The tension had eased, over the years, and Fenris had ceded the point about the Circle after Bethany was kidnapped by the Templars, just after they had finally returned from the Deep Roads. Leandra’s wailing had disturbed them both deeply, and it had been almost impossible to hold Justice back. He still remembered the way his mother had fought. He really ought to talk to Isabela about sending that letter. The golden hour darkened on the wrinkled leaves pinned to the front of his shop and evening cooled the streets of Kirkwall. The clinic got busy: there was an accident at the docks, one of the elvhen labourers had nearly been crushed, and the man’s husband was weeping as Anders healed him, because they could not afford the time off for him to rest the leg and heal proper. Anders was angry, a low burning in his stomach, but he focused on strengthening bone and mending cracks, and encouraging muscles to repair. When night fell, several other dockworkers came by to check on his patient, and he made them all a stew--stone soup, as usual--as they talked in hushed, urgent whispers about what to do next. This was the third injury this much, with the foremen rushing them since winter and choppy seas were coming, and they weren’t paying overtime or injury pay either. He was pleased to see a couple Fereldens there too, and even two Dalish--none of them from Sabrae, of course, but a couple around his age. They stayed quiet and listened, mostly, but Anders was curious. The man didn’t have vallaslin, but the woman had what looked like a branching tree outlined in thick purple lines across her face. The others seemed comfortable around them, though he himself had never seen them before: weird. Fenris might know something about this. Speak of the Dread Wolf and he shall appear: a little saying Anders learned from Merrill, and one that came to mind when he saw the aforementioned grumpy elf darkening his door. He almost said “Little Wolf!” but bit it back in time. Diminutives are difficult for those who have been diminished. Anders saw the way he flinched around Danarius. Pet names would not work. He said, instead, “Oh. You.” Fenris stepped in. “Yes,” he said gruffly. “Me.” The collection of dockworkers and relatives fall silent. Then one of the Dalish stepped forward, and Fenris actually smiled. “Lethallin,” the Dalish woman said. “ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma'sula e'var vhenan.” She holds her arms open, but Fenris grasps her arm instead, a less intimate hug. Fenris looked pleased. Anders was surprised. He always spoke so dismissively of the Dalish. “You two know each other?” he said. He eyed them doubtfully. Thedas was always so much smaller than he thought: running into Isabela was a clear example. Fenris dropped the Dalish’s arm. “Yes,” he said gruffly. “The only acceptable mages, you two.” Anders laughed. “Acceptable, am I? Tell that to the Chantry.” The workers in the room tensed. Divine Justinia recently released writ declaring laborers’ associations a sin in the eyes of the Maker, because they were not turning to the priests of His Bride, who were supposed to settle disputes. The usual rage: Elthina refused to settle disputes, refused to hear anyone except the Hightown nobility, and her Chantry was almost always empty of actual worshippers. Fenris said, “Varric wants you at the party. Are you done here?” Anders looked at the crowd. His patient was safely in a healing sleep, and with the Dalish revealed to be a mage, he was feeling more comfortable leaving him. Still, Varric’s protection only afforded him safety, not any of the others, and while Aveline was doing her best to obfuscate in the guards--and had been promptly demoted twice--he was always worried they would rush the clinic when he was not there. The Dalish mage said, “I can take it from here. We’ll be leaving soon, and it’s best you don’t hear.” So much of his life was knowing when to close his eyes. Anders said, “Alright,” and followed Fenris out. The night was crisp and clean, and Anders shivers slightly, despite his cloak of feathers. He eyes Fenris, particularly his footwraps. He understands intellectually and practically of course that elves have different circulatory systems. Still, he thinks, wrapping his arms around himself, he should be cold. They walk in meditative silence towards Lowtown. The gangs leave them alone: Varric’s paid them off. “So,” he says. “Aren’t your toes cold?” “What?” Fenris leans in to hear him better. They’re walking rather close now. Anders knows it is for mutual protection, but he leans in anyway. “No. No. They’re not.” “Ah,” Anders says. They round a corner and head up a stairway, and pay off the guard keeping curfew to let them through. “So, you know that Dalish woman?” Fenris hesitates. “You don’t?” “I don’t even know her name.” “Then it’s probably safer that way. Other clans don’t have as many...problems as Sabrae, and like to help out their kin. Regardless of how disparate.” Anders marvels how Fenris’ Common is so elegant, despite the conditions in which he learned it. “Do you know why she’s here?” Fenris looks at him carefully, and, without moving his face, scans the periphery. No one is eavesdropping. “Her husband’s steward of the dockworkers’ association in Wycombe. They’ve made a commitment to helping the others in Kirkwall and Ostwick too.” Anders is stunned: first, that Fenris knows this and he doesn’t, and second, that they are about to walk into the Hanged Man and most of the people in there will happily sell this secret out to the Merchants’ Guild and get them all killed. His patients, his neighbors, his people . “We can’t let Varric know,” he whispers. Varric will pay off the Carta and the Templars to protect him. That protection will abruptly cease if the dwarf, deshyr of the Merchants’ Guild, finds out he is protecting a rabble-rouser and a union drive. “But--what can I do to help?” Fenris looks up at him and smiles.

[iluvsexyvoltageguys]

Full Service

Fandom: Irresistible Mistakes (Love 365)

Pairing: Shunichiro x Reader

Note: @rougepetale this is for you, hope you enjoy your man 😏

You had been completely ready for work, just about to put on your coat and head out the door when you felt his hand on your shoulder. It was early and you hadn’t expected him to wake before you left, but you turned toward him and saw fire in his eyes.

He wanted you.

Knowing it wouldn’t take long, and feeling his heat light you up, you tossed the coat aside and let him press against your body, his erection obvious even through his boxers and your pants. The kiss was brief, dirty and deep, meant only to agree upon the level of need. Shunichiro pulled you into the living room where you could brace yourself on the back of a chair, right after unfastening your pants and letting them fall to your ankles. He stepped behind you to take care of your panties, pushing them roughly to the side as he bent you over.

He freed himself from his boxers and pushed forward, using his knee to open you as wide as your clothing would allow, sliding home with one long stroke. He hadn’t even bothered to check to see how wet and ready you were; not that there was a need for that. You were always wet and ready.

You wanted him.

There was never a rhythm, the pace frantic from the first thrust. You didn’t hold back, letting your cries for more echo throughout the room. Shunichiro was well aware that you loved to be fucked hard, but you liked to remind him anyway, pleading for his cock even as he gripped your hips with enough force to leave marks. When he leaned forward to nip your shoulder through your blouse, you came on a violent shudder, breathlessly demanding that he fill you up.

He couldn’t remember you ever wording it quite like that. Sure, you had told him to come plenty of times, but the specific request to fill you up was different. Primal. And he reacted to it. “You want to be filled up? You want to feel everything I can give you? The way only you can make me come?”

“Fuck, yes.”

Any further encouragement was unnecessary and Shunichiro pumped only twice more before he held himself deep inside and let your pussy help milk him of every drop. He was still draped over you, his cock slowly softening within you, as you mumbled into the chair cushion. “I should go change before I leave for the office.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You wanted to be filled up. I want you to stay that way.”

Something in his tone kept you silent, so he took the opportunity to slip out from you, fixing your panties as quickly as possible. Your pants followed, though he let you handle the zipper and button. You were quiet long enough that he thought he might have pushed you too far, but when you turned around and hungrily attacked his mouth, letting your tongue tease the roof of his mouth before you nipped at his lower lip, he stopped worrying.

You finally pulled away and smiled wickedly, loving the secret you would share with him all day. Without another word, you picked up your coat and left for work.

~~~~~

The rest of the morning was relatively normal; you, Toma and Toshiaki continued to work on the story board of the current commercial you were working on. However, even surrounded by the mundane, you couldn’t stop thinking about the way you were marked, feeling it with every step and embracing the warmth crawling just under your skin.

When you saw Shunichiro step off the elevator, two coffees in hand, you swore you felt a new wave of your own wetness mix with his. He handed you the steaming cup at your desk, leaning forward to whisper in your ear. “I can smell myself on you.”

Wide-eyed and blushing, you whipped your head around to where the guys were huddled around Toma’s computer, then slowly turned back to Shunichiro. “Really? Do you think they’ve noticed?”

“I hope so.” He walked away before you could respond, and you couldn’t even figure out how you felt. Powerful? Dirty? Needy? Some of everything? You supposed being ashamed would be a normal reaction, yet there was absolutely none of that. Hurrying to rejoin your team, you did what you could to push it all from your mind so that you could focus on work.

Things were fine until lunchtime, when everyone went to grab lunch and you and Shunichiro were left alone for several minutes. You were leaning against a desk, still editing the story board, but he made his presence known when he nudged your shoulder and grinned mischievously, “Still filled up?”

“Well, I’m not sure how ‘filled up’ I am, but I’m plenty wet.”

He studied you for a long moment. “What happened to keeping it in all day?”

“Um, gravity?”

It was a simple fact, but he just shook his head and grabbed your hand, pulling you away from the office and down a familiar hallway. There was a small storage closet that you had become rather acquainted with, though you really tried to avoid too much sex at work. The idea of getting caught was both arousing and appalling, but on days like this, it just didn’t matter.

You both crowded into the tiny room and shut the door behind you, leaving you with a sliver of light. It only took a minute of fumbling to find the sturdy boxes you knew were there, then stack them to a height that would allow you to sit at the perfect angle for him to fuck you with little effort.

Just as had happened earlier, your clothes hung around your ankles; he let his fall as well, unconcerned with anything but coming inside you again. Your mouths met sloppily just as his cock drove deep, a gasp of relief coming from both of you. The sound of your joining was louder and wetter than normal, a reminder of what you were doing and how much you were turned on by it. He reached for a handful of your hair and pulled your head back, giving him room to suck on your neck as he repeatedly pounded into you

Your hand dropped between your bodies, fingers quickly finding your swollen clit. He looked down at your colliding hips and groaned at the sight. “You want me to come hard inside you? Fill you up again?”

"Please!”

You let yourself go, your entire body tightening as you tried to stay silent, only a desperate mewl escaping your lips. He followed quickly, in tune with your body and on edge with the desire to leave you with more evidence of your shared lust. As he spilled inside you, his forehead fell forward against yours, and you both took a moment to catch your breaths.

By the time he slid away from your body and you carefully moved off the boxes, your eyes had adjusted to the darkness and you were able to watch as he eased your panties back into place. Before his hand fully let you go, he tucked it under the elastic and dragged his fingertips through the cum he had just left behind. Bringing them up to your mouth, he touched your lips and you opened for him, sucking his fingers clean as you stared at him.

“You’ll try harder to keep it all inside this time?”

Your tongue still held him in your mouth, your lips sealed around him as you nodded.

~~~~~

You managed to make it through the rest of the day with some semblance of productivity and concentration, even as the heavy scent of sex followed you like an illicit haze. The guys had to have noticed something, but stayed quiet, the topic too intimate for either of them to bring up. Still, just knowing that they must have had their suspicions was enough to keep the arousal thrumming steadily throughout your body.

For his part, Shunichiro did lots of staring, but far less talking than normal. Instead, he followed you with his eyes, territorial and proud, eager for the moment he could get you alone again.

You had dinner reservations at a swanky restaurant and needed to stop at the apartment to change first, so you left work at a decent hour. You were both quiet on the drive home, simply holding hands with an innocence that belied the day’s earlier activities, but once you were through the front door, you grabbed at each other, removing clothing at a feverish pace.

How you made it to the bedroom was unknown, even to you. Your panties were the last barrier between the two of you and they were unceremoniously tossed to the floor, just a second before his naked body pressed you down into the mattress. You attempted to lock your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, but he stopped you, instead moving them to his shoulders. The angle allowed him to get deeper than he had been all day, and hit your g-spot perfectly. It didn’t matter that you had already fucked twice that day; neither of you would last long.

You got loud, begging to be filled up one more time. Your string of expletives urged both of you on, and you finally screamed his name, your pussy gripping him desperately and pulling him in. Several seconds later, he emptied himself for a third time, sticky streams adding to everything he had already given you.

As soon as you both recovered, he moved to pick up your panties, dropping them onto your bare stomach. “Pick any dress you want, but keep the same panties on.”

You made it to the restaurant in time, dressed to the nines and sinful as hell. There was no way to tell which of you were riding more of a high throughout the meal; he still felt dominant, having left his mark on you all day long, while you felt powerful, flaunting your unions with poorly-hidden evidence. It was outrageously dirty, but you both owned it.

By the time you had finished dinner, you were fully sated, all appetites and cravings having been satisfied over that past several hours. Well, almost all of them.

Your server came over to you offering a choice of crème brulee, cheesecake, or tiramisu, but you spoke up before Shunichiro had the opportunity to respond. “No, thank you. He’ll be able to eat dessert at home.”

IM Masterlist

[mtraki]

(Warning: fluff and smut ahead!)

Arthur had double-backed and retraced his footsteps twice that evening, on the way to Miss Schofield’s tent.  Fortunately nobody still awake was paying him any mind.  This time he’d made it to just a few steps from where he could reach the entrance or call on her within.

It wasn’t a good idea.  But every time he turned back for his own tent, he’d somehow convinced himself all over again how harmless it was.  How it might do him some good.

It wasn’t a good idea.  It’d invite disaster into the careful, teetering balance they’d established.

 With winter upon the land in full, and jobs worth the risk all but dried up, he spent more time around camp, seeing to keeping them warm and fed.  Together, the two of them had gotten wiser about choosing their moments. Stolen kisses and lingering touches with none the rest the wiser. He’d attempted a few whispered compliments, but they’d sounded foolish the moment he uttered them.  Her flirtations were much better, setting fire to him time and again, so he never need worry about the cold.

It was good.  Much better than he deserved, for certain.

It did nothing for his nightly torments.  The last time he remembered sleeping peaceful was back in Tall Trees, when she’d come out looking for him.

Where he’d had the nerve to kiss her.

Where he’d slept with her pressed cozily into his side…

It wasn’t a good idea.

He cleared his throat, quietly.  A half-hearted attempt so he could tell himself he’d tried the next time he walked back to his tent with his tail tucked, “Miss Schofield?” His whisper was soft.  He didn’t want it to carry. Wasn’t convinced he wanted to be heard by anyone at all.

 Only able to bear waiting one racing heartbeat later, Arthur turned to leave again when he heard the rustle of movement.  Panic chased up his spine, and he almost leapt forward to escape.  Instead he froze.

 “... Who’s out there?” Her voice came soft and guarded.  It bothered him that he might have troubled her, so Arthur turned and stood at the entrance so she could see him from where she peeked out.

 “It’s just me.” He answered in a whisper, “... I’ll let you be.”

 “No...  That’s alright.  Did you need something?”

 No.  Yes.

 Even in the dark, the moonlight eyes seemed to see the war within him, so she said before he could answer, “Just tell me what it is, Arthur.  Please.”

 She was too clever for him.  In just a few short weeks, she’d learned just how to say that ‘please’ in a way that would shoot straight through him.  He hoped he grew used to it, and all those vulnerable parts would scar over so it wouldn’t work anymore…

 He hoped she didn't use it often enough for him to ever get used to it…

 Letting his breath out slow, a long plume in the dark, he said, at length, “... I dunno how to ask it polite…”

 “Then don’t bother with polite.  Ask me plain.”

 “...I…” He sighed again, hanging his head heavy,  “Can I spend the night wit’ you?”

 “Of course,” She said it so simply, like she’d been expecting him to ask.  Like it wasn’t such an imposition upon her and her beloved privacy.  Something swelled hot and aching in his chest, “Come in, and turn on the lamp, please.  It’s on the right.”

 Doing as bidden, Arthur ducked into the tent, removing his hat and turning to the right, groping for the lantern in the dark.  Deeper in the small space, he could hear Catherine fussing with cloth, probably laying out her pallet to accommodate the two of them more comfortably. His hands found the lantern-- still holding the last vestiges of heat from before she turned it out for the night-- and he was able to strike a match to light it again rather quickly, despite the anxious feelings threatening to put a tremble in his fingers.

 Golden light flooded the small space, and the outlaw set his hat to the side before turning to look at Miss Schofield again.  His heart promptly stopped, lurching into his throat so he might choke on it.

 She had indeed lain out the pallet and blankets to accommodate the both of them.  She was also wearing little more than her skin.  He had vague memories of the sleeveless shift she had on-- the rainstorm, he thought, but he’d been quite drunk that night, and couldn’t be sure-- that let light through enough to see the cream of her skin through the pale lace and silk.  Her arms were covered in gooseflesh. She was probably freezing.  Even so, one of her hands was slowly sliding a lace strap down the round of her shoulder, widening the half-moon of skin below the nape of her neck.

 In a rush, he caught her hand, trapping it between his and her shoulder.  She looked up at him, bemused and a bit pensive.

Oh.

Oh.

 “... No, darlin’.  That… that ain’t what I meant.” He swallowed around a suddenly very dry throat, “... I jus’... I jus’ meant to sleep.  Together, wit’ you.  An’ uh… well, I thought I might hold you…?”

 “...I see…” She looked to the side, a wry smile on her face, and Arthur knew she was either chastising or laughing at herself.  Then she met his eyes again, “Are you sure?”

 “W--”

 “--I mean that if you had intended somewhat more, I would not think the advance improper.  You do not have to fabricate--”

 “--I ain’t fabricatin’ anything, m--Catherine.” He shook his head, thoughts whirling frantically, “I jus’ want some sleep.”

 Both her brows raised as she continued looking at him over her shoulder, and her mouth formed a small moue, “Just some sleep…”

 “Yes..?” This hadn’t been a good idea.  Already large parts of him were judging the best way to retreat while conserving the greatest portion of his dignity.

 “... Alright,” She blessedly relented, holding up both hands with a shrug, “you can put your clothes over there…”

 “... What?” He stared after her as she pulled back the woolen blanket, clearly with the intention of slipping under it.

 She huffed a quiet laugh, “There’s no need for a fuss, Arthur.   It’s cold enough for you to wear a union suit underneath, isn’t it?”

 Setting his jaw, he narrowed his eyes at her, “What if I ain’t wearin’ one?”

 “Then I guess you’ll have to square with sleeping naked here or clothed back in your own tent,” She smiled at him brightly, shrugging a shoulder, “But you are not climbing into my pallet with your dirty clothes on.”

 He was tired, and anxious, and the note of finality in her voice brooked no argument or negotiation-- especially with how she pulled the blanket up around herself with her back turned.

 So he just… began taking off his clothes, starting with his boots, “Y’know, some men might consider this an unreasonable imposition, Miss Schofield.” He muttered over his shoulder.

 “I know,” He heard the smile in her voice, “but I wouldn’t pass the night with such men of my own volition.”

 “And what happens if I’ve got to get up in a hurry?  Someone comes snoopin’ around?”

 “I have full confidence in your abilities to defend the camp in your underthings or even in the nude, Arthur.”

 “Sure.  Fine. But you think them fools are talkin’ now…”

 She laughed quietly, “You can tell them I was being unreasonable.”

 Heat coiled through his belly, and Arthur wasn’t sure whether she’d meant for there to be a double-meaning to her words or not.  He finished undressing, carefully laying out a revolver where he might reach it in the dark without a belt and holster on.

 “Leave the light on.” Was her quiet instruction, that made him wonder how closely she was listening to him, or if she’d been peeking over her shoulder.  Otherwise he wasn’t sure how she’d known he was reaching for the lantern.

 “You sure?”       “Yes.  It’ll help when one of us wakes, confused about where we are.”

 “Alright…”  He looked at her, then at the pallet laid out, “... How you wanna do this?”

 “Lie down like you would if you were alone.”

 “Usually on my back…”

 “I know.”

 His brow furrowed, “... You sure it’s alright?  Gonna take up a lot of room...”

 “Just lie down, Arthur.”

 Taking a deep breath, the outlaw complied, settling himself down on the pallet.  As he settled in, the lady turned and started spreading the blanket over his legs.  Then she looked down at him, “I’m on your right side now. Is that alright, or do you want me on the left?”

 “Yer fine wherever you like, Catherine,” He told her softly.

 Giving a small smile, she laid herself down next to him while he watched, drinking in her nonchalant grace and how casually she submitted her body to him.  Without a second’s hesitation, she pressed close, tucking her front against his side so that her head rested on his shoulder, like he wasn’t a barely-washed outlaw.  Once she was settled in position, he felt and heard her quietly let out her breath, and every muscle in her body relaxed, yielding herself utterly, as if in full trust in him.

 It was beautiful, and perfect.

 But Arthur could not relax.  His heart still raced, and his thoughts tumbled recklessly.  He let them wander, crashing around in his skull, because if he tried to corral them, they’d focus on how Catherine had been prepared to lie with him even more intimately.

 On how that revelation caused heat and tension to pool relentlessly between his hips.  How her figure folded so neatly against him, and his arm around her, and the smell of her all around him only intensified that insistent, foolish line of tension.  How her hand resting on his chest felt equal parts possessive and trusting, and how much he wanted to surrender himself to it like a paltry offering. Weeks ago, he’d known himself to be a man half-conquered.  He wondered if it was more than half, now.

 He wondered if he was completely in her possession.  He wondered what that meant.  If it was a good thing. For anybody.

 “You’re very tense,” He heard the lady murmur gently, and Arthur wondered how long he’d been lying there, sleepless and harried and achingly hard.

 “Sorry.” He whispered back.

 Her hand brushed lightly across his chest, “Are you uncomfortable?”

 “I’m alright.”

 She hummed softly to herself, “What are you worrying at, then?”

 “Nothin’ in particular.” He lied, and hoped she didn’t catch him in it.

 When she didn’t reply, he figured she’d gone back to sleep, so he closed his eyes and told himself he could do the same.  After a few minutes of trying to convince his body to unclench, he felt her index finger make indistinct circles, gently against the wool of his union suit, her hand still resting on his chest, “Everyone is very excited about this lead Mister Bell proposed…”

 “Sure.  Folks get restless-- especially fools like the Callander brothers and Williamson.” He mumbled back.

 “Mac and Bill were joking about some kind of killing competition… Is the mark going to be heavily guarded?”

 Arthur sighed, uninterested in the subject at the moment, “Might be.  Train load of money for the banks out this way, for the winter.”

 “Are you going to catch it around Armadillo, again?”

 “Seems to be the plan.  You worried?”

 “... No.  I’m sure you’ll handle the business well enough.”

 “I’ll do my best, anyway.” He answered, running the hand of the arm around her gently up the side of her arm in what he hoped was somewhat reassuring.

 She lay quiet a moment, seeming to think this over, “Do you suppose then we’ll have enough money to go to California, like Dutch has been saying?”

 “Oh, I dunno.  You’d have to ask Dutch…”

 “We both know he won’t tell me,” Catherine gave a delicate snort, “He hardly gives me any clear idea of direction, much less details.”

 Grimacing, unwilling to try and unpack or explore that, Arthur offered a neutral, “Sure…”

 Suddenly, she propped up on her elbow, and Arthur looked up at her studying his face with her pale eyes, “... What do you think about it?”

 “About California?” He smiled wryly and shrugged, “Seems as good a place as any other, I reckon.”

 “Do you suppose anything will change when we get there?”

 Blinking at her, Arthur noted the faint tension in her brow, “I couldn’t say, Catherine…  Dutch says we’ll get some land and keep to ourselves.”

 “I know what Dutch says, but it sounds like something he’s probably said before.  But I wasn’t here before. You were.”

 “... Well, I mean, there was this place he was looking at a little before he brought you to us.  But he didn’t buy it. Never found out why. We had to move on after that.” Then he knit his own brow at her, “Why?  What’re you houdin’ after?”

 Her eyes had drifted away from his face, and she was looking at the canvas beyond him.  The outlaw could almost see the thoughts ticking furiously in her head. Finally she looked at him again, “... I think nothing will ever change, Arthur.  I don’t think California will be any different.”

 “You never know…”

 She shook her head, the length of her plait snaking over her shoulder and falling heavily in a loop, “I don’t believe California will offer what Mister van der Linde is looking for.  Even if it provides everything the rest of you need, he won’t be content.”

 She was probably right.  Arthur knew from experience how Dutch’s moods could get.  He’d get restless and excited about something or another. Some new truth to champion.  Some new injustice to thwart. Another example to be made. Another enemy to strike down.  It’d been more exciting when he was younger, and though he’d never always bought into all of it, Arthur thought the drama of it was well-worn, now.   There’d seemed everything to gain and nothing to lose back then. Now… now there was a whole group of them. Not just three or four men, but women and a child now too…

 But he didn’t say anything.  He just looked up into Miss Schofield’s beautiful face, wondering what might become of all this-- of them-- and why she was bringing it up now.

 “What if…” She whispered softly, smoothing her hand against his chest, as if feeling out the shape of his muscles there.  Arthur mused idly if she knew how it was torching through his blood, throbbing molten below his guts, “... What if we went on our own?”

 “Alone?” Arthur frowned, “... That ain’t a good idea…”

 The lady popped up, supporting herself with her hand instead of her elbow, though her other hand remained where it was, “Why do you say so?”

 “Dutch always said--”

 “--I don’t care what Dutch thinks about it,” She interjected quickly, “I want to know what Arthur thinks about it.”

 He blinked at her, feeling his chest clench up, stuttering the breath from his lungs as her hand started drifting down over his ribs and toward his belly.  He could tell there wasn’t any intent in the touch-- it seemed, after all, that she was pulling her hand away from him in a slow and casual way.

 “So think about it.  I’ll ask again later.”

 “... Okay…”

 Suddenly her hand froze, over the middle of his belly where the wool of his union suit had pulled away from his skin like a tent canvas to accommodate the problematic bulging and protrusion further down.   Staring at her face, which had turned to look at where her hand was resting, Arthur only had a thimble’s full of hope she hadn’t noticed. Then she returned his look with a small, knowing smile, and that hope evaporated.

 “... I… Pardon me--”

 Her tone was impossibly kind, “--It’s fine, Arthur.”

 “... It’s… I ain’t--”

 “--I know you cannot help it.  You don’t have to apologize.”

 Sighing, utterly embarrassed and disgusted with himself, he insisted, “... I really didn’t come here for that.”

 She laughed quietly, “I believe you.  But a man is entitled to change his mind…”

 With a frown and a snort, Arthur told her, “Ain’t worth troubling over.”

 “It will help you relax…” She said it like an invitation and an indisputable fact both.

 That was probably true.  Didn’t make it a good idea.  No matter how every part of him was eagerly on fire over it.  He was surprised, in fact, just how furiously he did burn.  After all, he’d buried these urges years ago, in heartache, regret, and bitterness, and they’d rested quietly since.  But with Miss Schofield unearthing them, somehow they were just as potent and foolhardy as he remembered. There was no hope of sleeping now.  Had there ever been, here in this tent with her? Or had he merely tricked himself into thinking so?

 His eyes were drawn from the cool patience in her expression, down, along the pale column of her throat, over the delicate contours of her collarbones where he yearned to press soft kisses (and which he would undoubtedly spend hours and pages trying to reproduce in his journal), and the heavily shadowed hints of lace-covered breast and belly…

 She knew he was looking-- had to know, seeing as her eyes hadn’t left his face-- and yet she did not protest or say or do anything but remain still and let him look.  She neither encouraged or discouraged her suggestion, and seemed instead insistent on letting him make up his own mind.

‘What you want has… become important to me.’

 Despite his protests that she do otherwise, she was still trying to give him what he wanted.  Well, there were a lot of things he wanted-- especially at this moment, blazing with lust-- none of them he likely deserved.

 But for certain, “... I don’t want to make a mess of things.  Or hurt you. Or make problems for you-- well, more than I’ve already done…”

 She moved her hand, then, bringing it up from his belly to caress the side of his face, “How do you suppose you’d manage that?” Was her gentle question.

 Taking a breath, attempting to steady himself, he replied, “By gettin’ you wit’ child, fer a start…”

 Strange, that the lightning in his pulse was strong enough to keep at bay-- if only for the moment--the floor-dropping, quiet, horror and self-loathing that always accompanied the acknowledgement that he could produce, and      had     produced, an innocent child.

 She gave a quiet laugh, “Oh, well, I suppose there is always that dreadful fate…”

 “It’s happened before.”

 His words or tone, or both, doused her mirth, but it was neither shock nor horror that replaced it.  Instead, he recognized that quiet, warm, ever-patient look she’d given many others. It was a look that invited him to bare the ruin of his soul to her, knowing she would listen and not judge, and it devastated him just as completely as he’d reckoned it would.

 But he did not tell her more about Eliza or Issac.  Not now. He knew he would, eventually, but there was too much else rampaging through him that to try and draw together words to do them justice was impossible.

 Leaning down, Catherine pressed a feather-light kiss to his lips and said, “If that is your concern, do not be troubled.  I am well-educated in how I might prevent an unwanted consequence. Besides, please do remember that I can provide you relief without risk at all.”

 There was that ‘please’, again, driving through his chest like a railroad spike, splintering whatever was left of his pragmatic sense…

 “I don’ think there’s any such thing,” He groaned quietly, against her lips after leaning up to capture them again, “as ‘relief’ when it comes to you, darlin’...”

 “You poor thing,” he felt the curling smile against his lips while she murmured in answer, “It won’t do any harm to try anyway, don’t you think?”

 Admittedly, he wasn’t doing much thinking.  All he knew was that he was kissing her, and drowning in the scent of wildflowers, and if his heart gave out from all the trampling around his ribcage, it’d be the sweetest death anybody could hope for.  His right hand came up, sliding along the delicate line of her back through the silk and lace. Parts of him longed to pull her close against him, but would just as soon crush a delicate bloom in his hand as force her down on him if she didn’t offer it herself.  But while his hand travelled carefully up her back, hers moved more confidently down his front until he felt her stroke lightly the length of the tentpole in his union suit, and his breath caught, clattering, in his throat.

 “Steady…” She whispered, breaking the kiss, “Breathe.”

 Confused, Arthur furrowed his brow at her, wondering what she was talking about with such a soft demeanor, “W-what?”

 “Focus on your breathing,” She gave him a small smile, “So I don’t have to scrub a mess out of your union suit later…”

 He chuckled, but a part of him inside burned with embarrassment, or offense, or something between the two, “... You think I made it this long without knowin’ how t’keep my composure?”

 The smile melted from her face, and Arthur watched the lady’s pale eyes search him, trying to read him.  Then she cocked an eyebrow and said quietly, “In most cases, I suspect you very much have full control of your faculties, Arthur.  But I tell you from experience: that all goes out the window once a lady has a hand on your cock.”

 Laughing in earnest this time, burying the sound into the side of her throat, leaning up, Arthur was unable to contradict her, “... I ain’t ever livin’ that down, am I…”

 “I’m not trying to humiliate you,” She whispered, removing her hand from his chest to thread her fingers through his hair-- but she did not pull him away from her neck, so Arthur continued pressing kisses there against the delicate skin, “I really do want you to focus on your breathing.  I can make it wonderful…”

 “It’s already wonderful.”

 “Trust me.”

 He did, he supposed.  Still... “... You want me t’jus’ lie here an’ breathe?  I’m kinda liking what else I’m doin’, in fairness…”

 “No,” The outlaw felt the quiet chuckle in her throat more than he heard the sound, “You don’t have to stop if you don’t want to.”

 Humming his acknowledgement, tracing his lips lightly down a prominent tendon toward her collarbone, the fingertips of his right hand had just found the nape of her neck, and his left hand found a rather natural place to rest at the side of her waist.  It was nothing new to take the lady by the waist, as he’d done on numerous occasions-- the neat, snatched curve fit his hand easily, and made for a good anchor point from which to lift or direct her physically when needed--but he was surprised to find her so soft and slender without her corset.   Without the whalebone and confusingly numerous layers she wore, Arthur was rather startled by how slight she was under his hands.  He suddenly felt awkwardly large by comparison.

 Her fingers had left his hair-- something he decided he would miss unless she did it again-- and both hands met in the center of his chest, “Will you be cold if I undo your buttons?” she asked, still whispering.

 “No,” Was his admission, murmured into the hollow between her clavicles where he breathed deep of her wildflower scent.  His rampaging heart had him burning up in his wool suit under the wool blanket, “What about you? You warm enough in this… what is this anyway?”

 “They’re called ‘combinations’,” Was her helpful answer as her fingers busied themselves efficiently at his centerline, undoing each button with ease, “And I am now with you.  You put out heat like a stove, Arthur.”

 “Happy to be of service,” He smiled, sliding his fingertips carefully from the nape of her neck to her jawline and chin so he could tip her face down to drink her up in another kiss.  It was a hard sell for him to accept he could, in truth, be anything but a burden (if not an outright menace) for her, but he was coming to the conclusion that at the very least, she liked the way he kissed her.  Especially when she seemed to hesitate every time in whatever else she might be trying to do, like she’d forgotten just what it was in the moment. A paltry victory, probably, in the face of how she managed to stampede over him with every look, word, smile, and touch.

 But it gave him an excuse to kiss those full, sweet lips more often.  A particularly wicked part of him took extra pleasure in the way her breathing caught, in what he imagined was an expression of affront to her more delicate sensibilities, whenever he slipped his tongue to mingle with hers.

 He was so secretly pleased with the reaction, in fact, that he didn’t realize she’d managed to finish unbuttoning his union suit until he felt her shifting her weight and then her ladylike hands-- still soft despite the callouses she’d industriously made for herself over the last few months-- sliding along the bare skin of his belly, up over his ribs, raking through the trail of short, coarse hair curling there.  He hadn’t noticed, either, that his other hand had left the relative safety of her waist and slid up her ribcage so that her movement had slipped the swell of one breast to be momentarily cupped in the span between forefinger and thumb. Arthur froze, unsure, pulling away from the kiss to watch the lady’s expression, the apology already on his tongue.

 She laughed softly and shook her head, “Touch them.  Touch everything. Whatever you want.”

 “I… I didn’t want to presume--” It was amazing how fast her nimble little hand could move from the top of his chest to cupping his privates, skin to skin this time.

 “Touch me.  I’m going to touch you.”

 Arthur needed no further encouragement.  Both hands moved, seeking out the lines of her his pencil had all but memorized.  He marveled again at how slender she seemed in his grasp. But his fingers sketched along the lines of lean muscle in her back and along her ribs before his thumbs sculpted lightly toward her sternum and he palmed both breasts through the silk and lace, noting their firmness and weight.   He noted too, how breathless she seemed when he seized her mouth again.

 Meanwhile her hand had circled his girth and was making long, smooth strokes.  Fire churned in his guts while a groan scrambled gracelessly up his throat and through his mouth into hers.

 “Breathe…” She reminded him with a soft kiss, so gentle and sweet he shivered under the kindness he knew in his bones he didn’t deserve.  The knowledge kept the frustration at bay.

 He breathed, trying desperately to turn his thoughts away from how badly the twisting, screaming knots in his guts wanted to release.   He wasn’t a young man anymore! He had no business feeling this green! He was no blushing virgin, no wet-behind-the-ears whelp. He knew how to handle himself!  He’d bedded women before!

 … Well.  Admittedly, he could count the amount of times on one hand.  The amount of times sober were even fewer. He only remembered two of their names.

 He’d never lain with any of them a second time.  He’d never asked. They’d never offered…

 Well.  Except now here was Catherine-- three, that was three of them he remembered, now-- and here she had him full-aware that as he exited his mid-thirties that he had little more experience in loving a woman than he’d had as a young buck half that age.

 What was he doing here?  Wasting her ti--

 She kissed him, suddenly hard and fiery, and pulled away just as abruptly, leaving him spinning while she rested her weight on his chest with her other forearm.

 “Wandering off by yourself, Arthur?” She grinned at him, sly playfulness curling her lips as her hand gentled at his hair.  Her grip remained firm at his cock, pumping faster.

 She’d known.  He wondered if it was his face that’d given him away?  “‘M’sorry…”

 “There are two buttons there on the front center of my combinations.  Small and white. Maybe you’d like to undo them?”

 “I… suppose-- I… Catherine…”

 “Yes?”

 “... I know I ain’t no good…  You don’ have t’be nice about it…”

 She blinked at him, something vaguely patient and amused in her expression, but something darker flickered in the shadows of her moonlight eyes, “...Few men are, sweetheart.  I’m sure you tell each other differently. It’s like anything: it takes intention and practice if you want to do it well. It’s a skill you can learn and master, if you want to.”

 “Is that right…?” He mumbled, but thinking about it, why would it be different from anything else?

 “Don’t get all twisted up about what you ‘ought’ to be doing.   You’re already doing everything I’ve asked you to,” She told him gently, tilting her face to one side to press a soft kiss over the scar on his chin, “The rest is just what you’d like to do.  Would you like to see my breasts?”

 “I… sure…”

 “Then get those buttons I told you about open,” She smiled, “and you’ll get your chance.”

 He chuckled, sliding his hands from where they’d been exploring the small of her spine up her sides and over her shoulders to meet at her chest, “My second chance, you mean..?”

 In his peripheral as he sought out the little white buttons hidden in the lace, Arthur saw the lady’s fine eyebrows crash together and a small frown cinch her lips, red from kissing.  He was about to remind her of the first occasion, amused that he remembered and she didn’t (though, given the circumstance, he supposed she could be forgiven for not remembering, how much pain she’d been in).

 But then she blushed, “... Oh!  I… I suppose you’re right…”

 Arthur couldn’t help it.  The quiet laughter was slipping out around his clenched jaws already.  How silly. This proud lady not batting an eyelash at sharing her bed with a reprobate like him, her hand stroking him iron hard, but embarrassed at the recollection that he’d already seen her bare breasts in an occasion she barely recollected.  How needlessly complex the modesty of a lady! Cupping her lovely face with a hand, he kissed her again, slow and warm, in the hopes of mollifying the tightening lines of ire around her pale eyes.

 The buttons gave him something to concentrate on, besides breathing steady and the awareness that he was completely unworthy to be where he was, doing what he was doing.  They were tiny and round, and slipped easily out of his shaking fingers. But there were only two of them, thankfully, and then the silk and lace split in the center in a slender ‘V’ of pale skin over her sternum all the way to her waist.  If he pushed the material to both sides, opening it further, it would reveal her chest fully, just as she’d said.

Steady.  Breathe.  With a gentle touch, he parted the opening on one side, sliding his fingers over the top of her breast, above the budding, rosy nipple.  Gooseflesh rose at the brush of his fingertips, and it was that that forced another groan around his clenched teeth.  That and how Catherine’s hand had slowed, wringing fire through his guts with long, firm, deliberate strokes.

 “Pretty soon, I think…” She murmured above his head as he buried his face in that widened ‘V’ of exposed skin to press more heated kisses, his other arm wrapping around her back.  She moved then, within his grasp, sliding a leg over her arm and his waist, so that she was no conger half-reclined at his right, but now all but sitting astride him. Her fingers returned to his hair, guiding him with her as she sat back, so he could continue to press kisses, dropping his free elbow behind him to support his weight, “... Arthur, do you want me to take you in me?”

 “Huh?” Slowly, he tilted his head back to look at her.  Blood was roaring in his ears, so he wasn’t sure he’d heard, much less understood her, clearly.

 “I’m sure I could fit you, if you wanted...”

 “‘Fit’ me?”

 “Well, if this other woman could, I don’t see why I couldn’t try…”

Oh.  His teeth ground together, struggling to keep his focus.  Steady.  Breathe.   Just the thought of being inside Miss Catherine-Louise Schofield had him shuddering at the brink of his control.

 It must have shown on his face, again, “I’ll be careful.  If it’s what you want.”

 It was.  Christ Almighty, it was, he realized.  There wasn’t anything at all wrong with what magic she was working with her hand, and even though it had him half-spooked what might happen-- what consequences might crash in on them-- Arthur wanted her core clenched around him and her arms wrapped around his neck, riding him into the sunrise, drinking the breath from his lungs with her kisses.

 It’s what he’d wanted since the time he’d seen her bent over Dutch’s little table, eyes and expression infinitely distant.  Not like now, where there was something quiet and warm in her small smile, and her eyes were alert, focused, and shone with pleasure-- at him or just herself, he couldn’t tell.  He nodded, jaw aching from the force he was putting on it.

 “Alright.  Give me just a moment…”

 Her hand changed over his cock, and she shifted again, exhaling steadily, the focused expression intensifying on her face.  It was then that Arthur understood fully what she’d said and what she was doing. He was not alone in the observation that she was so slender and delicate compared to him.  Also, it seemed her ‘combinations’ split in the middle, because he could feel the brush of her skin and then the moist kiss of her labia...

 “D-darlin’, don’t hurt yourself---fffnnn…” Wet heat enveloped the sensitive head of his manhood, where it was met with resistance.   But not even a moment later, Catherine exhaled, and inch by glorious inch, he was wrapped up by her body as he slid deeper inside her.  Their eyes locked, and something that had started growing up from his loins bloomed in Arthur’s chest, warm and bright, and his only recourse was to pull her against him, cupping her face with a hand to kiss her.

 “...Y’alright?” He whispered, feeling the tension in her neck and shoulders.

 She nodded, her smile somewhat wry, “... Yes.  You?”

 “Yes,” He chuckled, resting his forehead against hers, “You’re incredible, darlin’...”  He meant it.  A part of him was shocked by how much he did mean it.

 “Oh, I know better, Mister Morgan,” She teased with a playful smile, pressing her hands against his shoulders to lay him back and giving her hips an experimental roll while still gripping him tightly within herself.  Arthur’s mind reeled with pleasure and threatened to buckle entirely, “A man is always so full of compliments in the bedroom…”

 He had no reply, but found his hands in the place where her waist blended into her hips, and he struggled against the urge to grip hard.  He didn’t want to leave bruises. He didn’t want to hurt her. Especially not while she was making him feel so amazingly good.  She moved again, setting up a languid, relaxed rhythm, and it was simplicity itself to match her, rolling his hips up to meet hers while she rode him.  Inside, each stroke seemed to drive him deeper and infinitely deeper into her softness, with heat matching what swelled inside himself, while she squeezed around him just strong enough to be felt.  He ached for release, and bit it back. His fingers twitched needily into her flesh.

 When he broke their shared rhythm with a low groan and a curse, Catherine only smiled and adjusted to meet him at this faster, decidedly much more desperate one.

 “Come on then,” she said gently, resting more of her weight on her hands at his shoulders and arching her back to free her hips and legs, “come on.”

 Arthur’s mind did buckle then, and his hands grew rougher, pulling her down onto him as he bucked up into her, even as she rolled her lower half to meet his thrusts.  His eyes drank in the way her firm breasts bounced as if to echo each slap of flesh meeting flesh, and the flushed skin across her face and down her throat.  The way her kiss-swollen lip had been drawn between her teeth, just a little. Her moonlight eyes locked on his face, watching him watch her through a glaze of lust and ecstasy.   Admiring her work, perhaps?

 Part of him liked it-- liked the idea of her examining and commanding him like a plaything, her plaything-- and he shuddered deep inside at the thrill.  But another part didn’t like it at all-- didn’t like how it separated them so neatly-- because after all, if he was her plaything, didn’t that make her his plaything?  Again, he was reminded of the glint of Dutch’s rings in the lamplight, and the dark, uncaring eyes.  Of Catherine standing at the edge of the ridge with her hair blowing free in the wind, under the moonlight, confessing that she knew she was being used, and had been raised to accept it.

 No.  It wasn’t like that.

 Surging up, he moved both hands, one to reach back and support him, the other to pull her in to meet his kiss, deep and hard, as if through it he might communicate what she meant to him, and what them together like this meant to him, in a way he’d never find words for.  By force of necessity, their rhythm adjusted once more, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and ground herself against him.

 “What’s wrong?” She whispered.  Instead of answering, he dropped his mouth under her jaw, pressing a line of heated, open-mouth kisses.

 She clenched around him, and he shivered, the rest of his willpower beginning to rapidly crumble, “C-Catherine…”

 “I know.” Was her gentle response, “Whenever you’re ready.  Shall I come off of you?”

 No.  Yes.

 Yes, definitely.  No matter how much he wanted to stay buried in her and tangled up in her for the rest of his days…

 It seemed only an instant passed, and yet it was an instant that stretched a thousand years, but he was freed from the confines of her core, only to be nestled securely between their bodies, burning like a brand between their bellies.  He hardly had space to acknowledge the transition before the fire spilled over inside him, and he shuddered his release with a groan into the side of her throat while the world flashed blinding white for another too-short eternity.

 Then it passed, and like every other time before it, the self-conscious shame crashed in through every window and door, chasing tension through his spine and limbs and twisting sour illness through his guts.  Just what in this whole damn world did he think gave him the right to--

 “Shh.” Catherine’s gentle admonishment was accompanied by her fingers dragging through his hair, nails gently running against his scalp so that he wanted to arch into it like a great cat. “Whatever you’re thinking just now: stop it.  Everything is fine. You conducted yourself commendably. You’re a lovely man and it was a pleasure to lie with you.”

 Closing his eyes, Arthur breathed in the wildflower scent of her skin, noting the heady, musky smell of sex that joined it, “... If you say so…”

 “I do say so.  Should we lie down properly again so you can get some sleep, now?”

 Exhaustion was pulling at him with a strong, steady draw, “... Suppose we ought to… Did I make a mess?”

 “Only a bit, sweetheart.  It’ll wipe up easy enough.  Let me get my handkerchief over there…”

 She wiped up his bare belly, and the bit of her silk and lace that had been spattered, assuring him that it would wash out fine, before wiping clean his sensitive manhood that was rapidly tucking itself back into its foreskin.  Then, tossing away the soiled handkerchief again with a smile, the lady laid him down and snuggled up against him once more. It seemed to Arthur he fell soundly asleep the moment her hand returned to the center of his chest, like it might be a millstone plunging him into the dreamless waters of oblivion.

 He woke slowly, hearing the impatient, not-too-distant stamping of horses, hungry for breakfast and the scarce twitterings of birds that opted to linger during the winter months.  But it was movement that had drawn him to wakefulness, and his eyes opened to discover Miss Schofield attempting to slip out from under his arm.

 “Mornin’...” He offered in a thick whisper, causing her to turn her head, giving him a horrifyingly embarrassed look before covering it with a warm smile, whispering back,

 “Good morning.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…”

 “‘S alright…” Indeed, he was feeling admittedly better than he had in weeks, and it was…

 … It was really nice to see her first thing in the morning, a little rumpled and soft before she put herself together in her layers and pins for the day.

 “... Suppose I should get up an’ dressed anyway before someone asks why the horses ain’t fed yet…”

 “Assuming they don’t notice your tent is empty…?” She prompted with a smile.

 “Ah… yeah.” He wasn’t too worried.  The camp was quiet. It must still be early enough nobody else was awake, “... You want we should keep this to ourselves?”

 Her smile widened, “As opposed to shouting from the top of the wagons how we spent our evening?  I don’t think that’s either of our way…”

 “Well, no… I mean…” He furrowed his brow, unable to fight the amused smile, “I just… I dunno if you want them findin’ out you laid down with sour ol’ Arthur…”

 She slapped a hand to her cheek, feigning horror, “Oh my Heavens, you’re right!  They might just start thinking I’m some sly Jezebel!  Some faithless, Godless, shameless whore!”

 Scowling, he sat up, taking hold of both wrists and pulling them toward him, firmly in his seriousness, but not rough, “Now, that’s enough of that sort of talk.  You know what I mean…”

 “No, Arthur, really.  You’re the one with a reputation to lose.  I’m already soiled goods--”

 “--Now stop that, I mean it, Catherine.”

 She sighed and leaned forward, kissing him on the corner of his chin, “So do I.  The men respect you. I don’t know how much that might change if they know. I don’t care what they think of me, but I know this gang is very important to you.”

 Arthur, for his part, was fairly certain they wouldn’t believe him even if he did let slip what had happened.  He hardly believed it, himself.

 “... We’ll just… see what happens, then.  I guess.”

 “Alright.”

 Turning and beginning the process of buttoning up his union suit again so he could put his clothes back on, Arthur supposed it hadn’t been such a terrible idea after all.

(There are two things I want to mention here: a) UH... I'm not very experienced in writing publishable smut, so I'm sorry if it's awkward... >>; b) I know there are some rumblings in the fandom complaining about Arthur 'being written as blushing virgin' [as opposed to the more popular/common portrayal of him being a sex god, able to satisfy all our thirsty desires], but I headcanon that he's just... not very experienced.  I know that's not as sexy, and I'm sorry if it's not your jam...  If it's any consolation, he'll get more notches in his belt as the story goes on. [And in theory so will I...?])

[scenes-in-between]

Nothing Important Happened Today (Part 1)

(pre-episode)

One night. They get one night at home together before it all goes to hell.

It's not the most restful night, either. The baby is up every two hours to eat, and both Mulder and Scully have nightmares in between. Even so, months later, he will look back on this night of broken sleep with a longing so fierce it feels he might combust from it.

He finally decides after William's 5 AM feeding that he might as well get some water boiling (coffee for him, tea for Scully), and even bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, it is hard to remember a time he's been happier. This is the dream he never really allowed himself to want, a domestic sort of bliss he never truly believed himself worthy of, messy and imperfect but also somehow exactly right.

He almost drops the kettle into the sink when someone knocks on the door.

Instinctively, he reaches toward the holster he’s not wearing, frowns, and pads on near-silent bare feet to the door anyway. A wary glance through the peephole does nothing to set his mind at ease.

“What do you want?” he says quietly through the closed door.

“We need to talk,” is the muffled reply.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Maybe not. But you’re going to want to hear what I have to say to you.”

Clenching his jaw, Mulder unlocks the deadbolt but leaves the security chain in place, then opens the door just the small amount that the chain allows.

“And why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

“Believe me or don’t,” Kersh says. “But I didn’t have to come here. And if I walk away right now, the only person whose ass that saves is me.”

***

Mulder closes the door, and for a moment, Kersh thinks he might not reopen it. But he hears the slide and clatter of the chain being undone, and then the door opens once more. Mulder is standing there with the same defiant scowl on his face that he’s worn so many times before in Kersh’s office, only this time, the flannel pajama pants and bare feet make him look even more like a petulant teenager. It might be funny, if the situation weren’t so dire.

The temptation is certainly there, Kersh has to admit, to simply walk away. To let whatever Mulder has coming for him just take its course and have that be the end of it, once and for all. Under different circumstances, he might indeed have done just that.

But what’s coming for Mulder won’t stop with him; Agent Scully and this brand new, innocent baby will be caught in the crossfire, and that is more blood on his hands than he can stomach. Kersh may have no love lost for Mulder, but he is not a complete monster.

At length, Mulder moves to one side so Kersh can actually enter the apartment instead of standing out in the hallway like a jackass.

“Whatever you have to say, keep your voice down,” Mulder murmurs as he closes the door. “The baby’s sleeping.”

Kersh gestures toward the couch. “Mind if we sit down?”

“No, I think we’re fine right here,” Mulder says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You won’t be staying long.”

Arrogant sonofabitch.

“All right, then. I’ll cut to the chase. Your life is in danger. You’ve got about 24 hours to get out of town before a chain of events is set in motion that no one will be able to stop.”

“I’m sorry, is that supposed to scare me? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s not exactly new territory for me.”

“Oh, no? Then tell me, what does Agent Scully think about this cavalier attitude of yours, in light of the… new addition.”

At this, Mulder drops his arms and steps forward, getting his face right up into Kersh’s. “Don’t you threaten my son,” he practically hisses.

“That’s not a threat, you damned hothead, it’s a warning. A warning that you’ve got your head so far up your own ass that you fail to recognize the danger you’re bringing on them both by staying here.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that leaving them unprotected is a better plan? Thanks, but given how well that worked out the last time, I’m not making that mistake again.”

“They’re still alive, aren’t they?”

Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges, but whatever he’s about to say is derailed by the sound of another door opening in the apartment.

Kersh turns to see Agent Scully standing in the doorway to the bedroom, then quickly looks away; she’s wearing a robe over her pajamas, but even so, he is still her boss, and seeing her like this seems intimate in a way that feels deeply inappropriate.

“Sir? What are you doing here?”

“The Deputy Director was just leaving,” Mulder says before Kersh can answer.

Kersh levels a glare at him. “Actually, I think Agent Scully ought to hear what I’ve told you. Perhaps she will have the sense to listen.”

“No, I think we’re both done listening to your lies.”

He should have known it would be pointless to come here. Mulder was never going to listen to reason, especially not after learning about Kersh’s association with the very people he’s now trying to protect them from.

The same people who will not hesitate to separate his head from his body if they find out he’s been here.

It’s this last point that keeps him from throwing up his hands and walking out; if he leaves without doing what he came here to do, the risk will have been entirely for nothing, and Alvin Kersh is not someone who puts himself in harm’s way for no reason.

“If I were trying to mislead you, don’t you think I would have contrived to do so by some means that you would find more credible?”

“You’ve never shown even the slightest interest in helping us before,” Mulder counters. “Why start now?”

It takes every ounce of restraint not to roll his eyes.

“What I have refused to do, and will never do, is validate your ridiculous claims about aliens. You are so quick to blame everything on little green men that you ignore, to your great detriment, the very real and very human threats facing you. Especially now.”

Mulder scoffs. “There is nothing human about the men you were meeting in your office a few nights ago.”

“On the contrary. What you mischaracterize as alien is in fact the product of human science more advanced and more dangerous than you could possibly comprehend.”

This shuts Mulder up for a full two seconds. Then he shakes his head. “You actually believe that, don’t you? You really have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Mulder, can I speak with you for a moment?” Agent Scully says quietly from behind Kersh. “Alone?”

Mulder’s expression immediately changes, his eyes narrowing in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just… Would you excuse us a moment please, sir?”

“By all means,” Kersh says, without turning around.

With one more distrustful glare, Mulder stalks past him, and the two of them go into the bedroom and shut the door. Kersh, meanwhile, takes this opportunity to walk over to the chair in the living room and sit down. For several minutes, the only sound is a clock ticking somewhere nearby.

Kersh waits.

***

“I just think it's worth hearing what he has to say,” Scully whispers. “It's the only way we can hope to even guess as to what his true motivations might be.”

“We know that he wants me out of the picture, Scully. I don't think the 'why’ matters. I'm not going anywhere.”

“I know you're not.” She takes his hand and squeezes. His face softens, and he squeezes her fingers back. “But I still want to try and find out as much as possible about what we're up against.” She looks over at the bassinet. “If not for our sake then for William's.”

“Dana…”

“I need to know they aren't going to keep coming after him. That when they all walked away in Georgia, that was the end of it. Because if it wasn't…”

“I'm not going to let anything happen to him. Not to him, not to you, not to any of us.”

“Mulder…” She sighs. “We both know what they're capable of. We both know that's something you can't promise. Which is why it's all the more important to know whatever we can about what they want and what they're planning. That is the only way we will have any hope of fighting them. And while Kersh may believe the lie about their origins, that doesn't mean that the rest of what he might know about them is also untrue.”

“Unless by listening to him, we're playing right into their hands.” He shakes his head. “I don't trust anything that comes out of his mouth, regardless of whether or not he believes he's telling the truth.”

“I don't trust him either. But I still think that we should hear him out first, and then decide what to do with whatever information he might give us.”

Mulder drops her hand and rubs his face. “I don’t like it,” he murmurs from behind his hands. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

Nothing has gone “how it was supposed to” since the moment she found out she was pregnant. Mulder disappearing for months and coming back “dead,” all of the questions and the worry, the doctors she should have been able to trust but couldn’t, and all of it culminating in a birth that bore not even the faintest resemblance to any of what she had hoped and planned for. She fell through the proverbial looking glass the day Mulder left for Oregon, and she can count on one hand the moments since then when her life has felt like anything approaching normal.

And that’s even relative to the departure from “normal” that has characterized her life since the first time she walked into that basement office, nearly a decade ago.

She looks over again at William. If all of this turmoil is the price she has to pay for him, for his very existence, for the fact that however miraculous the circumstances surrounding his conception might have been, he is the product of a perfectly ordinary human union, then she will pay it without hesitation.

“Come on. We’d better get back out there.”

Without giving Mulder a chance to argue again, she opens the door. Kersh meets her eyes only momentarily before looking away uncomfortably. She’s not sure what he expected, dropping in on a new mother at 5:30 in the morning; no way in hell is she putting on a pantsuit right now. There is nothing immodest about her current state of dress, and if he has a problem with it, that’s on him.

Besides, maybe it’s a good thing if he’s thrown off balance a bit.

She walks to the couch and sits. “All right. I’m listening.”

[b-kitsune]

Many ways to say I love you: Day Twenty-Six.

Kidge-a-palooza 2019 Prompt: Persecute. Pairing: Kidge (VLD) Universe: Middle Age! AU Status: Part 2/2

She was attentive repeating in her mind the teachings of Shiro as she tightened the rope with her hands without losing sight of her objective, vaguely remembering how he had been instilled to point the arrow in the right direction. The deer looked around without knowing that Pidge was stalking her at a safe distance, eating the precarious grass that was beginning to bloom with the coming of spring, indicating that she had done an excellent job hiding in the undergrowth. It was a simple shot; she couldn't fail like last time.

Suddenly, she let out a light gasp when felt Keith's hands around her waist, taking her so gently that for a moment she thought had imagined it, but when she looked out of the corner of her eye she saw him by her side, looking at his target with the same thorough analysis of which it was so characterized. He moved her left hand that held the bow a couple of millimeters up. Pidge could feel his breath hitting the contour of her neck as if he was playing with her trying to distract her in a wicked game.

Pidge closed her eyes for a second, for that reason she hated to have Keith accompany her to hunt.

''You’re tense the bow.'' Keith whispered over her ear, Pidge could feel his lips pink her skin for a few seconds, giving her a chill on her spine. ''The shot has to be precise, or you will fail again.''

''I know.'' Pidge answered, trying to concentrate everything she could and not to think that Keith's hand was moving too close to her ribs, the deer still didn't move from his position.

''Shoot.''

The movement that came after hearing him was as subtle and direct as the voice that ordered her. The shot was right, but the strength of the arrow was not enough to break the deer's neck, so he quickly fled to the depths of the forest when he felt the blow coming from nowhere. Pidge groaned defeated approaching the place where her arrow fell after impact, part of the tip was bloodied by the cut that had surely made the poor animal.

''It seems that you lacked some strength.'' Keith commented once he approached her. ''At least you didn't miss the shot.''

''It is not enough.'' Pidge snorted frustrated. ''It's my fourth lonely hunt and I haven't been able to catch even a rabbit.'' Keith smiled sympathetically at her words, circling her shoulders with his arm to comfort her in some way.

''You have advanced a lot in recent months Pidge, it's just a matter of time.''

''I don't need time, I need to improve.''

Keith's eyes darkened at her words, thinking of the reasons she might have for wanting to improve her collection skills as soon as possible. But even though they had known and worked together for two years, she was lately being too reluctant towards him, so she didn't talk about the account when Keith asked her something else. Pidge closed completely, especially when they were alone as if she didn't trust his intentions enough or his mere presence generated a hint of anxiety, which saddened Keith more than he would like to admit.

To be honest, Keith was to blame. Their relationship had turned to deep discomfort since the last talk they had.

A couple of months ago, after an attack on a nearby tribe that claimed their territory as their own, they had been too injured during the battle when they defended the town, so they were forced to keep absolute rest on orders from Shiro and the council. Keith and Pidge spent many nights together as they needed rest, and over time, their relationship had turned to something much more intimate and enjoyable. So it was no surprise to anyone to accompany them in their recovery. One night, amid laughter caused by alcohol and the vulnerability that silence was around, Keith admitted that, at the next summer solstice ceremony, he would link ties with the strongest woman in the tribe. He hoped he realized he was referring to her, it was an act too bold for his own heart and he didn't feel brave enough to say her name out loud, but Pidge's reaction was a loud throat and a mocking laugh, changing the subject as if what Keith was telling her was absolutely stupid. He let it go, anyway, Pidge was still Roman, so surely the union of ties made no sense to her.

The next day, she didn't look at him all day. Lance had even asked him if he knew the reason she was acting strange, but Keith ignored the matter. What he least wanted was for Lance to know what he was planning because he would tell Romelle, and therefore, the entire town would find out.

Since then Pidge acted as if his presence bothered her. Keith tried to give her signs in every possible way before the solstice ceremony when he officially planned to ask for her hand, but it seemed that she didn't affect him in the least.

In the back of his mind, Keith thought that perhaps his feelings weren't the same as Pidge felt for him. Maybe he had confused everything and she just needed someone to feel comfortable with after the loss of her family. Although Shiro had told him that possibly his feelings were reciprocal, at that moment Keith was beginning to doubt.

He watched her cross the roads with grace and agility while looking for new prey to hunt, leaving him behind on various occasions. Keith was proud of how much she had advanced in the last year since she began practicing with the bow. It is not as if she had the obligation to accept him, she was a free woman anyway.

''I think all animals have agreed to avoid me.'' Pidge commented approaching him, completely defeated. ''This is useless, it took me hours to find a deer.''

''Deer are beautiful and intelligent beings.'' Keith said smiling softly. ''They realize when a predator is stalking them.''

''So I'm being too obvious?'' Pidge asked raising an eyebrow in annoyance. ''I thought you told me I was doing a good job hiding.''

''You do. But you are also very anxious, and animals can smell it.'' Keith stepped back towards the sky, the light began to dim. ''We'd better go back, you can try tomorrow.''

''No, come back if you want. I won't leave here until I catch something.'' Pidge continued on her way to the opposite side, Keith sighed heavily at her stubbornness, following her. Pidge looked confused. ''What are you doing?''

''It's getting dark, it would be irresponsible to leave you alone.''

''You don't have to do this.''

''I want to do it.'' Keith replied approaching her, but Pidge just looked away annoyed.

''I don't need a babysitter, if you're here it will be harder to find something to hunt.''

''Why are you so obstinate with that?'' Keith questioned losing a little more patience.

''I already told you, it's none of your business.'' Keith took her wrist tightly, preventing her from moving away. ''Let me go.''

''No one in the village is upset about that, stop thinking you don't fit in here just because there is something you are not good at.''

''I need to be good in this.''

''Why?'' Pidge growled trying to let go, but Keith's strength didn't allow it.  ''Are you trying to prove something to someone? Is that?''

''Keith let go of me.''

''Answer me Katie!''

''Why are you so interested in that?!''

''Because I don't want anyone to court you!''

Keith shouted, at last, stopping the struggle while they both watched in amazement. The silence felt heavy until after a few seconds, Pidge got rid of Keith's hands. He sighed heavily, looking towards any part of the forest so as not to see her directly.

''What are you talking about?'' Pidge asked, her voice echoed heavily in the air. ''Now I'm something you should protect? Do you think that I am not able to fend for myself?''

''Is not that…''

''So what is it!?'' She shouted angrily, taking a couple of steps back, she didn't want to be near him. ''Do you think being by my side gives you the right to act like my older brother?!''

''You are important to me Pidge! How hard is it to believe that?!''

''I don't want another brother, Keith! No-'' She put her hands to her head as her tears began to emerge, looking around as if the words were no longer enough to prove her pain. ''I don't want you to keep looking at me like I'm a girl...''

''… I don't do it. ''He said after a few seconds, his mind was blank, his body was not able to respond either. Keith began to feel his feelings too heavy on his back. ''I never saw you like a sister to protect. ''He took a couple of steps towards her, taking her face with his hands so that her eyes met. Pidge's tears spilled on her cheeks. ''I love you, Katie.''

Keith thought it was enough for her to finally understand his feelings that he had hidden for long months since he began to know her better, but before he knew it, Pidge hit him hard to get away from her, and later, she ran away towards the depth of the forest.

 ...

 She could hear the wolves moving around her position looking for something to feed on, she was sure for the moment when Hunk's words about hiding from potential predators resonated in her mind, but she had to stay alert if she didn't want to meet in her own path for some mistake. From an early age, her family had instilled about the dangers of being in the depths of the forest late at night when they made outings on some important event, wild animals came out hunting and anyone, however brave and cunning it was an easy target for them. All of her senses were alert as she walked hard through the damp grass, but Pidge knew that she couldn't stay too long in one place while trying to find her way to the village. She cursed herself internally when she fled from Keith, she was completely lost thanks to her impulsiveness.

The temperature dropped to almost freezing her bones, the moon didn't deliver enough light to be sure where she was treading, but she prayed to all the gods to find her way back as soon as possible. She didn't want things to end that way, all Pidge wanted was for Keith to let her make her own mistakes while perfecting herself in the hunt. She needed to become a dignified woman before the summer solstice celebration, she needed both Krolia and Kolivan to consider her a suitable woman to fight for Keith's hand. It was the only goal she had since that night in which Keith had confessed to her because of alcohol, that she felt it was time to commit to someone else.

She knew that the Celts had a different way of compromising compared to her own people. In Rome, her circle was marrying by political or military power, she was sure that her father would have ended up marrying some son of a minister eventually, and she could say absolutely nothing against it. Nor is it as if she cared too much, Pidge had grown up loving the knowledge of the sciences and constellations around her, she didn't think she would find love in marriage as her parents had done.

Actually, nobody did.

But Pidge remembered reading, a long time ago, that the Celts were engaged in a strong sense of camaraderie and appreciation of their partner. They worked as partners while composing their own family, respect was mutual and there was no difference in power over another. Pidge had seen her while living in the village in recent years, they even thought that after death their souls would remain united. And Pidge was hoping one day to find that same way of life with the person who loved her as she was.

When she learned about Keith's intentions, she thought it would be a good opportunity to fight for what he wanted. She had betrayed her people, fled her home, left behind a life of luxury to work together with Celts. Pidge felt that nothing was impossible for her if she tried her best. She just had to prove that she was worthy enough to ask for the hand of the son of one of the highest authorities in the village. Keith was the person who had helped her the most with Shiro to adapt to her new life, he was her friend, her confidant of her greatest fears, and sometimes he acted so close to her... That she thought that perhaps he was able to reciprocate.

But now, remembering how she acted as soon as he was declared hours ago, Pidge didn't know how to respond, all she expected was that Keith wouldn't hate her for that.

She stopped abruptly when she heard the gallops of a horse nearby, hiding under a rotten trunk where the moonlight didn't reach and thus wasn't detected quickly. Except for her dear partner, there were no horses in the forest, and the Celts didn't use them.

When she felt the gallop near her body as it stopped and a loud voice rumbled in the dark of the night, Pidge felt her heart stop for a few seconds and her breathing caught in her throat.

The subject spoke Latin, who was near the lands of the Celtic village was a Roman.

Pidge prayed to the gods that she wasn't an emperor's envoy. Or that would imply that they were thinking of attacking the village.

She crawled much deeper into the trunk, preventing her from seeing her by chance when she heard him get off the horse, she was only able to see his feet lacking any armor. Pidge felt that her dress was stained with mud and grass, and Pidge hoped she wouldn't have an allergic reaction after a few minutes.

She took the bow on her back, if she was fast enough Pidge might be able to shoot him in the chest before she ran, if she had any luck, she would find the village to warn them of the threat. But as fast as she heard him walk, he climbed on his horse and began a slow gallop in the opposite direction. Pidge waited a few minutes before getting up, realizing that the subject was no longer at her side.

He began to walk towards the opposite direction from where she heard him heading, but before taking a couple of steps, Pidge heard the howl and the grinding of the horse behind her back. Pidge didn't think too much where he was going, she had to run away from him.

The forest was humid because of the low temperatures of the night, but she was agile enough to evade the blockages while the Roman followed her at a distance that gradually began to shorten.

Pidge avoided the tears being released while taking the bow and shooting at one of the horse's legs, her hands shook so much that when the arrow shot out, she cut off part of her left hand. She was scared, but to her great relief that didn't prevent the shot from failing, she watched as the animal fell terribly towards the ground while the subject quickly recovered. Starting a new persecute, at least Pidge had more advantage in a race than on horseback.

She began to tense a new arrow, but when she looked back again, the subject threw herself on her to stop her, Pidge shouted in fright when she felt his hands forcing her to release the bow, losing against his strength. Her heart was beating vigorously because of the race and she had only one option left that she hoped would be enough. With a free hand, Pidge took the knife that Keith had given her to defend herself against her attacker, but when she got up and took off his hood in a single movement, she clearly saw his features with the help of the moon, her breath stopped.

Pidge thought she was hallucinating.

He surely believed it too.

She lowered the knife until he dropped it to the ground, her tears began to fall back on her face until the lump of her throat didn't allow her to say a single word, she was overwhelmed and feared that, if she touched him just a little, he would vanish like a cruel illusion.

But it was not necessary.

''Pidge!''

Keith's scream and watched as her brother Matt was thrown to the ground against the mud was enough to disappear all the shock.

''You're okay!? Didn't it hurt you!?'' Pidge started laughing after seeing the hilarious scene that was forming while processing it in her head, pushing Keith away from Matt's body.

''It's okay! He's my brother!''

''What?'' Pidge did her best to lift his body but only saw that Keith had knocked him out, which was not a surprise, he had fallen hard from nowhere. ''I thought your brother Matt died in the fire.''

''Me too.'' She raised his hand to see it in the low light they had. Seeing how a fairly pronounced x was drawn on his back. ''Matt was a slave...'' She whispered hatefully. ''The empire transformed him into a slave when he lost his civil rights...''

''Pidge...'' She looked up slowly, with a strong determination on her face. ''He escaped like Shiro from the colosseum, you have to take him to the village as soon as possible.''

''I will take him.''

Keith took it between his back to load it correctly without effort, so Pidge thought he was probably malnourished by the miserable life he was forced to lead. They began to walk in silence, again the tension felt on their shoulders and the shock of finding her brother after two years make Pidge turned her stomach.

When they arrived at the village, everyone was surprised at how dirty and ragged they looked from a simple hunt. Shiro was the first to react when he saw Matt and the mark on his palm so familiar that he also rested on his own back. Pidge watched as his eyes darkened, avoiding recalling a past that gave him nightmares until this day.

Shay was in charge of treating the visible wounds once she discovered that he had no severe wound that threatened his life, Matt was only tired and needed rest until he was ready to wake up.

Pidge was with him at all times in the night, until she was reprimanded by Shiro to rest properly, she reluctantly agreed after a slight discussion. She knew she couldn't do much for her brother while he was unconscious, she just hopes he woke up as soon as possible.

Once she left the cabin to go to Shiro's home, she could see that the sky began to lighten in a pleasant pinkish color, the dawn mixed with the night from which some stars could still be seen above the sky.

Without realizing it, she couldn't help walking to the place that he knew Keith would be sitting next to Kosmo to observe the constellations.

As she supposed, Keith was lying on the grass, without even having changed even the dirty and muddy clothes.

Pidge sat next to him, for a moment, she felt that all the emotions lived less than twelve hours ago was just a terrible dream. Her body felt exhausted, but strangely she felt no sleep.

''It doesn't have to be this way.'' Keith said after a few minutes, Pidge looked surprised when she heard his voice.

''What?''

''Make this awkward.'' He said softly, looking at her with a sweet smile that made Pidge compress her chest. Since when was Keith able to smile so warmly?

''It's not... Awkward.''

''Wasn't that why you escaped?''

''It was because I was a coward.'' Pidge admitted quietly. ''I-''

''Don't do it.'' Keith stopped her before she realized, with one hand on her lips, they were too close to the other at that moment. ''I don't want to force you to anything, and with the coming of your brother, it is understandable that you have more important things to do... Just...''

''Keith?'' Pidge didn't know what to say about his words, but his eyes were so full of love and appreciation for her that she didn't know what to say.

''On the day of the solstice, I want you to give me an answer that day.''

''Why?'' Keith looked away in embarrassment.

''It ... It is assumed that, if you accept it during the beginning of summer, the gods will bless us with eternal happiness.'' He said, at last, Pidge felt that her heart could no longer love that man, feeling her own cheeks flush with shame. ''It's okay?''

''Yeah.'' She replied funny. ''I will answer that day, so that we may be blessed for eternity.''

It was a stupid promise, but both couldn't be happier knowing that in that same place, it was the day they met without masks for the first time.

[alcalavicci]

(Disclaimer: treat 1950s articles like they’re RPF/fanfiction. This is from 1960, but it still reads very much like a 50s article)

Photoplay Magazine- July 1960

WHY MILLIE PERKINS HAD TO SETTLE FOR A RUNAWAY MARRIAGE by Elaine Blake

When Millie Perkins and Dean Stockwell slipped off to Las Vegas for a secret marriage just before Easter Sunday, people in Hollywood didn't have the nerve to ask them, "But why the runaway? What's all the hush-hush about?" Hardly anyone knew them intimately enough to ask such personal questions. But they wondered plenty. For if Millie and Dean were older, or anyone of Hollywood's multi-divorced-and-married couples, you could more easily imagine them climbing into his three-year-old Chevy or her tiny English job and casually taking off for the Gretna Green Wedding Chapel in Vegas. But Millie and Dean are young! And though the newspaper stories were as brief and uninformative as this secretive couple themselves, you still read seven very romantic little words. "It was the first marriage for each." First marriage! To any girl that's a big-wedding dream woven of satin and lace, perfumed with flowers, set to organ music whispering in a hushed church till it swells triumphantly for a radiant bride and bridegroom. Mostly this is a girl's dream, a magic charm to keep romance alive forever. It's Her Day, her audience smiling and weeping just a little at the lovely vision coming down the aisle to meet her waiting bridegroom.

Millie had no part of the dream. You could understand Dean's not caring for it - many a male goes through the ordeal only because a girl loves a big wedding and he loves his girl. But Dean loves his girl, too. And wouldn't you expect a little girl from Fair Lawn, New Jersey, to want her family around when she says "I do" to the first love of her life? Why, then, did Millie Perkins, with a great big wonderful family - father and mother, four sisters and a brother - who could have made her wedding the most wonderful, exciting day in her life, settle for slipping off to a secret ceremony like a pair of runaways?

They drove up to Las Vegas just before eleven, that Good Friday morning. Millie was wearing a simple little blue dress. Everything about her is always tiny and unfancy, and her wedding outfit was no exception. But, for Millie, this was quite dressed up - a nice change from her eternal blouse-and-skirt-and-high-socks.

THEY WERE MR. AND MRS.

Their first stop was the Gretna Green, one of the many "marrying chapels" in Vegas and one of the nicest. They told the hostess, Mrs. Anderson, what they wanted in the way of a ceremony - a simple one, naturally. Then they headed immediately for the Clark County Courthouse to take out the license. A Las Vegas newspaperman just chanced by a stroke of luck - his - to be in the County Clerk's office. Hopefully, he followed Millie and Dean to the elevator, asking when and where they were getting married.

"No publicity," Dean said flatly. All further tries got the reporter nothing but a brush-off. What frustration! The only newspaperman on the scene and he was getting nowhere. He pleaded plaintively, "I wish you'd help me!" Dean shook his head, took Millie's arm and walked her away without another word.

Back at the Gretna Green, with the license, they found a minister summoned by the management, the Rev. Alan Robertson, pastor of the Church of Christ. The single-ring ceremony didn't take long. Millie

and Dean, alone with their love, seemed completely unaware that there were no attendants for a girl with four sisters, no best man for a boy with an older brother. No mother smiling through tears, no father choking down a lump.

"I now pronounce you man and wife," the minister said. They were Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dean Stockwell, looking into each other's eyes as they spoke a Beverly Hills address for the license to be forwarded to after it was duly recorded. Then, they left town - all this within a few hours. Nobody had seen the star of "Diary of Anne Frank" married to the star of "Compulsion" except a stranger, the chapel hostess.

Secrecy? Hollywood says that Millie's idol is Greta Garbo the Sphinx, and that Dean deals curtly with the press like HIS idol, Marlon Brando. Millie's studio got a taste of the same. All they knew about the marriage was what they read in the papers. Their frantic phone calls finally reached Millie after the weekend, and when they asked, pointblank, "Are you married?" she answered, "My personal life is my own."

But is a passion for privacy all that was back of the slip-away marriage? Hollywood thought not. People who wouldn't dream of asking either of them such an outright blunt question, immediately began asking each other more round-about ones. "Why do you suppose they had to run off like that, dodging reporters, and refusing to say if THEY DID or THEY DIDN'T marry?" For a while, there was even a revival of an old rumor - that this celebrated pair of "loners" were actually married more than half-a-year before, when a top movie columnist reported their secret union from "very reliable sources."

Now, this was all some people needed - Millie and Dean refusing to deny or confirm a new report of a new secret marriage - and the old one was stirred to life. Some began insisting, all over again, that they must have been husband and wife the whole time.

If all the uproar and theory doesn't seem to make sense, neither do most rumor binges in small towns where everybody knows everybody - except the rare handful who REFUSE to be known. Actually nothing could be simpler than to explain Millie's and Dean's kind of wedding, once you accept them not merely as two secretive people, but two highly individual ones.

"LITTLE PEOPLE"

Both are what Millie calls "little people" - meaning they make no pretenses and are sturdily against being pushed into any. And before they fell in love, each had a shattering capacity for loneliness. But right there is a nub of difference. For Dean has known, since childhood, what it is to be so apart from others and so hurt by the apartness that he'd die before he'd let it show. That's loneliness, from way back and deep down.

But Millie was never a hermit girl - not until she came to Hollywood. Home in Fair Lawn, in the tree-shaded house full of lively Perkinses, you couldn't be sad unless you worked at it. "A lot of living went on there" she recalls wistfully, "and I was always part of it." Her chief grief was peering into the mirror and deciding she was the one ugly Perkins. She still isn't sure the duckling has, as yet, made it to swan.

That's a tell-tale symptom. The ground isn't firm under Millie's feet because her big breaks came with luck, not the hard work she believes in. When she left the safe nest for New York, fashion modeling fell

into her lap - someone liked photos he saw of her. It spiraled. Twentieth Century-Fox talent scouts, searching the world for a girl to play Anne Frank, also liked Millie's face in a magazine. They chose her

over 10,000 applicants who wanted to be movie stars, when she didn't particularly want to be one. She came to Hollywood looking fourteen, indeed, in dark knee socks, a rumpled skirt and blouse. These are still her favorite kind of clothes - she's indignant when they're called her "Anne Frank costume."

But she came quivering with fear. She was an amateur, a worrier, the pros were watching for her to fall on her face. She never got over her dread of failure. She cried under pressure, she walked alone. But to those on the set who were patient and kind, she was sweetly courteous. Director George Stevens beame an ideal in the place of her papa, the Merchant Marine officer she used to greet rapturously after each sea trip when she was home. Dodie Heath, who became Millie's friend while both were in the "Anne Frank" cast, loved her for the gentleness that many mistook for weakness - till they found she couldn't be stepped on.

Dodie told a writer, "When Millie finds someone who understands her, she gets all excited." Prophetic words. For when she met Dean, they both found understanding. And this he had been groping for all his life. From then on they walked together. They shared the outdoors, on a sailboat, on horseback, anywhere away from people and night clubs. They sprawled in secluded grassy fields and read to each other. And they talked - about everything in both their worlds. Millie even confided how sad it was for a little girl to be an ugly duckling. She didn't care that girls never admit to ugliness, past, present or future.

Anyway, Dean topped her. He said, "It's worse to be such a pretty little boy that the kids you want to play with laugh in your face. You're different - a child actor, and that's a terrible thing to be!" At six, Dean was a stage veteran starting a film career in "Anchors Aweigh." He worked too hard and played too little, till at sixteen he'd completed high school and more than twenty pictures for M-G-M. Then he rebelled.

"I'm through with all this," he told his mother and older brother Guy. "I'm going to college. I don't know what I want to be - but I want to be something." A year at Berkeley, and the "apartness" got under his skin again. He felt he'd always be "that actor" or "that conceited ham." Restless, unfulfilled, he took off for anonymity. As "Rudy Stocker" he wandered to find himself. He did everything from lugging office mailsacks, in New York, to driving railroad spikes in Texas. After a few years, satisfied he could live by the sweat of hard labor, he came back - first to the New York stage, to co-star in "Compulsion," then to Hollywood. And eventually to meet and fall in love with Millie Perkins.

THEY'RE YOUNG - BUT WISE

The mixed-up rebel was a man now, and Millie saw this in him; leaned on him for strength. She worried with him, wept on him, laughed with him, shared his quiet times with music and books, his exciting times in the big outdoors. Dean had been close to other girls, but never one like Millie. He listened to her joys and troubles, comforted and praised her, poured out his own complicated heart to her - and never, never tried to change her.

"This is my girl," he introduced her at his birthday party, where she showed up in the same old kind of skirt and blouse - and the others were all so dressed! He kissed her and said, "My girl looks different from any other - because she IS different." He loves her exactly as she is and doesn't want to change her.

This is the all-accepting love that Millie never wrote her family back home about; they read it for themselves in the columns. Friends said then, "Millie isn't sure how the Perkinses will take it, they being Catholic and the boy Jewish." They described the pictured fragment of the Ten Commandments framed and hanging over Dean's fireplace, and the Torah, the Hebrew Law, among his books.

But if difference of religion finally prompted them to go off to Vegas, secretly, and be married by a Protestant pastor, that's only part of it. The whole story is that Millie and Dean have something together far more important to them then religion, family, career, anybody or anything.

They're young, but wise. They know love is something you can't describe in words that anybody but your own beloved will truly understand. And suppose, not understanding, your family or studio or friends disapprove? They can't stop you, not when you're of legal age. But to two sensitive people, criticism of their best, dearest treasure would be harsh as a rough finger bruising a petal.

No, say the few people who really know Millie Perkins and Dean Stockwell, they took no chances. They thought about how they felt toward each other, and decided it WAS their own and very precious. That was why they ran away - to protect their love.

SEE DEAN IN 20TH'S " SONS AND LOVERS."

-The End -

[lastxviolet]

Madripoor is for Lovers (Zemo x F!Reader) - Ch. 2

Summary: Y/N is a SWORD agent recruited to help Sam and Bucky track down Karli and the super-soldiers. When Helmut Zemo joins the team, he takes a special interest in her. The friendly union is wrought for disaster, but then things take a turn for the worst when Y/N is taken as collateral. Will Zemo keep her forever? Does she even want to escape? And what happened in Madripoor that made the whole thing so complicated?

Warnings: 18+ / eventual smut / kidnapping

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32878015/chapters/81589774

The plane completed its descent, jolting you awake and away from the dream of what happened next.

His hands inside your dress and the moment in the evening that stopped feeling like an act.

“We are here,” he confirmed, gripping your hand and leading you from the plane.

The air wasn’t cold anymore and smelled like spring. It was May in the states and DC had felt the same so it was possible that you were still in the northern hemisphere. The United States and Canada weren’t options for the criminal, neither was Germany.

Italy?

He spoke to the driver in German and although you recognized the words, you had no clue what they meant. A short drive later and the car stopped. He untied the blindfold and you took in the sight of a lone chateau at the end of a lavish driveway. He opened the door and motioned for you to follow.

“No gun,” you questioned, eyeing his relaxed demeanor.

He smiled. Although you were angry and the sun was too bright, you were glad to finally be able to see something again.

“Not necessary,” he nodded at the rolling hills around them. “Where would you run?”

You glared at him, letting him know that this was still against your will and that any familiarity you’d had, was gone.

“You’re very confident that I prefer your company over death,” you hissed, eyeing the wilderness.

“You’ve come with me this far.”

Your eyes met his. It was impossible to know what he was thinking beneath the stern exterior.

“You could’ve screamed for your comrades,” he shrugged.

“There was a gun aimed at my temple.”

“Or jumped out of the plane.”

Again, you glared at him. If looks could kill.

“This way,” he said, clearing his throat. “Please.”

You followed him, debating if you could make it to the car or even out of the compound before Zemo shot you or caught up.

The terrain was unfamiliar, and now you were in a foreign country, alone and uncounted for.

Zemo slowed and matched your snail’s pace, signaling that it was time to hurry up. You moved slower despite his hand on your back and he clicked his tongue. You made the journey last as long as possible until there was no choice but to cross the threshold.

“Your room is up the stairs and to the right,” he said, eyes on your face.

You stormed up the wooden stairs, making each groan with your anger.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” he called after you.

You slammed your door in response. The wall shook and you half hoped it’d bring the whole house down, taking you and Zemo with it.

An hour later, you entered the small and intimate dining room. A round table sat in a nook surrounded by windows, looking out onto the cliff-like drop below. You didn’t even glance at the food before you. There was only Zemo, and convincing him to let you go.

“Is your room to your liking?”

You scoffed. “My cell is fine, thank you.”

Unfortunately, your warden was fond of conflict, and difficult people. The words only seemed to intrigue him further. His eyes danced over your face, glancing down towards the exposed skin on your chest and then up to your lips.

“They say a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity,” he mused.

“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence,” you quoted.

His eyes twinkled again, he knew, as you did, that it came from an Italian philosopher. It was applicable but also, a guess.

He raised his glass towards you before finishing the quote. “But an optimist because of will.”

In true Zemo fashion, he neither confirmed nor denied your suspicion. You lifted your glass of red wine towards him with a scowl.

You ate in silence for a while, you, staring out the window, Zemo, eyeing you. You made it half an hour before the weight of his stare became unbearable.

“So what’s your game plan, with all this,” you asked, waving your fork to yourself and then to him and the house.

“Do not ask questions you already know the answer to,” he chided. “It is beneath you.”

“My life for your freedom.”

He sighed then, almost like he didn’t like that answer either. It was the right one, you both knew that but it looked like it pained him. Seeing that flicker of humanity hurt more than you wanted to admit. It'd be easier if the man beneath the mask wasn't real. It'd be easier if he'd been lying and there weren’t two versions of him. You wished that there wasn’t a charming and passionate man beneath the evil Baron facade, but there he was again.

“Prison is not an option for me,” he admitted, laying down his fork. “But I am sorry that it had to be you.”

You nodded and scoffed, rolling your eyes for good measure.

“I do hope to make you comfortable, in the meantime — ”

“Before you kill me,” you interrupted.

He clicked his tongue again and glared. It was the plan he orchestrated and yet, he didn’t seem to like it.

“I may not have to,” he corrected.

You laughed then, with little care for his strained expression. “Have you met the Dora Milage? They’ll go through whoever they need to, to avenge their king. They don’t know me nor do they care about me. You don’t have the winning hand that you think you do.”

“You are forgetting about your colleagues. They've lost one of their own. If not loyalty, then pride will make them come for you,” he corrected.

Again, you smiled at his miscalculation. “I’m a foot soldier, not an avenger; not a super soldier; not one of them.”

"There is no such thing as small people, only small — ”

“Great,” you bellowed. “More wisdom! Your riddles and literature are useless now. You should’ve spent more time studying negotiations while you were incarcerated. Why didn’t you take Bucky? Or Caps little assistant? The US would’ve been at your feet for them back. You could’ve gotten a pardon and a reward!”

“I have no need for a reward,” he spat.

Your chest was heaving, out of anger, out of nerves, but most of all because the man in front of you was once again, impenetrable.

“Or a pardon from the great United States,” he continued, almost in a whisper.

Your eyes snapped to his but he avoided your gaze. He swirled his wine and stared off into space before inspecting you again. Something was missing, something that didn’t make sense.

The glimmer of humanity returned, despite his best efforts to hide it.

He’d been the main orchestrator of his outbreak from jail. He had private homes, apartments, transportation, weapons, cars, everything. He could run forever but he didn’t need you to do it. How was this life any different than what it would be if he was free? He watched you come to the realization and winced as it clicked into place.

“Why am I here,” you whispered, squinting.

He was silent and looked back to the window.

“Zemo,” you whispered. “Look at me.”

Funny enough, he followed the order.

His lips moved in silence but words didn’t escape.

“Why did you choose me?”

He pursed his lips in exasperation. It was no secret that he liked having the upper hand but he’d shown you all his cards a moment ago. You wondered why he hadn’t bothered to lie.

“I chose you because they wouldn’t — they won’t.”

He stood up and leaned against the sill, sipping wine in small swigs and staring out at the greenery.

“You would die for your country, Y/N,” he explained. “I find that admirable — heroic even but the problem, for me, is that they would let you.”

“Let me?” You repeated the phrase slowly, trying to understand the point.

He let out a huff. “If you caught a grenade in the name of bettering America, what would happen?”

You cocked your head in question. “I die? Maybe get a Purple Heart?”

“And then what? Would they bat an eye before rejoicing you — celebrating you and your sacrifice? Encouraging others to do the same in your name?” He paused and stared at you.

“No….no they wouldn’t because your death would mean that their wars are working. Another name in the long list of people that they were willing to gift to the god of war.”

“That sacrifice is what I signed up for — it’s my choice,” you explained, confused about where he was taking this.

He nodded and yet made no amends or clarification. The angry veins in his forehead receded and his gaze flitted away like he couldn’t bear to continue. You suddenly wondered if he'd even sent a ransom note, or whatever kidnappers do. The look in his eyes, told you no. The tone of his voice told you that he might not ever.

“Then you are doing your duty as a prisoner of war here, with me.”

He smiled and your anger dissipated. You lunged to grab onto any remaining frayed piece of it but there was nothing left. All those years of training and fighting, all to succumb to an evil man in a fitted turtleneck. You hardened your expression in an attempt to remain vexed.

“Your circumstance could be worse,” he concluded.

“And what of your circumstance?”

Silence ate up space between you. His gaze was set on you once again and then it seemed like you were the only two in this room, this home…the world.

“Better than it has been in a long time, schatzi,” he sighed.

“How so,” you asked, pushing for information.

He shrugged. “I am free and I am alone….with you.”

You winced and shook your head. “Don’t,” you whispered.

His brows furrowed. “In previous interactions, you did not seem to resent my…affections, Y/N.”

Butterflies ravaged your sternum, bringing memories of the night at Sharon’s with it. If it was different, if he had turned over a new leaf, then it would be easier to admit your feelings.

“Is this your version of affection? Holding me hostage?”

“Yes,” he breathed, coming to sit next to you, so close you thought he might touch you.

“Let’s not…talk about it,” you whispered, trying to push away the longing in your chest.

“I would like to,” he pushed.

All you could do was stare. The memories should've stayed in Madripoor. It should live in your brief collective drunk past. But you could see that it weighed on him as heavy as it did on you.

“That is fine,” he sighed. “I can talk if you will listen.”

You nodded once. The residual affections plagued you and it was impossible to keep your heartbeat at bay. The thought that he might feel the same was exhilarating and terrifying.

“It was you who assisted me with my escape plan. You who tracked Karli. You who guessed that I’d betray you on countless occasions. You who ensured that we evaded Captain America as long as we did. You who played your part so well that everyone in Madripoor thinks I have taken a wife.”

“Your point,” you hissed, deadpan.

“The super soldier solution does not increase intelligence, as you know. Nothing does. Even all the books in the world cannot alter what is already there. Either you are born with the glorious burden, or you live in ignorant bliss,” he explained.

He reached up and brushed his thumb along your forehead. “I know your burden, Y/N, because I share it.”

A stuttering breath left your chest. Compliments were the easiest forms of manipulation. You’d studied it, known it, resisted it in many years of training but this felt different. Everything he did and said, felt different.

“I do my job Zemo, that’s it.”

“You excel,” he corrected. “You make the rest of your colleagues look like newborns and yet they don’t...value you. Not like I do, Liebling.”

“If this is about the incident at Sharon’s,” you said, recognizing the nickname. “It was a mistake.”

He chuckled. “An optimist would call it a happy accident.”

“I’d call it life-ruining,” you said, trying to decipher the feelings of anger and something warm inside your chest. “If it led you to this.”

“I understand if you hate me,” he explained. “But you should know that living here with your hatred will be akin to breathing, for me, if it means you are safe. Natural and life-bringing.”

Your face gave nothing away but he’d stunned you.

“The evil baron is becoming less and less of a character.”

“They say hate itself is a version of love,” he mused, ignoring your words and staring at your lips.

The word knocked thought and common sense back into your head. This wasn’t love. This was ownership and selfishness. A myriad of terrible things that had tangled you both in this mess. It’d spurred from fascination and proximity but for love to grow, there has to be more. There has to be more good than bad. You looked around the home, owned by the man in front of you. Both beautiful, breathtaking even. But not enough to trade your freedom for.

“How convenient for someone with so many enemies,” you hissed.

His eyes squinted then and the Baron who commanded respect in Madripoor returned. There was this side of him too, you reminded yourself. And it seemed to be winning over the side who loved books and witty conversation.

“Are you my enemy, Y/N?”

For the first time, you didn’t know what to say. Before this, it wasn’t safe to call him anything other than an enemy but now? He ruined any chance of normalcy or redemption. The question lingered between you and it struck you how close he’d gotten. It would take almost nothing to start a repeat of the night at Sharon’s. But this was a different man.

“I didn’t have to be,” you breathed before breaking eye contact. You gave him no time to answer before fleeing back to your room.

[nadziejastar]

Honestly, it feels like they came up with the idea of Subject X to extend the story of the Radiant Garden crew because otherwise KH3 would be the perfect place to end their story. She wasn't just a test subject, she was apparently a central figure in the experiments. When she inevitably returns in KH4 she'll drag Ansem, the apprentices, and the boys back into relevance even if they have no other reason to get involved

I suspect you’re right regarding the future. I am sure that she’ll be vital to KH4, and she’ll be heavily involved in Lea and Isa’s story in the future. She’s involved in a large human experimentation plot, and Lea and Isa also having that backstory would be seen as redundant.

None of this will be directed at you anon, just my general opinion on the current state of the story and characters.I’m going to rant a bit about the direction things seem to be going to get it off my chest. Basically, I resent how she took Saix’s backstory and derailed his entire character arc. And I don’t think any of them even needed her to have a role in the future of the story. Ansem the Wise still has a ton of potential. Lea is a full-fledged Keyblade wielder, and Isa could easily be one too. Whatever experiments she was involved in are going to be poorly retconned into the Xehanort Saga and will probably overwrite the mind control experiments that were originally mentioned. “Plot twist: There were no mind control experiments! It was really about learning the secrets of time-travel!” I’m not really excited to learn more, to be honest. 

I didn’t play Union X. I tried to, but I didn’t like the gameplay. I have read the story summary online and watched Back Cover. But I have no attachment to Skuld or any of the other original characters from that game. I didn’t play KH3 to learn about them. I don’t care about them. I wanted closure on the characters from this arc. The arc that’s been building up over the last decade. I was attached to Lea and Isa and all the others. And to have it suddenly be all about this new girl and Keyblade wielders of yore out of nowhere…well, it felt like a slap in the face as a long-time fan.

As for Isa’s character: If KH3 is the precedent for how he is to be portrayed going forward, I’m not very excited for the future. It doesn’t sound like Nomura is either.

–There are several Organisation members whose original names are still unknown. Will we have a chance to learn them someday, or to find out about the scar on Isa’s face?

Nomura: If there is a sequel, then that chance may come. But in my heart right now my desire is a blank page.

To be honest, I don’t even know how much blame I can attribute to Nomura personally. I know he wanted to make BBS Volume 2 and was very disappointed it was cancelled. I highly doubt he’s happy with the many, many revisions to the story after it got canned. I suspect his lack of interest in explaining Isa’s scar is due to the fact that he already had a great story all planned out and it was not able to be realized due to factors outside of his control. The Foreteller arc is an opportunity to step away from the butchered Xehanort Saga plot and start over with a blank slate. Just like Verum Rex seems like his attempt at restarting the butchered Versus XIII project with a blank slate.That’s my personal opinion. If it’s true, I can hardly blame him. 

As for Lea and Isa’s relationship, here is my honest take: KH3 took a very close and emotionally intimate former relationship between two boys (to me it even seemed romantic in nature) and made it into a caricature of a “dudebro” relationship. And like clockwork, it was all about a girl now. If I’m being perfectly honest, it felt like whoever was writing the Lea/Isa scenes was thinking “no homo, no homo” the entire time. Like they were terrified to depict even the slightest bit of genuine intimacy between these two male characters. I mean really, howcliché to attribute all of Saix’s villainy and the breakdown of his closest friendship… to a single girl that he barely knew. Completely deflecting away from the relationship they had with each other. A relationship history that spanned multiple games now revolves around a character who was never even mentioned before, let alone seen on-screen.

By his own description, he was not close to this girl. He spoke a handful of times to an imprisoned, traumatized amnesiac girl, in hushed whispers. He couldn’t have known her that well. She had amnesia. Did he even know her name? Did SHE even know her name? Didn’t sound like it based on the reports. He said they spoke in the shadows and it was too dim to make out her features. Did he know what she looked like? Again, this was not a childhood friend or anything. After a while, he wasn’t sure if she even existed. I seriously could not wrap my head around how ridiculous this whole concept was. It felt like a joke.

In 358/2 Days, Axel spent the entire game angsting over the loss of his close relationship with Isa. In KH3D, the first thing he does is look for him, and he’s very visibly upset when he finds out he’s still with Organization XIII. Then in KH3, he doesn’t mention him at all. It’s only Roxas this, Roxas that. Lea only remembers Isa exists when he randomly shows up in Twilight Town. I’m like, where did THIS come from? I was laughing hysterically when Saix asked for ice cream. It was the most out-of-character thing I’d ever seen. Axel didn’t even seem phased by him being so friendly all of a sudden, which was also very strange. I would have expected a stronger reaction, but he seemed more annoyed by his presence than anything. Even his promise to bring him home felt more like an afterthought than a priority. “I going to get my precious ROXAS back! Oh, well, I guess I’ll bring you back too, Isa. I mean, as long as you’re here…why not?”

Lea: Would you get lost? I’ll clobber you tomorrow.

Saix: Hmph. I expect no less.

I really disliked how Saix’s personality was portrayed in KH3. In my opinion, Isa’s entire redemption hinged on the fact that he was Xehanort’d. Saix was THE main villain in 358/2 Days. He was basically Xemnas-lite, only far more of an active presence than Xemnas himself was in that game. He was constantly antagonizing Roxas, Xion and Axel. By writing the story so that he was in control of himself the whole time, it sent the message that Saix’s personality is Isa’s true personality as well. And I just don’t think that works. At all. It’s inconsistent with the story, and it’s honestly insulting to Isa’s character. There was SO much evidence that Isa was not in control of himself prior to KH3.

It also left a very poor taste in my mouth because Isa was implied to be an innocent victim of cruel human experimentation, who was being controlled like a puppet by an evil madman. That is horrific abuse to a 15 year-old child. And the heartwarming resolution to his story is watching his best friend “clobber” him? Really? All he needs is someone to beat some sense into him? And keep in mind, this is supposed to be a battle to bring about the apocalypse. Why does the dialogue sound more like a pissing contest between two high school boys that are planning to have a fistfight in the parking lot after school?

Saix: I was jealous.

Lea: You admit it.

Saix: Well, if I make it back…you won’t get it out of me a second time.

Isa doesn’t even get a good redemption scene. He isn’t allowed to show any emotion whatsoever. He actually berates Lea for showing emotion…FOR HIM. And what’s Lea’s opinion after Isa is defeated? He’s disgusted that he LET Xehanort “reduce him to this.” It’d be like if Ven or Aqua were disgusted at Terra for having the audacity to get possessed. But no, apparently Saix was just putting on an “act” the whole time. All of his sociopathy was just an act of macho bravado to hide his jealousy and wounded ego. Sheesh, that’s supposed to make him more sympathetic? And he’s STILL a jerk even when he apologizes. There really was no way to make Saix into a “redeemed good guy”. I mean, he was a Xehanort clone, for Christ’s sake. As far as I’m concerned, the X-shaped scar never getting explained is just symbolic of the fact that the real Isa is still dead.

If it had just been shown that he was a victim of mind control, he wouldn’t have even NEEDED a redemption. He’d just… go back to being Isa, who was always good in the first place. I mean, you don’t need to redeem Xemnas to redeem Terra. Sure, it’s his body, but how stupid would it have been to have Xemnas give a half-hearted apology, then go back home with Aqua and Ven? The story could call him “Terra” all they want. But that’s still not Terra; that’s Xehanort. No, they actually needed to bring Terra back to have a truly happy ending for the trio.

That’s how I feel about Isa. KH3 can call him “Isa” all they want, but all I saw was a watered-down, slightly less douchey version of Saix masquerading as Isa. I wont go into too much detail right now because I have a huge meta almost finished (I hope to have it posted soon) analyzing Isa’s weapons and how they paint a very detailed picture of his (original) personality. And by every indication…Isa’s personality was very feminine, empathetic, and emotional. He’s basically the archetypal Yin; the Moon goddess. And that’s definitely closer to how I interpreted his personality based on BbS. I can’t see him saying ANY of the dialogue he had in KH3.

[gellavonhamster]

terpsichore

explicit || Bertrand Baudelaire/Beatrice Baudelaire/Lemony Snicket || pre-canon

ao3 link || originally posted in Russian

“As to Remarque, I believe that All Quiet on the Western Front is overrated. The same could be said of Three Comrades,” Lemony argues as he unbuttons his shirt. “A classic case of everyone being familiar only with the books made popular by their screen adaptations. Spark of Life, for instance, deserves much more appreciation. So does Heaven Has No Favorites.”  

“Hmm. I share your opinion on Spark of Life,” Bertrand hangs his sweater on the back of the chair, sits down on the edge of the bed, and starts undoing his wristwatch. “But Heaven Has No Favorites… no, can’t agree. I found it rather superficial.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as one of those who consider any book centered on a love story superficial.”

“Please don’t put words into my mouth. I never said that,” Bertrand puts the wristwatch on the nightstand, under a pot-bellied table lamp with a motley shade, and turns to face Lemony again. Lemony is fighting the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt, and it appears they’re winning this battle so far. “It’s just that it looks a great deal weaker when compared to his war novels. If it had been his only book I’ve read, I might have well thought of it differently. Need some help?”

“Be so kind,” Lemony extends his hands to him, and Bertrand unbuttons first the left cuff, then the right one. “Still, you have to agree that the problem of denying the inevitable or resigning yourself to it…”

“Snicket, why are we talking about literature when we’re about to have sex?”

“Well,” it looks like Lemony isn’t embarrassed or bewildered by this question in the slightest, “because Beatrice asked us not to start without her and I thought that while waiting for her, we could revisit our yesterday’s discussion?”

“If you’re not going to start without Beatrice, what are you doing with my belt?”

“Helping you unbuckle it, like you just helped me with the buttons,” Lemony replies, his face perfectly honest. “But I can stop if you don’t want me to.”

Bertrand catches his hand and presses it back to his belt buckle. Perhaps a little lower. Perhaps, not to the buckle.

“Go ahead,” he allows.

Beatrice lives at the attic floor of a house situated on one of the busiest streets in the city, but today it’s surprisingly quiet here. No noise of cars or tipsy passers-by coming from outside, just the sounds of the house itself: the ticking of the clock, the creaking of the bed, his and Lemony’s breathing, Beatrice’s heels clicking in the living room. It is as though this apartment has suddenly wound up outside of time and space, and it shall always be late evening here, an early spring outside the window, and just the three of them and no one else. A sanctuary, Bertrand thinks, running his fingers through Lemony’s soft hair as Lemony kisses his neck, each time near the spot he’s planted the previous kiss at, like applying brush strokes to the canvas. A parallel dimension that strangers cannot enter. He doesn’t know how to express this feeling of blessed detachment from the world, and he isn’t sure it has to be spoken about.        

“Why is she wearing heels at home,” he whispers instead, and Lemony’s quiet laughter tickles his skin.

“Because, my good sir, in my own house I can wear whatever, even a diving suit.”

Beatrice is standing in the doorway, her arm resting on the doorpost. Lemony rolls off Bertrand clumsily, and both of them reclined on the bed, they watch her twirl in front of them like in front of the mirror, providing them with an opportunity to get a good look at her outfit.  

“How do I look?” Beatrice inquires. She seems so pleased with herself, there’s something touching about it. Bertrand smiles.

“Gorgeous,” he says, and immediately after him Lemony pronounces:

“Ravishing.”

Beatrice is wearing a flippy scarlet dress, black stockings, and high-heeled shoes with ankle straps – a highly convenient model for those who have to hide a certain tattoo from curious eyes. Her dark locks are shining in the dim light of the chandelier and falling on her shoulders that are covered with a silvery shawl. Bertrand hasn’t seen any of the things she’s wearing before, except perhaps for the stockings and – certainly – for the pearl necklace he and Lemony gave her for her last birthday as a present from them both.    

“Are we going somewhere?” Bertrand asks, trying not to sound disappointed. Beatrice looks gorgeous indeed, but after the supper, when she pulled them both close, and with an inscrutable smile ordered them to wait for her in the bedroom, he imagined the rest of the evening somewhat differently.  

Beatrice’s face breaks into a smile just as inscrutable as earlier:

“Esmé and I did some shopping today…”

Lemony, who cannot stand Esmé, and knows the feeling is mutual, lets out an anguished sigh.  

“…and I decided I have to show you everything I’ve bought,” Beatrice either doesn’t notice his reaction or pretends not to notice. “Everything at once,” with that, she turns around and disappears in the living room again. Bertrand’s instant conclusion is that she’s forgotten to grab some other today’s purchase, but it turns out that apparently she went to put on a record, because the silence of the apartment is suddenly ripped by the sounds of saxophone. Etta James, Bertrand observes automatically.  

Beatrice appears in the doorway again and makes her way towards them, swaying her hips.

“So what…” Bertrand starts, and immediately gets hit in the face with the balled-up silvery shawl. He looks up in confusion – and meets Beatrice’s eyes as she begins to lift her skirt slowly, smiling with abandon and continuing to move in sync with the music.  

“Now I see,” Bertrand says, and shifts his gaze to Lemony, who is watching Beatrice spellbound and longing and doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. “So does it happen often?”

“Occasionally,” Lemony responds, not looking at him, and Bertrand cannot help but feel a pang of… jealousy? Not of him but of everything these two have already had before him and will probably have after him. Sometimes it crosses his mind that their strange union that came into existence this winter is something fleeting, that he, in contrast to Beatrice and Lemony and their love, is something fleeting himself, because so far everything in his life has been fleeting, and that must have left its mark on him. These are destructive, pestilent, suffocating thoughts – so is Lemony’s ill-concealed certainty that both Beatrice and Bertrand are too good for him and he doesn’t deserve either of them individually, let alone both of them together. So is Beatrice’s slightly better-concealed certainty that in truth, none of them deserves all of this, none of them deserves their fragile secret happiness because they all are murderers and one day all of this shall be taken from them, they shall be taken from each other. These thoughts are impossible to drive out completely; still, Bertrand puts the crumpled shawl to his face, buries his nose in it for a moment – the outfit may be new but the perfume is the same, Beatrice’s dressing room at the theatre smells just like that – and swears to himself at least to put them aside until later.             

“Do you also… occasionally?” he cannot stop himself from asking. Lemony chuckles softly:

“You know I’m not much of a dancer.”

“Eyes on me,” Beatrice orders half-strictly, half-playfully, and they obey, of course they obey her.  

Naturally, it’s not the first time Bertrand sees her dance. But the way she waltzes with him or someone else at another ball of the Duchess of Winnipeg, or dances Charleston with Monty in the Anwhistles’ drawing-room, has nothing in common with what she’s doing now. Bertrand isn’t even sure that could be called a dance: she’s flowing like quicksilver, moving her shoulders, her hips, her arms; she’s running her hands over her body, crumpling the dress; she presses her back to the doorpost and streams down it only to rise again. It seems like she doesn’t notice him and Lemony at all, although a stripper probably is supposed to… maintain the contact with her audience? Remind them that it’s all for them, stroke their ego? Beatrice could just as well be dancing on her own in front of the mirror, so whatever it is that she’s doing seems devoid of play-acting and very intimate, and Bertrand cannot fight the feeling that they’re spying on her and she doesn’t know.    

It is… thrilling.

She undoes her dress with her back turned to them; the zipper gapes open lazily, and after Beatrice frees her arms from the sleeves, the dress falls on the floor. Beatrice steps over the dress – and only then finally looks at them. “And I just wanna make love to you, love to you,” toils away the old record player, yet Bertrand still hears Lemony heave a sigh next to him and squirm on the sheets a little, even though it’s not like he hasn’t seen any of this before – it’s not like Bertrand hasn’t seen any of this before either, actually.      

Fine, they haven’t seen this lingerie set. It makes sense now what Beatrice meant by “everything she’s bought”. All black – stockings with a garter belt, silk panties, and a bra made of translucent lace which, judging by its design (the recurrent necessity to work undercover has broadened Bertrand’s horizons in regard to ladies’ fashion), supports adequately but doesn’t really cover anything. Even from the bed Bertrand still can see her nipples through the twirls of ornaments. That’s all really beautiful, but Bertrand is almost sure that if any other woman was standing in front of him looking like this, some other woman he has never seen in nothing but underwear, never seen without underwear, never held close and never tasted, that wouldn’t have had the same effect upon him. But it is Beatrice standing in front of him and watching him with her shining mischievous eyes and undoubtedly seeing with the naked eye how her little show affects him. Him and Lemony too, Bertrand notices when he turns away from Beatrice for a second and quickly runs his eyes over him.          

Beatrice bends down, swiftly unclasps the strap of one of her shoes, then the other, and kicks them off, careless.    

“Come on,” Bertrand begs in his head, though he doesn’t know for sure what he’s begging for.  

Then she makes her way to him. Perhaps she’s following some plan she has thought out earlier – after all, there’s nothing she enjoys better than coming up with some bizarre and unreasonably elaborated idea and putting it into action; or maybe she’s reading his mind, who knows. In any case, she hardly doubts he’ll guess what he has to do: at some point their ways, which had previously ran in parallel, crossed, and they found out they were great at taking each other’s hints.    

Beatrice detaches her stockings from the garters, takes the belt off, and throws it on the bed – Lemony reaches out to catch it but doesn’t manage to. Beatrice approaches the bed from the side Bertrand is reclining on, and puts her left foot on the bed without a word, her knee bent. For a moment her eyes meet Bertrand’s, and she gives him a barely discernible nod: go on.  

He takes off her stocking very slowly – not because he fears he might tear it but to keep touching her for longer, to run his fingers over her hot skin, to squeeze a little, but not enough to cause any pain. The moments stretch, thicken like honey, and all along Beatrice keeps her eyes on him. She’s got a fresh scratch on her knee – the only thing lacking is a flowery children’s plaster – and she must have shaved her legs either quite a long time ago or just not that carefully, and she’s so familiar and home-like behind all this game of seduction that Bertrand longs to kiss her but he’s not sure he’s allowed to. Frankly, he also longs to do something about the problem that prevents him from concentrating on Beatrice’s performance properly – to take matters into his own hands, so to say – but of that he’s even less sure.  

After he’s finally relieved her from the stocking, his fingers keep stroking her ankle for some seconds more; then he takes his hand away. Beatrice gives him an encouraging smile and moves to the other side of the bed, offering Lemony to take off her other stocking. Snicket turns out to be bolder: he leans down and no, he doesn’t kiss her, he doesn’t dare to, but he presses his forehead to her knee, closing his eyes in rapture. Snicket and his need to worship, literally at times, the people he loves. Bertrand would’ve wondered what that says about his state of mind, but firstly, this is not the most unhealthy need Lemony could have developed after everything he’s been through, and secondly, Bertrand is but a mere mortal and loves the way Lemony nuzzles at his belly before moving down and taking Bertrand’s cock into his mouth.        

“Patience,” Beatrice says when Lemony pulls off her other stocking at last and tentatively reaches out for her again. She’s as turned on as they are: it’s obvious from her voice and the look in her eyes and the way her hardened nipples stand out under the thin lace of her bra although it’s far from cold in the room. She steps back and turns around to go back to the spot by the footboard of the bed – back to her stage – but suddenly stops and notices:  

“You don’t have to suffer though, you know. You just can’t touch me until I let you. But you can touch yourself. In fact, you should,” she smiles playfully, as if drunk. “I want to watch too.”

Bertrand should probably be ashamed of how he makes haste to take his underwear off. He doesn’t manage to, though – a broad hand stops him, suddenly on his crotch.

“If you want to,” Lemony says hoarsely, and if all of this has already felt like too much before, now it is downright unbearable, because he has a voice like melted dark chocolate; had it been tangible, it would have been tempting to dip one’s fingers in it, and then lick them clean. Bertrand looks at him, all flushed, with a ridiculous bedhead caused by their short prelude and the subsequent lying on the pillows, and thinks: does he really believe I’d refuse him?    

“Turn towards me a little,” he orders. “And take off your pants, for crying out loud.”

It must be at that moment that the performance stops being a performance – because they’re not staring at Beatrice non-stop anymore but get sidetracked by each other, and Beatrice isn’t dancing by herself like before but is clearly aware of their presence and watches them just like they watch her. As a matter of fact, she isn’t dancing anymore at all. Her hips still keep swaying but she’s staying at the same spot by the footboard and paying less and less attention to the music – looks like she doesn’t even notice when the song ends, and just keeps on fondling and squeezing her breasts that are still covered by the bra. When she finally takes it off and puts her hands on her breasts again, lifting them and letting them fall, licking her fingers and rubbing her hard nipples, Lemony lets out a deep moan and jerks up his hips. He won’t last long because Bertrand knows how to touch him, heavy and hot and aroused to the limit; because Lemony’s breathing raggedly, and although he’s trying not to miss Beatrice’s single movement, he keeps closing his eyes time and again in bliss and agony. He gets out of step over and over again and his hand slides off Bertrand’s cock and he loosens his grip when he shouldn’t. Just as much enthusiasm, but less skill. Not his forte; Bertrand knows for sure that if Lemony was sucking him off right now, he wouldn’t last long himself. For a moment he imagines what it would have been like, thrusting into Lemony’s hot capable mouth while watching Beatrice, who has climbed onto the bed right beside them, caress herself through her panties and move in a way that makes her breasts bounce as if he’s making love to her now and she’s riding him – and nearly comes on the instant.          

Lemony finishes first. Bertrand doesn’t notice what he’s wiping his hands on: the sheets or his own clothes or that new silvery shawl that must be still knocking around somewhere on the bed. It is probably important but right now he cannot recognize that. What is really important is to kiss him, and Bertrand kisses Lemony first on the lips – he’s so stunned by pleasure that he can just barely kiss back – and then on his sweaty forehead, right by the hairline, hastily breathing in the intoxicating, familiar smell of his hair.

Bertrand moves aside from him and turns to face Beatrice again, set upon using his own hands to finish what Lemony started – and gets hit in the face with the silk panties. He picks them up and reflexively puts them to his face: soaked through.  

Beatrice pulls her wet, slicked fingers out of herself and extends her hand to him.

She told them they can’t touch her until she lets them.

Now he can.

Bertrand sucks her fingers into his mouth, swallows their salty taste, grabs his cock – and finally lets himself go, and the world around him explodes with unknown colours, and Beatrice takes her fingers out of his mouth when he moans.  

“You’re both so…” he hears her say, as though from afar, her voice slightly surprised and tender. When she drives herself to her orgasm with a few confident touches, her other hand keeps hold of the only part of her outfit she’s still wearing: their pearl necklace.    

Then she collapses on the pillows between them, and the three of them lie side by side for a little while, trying to catch their breath. Bertrand is the first to recover himself; he gets off the bed despite Beatrice’s groan of protest, makes it to the bathroom, pours water on the first towel he gets his hands on, and wipes himself with it. Having thrown the towel into the bathtub, he takes another one from the hanger and wets it under the tap, then brings it into the room and drops it on Lemony’s belly. Lemony flinches.

“Clean up,” Bertrand tells him, climbs back onto the bed, and puts his arm around Beatrice’s waist. “You’re going to mess up the sheets.”

“I admire your ability to remain sober-minded in any situation,” Lemony murmurs as he cleans himself.

“I admire your ability to use such fancy language in any situation,” Bertrand says. Beatrice giggles.

“I think,” she props herself up on one elbow and moves closer to Lemony, “he’d use such language even if woken up at three in the morning.”  

“Please don’t try to check if it’s true,” Lemony says, and Beatrice kisses him on one cheek and then on the other and then on the mouth, and Bertrand’s heart aches with tenderness a little when he watches them, but not with jealousy, no.  

Beatrice turns back to him and takes his face into her hands.

“Always thinking about something. Can’t stop for a second, can you?” she asks, affectionate. “What is it about this time?”

“Just the two of you,” Bertrand says.

This time he’s actually telling the truth.