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emmg · 5 months ago

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He wrestles with a feverish appetite, this crude and uninvited urge that intrudes at its own whim—though, really, when would such thoughts be welcome? It is not refined, not proper, to sit opposite her and let his mind wander to the gloss of her lips, to wonder how she might taste, to wish that the mascarpone she savors so languidly were his own flesh, heavy and impatient.

He despises himself for it—wants to be better, finer, something more than hunger in its basest form. And yet, he wants. Sweetness, yes; kindness, yes; love in all its quiet splendor—but also salt and sweat, the lush, slippery heat between her legs, his or hers or both, some mingled thing he might catch on his fingers, press back inside her, trace along her trembling thighs as he coaxes her to completion.

But it is not only this. No, his disease is greater, more humiliating still. He thinks of grand, maudlin absurdities. Of flowers left on windowsills, of rings slipped onto fingers, of days spent making memories out of nothing. And it is this, not lust, that he fears might truly appall her. Because hunger, after all, is easy to satisfy. It is love, foolish and relentless, that tends to send people running.

You mustn’t be so sentimental, someone had murmured that to him once. He can no longer summon the speaker’s face, nor their voice, nor even their gender, only the ghostly trace of the words themselves, breathed or sighed, said once or, more likely, many times.

It became, in those gauzy, amber-lit years of his youth, something of a running jest. An affectionate, exasperated refrain, volleyed at him with the regularity of a well-worn melody.

"Don’t fucking propose to the waitress, Volkarin. She’s bringing you a beer, not subtly signaling that she wants to die in your arms," Johanna would mutter, leaning back against the sticky wood of some dimly lit tavern, where they debated spirits over spirits.

"They’re funding your research, Emmrich, not secretly applying to be the mother of your children."

"Your new assistant is very handsome. Try not to hyperventilate when he hands you a quill."

He laughed along. It was funny, after all. Until, inevitably, it wasn’t. Until the joke, fossilized through sheer, relentless overuse, lost its shape and became a dull thing, something to stub his patience against. Until his forced little chuckles gave way to eye-rolls, to abrupt departures, to a growing sense that he was, in fact, trapped in some long-running farce penned by a particularly untalented playwright.

They were all married now, every last one of them—the tireless jesters, the committee of mirth who, years later, still found delight in flogging the same long-dead horse. And he wasn’t. Not that he was alone, of course. He had his affairs, his amusements, his charming little entanglements. But still, from time to time, a most delicate and specific malice stirred in him.

He wanted to dig up some particularly malicious little corpse, whisper something truly awful to it, and dispatch it to haunt them. Not in any grand, dramatic fashion. No moaning, no rattling of chains. Just a gentle, relentless nuisance. A ghost of mild inconvenience. A door that won’t quite shut. A draft they can’t find. A whisper when they’re shaving. A misplaced document on the morning of a big presentation.

The sort of thing a petty man might dream up. And he has, after all, always been petty.

He tried, though. He tries still. To smooth the edges of his affections, to hush the operatic swell of his heart, to trade grand declarations for something gentler, something more palatable. Not entirely, of course—self-betrayal is a vulgar thing. But enough. Just enough to keep from frightening them, from scattering them like startled birds.

For Rook, mostly. Because Rook is not like him. Rook does not do sentiment. Rook has the supreme, indifferent ease of someone born beautiful, the kind of beauty that turns heads and opens doors without so much as a sidelong glance of acknowledgment. Rook has never had to earn affection—it accumulates around her the way cigarette smoke clings to velvet. Rook rolls her eyes at poetry. Rook, with her lazy smirk and her miraculous ability to construct entire, fully functional sentences composed exclusively of obscenities.

He loves Rook very, very much. He suspects Rook loves him too, in her own peculiar way. She smiles, she laughs, she allows him his embarrassing little effusions, even kisses him for his trouble—then, with perfect timing, calls him a dweeb and steals the last sip of his drink.

It’s fine. He’s learned to translate. In Rook’s private dialect, dweeb means yes, fine, I suppose you amuse me, a kiss means I would be inconvenienced by your untimely death, and drinking the last of his whiskey? That, of course, is a vow of eternal devotion. Or something like that.

It all collapses into a feverish, tangled catastrophe one evening. A breathless, ill-advised implosion of longing and lust and something dangerously adjacent to reverence. She is so, so beautiful, and he wants to touch her, of course, but also—he wants to read to her. Not the dull, airless sonnets, no, but the real poetry, the ones thick with scandal, with sin, the ones that might cajole that sharp little smirk from her lips. Maybe while his fingers are inside her. Maybe precisely then.

He wants to coax pleasure from her, whispering thick, illicit syllables against her skin, punctuating each lewd phrase with the curl of his knuckles, just to see how the two mingle, just to see which makes her gasp first. To see if she’ll arch into it, if she’ll moan, if she’ll laugh. Because of course she’ll laugh. She always does. Even when he licks his fingers clean, even when he settles between her thighs, even when he finds his own satisfaction in the aftermath of hers, she will be laughing.

It happens like that, and yet, not like that at all. Because as he collapses against her, boneless and spent, something dreadful and unmistakable unfurls in his chest—too late, of course, always too late. His sentimentality, that incurable affliction, has caught up with him at last, threading itself through his ribs, pressing its damp, foolish hands against his throat.

He bows his head to her chest, breathing her in, willing himself to contain it, to gather the wet, trembling edges of his absurd little heart and tuck them out of sight. Perhaps she will not notice. Perhaps she will feel only the smile he presses into her skin, as if that might smother the rest.

A silence—brief, terrible, perceptive.

"Oh no," she says, and he feels her fingers weave into his hair, loose and lazy and terribly knowing. "What the fuck did I do?"

He shakes his head—not much, nothing at all, everything. Just a little.

"Nothing, my darling," he says, only slightly unsteady. "Nothing at all. I am—" a soft exhale, an almost-laugh, "—very happy." He swallows. Feels the first pangs of self-reproach begin to bloom, acid-sweet. "Only… allow me a moment to gather myself. It will pass."

A brief caress at the base of his neck. Then, just as he begins to sink into it, she shifts, shoves, displaces him. He rolls onto his back, compliant, expectant, and she follows, settling astride him, her thighs bracketing his ribs, her cool hands framing his face.

"Happy?" she confirms.

"Yes, happy."

"Hm." A small, satisfied noise. "Good. Happy and pretty. You’re so very pretty."

She does not elaborate—she never does—but she kisses him. Thoroughly. His cheeks first, then his chin, the arch of his brow, the slow, methodical placement of lips upon skin, like affixing wax seals to letters never meant to be sent. His eyes, last. She drags a fingertip down, drawing his lids closed as if dimming a lamp. Then, the press of her mouth, warm, dry, familiar. And then—oh.

The flick of her tongue, feline and quick, slips between his lashes, parting what she has only just sealed, grazing the raw, unguarded wet beneath. He flinches; she giggles, breath skimming his cheek, unreasonably pleased with herself.

She does it again, slower this time, the tip of her tongue tracing the curve of his eyelid. Then once more, lower now, across the ridge of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. A methodical, absentminded mapping—kisses pressed to skin with no particular urgency, a grazing of teeth when the impulse strikes her. He lies still beneath her, utterly at her mercy, though she is hardly in a hurry to exploit it. She seems content merely to taste him, her breath leaving damp traces that cool, then tighten, then disappear.

Chocolate, yes, still lingering from earlier, something dark and rich that settles at the back of his throat just from breathing her in. Salt, too, a faint sting where sweat beads along the curve of her upper lip.

Finally, an exhale. A minute adjustment of her weight as she lifts her head, pleased, apparently, with whatever inscrutable calculation she has been making. A kiss, light as a comma, stamped onto the very center of his mouth.

“There you go,” she announces, stretching her arms overhead, yawning into her wrist, smiling that slow, pleased smile of hers. “All cleaned up. Not a tear in sight, since you seem to find your own emotions so mortifying.”

"Thank you," he says, and, disastrously, feels like he might start crying again.

"Mm-hm." A pause. Her fingers tapping absently against his cheek. "There’s a joke in here somewhere."

"Is there?"

A frown, thoughtful, exaggerated, her brows knitting together in careful concentration before giving way to a terrible smile. "Yes." A beat. Then, the telltale flicker of something truly indecent behind her eyes. "Something about staying hydrated. Or maybe—" a pause, as if she is weighing her options "—eating out your third eye."

He laughs then immediately chokes as she presses her hand to his throat for balance, the casual weight of it cutting off just enough air to send his body into brief, ungraceful revolt.

"Never short on dreadful puns, I see." His voice, when it returns, is slightly hoarse.

"Never," she agrees. Then, with a flourish of indulgence, she leans down again, kissing his eyelids one by one. “So you continue doing this—” kiss, kiss, kiss “—and I'll continue doing that.”

Disgracefully, absurdly, he cries again, even as she laughs, even as her laughter spreads like ink in water, pulling him under, until the whole thing disintegrates into some ungovernable mixture of mirth and misery. He is laughing too—helplessly, wet-faced, ridiculous—and she, entirely unbothered by his descent into sentimentality, licks at the salt on his cheeks like a cat, or perhaps some particularly devoted dog, calling him pretty, pretty, pretty in that lazy, drawling way of hers, as if the word itself were a charm, a refrain, a verdict.

He wants to ask her why—why this word, why now, why, of all possible things, she has settled on this ludicrous, ill-fitting descriptor as he lies before her, blotchy and unsightly and utterly, embarrassingly undone. But she only snorts into his collarbone, her breath warm, unbothered, and the chant continues, pretty, pretty, pretty, until he is left with no choice but to accept it.

In the morning, his eyes are red. Lucanis notices. Davrin notices. The two, incapable of letting a thing be, set about turning his misfortune into sport, taking turns to see who can unearth the most appallingly indecent explanation.

He feels a migraine approaching.

And then Rook arrives, deposits a cup of coffee into his hands, and, without so much as a glance at him, declares, “He snorted too much powder last night. Leave him alone.”

Ah.

Oh.

He sits there, staring at her, vaguely appalled, impossibly infatuated, hopelessly starry-eyed. Very well, then. She has let sentiment in—however unwittingly, however carelessly—and now she will drown in it. And then, once she is thoroughly waterlogged, he will buy her all the gold in Nevarra.

#just liberating my writing folder from these emmrich character studies that no one asked for lmao #this man cries a lot and often #this is a hill i'll die on #he's cried after sex so many times he stopped counting #he just has feelings ok and wants to bake cupcakes #emmrich volkarin #emmrich x rook #emmrook #rook x emmrich #dragon age the veilguard #datv #my stupid writing #shortstories

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erinwantstowrite · 9 months ago

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will peter be like an older brother to miles in lof ?

absolutely he is

there's about an 11 year difference between them (Miles is 14, Peter is 25), so it's a lot more like the older brother type of relationship that Peter has with Tim (despite Tim being his uncle). Peter has mentored(ish) other young heroes by this point (mostly in the Bats' universe) but since Miles is another Spider-Man, Peter takes up most of the responsibility in making sure Miles is safe and teaching him the ropes. That's HIS sassy child genius, thank you, and he's not a sidekick, he's Spider-Man.

He was also adamant that Miles tell his parents immediately, and gets along great with Rio and Jeff.

Which is HILARIOUS to me because at this point in time, Peter has built up a persona for the public eye just like the Bats did. In Rio and Jeff's eyes, they're gobsmacked that the clumsy, scatterbrained, and "scaredy-cat" kid that Tony Stark adopted a while ago is Spider-Man. (Technically, none of this is a lie. Because Peter is a terrible liar unless it's For the Jokes, and often comes across this way even if he hadn't meant to.) They're wondering how he pulled that off since he's the same age as Spider-Man, who is known to be an Avenger, and associates in the same circles as Peter. It helps that Peter and Spider-Man have been in a social media war, and that Peter works at the Daily Bugle that is known for disliking Spider-Man. Peter's been taking lessons for years atp to keep his identity safe. Which is also bonus points to Peter, because the two can tell that secret identities mean everything to him, but he told them who he was in a heartbeat (literally the very first thing he did when he found Miles).

In other words: Peter was ecstatic to become a teacher for his own matching superhero kid and it's one of the most important bonds in his life. That's his baby brother now!!

#erinwantstowrite #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #leap of faith ao3 #peter parker #leap of faith catch me if you can #leap of faith #miles morales #peter parker is a GOOD mentor #a great one even #he takes that shit so seriously despite it looking like he's always just telling jokes from an outside perspective #you know those folders you go home with when you're a kid #the ones where your teacher puts stickers and talks about how your day/week went and your homework #peter has one of those that's really just a journal written to make it look like miles is taking after school classes with him at SI #and miles has to give it to his parents to look over #“You got three gold stars today!”#“yeah 'cause i didn't get blown up :)”#“that's my boy!”#rio was like “wtaf” at first but she quickly was like “oh so if anyone is gonna help miles stay alive it's this kid”#thank you for the ask!

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