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brain-rot-central · 4 months

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Sonnet of the Lone Cardinal

A/N: This is a working title. I reserve the right to change it going forward, lol. This is also my first AA fic! Can't believe it took me this long. Also feel free to note any other tags I may have missed. I'll add them as I go.

Rating: E Word count: 5.1k Pairing: Ascended Astarion/Fem!Tav Warnings: 18+, post-canon, PiV sex, creampie, angst, stalking behavior, obsessiveness, possessiveness, manipulative behavior (overall A's not really the greatest in this), use of derogatory language (though not at anyone specifically), messy break-up, depictions of gore, break-up (maybe make-up?) sex

Summary: Astarion has performed the Rite, becoming someone unrecognizable. Tav leaves him after settling their business with the Netherbrain, refusing his proposition to become his consort. She uses these last 6 months to heal her broken heart, mourning all they were and what they could have been. Hopefully all her hard work has paid off, because he's decided he wants her back and drops in for a visit.

♥ Next Chapter ♥ Link to Ao3

“It's awfully dangerous for such delectable morsels to leave their windows open this time of night.”

The whimsical voice comes from behind. With it, a rush of cold air sweeps through the quaint upstairs bedroom. Curtains lining the double panes of the front windows dance as the breeze blows in. Papers on the dresser scatter about the floor.

A young woman dressed in a sheer linen nightgown sits at her vanity, combing through her long red hair, when she freezes.

A familiar scent dances beneath her olfactory nerves - heady, rich, citrus. She breathes deeply, the warm spice of the cologne sweeping through her. Waves of heat pulse throughout her body as her ears pick up the sound of footsteps drawing closer.

With a sigh, the woman closes her eyes as the assailant reaches her position, their footsteps coming to a halt behind her.

It's him, she realizes. She’s never been more sure of anything else in her life.

Many months have passed since their last meeting. Passion burned as hot as an Infernal forge on that night. Promises of love, of pleasure, of power poured freely from their lips as their bodies intertwined. At that moment, she was prepared to give him everything - her life, her freedom, her body, soul.

She would have, had she not come to realize it was all an elaborate farce.

As she cracks open her eyes, daring to look up, the woman catches his reflection in the vanity mirror. With an audible gasp, it quickly dawns on her that this is the first time she’s seeing his face reflected in a glass pane.

Their eyes meet in the mirror, her chest suddenly heaving.

It is him.

And by the Gods, he's even more devastatingly handsome than she remembers.

“You never know what sort of monsters are out lurking the streets, hm?” he purrs, bringing his face close to her ear.

Assaulted once more by the warm spice of his cologne, her head spins.

“Astarion,” the woman whispers, nearly breathless. “What are you doing here?”

Craning his head, Astarion dips down into the nape of her neck, inhaling deeply. Her pulse quickens as he draws near, heart hammering away in her ribcage. His lips curl, fangs gleaming in the faint candlelight illuminating the room as his tongue sweeps over his teeth.

“I needn't an invitation to go where I please now, pet,” he pants against her neck.

A cold shudder shoots down her spine.

There was a time when her body would come alight from his many terms of endearment.

Darling, dear, sweet, pet, love.

Love.

“Nothing special, of course. You're only the first person I truly care for.”

His words echo in the far recesses of her mind. The words of her companion and partner, her lover… of a man who no longer exists.

That night in the ritual chamber, he changed.

The sound of the staff hitting the stone floor reverberates off ancient walls. Cazador and his spawn playing their parts, bound together in blood by the Rite. Astarion, levitating at the center, eyes burning red as an aura of blood envelops him. He's chanting the words - the Infernal seance that was once meant to be his end.

Her tongue lay heavy in her mouth. Words fly across her mind; desperate pleas begging him to reconsider, to stop this. None ever make it past her lips.

Suddenly, the spawn pop. One after the other.

Pop, pop, pop.

Astarion laughs, loud and boisterous, relishing the new found power that comes with each death.

Finally comes Cazador's turn.

He screams - a true blood-curdling scream. The type you hear moments before a person knows death has come, all too late. His voice carries on as she stands in the chamber, helplessly watching Cazador succumb to the ritual. He bursts at the seams into a pile of pulverized matter, dripping onto the floor below, completely unrecognizable.

Then suddenly, the room is engulfed by a haunting silence.

The Ascension… is complete.

The aura around Astarion fades and he drops down onto the platform below his feet. He remains kneeling for a moment. The sound of his breathing is all that fills the chamber, companions too stunned to speak.

He rises, slowly turning to face their leader. Looking upon his face, she sees the horrible truth lay bare before her.

Her lover is no more.

She's mourned him, the promise of them, ever since that night. Cried tears until her head throbbed and her face swelled, cried until nothing but sleep could soothe the ache in her heart.

And here he stands behind her, a scowl littering his visage as their eyes meet yet again in the mirror.

Her heart pounds in her throat, tears welling at the corners of her eyes. She swallows, asking, “Why did you come here, Astarion?”

Astarion pulls himself back, taking a few paces away from the woman. Folding his arms over his chest, he replies, “My darling Tav, I've come to take you home.”

“Home? I am home,” insists Tav. Turning her body, still seated in her chair, she scans him over.

Moonlit curls sweep elegantly across his forehead, framing his face. Ruby gems glint in the dim light of the room. He's wearing a black and silver doublet, blood-red dragons delicately embroidered on the lapel. Every bit elegant and refined; elite.

Astarion's face softens. He draws closer again, Tav’s breath hitching as his hand cups her chin. Tilting her face up toward his, he states, “I've given you more than enough freedom.” He cranes his head, bringing his lips a breath above her own as he whispers, “Don't you think?”

The velvet grace of his voice makes her dizzy. Tav realizes she feels heat radiating off his skin as their faces draw closer in proximity; a stark contrast to his usual aura. Her face burns - a fire that quickly spreads down into her belly. Tav tries to speak but Astarion closes the distance, lips capturing hers in a delicate embrace. His kiss is soft, alluring, unhurried.

Gentle, she thinks to herself. He's being so gentle.

“Astarion-” she protests, logic returning to her as she breaks the kiss. Tav scans his face, drawing her head back. Heavy lids fall over his eyes as they transfix upon her lips. He’s hungry, in more ways than one.

She knows that look. It's the very same he'd give her night after night in his tent, when all he wished was to share his body with her. Instead, they'd find other ways to partake in the ecstacy of one another until they were left breathless and panting.

But that was long ago.

Astarion's tongue darts out to lick over his lips as he says, “A lord is nothing without his dearest consort.” He moves to kiss her again, but Tav quickly ducks out of reach. She stands, hands clenched in tight fists.

“No,” she insists, locking eyes with him. She furrows her brow. “I will not be made into your personal plaything!”

A chuckle rumbles from his chest. Astarion tilts his head, a smirk forming on his face. “‘Plaything?’” he reiterates. “Do you believe I think that little of you?” Astarion brushes his knuckles over Tav’s cheek. “My darling treasure,” he begins, “I have many playthings, though none are quite like you.”

Tav’s pupils blow wide.

Astarion means to make her jealous with talk of other lovers. He means to fill her mind with images of him making love to unknown beings. To make her think of him finding pleasure in others who are not her.

She will not rise to it.

“Your chosen harlots aren’t enough?” Tav sneers. “I thought Lord Astarion Ancunín had everything he desired?”

With a scoff, Astarion replies, “You don't get it, do you?” A twinge of impatience can be heard as he says, “You helped make me what I am. We are bound to one another, until the end of time.”

Tav shudders as his hands come up to hold her face. She pulls in a sharp breath, expecting the cold sting of death from his usual chilled palms. Yet, they're completely warm as they cradle her jaw. Another reminder that he is now very much changed. Alive. His cologne assaults her senses once more and her eyes flutter closed as she settles into the strange comfort of his touch.

“My heart will never stop calling for you,” Astarion speaks softly. “No other can satisfy that hunger.” He brushes over her bottom lip with the pad of a thumb and feels her tremble below him. “You are to be my consort, my bride,” he insists, voice stern but low. “That is your role in this.”

Tav falters beneath his touch, allowing herself to be walked back to the wall next to the vanity. Her hands come up to wrap around his wrists. “Such honeyed words,” she retorts. “If I didn't know any better, I'd actually believe you.” Her back connects with the wall and she gasps.

“Tav, look at me,” Astarion demands with urgency. She doesn't comply, turning her head to the side. Slipping a hand from her cheek to grasp her chin, he forcibly turns her head back toward his. “Look at me!” he spits again.

Hesitant to look upon Astarion’s face, Tav cracks her eyes open. Opening them fully, it's not anger that she finds there. Her stomach flips. No, not anger or even disappointment. Instead, she sees… vulnerability.

“I wish I could replace you. I’ve tried,” Astarion bites out through clenched teeth. His face falls as his eyes settle on her. “Nothing can fill the void your absence has left.” He shakes his head slightly before adding, “Something within me screams for you, as if I were alone in a decrepit crypt and only you can save me.”

Her heart beats wildly in her chest. She feels as though she may suffocate, or that her heart may give out at a moment's notice. Tav begins to feel the tendrils of desire dance across her abdomen. They start low in her groin and quickly spread upward, causing a rhythmic contraction of her walls. She cannot fall for this again, she simply must not. All he's done is spout pretty words and step into her presence. And yet…

His breath pants against her face as he rests their foreheads together. The scent of freshly chewed mint whirls beneath her nose. Her vision spins.

In her stupor, Tav hardly notices Astarion's hands slipping under her nightgown. His palms rest on the backs of her thighs and he lifts a leg, allowing more room to slot himself against her core.

Tav groans as their centers meet, arching her back. Her chest presses into his and she moans, hands seeking purchase in his hair as he rocks himself into her once again.

“Astarion,” she pleads, wrapping her leg around the small of his back. A bolt of pleasure shoots up from her groin. She feels her walls clench again in desperation as his hardened cock brush against her cunt, straining against the fabric of his trousers. Her body remembers him and is all too eager to receive him once more.

Astarion knows. He recalls exactly how her body reacts almost on instinct to his touch. He pants against her lips with each roll of his hips into hers. “Come home with me, Tav,” he groans out. “Please, darling. I need you.”

His voice comes out ragged, stressed. Astarion leans against her chest, slipping his face into the nape of her neck. Inhaling deeply, a fire begins smoldering low in his belly. Her scent is of fresh mountain dew in early spring. Floral, sweet, and holding the promise of possibility. His cock twitches in anticipation.

Tav moans, loud and unfiltered. Her knees grow weak and she nearly buckles off the wall if Astarion weren't holding her up. She throws her head against the wall behind her, back arching once again.

“I mourned you,” Tav tells him, nearly breathless. “I mourned us.” She doesn't protest as Astarion lifts her other leg to join in locking around his waist. Tav doesn't fight how he grinds himself into her again, trapping her between himself and the wall. She feels faint, her vision growing fuzzy at the edges, though she manages to huff out, “You don't get to come here and make demands of me, Astarion.”

Astarion pulls his head back leisurely to meet her eyes. “You left me, remember?” he says low in his throat.

“What choice did you leave me with?” Tav exclaims in frustration. “You wanted me to sacrifice my life in order to prove my love for you. You would have never asked that of me before that accursed Rite!”

“I only wish to live out the rest of eternity together,” Astarion replies. “I promised I would protect you, that no harm would ever come to you.”

Tav stares into his face as realization registers in her mind, mouth falling slightly agape. She's gotten used to reading between the lines of his words, so often laced with duplicate meaning. True to his former life as a rogue of the night.

Her mortality is a threat to his oath.

Astarion cannot fathom going through the rest of time without her. Or, he does, and the thought is too painful for him to ever risk becoming reality. That is what he means to say, though apparently incapable in this new state.

“Isn't this what you wanted?” he asks, quietly. “To be together? Forever?”

Tears well in the creases of her eyelids and Tav sobs. “You are a fool, Astarion Ancunín,” she chides.

Astarion hovers his mouth mere millimeters above hers. “Only for you,” he says. “Always for you.” He captures her lips in a gentle embrace, breathing deeply through his nose as he pushes further into the kiss.

Tav moans into his mouth as she slackens her jaw, creating enough room for their tongues to begin exploring one another. She gasps as Astarion carries her from the wall to her bed on the far side of the room, grabbing at his shoulders for leverage.

“Tell me I may have you,” he asks, breaking the kiss as he lays her down over the mattress. He climbs over her, mouth descending upon her neck. He peppers chaste kisses along the underside of her jaw.

Tav writhes beneath him, whimpers escaping her throat as he licks and suckles on the delicate flesh of her throat. With resolve quickly waning, her hands find purchase again in silver locks as she finally says, “You may, but only for tonight.”

Astarion freezes above her. Hesitantly, he pulls himself back, looking her over as he begins shrugging off his doublet. “Are you sure?” he inquires softly.

This is the perfect opportunity to ask him to turn and leave. To not start this over again, to not return down a path in which she knows there is no favorable end. Though, Tav also cannot deny just how much she has missed him, as well.

“It's only sex, Astarion,” she tells him, sitting up to undo the ties of her nightgown. “That's all this will be.”

His hands come to rest atop hers, replacing her motions as he pulls gently at the laces of the gown. With the last tie undone her gown falls open, revealing her bare breasts to his heated gaze. Astarion sucks in a sharp breath as he meets her eyes.

“Only sex,” he ponders aloud as he furrows his brow. “But what if I want-”

“No,” Tav interjects, voice firm. “This is all I can give you. You either take this, or you have nothing.” Her breathing comes uneven as she stares back at him, chest heaving. Her nerves have come alight; she cannot fall in love with him again, but she can at least offer him this.

With a curt nod, Astarion replies, “As you wish.”

His expression is guarded as he fumbles with the laces of his trousers. He pulls his undershirt up and over his head, dropping it unceremoniously onto the floor behind the bed. Standing up, he peels off his boots, pants, and underclothes in one fell swoop. He returns to Tav on the bed as bare as the day he was born, following her eyes as they roam down the long plane of his torso. They come to rest between his thighs.

Astarion’s cock stands ready at attention, jumping in tandem with his heartbeat. Saliva pools thick on her tongue and she slips the nightgown down and off her arms. She's left naked before him, not having time to fully dress before his unexpected visit. Tav hears him groan as he looks her over.

A surprised gasp falls from her mouth as he cups her sex. She feels him drag two fingers through the arousal that has already gathered between her folds, and watches as he brings those same fingers to his mouth. A bolt of desire pulls behind her navel as she watches his slick-soaked fingers slip between his lips. He suckles around them, moaning his approval.

With a wet pop, Astarion pulls the two digits from his mouth and places them against her cunt again. They're saturated with his spittle, softly prodding at her entrance.

“A-ah!” Tav gasps as his fingers sink in. It's only two, but Gods how she's struggling to take them. They glide in and out, Astarion occasionally curling his fingers to pass along the spongy spot inside her that turns her vision white.

It's not long before he's pulling his fingers out and lining himself up along her entrance. Astarion spits into his hand, giving himself a few languid strokes. The weight of his cock slaps down heavily as he drags his length through her slickened folds once, twice, before he's finally slipping into her.

Screwing his eyes shut, Astarion lets out a guttural groan as he feels his tip pop through her tense entrance, her warmth enveloping him as he seats himself a bit further before halting. Her walls spasm wildly around his shaft; it takes every ounce of willpower he has not to sink the rest of himself down into her inviting wet heat.

Tav sighs as she finally adjusts, body relaxing around him. She hadn't necessarily forgotten that taking Astarion is no small feat, though she did forget how it feels to actually do so.

“You can move,” she tells him meekly.

He doesn't respond with words; a simple nod of his head is all Tav gets before he's leaning over her, hips slipping further and further toward the backs of her thighs. Wrapping his arms around her thighs, Astarion pulls her into him, pelvis meeting her backside. He growls, cock twitching as his tip brushes against her cervix.

Tav shudders under him as he pulls out, feeling the dragging of his length within her cunt, only for him to push back in with added force. Her body jerks upward from the power of his thrust. An audible string of whimpers falls freely from her lips as he does it again, and again, and again.

Astarion catches Tav’s hands as she tries reaching for him, pushing them back toward the bedsheets. Confused by his gesture, Tav tries again, only for Astarion to once more shove her hands off of him.

Stunned, Tav looks at his face. Sweat is beginning to gather along his brow, though he keeps perfect composure. There is no lust nor passion to his expression. He looks… removed. Distant. Aloof.

Just… having sex.

“Astarion?” Tav asks, concerned. “I can't touch you?”

He scoffs above her, grunting as he slams his hips again into hers. “Touch is a rather intimate thing,” he says, sarcasm saturating his tone. “Intimacy isn't welcome when you're just having sex.”

“Stop,” Tav demands, hands pressing against his stomach. Astarion immediately ceases his movements. “This is too cold, Astarion,” she says quietly. “This isn't us.”

Above her, Astarion sucks in a large breath. “It is when it's devoid of emotion,” he clarifies, patience wearing thin. “That's what you wanted, isn't it?” He tilts his head, craning his neck to look down upon her. “Just a quick romp?”

“I-”

Venom seeps from his pores as he quickly adds, “If you were ever curious as to how I treat my harlots, well, now you know. It's rather different from our last time, eh? I wonder why that is?” Astarion feigns an inquisitive glance, placing a finger to the side of his mouth as his lips form into a pout.

“Astarion, I-”

Tav tries desperately to interject, but is disrupted again by Astarion snapping his fingers. “Oh, I know! It's because I made love to you!” he sneers, lips curling over his fangs as he leans closer to her face. “You were never a conquest to me!” he growls. “Never one night it's best to forget.”

Astarion exhales, eyes falling closed in an effort to regain his composure. “If you insist on me treating you like a whore in a brothel, fine,” he says, “I'll do it. But know it's not done willingly.”

Tav remains silent, words failing her. Her body trembles as the full weight of his confession echoes throughout her mind. Pulling in ragged breaths, she questions, “Would you make love to me again? If I asked?”

Astarion huffs out a laugh, his expression softening. “I would raze an entire city for you,” he confirms. “You need only ask.”

A sense of despair enshrouds her as she stares into his ruby red eyes. He still loves her, Tav realizes. As much as, if not more than, the day she left him. Her head pounds; she needs to stop this from going forward. The voice in her head is begging her not to continue, to not risk reopening the wound she's spent the last six months delicately stitching back together.

Their last night together replays in her thoughts. She recalls the all-encompassing feeling of want that radiated off Astarion, that night. He carried her into a world of pleasure she never dreamed possible, all while singing praises deeply into her ear as he rocked in and out of her core. They joined as one, body and soul. Or so Tav thought, until the following morning.

Astarion looks at her now with that same compassion in eyes. He means what he says; he would destroy anyone and anything should she ask it of him. He's already destroyed himself, all in a vow to protect her.

Choking back a sob, she accepts final defeat in the battle her heart fought so desperately since he first came through her window. “Make love to me then, Astarion,” Tav tells him, pleadingly. “The way you used to.”

The flame of the single candle in the room dances in his eyes. The ghost of a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “Oh, my sweet,” he purrs, “There's nothing I'd like more,” Astarion brushes her cheek with the back of a palm. His arousal has flagged, still situated within Tav’s warmth, though it stirs back to life as he captures her lips in a hungry kiss.

Tav groans as she feels Astarion's length swell within her walls, noises swallowed by his mouth over hers. When he grows stiff enough, Astarion gives shallow thrusts between her legs. It isn't long until he's back to full virility, rolling his hips into hers in a steady rhythm.

She cries out as he breaks the kiss, one last deep thrust before he's pulling out of her. Pushing her legs back, knees almost hitting her chest, Astarion slips back into place between her thighs. Tav’s knees are being held up by his shoulders as he bends forward, sliding his cock back into her slickened cunt with ease.

Astarion groans as his cock slides down, down, down until his tip nudges the end of her tunnel. Tav gasps as he settles himself impossibly deeper, hips giving a soft push that leaves her womb pulsing. She claws at Astarion’s back when he pulls his hips up slightly, only to crash into her again.

Astarion rests his forehead against Tav’s. He drops his hips repeatedly into her center, eyes locked with hers as he does. The air pushed from her lungs from each of his thrusts passes over his face and he greedily sucks it in. Her face is flushed shades of red and pink as blood rushes through her veins, singing her desire loudly in his ears.

Nails sink into the tender scars on his back and Astarion hisses. With half open eyelids, Tav struggles to keep his gaze, pleasure threatened to overwhelm her. But when she finally does, she sees it. There, in his eyes, is him. The man she fell in love with.

Astarion's eyes are soft, round, pleading. The eyes of the man she gave herself to repeatedly all those months ago.

Each night she spent being devoured by his mouth, pulling the very essence of her body into his, she felt it - the sanctity of her oath dangling in the balance. Should she have stuck to her teachings, Astarion would’ve been staked through the heart at first discovery of his true nature. And yet, night after night, she willingly succumbed to the lustful desires that only her blood could provide him.

She moans as he angles his hips sharply on the next downstroke, the head of his cock brushing deliciously up against her spot. The rhythmic fluttering of her tunnel over his shaft pulls a throaty groan from Astarion, who quickly buries his face into the nape of her neck as the sensation wracks through his body. His arms envelop her torso, using her as leverage to increase the pace of her thrusts.

Tav feels her arousal leaking down the cleft of her ass, carved out from her with each plunge of his cock into her cunt. The tip of him rams against her spot repeatedly and she shakes in his arms, pleasure coiling tightly in her belly with not much left to hold onto. “Astarion,” she pants against his ear, mindlessly mouthing at his lobe. “Gods, Astarion…”

He groans again against her neck, skin muffling most of it. The sounds of their joint arousal fill the room, and Astarion pulls his lips back in anticipation of his impending climax. The smoldering fire in his belly has erupted into hellfire, threatening to consume all and any in its path if not quelled soon.

Fangs press into the delicate skin of her neck and Tav shivers, hands flying into his hair and grasping, pulling. “Do not bite me, Astarion,” Tav says, panicked.

Humming his disapproval, Astarion reluctantly pulls his head away from her neck. He rests his forehead against hers again. “Where do you want me, Tavaria?” The question comes quietly, unguarded. Strained.

Tavaria.

The sound of her full name on his tongue sends pulses of desire through her belly. He's close, Tav realizes. Astarion pants against her face as his thrusts grow more uneven. Moving a hand to his jaw, Tav holds his cheek, rubbing his chin with her thumb. “However you want,” comes her reply.

Astarion shudders, a moan slipping past his lips, eyes rolling to the back of his skull momentarily. He blinks back into focus, chest heaving as his breathing becomes labored. He's barely lifting hips into Tav, instead giving short stuttering thrusts that have his tip kissing her cervical os.

“Tav, please,” he begs. “Tell me.”

Silver strands of hair stick to his sweat-soaked forehead. Brushing them out of the way with a hand, she plants a kiss between his brow. “Inside,” she coos. “It's okay.”

Carnal desire flares behind Astarion's eyes. He grunts, raw and guttural as he dips his head back into the crook of her neck. He feels his cock begin to swell, a telltale sign that his release is imminent.

Tav whimpers as Astarion rams over her pleasure point again and again, the fattened head of his cock dragging along her walls. It doesn't take much longer before she's screaming out her completion below him, nails digging into the skin of his marred back.

Astarion roars out his own climax above her, balls pulling up tightly as fangs sink into the pillow next to her. He floods her channel with his seed, tiny rolls of his hips pulling groans from his chest as he rides out the wave. Tav’s walls are more than willing to massage the rest of his spend from his balls and into her greedy womb.

They lay together panting, post-coital haze in full effect. It isn't until Astarion shifts to pull out his softening member that Tav feels it - his spend dribbling from her entrance and onto the nightgown under her. He's the first to leave the bed, shaking his head while running a hand through tousled locks. Tav watches him disappear into her washroom as she slowly sits herself up onto her elbows.

The sound of water running into the tub can be heard and Astarion reappears in the doorway. He returns to the bed, Tav gasping as he scoops her up into his arms and carries her toward the washroom.

“What are you doing, Astarion?” she asks, mind still clouded by her peak. She loops her hands around his neck, lolling her head against his shoulder.

A chuckle rumbles from his chest as he kisses the top of her head. “Taking care of you,” he answers, bringing them both across the threshold of the washroom.

-------------------------------------------

Tav awakens the next morning alone, tucked snuggly in her bed. The events of the night are hazy as she slowly regains consciousness. She doesn't recall when or how she fell asleep. Peeling off the covers and giving herself a quick look over, she realizes she's dressed in her nightgown again. The ties are neatly in place, eerily similar to how she had them before.

Looking around her room, there's no evidence that Astarion had been present. The papers she swore fell to the floor are all stacked neatly on her dresser. The candle has been hushed out, and her windows closed.

Was it a dream? she ponders, heart rate rising as her confusion grows.

Her eyes scan the room frantically in an attempt to find a single piece out of place. Finally, she finds the answer she is searching for laying atop her vanity. Rising out of bed, Tav walks over to find a single rose laid across the top of the desk. He was here, Tav notes to herself, bringing the rose to her face. She inhales its sweet scent, dread filling her heart as the heavy weight of last night begins to actualize.

No, it was very real. And it’s only just beginning.

#astarion #ascended astarion #bg3 #bg3 astarion #astarion smut #astarion ancunin #fanfiction #astarion angst #astarion x tav #astarion romance #astarion x female tav #my writing #bg3 fanfiction

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stargirllanaa · 5 months

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୨⎯ "Cruel World” - Rafe Cameron

❥ Masterlist

Warnings: Dark!Rafe, Noncon smut, toxic relationship, Abusive relationship, Domestic violence, Gun violence, Drinking, ex!rafe, Rafe is actually terrible, psycho ex bf Rafe

Summary: loosely, based on ‘Cruel World’ by Lana Del Rey, everything goes wrong when you spot your psycho ex bf at a New Year’s Eve party.

A/n ✎: Thank you so much for 100 followers! Ahhhh!!!! I’m so glad you guys are enjoying my work, I recommend listening to the song ofc but you don’t have too. Bold and italics are flashback. Enjoy <333

Wc: just under 3k

18+ MINORS DNI, YOU WILL BE BLOCKED

“Does anyone know where I put my eyeliner?” Your friend Nora asked you, as well as your other friend Violet.

You were all getting ready for some New Year's Eve party at Nora's boyfriend's house; everyone would be home from college for winter break, so you were excited to see all the people you went to high school with.

“No, but I know where the vodka is!” Violet chuckled,

“Come on, let's all take a shot!” Violet continued as she made her way over to you.

“Come on, y/n, are you going to pout all night? He might not even be there.” the brunette expressed as she sat beside you, bottle in hand.

She was referring to your ex, Rafe Cameron, and you knew for almost a fact that he would be there. Nora's boyfriend happened to be his best friend, Topper, and you and Rafe hadn't exactly ended on the best terms. The two of you had been broken up for about a month and a half; for the first two weeks, he would not stop texting and calling you, profusely apologizing, saying things like, ‘I'll go to therapy.’ ‘give me another chance.’ ‘I'll be better.’

It got so annoying that you had to block him; obviously, that wouldn't stop him. The thing was, Rafe was fucking crazy; he would always find a way to get to you, and if he didn't, he simply didn't want to.

“He's going to be there.” You said with a sign, “I'm just going to get fucked up, ignore him, and hopefully get some dick tonight.”

“That's the spirit!” Violet said as you tilted your head back, and she poured the vodka down your throat.

“Are you kidding me?” Your boyfriend asked you in a harsh tone as he stalked toward you.

“What?” you respond as you tried to take a wobbly few steps back.

His eyes narrowed at you, and his eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, aside from the clown makeup,” Rafe said, referring to your red lipstick.

“How many times do I have to tell you I don't like that dress?” Rafe interrogated as he roughly grabbed your waist.

“How many fucking times, y/n?” the blonde shook your body roughly. “For you to get it through your thick fucking skull?”

You were silent, frozen almost; whenever Rafe got violent, you didn't know how to react. You didn't fight; you didn't try to run; you stood wide-eyed in shock because if you did respond the wrong way, you knew it would make things 10x worse than they already were.

“Huh?” He asked you, shaking your body roughly again, waiting for you to respond.

“I- I don't know.” You mumbled weakly.

“You don't know,” he mocked with a dry humorless laugh.

“Go and change. Red looks trashy on you.” He stated before letting go of you with a harsh push into the wall.

All your friends knew that Rafe was bad, but they certainly didn't know how bad he was. You were so good at hiding it, concealer, color corrector, foundation, you name it; if it could cover a bruise, you had it. Every story you told them about your fights with Rafe were very watered down, and because of that, no one knew how truly scared you were to run into Rafe at this party. Not in an ‘Oh, no, my ex!’ way more in a ‘he might kill me way.’ But with every shot you took, you felt your fear start to fade slowly, and when you arrived at the party five shots in, in your little red party dress, you felt way more confident than you should have.

Your arm linked with Violet’s as your friend Nora lost the two of you to find her boyfriend. You and Violet stumbled through the house, passing through groups of people, trying your best to find the drink table.

“By the way, I love your dress,” Violet approved, looking you up and down. “Red is your color.”

“Thank you!” you smiled, taking the compliment to heart; she didn't know just how much that meant to you; you hadn't worn red since Rafe had told you it was ‘trashy’ on you.

“Fuck, is the Britney Smith?” Violet giggled, pointing at the short blonde girl.

“Isnt she pregnant?” you wondered as your eyes fell on the drink table.

“Oh my god, look who's right next to the drinks,” Violet says before covering her mouth with her hand.

“Is that Alex?” you replied, squinting your eyes to get a better look.

Violet nodded in response, eyes wide with excitement.

“Go talk to him!” you smiled at her. “I'll sit right over there,” you said, pointing at the elegant velvet couch.

As you sat on the couch, you couldn't stop thinking about Rafe. Your anxiety slowly started to rise, and you regretted every choice you made up to this point. First of all, you and Rafe had ended on horrible terms; second of all, you came to a party that you knew he would most likely be at, and now you are all alone and a little more drunk than you'd like to be.

You couldn't stop thinking back to that day, your breaking point, the last fight you had with Rafe before you ended things for good.

“Why are you following John B on Instagram?” Your boyfriend asked you as he looked up from his phone.

The question confused you a bit; you honestly didn't even know you were following him in the first place.

“I don't know?” you replied with a shrug. “Probably was an accident; maybe Sarah tagged him in something or-”

“Was it an accident when you smiled at him the other day at the wreck?” he cut you off.

Was he serious right now? John B had waved at you, and you simply smiled in return. You were just being nice; it was nothing more than that.

“Rafe, I-” You were going into very dangerous territory, and you knew that, even though Rafe was physically attractive, he was very insecure, which showed a lot in your relationship.

“If it's another bullshit excuse, I don't want to hear it,” he scolded as he stalked towards you.

He wasn't even giving you the chance to defend yourself, and frankly, it was pissing you off even more than his stupid questions.

“Rafe, I don't even know what you're talking about; I literally-” you plead with your boyfriend, taking a step back for every step he took forward.

“Of course you ‘Dont know,’ you never do.” Rafe hissed at you, moving closer and closer.

“That's what you do; you act all fucking innocent and then sneak around behind my back.” the blonde accused.

“Do you think I'm stupid?” He sneered, backing you against the wall.

That was the final straw; now he was accusing you of cheating from a simple smile and an Instagram follow. I mean, how delusional could he be?

“Are you fucking crazy?” you asked him, eyebrows furrowed.

You could tell he was shocked at your response by the way his eyebrows arched upwards slightly, but you could also tell you pissed him off by the way his jaw ticked.

“What did you say to me?” He asked; he heard you loud and clear the first time; he just wanted to see if you had the guts to repeat it.

“Are you fucking crazy? I follow him on Instagram. So what? I can unfollow him if it's a problem.” you argued, shocked that this was even an issue.

Rafe's hand shot forward without warning, delivering a sharp slap to your face. Time momentarily slowed as the impact echoed through the room. As the sting of the slap registered, a deep sadness clouded your features. You hated to say it, but you were used to rafe hurting you.

“Who do you think you're talking to?” Rafe asked you. Blue eyes are darker than their everyday shade.

“Huh?” He scoffed, laughing slightly.

“Calling me crazy…talking to me like I'm the one in the wrong?” your boyfriend shouted as he snatched a big chuck of your hair, gripping it tight enough to bring tears to your eyes.

“Rafe, I-” you tried to defend yourself as tears clouded your vision.

“No, I'm talking now.” His voice boomed as he screamed in your ear.

Rafe slammed your head against the wall behind you, using your hair as leverage; at this point, your ears were ringing, your head was banging, and you couldn't speak from the pain alone. And Rafe just kept going on and on about how important trust is in a relationship, but how could you even listen when he was gripping your hair so tight? But obviously, Rafe didn't see this as punishment enough because he dragged you by the hair to his closet, and even as he rustled through his sock drawer, clearly looking for something, he didn't once let go of your hair.

“Rafe! Stop-” You were cut off by the feeling of ice gold metal pressed against your temple; you were completely frozen, not knowing what to do; there was no way your boyfriend was pressing a gun against your head over an Instagram follow.

“If you even look at john b again, your fucking dead.” Rafe threatened coldly.

Your heart was racing; Rafe was impulsive knowing him; you could breathe the wrong way, and he would pull the trigger. That didn't stop your breath from fasting and your tears from falling, though.

“You hear me?” he asked, pulling your hair back just enough to make eye contact.

You didn't say anything; you had been sobbing ever since you felt the metal against your head in the first place.

“Do you hear me?” He shook you, demanding an answer, “I will fucking kill you.”

“Yes!” you cried out, hoping and praying for him to put the gun down and let go of you.

And when you left his house that night, you had never returned. Rafe did have his good moments, but was he worth your life? You broke up with him over text the following day, and you hadn't seen him since.

Since today, as soon as you looked up from your lap, lost in thought, you made eye contact with Rafe. You felt sick when you saw him; you knew he would be here, but you weren't expecting to see him this soon.

You stood up, making your way through the separate groups of people; you needed to find somewhere you could be by yourself because right now, you felt like you might have a panic attack.

“Excuse me,” you repeated over and over as you drunkenly stumbled to the stairs. No one was upstairs, other than maybe a few people hooking up, but other than that, it was pretty empty. You looked for a room, apologizing when you opened the door to see Nora and Topper making out. You stumbled through the halls until you found an empty room, sighing in relief as you closed the door behind you.

Your relief was short-lived because you didn't realize that Rafe was following behind you the entire time, and when he entered the room, you instantly regretted isolating yourself from the rest of the party and your friends.

“No.” you panicked, anxiety rising deep within your stomach.

He was intentionally standing in front of the door. There was no way out.

“Hey, Listen, y/n-,” Rafe said calmly, trying to calm you down.

“No! Get away from me!” you interrupted words slurring, not wanting to hear a thing from him.

You had no desire to speak to Rafe, not after all he had put you through in your relationship, not after you had been in therapy for the past month to heal the pain he had caused you. He wasn't just a regular ex, Rafe was fucking crazy, and you both knew it; you knew he was waiting to see you in person again, probably planning it, planning out exactly how he was going to get you back and what he was going to do if you declined his offer.

“Can you just listen to me!?” he snapped at you, slightly losing his calm demeanor. “I just want to talk-” He said through his teeth, walking over to you and away from the door.

“Well, I don't want to talk!” you barely even knew what you were saying; your head was spinning, and you regretted every shot you had taken earlier.

“So that's how it's gonna be, huh?” Rafe mumbled to himself more than you, fist clenching as he spoke.

As he got closer and closer, the room seemed easier and easier to escape; you knew you couldn't scream for help because of the loud music banging throughout the house; no one would hear you, and you knew you couldn't put up the best fight because you were drunk and Rafe’s also way stronger than you, he had proved this time and time again.

So you took the opportunity to run for the door while you still could. But two steps in, Rafe had already caught you and wrapped his arms around you, holding you tightly against his stiff chest.

“I didn't want to make this complicated.” he hissed into your ear. “But come on, y/n, it's almost like you want me to hurt you.”

You thrashed your body, wiggling side to side, trying to escape his grip.

“You’re fucking crazy!” You shouted as you continued to attempt to free yourself.

“Yes! I'm crazy,” Your ex admitted as his grip around you tightened, and his nostrils flared. “I'm crazy for you.” he dug his nails into your side.

“Get off of me!” you cried out, voice raw with emotion.

“You come to my best friend's party wearing the fucking dress I hate! Knowing I'm going to be here!” he criticized, pushing your body towards the bed. “It's almost like you want me to take it off.”

“Rafe, stop, I-” you were cut off by Rafe throwing you on the bed and wrapping his hands around your throat as he hovered over you.

“Shut the fuck up!” He sneered, looking down at you with dark eyes.

“You fucking left me!” His grip got tighter the more he spoke. “Not even a call, but a fucking text.” he scolded. “Do I really mean that little to you?”

You didn't end things the way you did because you didn't care about Rafe; you cared about Rafe so much, more than you ever wanted to, and that hurt; throughout everything he's done to you, all the pain he's caused you, you still cared. You broke up with Rafe over text because you were terrified; he had threatened to kill you over an Instagram follow; you couldn't imagine what he would have done if you dared to break up with him in person.

But you couldn't say any of that because he was choking you so hard that you couldn't breathe, let alone speak; all you could do was hit his hands repeatedly, hoping he would let go.

“You didn't care about my feelings. Why should I care about yours?” He asked you, looking deeply into your bloodshot, teary eyes with his blue angry ones.

Your mind was racing; Rafe was actually going to kill you. You saw this day coming many times throughout your relationship, but you didn't expect it to happen when you guys were finished. You had shared your body, your mind, everything with him, and you had been happy it was over; you finally were starting to feel like yourself again. But now he was going to take that all away from you.

Rafe finally let go when he started to see your eyes roll back as you started to lose consciousness.

You gasped for air in between coughs as you held your throat, desperate to soothe it from the pain he caused with his harsh grip. You had accepted death. You knew exactly who you were dealing with, and the thought of him killing you over a breakup wasn't too far-fetched.

“You have a lot of making-up to do after the stunt you pulled last month,” Rafe sighed as if he was inconvenienced by what he was doing to you.

The stunt you pulled? Your break up was serious, and for a good reason; he was lucky you hadn't called the police; if anyone had pulled a ‘stunt,’ it was him. He had pulled a series of stunts throughout your whole relationship. He was pulling one now.

Before you knew it, Rafe was tugging at your dress, attempting to pull it off you. If there was one thing you weren't doing, it was going down without a fight. You tried your best to kick him and scratch him, everything, but you were drunk, had just been choked, and Rafe was much stronger than you, so he pinned your wrist above your head with one hand and pulled the bottom of your dress up with the other.

“Remember this, y/n,” He said as he positioned himself up against your cunt. “Remember this feeling the next time you think about trying to leave.” He taunted before pushing into you roughly.

As he thrusted into you repeatedly at a rough and harsh pace, you sobbed. You thought Rafe was behind you; you told yourself you would never let a man hurt you the way he did again. You were so happy when he was gone.

“Fuck, take this off,” Rafe moaned as he pulled your dress over your head.

With every hash thrust, your cries got louder. Rafe didn't care about your pleasure or even his; he wanted to hurt you; he wanted to see your tear-stained face. This was your punishment, and he was succeeding. The only thing you felt between your legs was severe pain.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” you heard everyone downstairs scream in unison.

“Happy New Year,” Rafe smirked as he pulled you in for a rough, sloppy kiss.

Rafe was fucking crazy.

#dark!rafe cameron #dark!rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron fanfiction #dark rafe cameron #obx fanfiction #outer banks fanfiction #rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #dark rafe x reader #obx imagine #rafe cameron imagine #rafe obx #rafe imagine #rafe outer banks #outer banks #dark!rafe x reader #dark!fic

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mrghostrat · 6 months

Text

some tips for writing flow

i've had a lot of comments complimenting my writing style, most of which don't know how to explain or describe what they like about it. i never really knew either, but i've been paying more attention to the way i write things lately, in the hope of being able to understand and explain it.

a lot of this is "based on feel" with no hard and fast rules, but there's also very tangible techniques you can hopefully work into your own writing, if that makes sense? idk is this anything—

1 - sentence beats, and alternating them.

this is probably the biggest thing in my writing. i've realised my sentences can be measured in beats, based on their length and how many sections they can be broken into. the pattern changes often, and i don't have a concrete rule in how i fill a paragraph (again, i've only just put words to any of this), but it's probably the most important part of my flow. let's have a look:

1 beat: • this is probably the biggest thing in my writing.

2 beats: • i've realised my sentences can be measured in beats • based on their length and how many sections they can be broken into.

3 beats: • the pattern changes often • and i don't have a concrete rule in how i fill a paragraph • but it's probably the most important part of my flow.

it looks like a favour certain patterns, the only real "rule" i use is to construct a paragraph with various beats, and never put two side by side. whenever i'm struggling with my flow, it's usually because i've put two of the same beats next to each other and everything feels either stiff or crowded. i rarely put two side by side, unless it's for specific emphasis.

the other exception are paragraph breaks: these are a pause for breath, and allow us to reset the pattern. i often start and end my paragraphs with single beat sentences, and it doesn't feel like they're running on because there's that lovely breath between them.

2 - short paragraphs

the rule we learn in school is that new paragraphs are for new ideas. convert this to prose, and we can consider "ideas" to include the character's thoughts, new narrative tangents, and physical movement around a scene.

one of my biggest struggles reading "bad" fanfic is when paragraphs are too lumped together. crowley will walk into the bookshop, see aziraphale across the way, wander over to a shelf, select a book, then pour himself a drink all in one big chunk. i can't parse that. there doesn't have to be a new line break for every new action, but grouping the relevant ones together and breaking in between broad motions (i.e. walking across a room, acknowledging a character) can help ease readers through the scene.

paragraphs are a breath, not only for sentence flow, but for processing the action within a story. similarly, purposefully keeping multiple actions confined to a single paragraph can make them feel quicker, while breaking them up into multiple paragraphs will slow down the pacing (even if the amount of detail describing each action is the same). included some examples because i'm struggling to explain this one

3 - mixing metaphors

this might sound less flow related, but i used to struggle with it a lot as a young writer, and paying more attention to it has definitely helped clean up my flow and writing overall.

i love a good analogy, but it can be easy to get carried away, and this can bog down the prose. my personal rule is that i can get silly with my metaphors (see: the mon chéri magnet), but i can only use one at a time. no talking about the magnet in aziraphale's chest and the angel and demon on his shoulder within the same scene.

if i'm getting silly and long winded with a metaphor, i also try to limit the length of it to one or two paragraphs. paragraph 1: set up the metaphor, establish the analogy. paragraph 2: come back to the reality of the scene, then mention the metaphor once more to link it all together. if i'm feeling cheeky, then i mention the metaphor again ONCE in passing, a couple of paragraphs or even chapters later

the magnet was a fun one, because i kind of flipped how i would usually present a metaphor, with the long winded tangent coming last instead of being the set up. and even though i used the metaphor 3 times, it felt like 2 because the set up was really just a planted seed for what i'd be mentioning later in the theatre. referencing the "whispered curse in the dark" also helped tie the scenes together and keep the analogies neat and tidy in our heads

meanwhile i got a little more carried away with the space metaphor in postcards (i feel like there's probably a 4th and maybe even 5th mention during the bookshop scene), but each one was blink-and-you'll-miss-it brief that didn't slog down the prose.

4 - avoiding repetitive pronouns

we're all going to struggle with this, and i don't have a secret hack for avoiding a wall of "he this, he that, he then," and i honestly try not to beat myself up over it too much. but there are two things i check to make sure it's not getting too repetitive:

1. looking within a paragraph

apparently everything revolves around paragraphs and the breath between them lmao. i don't have a strict rule like "use the character's name once per paragraph, then 'he' for the rest" or anything like that, but it's in that kind of vein. i simply pay attention to one paragraph at a time to watch for too much repetition, and if i notice it's been one or two whole blocks without switching from 'he' to a name, i'll chuck one in to break it up.

2. paragraph starters

this is so picky. and i don't know if it does ANYTHING, but it bugs me when i'm writing and i notice every paragraph starts the same way. maybe it has no effect on the flow at all. but i like to make sure my paragraphs aren't starting with the same "he" "he" "he", and that forces me to go back and switch around the pronouns in recent sentences, so the next paragraph can flow on more smoothly.

5 - use interruptions appropriately

edit: sneaking this one in here as a final thought! i just want to mention the use of em-dashes, semicolons, footnotes, and parenthesis mid-sentence. it's common to favour one in particular, but each have spectacular uses and can add miles to the pacing and flow of your prose.

em-dash (—) interruptions, cutting off dialogue— pausing to make a point — like this — in the middle of a sentence.

semicolon (;) helps with making lists and continuing a compound sentence that doesn't really link with 'and' or 'but'; when you want to pause, but a new sentence would break the flow of things.

footnotes (¹) these should be optional additions to the text imo. you should be able to keep reading without looking at the footnotes and not lose an ounce of story. they're additive, not necessary.

parenthesis ( () ) a great way to interrupt yourself (less sharply) than with em-dashes, include longer pieces of information (like what you might put in a footnote, except more crucial to the narrative that you don't want people to miss!) and adding sass (lol) and tone to your prose.

#*taps mic* IS THIS ANYTHING #includes some bnf teasers :)#note: ADDED A 5TH POINT AT THE END AT THE LAST MINUTE #writing tips #writing process #fan fic #fan fiction #fic #rat writes #good omens fic

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loquaciousferret · 1 year

Text

Heat Waves

Gif: @serenaxpedro

Summary: A heatwave and a broken air conditioning unit in the office leads to tensions running high between you and your partner, Javier Peña. What lengths will you consider going to, seeking relief?

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader

Warnings: 18+ smut, no minors etc etc . fingering, unprotected sex, semi-public sex (in an office), maybe more, just please don’t read if you can be sensitive to any kinds of sexual content

Word Count: 2.5k

A/N: credit to @tightjeansjavi for the prompt, this was delightful to write hehe

You check the wall thermometer again. The needle is creeping just above 30°. You groan loudly.

For a building full of people whose work visas list them as being employed in “Janitorial Services”, the US Embassy in Medellin had a shockingly poor maintenance and janitorial department.

The air conditioning had broken yesterday, towards the end of the work day. It was bearable because it was already beginning to cool down into the evening, but today, in the mid-day sun, in a July heatwave, it had been too much for most of your colleagues to bear.

Anyone who was able to work from home had scurried off with boxes of files to catch up on paperwork in their air conditioned apartments.

But you and Javi couldn’t move the entire wall of the office where you were mapping out trade routes, connections, linking suspects together and desperately trying to find a pattern that would let you understand where exactly the evidence was that you so desperately needed.

You had probably consumed your body-weight in water. You had already shed as many layers as possible. You had even removed your tights. All that was left was a tight skirt and a blouse that was sticking to your skin all over. Plastered to your lower back, your chest. Nothing was cooling you down.

“Are you evening listening to me?” Javi sighs.

Your gaze snaps up to him, he is watching you with an expression that is more defeated than irritated.

“I’m sorry Jav, can’t think straight. This fucking heat’s making me crazy.” You say sincerely.

“Yeah, you can say that again.” He responds sympathetically.

He wipes sweat from his brow.

“Just… take a break. G’nna go outside to smoke, hopefully catch a breeze.” He mutters.

As he leaves the room, a disturbing thought crosses your mind. The shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and his back muscles flexing as he reaches for the door handle makes you question… Is Javi attractive? Well, obviously, he is, to every other woman in Colombia. But is Javi attractive to you? Not up until now, his personality thoroughly put you off. But the way he looked from behind, even with those patches of sweat staining his shirt… or, maybe, especially with those patches of sweat…

“What the fuck.” You mutter.

This heat really is making you insane. You physically shake your head to try and rid yourself of the thought. Javier fucking Peña. Yeah right.

You return your focus to the document he was attempting to discuss with you before. It was a transcript of an intercepted communication, between two parties who you couldn’t understand a reasonable explanation for them now working together. The whole thing sent your head into a spin trying to piece it together.

You knew you were on the edge of a breakthrough. You could feel it. Javi knew it too, and you were both pushing each other to your limits. He was an excellent partner. His job was the only thing he cared about. That might be the only thing you and Javi had in common. As different as the two of you were, the job was where you found mutual respect, and that was all that mattered.

Heat creeped up your chest and around the back of your neck. It was practically choking, consuming every single sense and causing a layer of impenetrable fog to settle in your mind. Being off your game at a critical point in your investigation was less than optimal.

Javi entered again and you analysed his features. If the heat was affecting him as much as it was you, he was doing a good job at not showing it.

“How are you coping with this? I feel like I’m about to be swallowed by the sun.” You groan exaggeratedly.

“Grew up in Texas.” He shrugs.

“Really?” You say, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes.” He says, meeting your eyes. “Is that surprising?”

“Yeah. I thought Southerners were gentlemen."

“Maybe I am.” He responds, holding a bottle of water to his forehead.

You scoff and then clear your throat. “Anyway, I’m reading this again. I can’t help but think this is a code name for some kind of object or thing, not a person. If it was a person they would have come up before now. There are only so many people that run in these circles, I just don’t think we could have missed someone this important.”

He tilts his head from side to side, considering your suggestion. As he does so, the tendons in his neck protrude and you see how his tanned skin sparkles as it glistens with sweat.

Finally, he responds, “Maybe. But for what? These guys aren’t geniuses. Think we can work out the code?”

“I don’t know.” You say. “Not any further forward on that part.”

You fan yourself with some scrap paper you have folded and concertinaed carefully. You throw your head back in your seat and sigh deeply.

When you sit back up and open your eyes again, you think you find Peña’s gaze trained on your chest, but he quickly looks away.

You feel yourself equally irritated and intrigued by his staring. You had never noticed him look at you like this before.

“Everything OK, Jav?” You say, trying to sound casual.

“Yeah- Yeah. I’m good. Just- Yeah.” His eyes linger on yours for a moment and he runs his hand across his forehead, wiping away beads of sweat.

You both continue to work, but you feel his eyes continually flicking back to you, telling you he is not focussed either.

You feel as though the tension continues to build as you both try and work, and you want to tell yourself it’s not just because of the heat. But you are worried this is one-sided. Even if that would mean you were the only woman in Colombia Javi wasn’t interested in sleeping with.

As the day goes on, painfully slowly, you find yourself more and more distracted by his presence and frustrated with your lack of progress in your investigation.

You curse loudly.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, his gaze intense.

“I’m just… I’m so frustrated, Peña. I don’t know what to do about it.” You sigh.

“I’m sure I know how I could help you deal with it.” He says, with a glint in his eye.

You scowl at him. Now that had to have been intentional flirting.

“I feel like no matter what we do we are always running in circles chasing our own tails. How do they always stay one step ahead of us. Like you said, these guys aren’t geniuses.”

“Hey.” He says, his expression stern. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll get ‘em.”

“Every day that goes on we are losing more. I feel like I’ve already given all of myself and more to this investigation.”

He had closed the distance between you, and placed his hand over yours where you fiddled with your pen on the desk. The touch burned.

“Let me take your mind off it.” He says, something unfamiliar behind his eyes.

You ignore him, and slide the memo on your desk over towards him. “Can you assign someone else to the stakeout tomorrow. We have to be in for the meeting with-“

He cuts you off, grumbling, “You always use work talk to distract guys hitting on you?”

“Hitting on m- Jesus, Peña. The heat makin’ you fuckin’ stupid?” You shoot back.

“Maybe.” He shrugs. But he doesn’t step away from you.

“You believe in shitting where you eat?” You continue.

“Not usually. But I can see how frustrated you are. I’d be a bad partner to let you suffer like this.” He smirked.

You raise an eyebrow at him. You know the answer to your question but you want to hear him say it. “What are you suggesting?”

He leans in closer, “I’m suggesting I help you forget work a while, let me relieve some of your tension. Maybe it’ll force a breakthrough.”

“Yeah right.” You say. You turn to face him, looking for any sign in his dark eyes that he isn’t being serious in his proposition. Any sign of hesitation or doubt. Any sign that it is all some joke. But you don’t find it.

His moustache tickles as he whispers in your ear. His hot breath sends shivers down your spine. “You know you want it. Let me help you.”

You want to say no, but your body betrays you as you find yourself being acted on by what seems like a magnetic force, drawing you closer to him.

You manage to produce one more protest, but it comes out weak, as though you are trying to convince yourself for a reason to say no. “That would be unprofessional.”

“Who’s gonna report us?” He taunts. “You?”

You find yourself shaking your head in response to his question, and he pounces on you, connecting his lips to yours in a desperate kiss.

An oppressive heat continues to suffocate your body, but this one isn’t from the conditions in the office, this is a fire that is coming from within, a burning flame stoked by the attraction and desire that has come over the two of you.

You give in to the feeling of him as his hands roam all over you, unbuttoning your blouse hastily and discarding it. A mixture of excitement and guilt nags at you. This is your partner. This is wrong. And not just any partner, it’s Javier Peña. He has screwed at least half the women in Medellin. This is not how you should be behaving.

But at the same time, you can’t deny the intense chemistry between you in this moment. The way your desperation and hunger perfectly matches his. The way he whispers dirty words in your ear, sending shivers down your spine.

His cock is already straining against his tight jeans, and you reach a hand up to palm him through the denim.

He sighs at the feeling and puts his hands on your waist, pulling you up and guiding you to sit on the desk. A strong hand parts your thighs and creeps upwards, pressing against the thin fabric of your panties. You moan into his mouth, and then blush, embarrassed by the affect his touches are having on you so quickly.

He continues to rub gently against the fabric and you reach towards him to release his belt buckle. You fumble with it and he pushes your hands away impatiently and takes it off himself, unzipping his jeans and taking out his erect cock.

He strokes himself a few times and you watch, transfixed, your breathing shallow.

He stops and gathers the hem of your skirt, pushing it up to your hips to release your thighs. He spreads you wide and pushes your underwear to the side, not bothering to remove it as he plunges two fingers inside you.

You gasp and he starts off with an already quick pace, hammering in and out of you and curling them inside you to reach the most pleasurable spots. It doesn’t take long until your legs are shaking, your hands gripping the edge of the desk to steady yourself. You were already sweating from the heat but now you feel as though you are melting, struggling to catch your breath and releasing desperate whines of pleasure.

His thumb reaches up to rub your clit and you moan, “Javii-”

“You like that, huh?”

He attaches his lips to your neck, sucking lightly before moving down to the valley between your collarbones, licking up beads of salty sweat that have gathered there. He moans into your skin and the sound goes right through you, you twitch and start to feel an orgasm rising inside you.

“You gonna come for me before I even fuck you, huh?” He taunts, “More desperate than I thought.”

You ignore his cocky commentary and focus on the feeling of his hands on you. You can’t deny he is skilled and knows exactly the right pace and rhythm to bring you your release quickly.

The pressure on your clit increases and he rubs faster circles around it. Tension builds in your stomach.

“Don’t stop.” You gasp out.

His other hand has reached back to stroke his cock roughly, and he lets out small sounds of pleasure into your ear. You didn’t expect him to be this vocal but it turns you on.

Your pleasure is reaching its peak and he senses it too, toying with your clit unrelentingly as you writhe on the desk beneath him, the cool surface doing nothing to calm the heat inside you. Your legs tense up as your orgasm washes over you, you lose your stability and fall backwards atop the papers and documents strewn across the desk. Your back arches and his movements don’t slow down, unashamed cries of pleasure streaming from you as you ride out your orgasm.

He shifts slightly and there isn’t a moment of rest until he removes his fingers and replaces them with his hard cock. He plunges deep inside you on the first thrust, the hairs at the base of his cock rubbing against your clit, almost driving you to overstimulation with your orgasm barely subsided.

He sets a punishing pace with his haps, snapping against you hard and fast, your cunt greedily clenching and tightening around him every single time he buries himself inside you.

“Feel so good. Don’t know why I waited this long.” He mutters.

You whine, unable to form a coherent response. One of his hands is squeezing at your chest and the other is gripping your hip, pulling you down on him harder to intensify the force of every single thrust.

He is everything you thought he would be, hungry and passionate and clearly practiced in the art of both giving and taking pleasure.

Your sounds echo around the room. Neither of you worry about this, knowing the office was nearly empty. Even then, your desire for him clouds your mind so far to the extent that you don’t think you would mind being caught anyway. It was worth the risk.

He takes both of your legs and manoeuvres you, bending them and lifting them up so they lazily rest against his shoulders. Thank god for yoga, you think.

The new position tightens you up and somehow allows him even deeper access. You moan shamelessly and he grunts with every single thrust. His pace is unrelenting and you feel him becoming more and more forceful with each one, chasing his climax.

“Can I come inside you?” He asks through gritted teeth.

You are unable to form words, you nod, your mouth hanging open but no sounds come out other than strangled gasps.

“Fuckkk.” He grunts, turned on even more at the prospect of filling you up and it sends him over the edge.

He spills into you, your name thrown in amongst the curses he mutters as he comes. He keeps a tight hold of you as he steadies his breathing.

Moments after he releases inside you, you feel the relief he had been promising. You close your eyes and let out a deep, contented sigh.

And then, suddenly, they fly open again.

“Move!” You almost yell, pushing his chest away from you.

“Move. I’ve got it.” He pulls himself away from you and you leap up, pulling your skirt back down. You grab a pen and begin scribbling frantic notes over the transcript.

“I’ve got it.” You repeat.

“Worked even better than I imagined.” He teased, smirking as he buttoned his jeans and re-fastened his belt before coming to join you and see the revelation you had come to.

“Good to know.” He adds, “Nice tactic for the future.”

You roll your eyes at him and thrust the paper towards him with satisfaction. He might be right, it might have been the sex that did the trick, but you would never admit it.

More Javier Peña oneshots:

Over and Done With | Partners | All Work, No Play | Little Games

#javier pena smut #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena fanfic #javier pena x reader #javier pena x f!reader #narcos smut #narcos fanfiction #agent pena #javier pena #narcos fanfic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal fanfiction

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reiderwriter · 9 months

Text

♦️Pardon The Way That I Stare♦️

Chapter 8 of That's What You Get

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Summary: After some encouragement from Emily and Penelope, you try to explain your reaction to Reid at work. Until you find yourself reacting to him more and more, distracting you from doing your job. Warnings: Alcohol consumption, mentions of sex, Reader is just really horny for Reid (REAL). A/N: We're getting closer to the climax and I'm SO beyond excited for everyone to read the next chapter because I think it's going to be so good but also so evil and I enjoy that very much. If you like the series, let me know by dropping a message in the replies or in my inbox, and follow my other account @reiderslibrary for just fics from me without my random thoughts and bullshit in between... You can find masterlist here, and the series masterlist is linked here!

You were stupid, there was no other logical explanation for it. Staring at Emily on your doorstep as your brain stood there, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, trying to process the words she’d just said to you, there was really only one thing running through your brain.

“I’m a fucking dumbass.” you groaned, your hands coming up to your head as you pondered your next move.

“There’s no chance that you’ll believe this was all just one practical joke that I’ve been playing to test how quickly you could turn up at my place with wine?” You looked up hopefully at Emily, and she returned with a concerned look of her own, that silently communicated ‘No, I wasn’t born yesterday.’

“Worth a shot, come on in.” You opened the door wider for Emily and grabbed a second glass from your kitchen to share the wine before she could start her interrogation.

“So,” she prompted as soon as you returned to the couch, and you sighed heavily as you nodded and began.

“I married Reid in Vegas.”

“Yes, I got that from the text, what I didn’t get was why, what, when, where, who, and how! Question words, Y/N, important information if you please.” You chuckled at Emily’s tone, and you melted a little into your couch. Just like with Penelope, letting others know had comforted you. You’d never been one to bottle up your emotions, and you couldn’t exactly tell Spencer how you felt about him, so your dearest FBI-assigned best friends were a welcome compromise.

“You promise not to tell anyone? Penelope knows, and so does Rossi, but no one else does. Well maybe someone else but I don’t know who that someone is - long story.” You rambled, still aware of the promise you’d made with Spencer, and knowing that you’d actually broken it twice now.

“Scouts honor, now get on with it.”

“You were never a scout.”

“That’s beside the point, Y/N, now spill!”

“Do you remember when we finished the case in Vegas last weekend, and we all wanted nothing more than to go home, but the jet was landed?” A small nod encourages you to continue. “Well, Reid offered to show me this bar that he thought I’d enjoy, and honestly, I’d had a tense phone call with my mom and was feeling a bit crappy, so I thought a drink wouldn’t hurt.”

“A drink might get you married though.” You glared at her at the interruption, and she held her hands up in surrender as you continued.

“The bar was amazing, and he noticed I was feeling down, and I don’t know, he just has this way of making me feel calm and fully together. I was a mess earlier that day, but with like one short conversation, he kind of turned my mood entirely around.” You flushed then and decided to ignore Emily’s next interjection.

“Oh god…”

“Apparently after that, we went to a casino or another bar or something, but honestly, I drank so much I don’t remember any of that. But at some point, we bought a very expensive engagement ring, made our way to the Bureau for Wedding Licences and then a chapel and now we’re legally married.” You tried to end your story there, but Emily wasn’t having that.

“No, you’re not stopping there. You said you kissed, and you ruined everything, and you mentioned a wedding night in that text, do not shortchange me now, Y/L/N. Wait, should I be calling you Reid now?” She grinned at the flush that coated your entire body with that, and you buried your head in your pillows.

“Okay, okay. Well, we’re trying to figure out who the witnesses to our wedding were. We know that two team members were there, and Penelope was one of them, but Spencer doesn’t know that yet. Again, another long story.” You let your words sink in as you realize the tangled mess you’d spun for yourself in the last week.

“We spent some time researching our options on Saturday night, to see if we could get our memories to come back and I might not have left until a couple hours ago?”

“Y/N! You’ve been banging Reid for the last three days?”

“No! No, nothing like that, we didn’t- well, we did just not at his house, but also I don’t think you want to hear about that.” You spilled all the details about your last few days with Reid, his touches, his care, the dates you’d been on, the way you’d wrapped yourself around each other in your sleep, but still woken up to an empty bed, all the way up to that fateful kiss and your stupid reaction.

“So there, I’ve ruined it.” Emily looked at you pityingly and started to say something when your doorbell rang a second time.

“That’s reinforcements,” Emily said, standing and moving to greet the newcomer herself. You were relieved when Penelope Garcia came marching through the door, ice cream in hand and mouth already moving.

“Have no fear, your guardian angel is here. Emily texted me en route and I disentangled myself from my plans with a now very suspicious Derek Morgan to race over here. I think I managed to throw him off the scent by mentioning my ukelele lessons with Sam though, he always kinda glazes over whenever I go into heavy details about that.” She perches herself on the couch beside you and starts organizing things on the table, pulling out three tubs of ice cream and locating adequate spoons in the drawer.

“Pen, you didn’t have to do all this…”

“Yes, I did. Emily tell her I did. I need all the details that you suddenly remembered Y/N or I’m going to go crazy, and let me tell you, I am not an effective tech analyst when my mind is all aflutter with wonder.” You smiled awkwardly at the situation. You’d glossed over the details of your wedding night with Emily, going no further than insinuating that you’d had sex, but now the pressure was on.

“We just want to help you, Y/N. And we’re morbidly curious.” Emily joined in. Both of their eyes were trained on you in a hopeful expression, leaving the ball firmly in your court as you fought down the embarrassment rising from the back of your throat.

Closing your eyes, you took a deep breath.

“I think it was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life,” was all you managed to squeak out before they were reacting, asking twenty questions each in the space of a minute as your body both caught fire at the memory and shrunk down to the size of an ant at the attentions.

“Calm down, calm down, I’ll tell you more but you have to calm down.” They stilled themselves and bit their tongue, and you continued.

“Well I don’t want to get into the, uh, specific details, but let’s just say that he’s very good at putting theory into practice. That or he’s actually very experienced in sex and nobody ever realized, because the things he was doing were like, expert-level maneuvers. I didn’t think I was that flexible until he was hitting from-”

“OKAY not that much detail, this is still Reid we’re talking about.”

“Sorry,” you giggled sheepishly and decided to spare them all the details. “All I’ll say is that we both finished multiple times. And I might have stupidly let him finish inside of me.”

“Y/N, you should know better! Safe sex is really important, especially if you’re fucking in a hotel room in Vegas.” Emily half-chastised you, but you could hear the humor in her voice and just rolled your eyes.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly having sex with a stranger, I was having sex with my husband.” That got you a teasing cooing from the two women and you buried your face in your hands again.

“So he’s your husband now, is he? How long have you been married? Like three days?”

“Five. Fuck, we’re running out of time.” The length of time that had elapsed since you’d walked down the aisle shocked you as soon as you’d acknowledged it, and you downed your glass of wine as your brain ran rampant.

“Rossi said that if we didn’t tell everyone in a week, he’d do it for us so we didn’t lose our jobs, and we need to file for an annulment soon so we don’t have to get a divorce but there’s like… a one week window, and it’s already been five days. Shit. shit shit shit shit.”

“Hold on, Y/N, you said he kissed you earlier today, right? I wouldn’t exactly recommend getting married and then dating your partner, but it sounds like you both at least like each other enough to pursue this relationship, why would you need an annulment?” Emily’s confusion only served to remind you of the reason they were both here in the first place.

“That’s the problem. I think he thinks I don’t like him like that. And it’s totally my fault that he thinks that, because when he kissed me I didn’t react well and then he just left, and I think I ruined everything.”

“Define not reacting well,” Emily probed further.

“I pushed him away and slammed the door in his face. But that was only because I remembered everything that happened between us on our wedding night, and remembering the most satisfying experience of your entire existence while face-to-face with the man who you’d hitherto never thought capable of that, and having it occur in like 0.02 of a second is a paralyzing experience.”

“Oh my god, you’re an idiot,” Penelope whispered from her side of the couch and you nodded heartily in agreement.

“And what, he just left?” Emily asked again, tone incredulous with all the information she was receiving.

“Well when I’d had my moment and realized what I’d done, I opened the door again and he wasn’t there. And that was only like a minute later. He messaged me this after he left.” You grabbed your phone and opened it up, showing the girls the message and noting their winces in reaction to his words.

“It’s bad, right?”

“No! No, this is salvageable! You just have to… be brave?” Penelope didn’t seem to believe her own words as you pulled your phone back and poured yourself another glass, ready to drown your sorrows once again. Emily was a little more confident.

“Okay. Here’s what you do. I’m going to talk to Rossi for you tomorrow morning at work, get him to hold off on his big reveal while you go and explain everything to Spencer. How does that sound?”

“That sounds doable, I guess.” You sniffled a little, rereading the text having made your emotions jump back up to the surface again as you fought off tears.

“Brilliant. And then you can stay married and continue having wonderful sex, and make some genius babies and make me their godmother.” You threw a pillow at Penelope that she was just too slow to catch, and filled the rest of your evening with wine, ice cream, and good company.

–X–

Emily sends you a thumbs-up text after she talks to Rossi the next morning, and a weight falls off your shoulder. One step down, one to go right?

You’d arrived at work probably a little bit too early, having spent the night tossing and turning and playing every possible outcome in your mind over and over again. It had been half an hour before the next person turned up, and Hotch had only given you a confused half-nod in greeting before secluding himself in his office. Rossi had been the next to arrive, about twenty minutes later, and he too had questioned your presence but not in so many words.

“Early morning, Y/N? Settling into new routines in your newly-wed life, are we?” You’d stuttered out an answer but he was halfway up the stairs by the time you finished, obviously meaning the comment to be rhetorical.

Morgan, Emily, and JJ were all next, showing up only a few minutes before your shift officially started, but there was no sign of Reid, and you were running out of time - and privacy - to talk to him.

Then at 9 sharp the elevator doors opened, and from your seat at your desk, you watched him step out, feeling your tongue grow thick and your heart beat faster as he made his way into the office. This wasn’t how you were supposed to feel, this was cartoonish like a teenage boy in a brat pack movie watching the hottest girl in the school walk down a corridor. This was Spencer, your husband, and your best friend, and here you were feeling giggly and shy.

You almost felt like texting Emily back, telling her if you started giggling and twirling your hair, to take you out back and put you out of your misery.

He didn’t make eye contact with you as he settled into his morning routine, pulling off his scarf, putting his bag away, and then moving to the kitchen to fill up on his morning coffee. You did your best to covertly follow him, trying not to alert the others to your heart eyes as you looked at him and forgot everyone else.

“Spencer, can we talk?” You blocked off the entry to the kitchen as he spun around to face you, a bittersweet smile playing on his lips.

“Sure, Y/N, what’s up?” His voice didn’t betray any of his emotions, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, and you could tell you’d hurt him the day before. You took a deep breath and walked closer to him as he continued making his coffee, again refusing to look you in the eyes as he continued as normal.

“It’s about yesterday-”

“We probably shouldn’t talk about this here, right?” He cut you off in a whisper, his voice sending shivers down your spine as you gripped the countertop beside him for support. You’d gotten closer than you expected at first, somehow magnetically drawn to him, your body language just as open to him as he was closed to you.

“I think we need to, Spence. I’m sorry, I panicked.”

“No, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have done that-”

“Spencer I got my memory back.” His eyes widened and he blossomed in front of you again, attention entirely on you now as he took in your words.

“You did?”

“Partially, only the… Only the memories of your hotel room.” His eyes darkened in understanding, moving unconsciously closer to you, placing a hand next to yours on the counter as he effectively trapped your body in.

“Oh. Those memories.”

“Yeah. So you can see why I was a bit distracted.” He nodded at your words, but he was still coming closer to you now. Your body felt weak underneath you, entirely reacting to his closeness, the warmth rolling off his body, the electricity sparking between you despite him not touching you anywhere.

“Distracted?” His eyes darted to your lips as he grew closer, and your legs chose that exact second to give in underneath you.

Your knees hit the ground uncomfortably, as he reacted to your sudden movement, trying to grab you and pull you up, but only managing to grab the hand that was already holding the counter above you, awkwardly twisting and pinning your arm up.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, I’m sorry, I think… I think I should go,” you were face to face with his crotch, and looking up at him in that position was certainly giving you unwholesome thoughts. He jumped back as you scrambled out from underneath him, begging whatever god was out there that none of the profilers you worked with would question the dazed state that would follow you for the rest of the day.

–X–

Despite your need to straighten things out with Spencer, you’d avoided him for the rest of the day, and, having been called out on a case, you spent the better part of the week avoiding him as well. After literally falling for him, you’d decided that maybe in your newly weakened lovesick stage, it was best for everyone on the team that you try to stay as clear-headed as possible.

Not everyone on the team, though, agreed. He’d trailed after you like a lost puppy for days now, and you wanted nothing more than to give in and throw yourself in his arms. But there was a murderer on the loose and you needed to give your entire attention to it.

He’d tried multiple times to get you to help him with some work, suggesting that you go through some files together, or check out one of the witnesses together, much to your discomfort. Luckily, Hotch had picked up on some of the discomfort between the two of you and had kept you somewhat apart, not asking questions.

But the last night on the case, he’d cornered you, and you had to work twice as hard to extricate yourself from the situation.

“Y/N, why are you avoiding me?” He’d caught you alone in the hotel lobby, pulling you into a dark corner without much foot traffic to confront you. “Is it because of the kiss? Because the way you talked about getting your memories back the other day made me think we were okay about that again, but if we’re not then I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not the kiss, Spence, and we really shouldn’t be talking about this here.” You tried to turn and leave, but he grabbed your elbow and spun you back into him, bodies pressed flush up against each other now.

“Spencer let go, someone could see us.” Even you knew your voice sounded half-hearted, not really wanting him to stop touching you at all.

“If it’s not the kiss, then why are you acting like I don’t exist?” His face was close again, and you felt your body reacting the same way it had done in the staff kitchen. Your knees went weak again, but he was prepared this time, holding you up in his arms, gently maneuvering you so you were pinned against the wall.

“Is this it?” He asked, letting his hands trail over your body as you whimpered under his touch. “Your reactions?”

Your brain was empty of a response, so you just held still, desperate to see what he would do or say next.

“You know, the deadline on our annulment has passed. It’s been over a week now,” he said, his forehead resting on yours as he brought his hips ever closer.

You were the one that gave in first, pushing your head up to capture his lips in a crushing kiss, needing him the way you needed water, food, and sleep. You’d deprived yourself for so long, and now you were hungry, ravenous, and he was the same. Your lips opened, and soon his tongue was snaking in, caressing you in ways both familiar and new, and your entire body heated up to its boiling point.

You moaned under his touch as his hands wandered, silently begging for more of him. Your brain only kicked back into gear when you registered the sound of voices about to turn the corner. Quickly pushing him off, you pulled yourself together just as JJ and Morgan found you there.

“Y/N, Reid, Garcia got a positive ID on our unsub, we’re about to go SWAT his house, get your gear ready.”

Either you were very good at masking your emotions and the physical outburst you’d just shared, or Morgan was just too caught up in getting his job done that he didn’t look too closely at the way Reid’s tie was half undone, your lips were pink and swollen and that both of you were breathing abnormally. Whichever it was, you were just thankful that neither of them questioned you as you all left to go and do your job.

–X–

To your detriment, you’d avoided him on the jet back as well, choosing to wrap a blanket around yourself and sit in a single seat at the end of the plane rather than risk his hands on you again like last time. You already couldn’t be trusted around him, and you wanted to take no risks with everyone else present.

He’d sat in your line of vision purposefully though, making eye contact every now and then to remind you that he was still watching you. You’d feigned exhaustion and pretended to sleep in the end, despite the flight duration only being a measly two hours. He’d let you exit the plane alone though, and said a general goodbye to the team upon landing, giving you a second look and wave before taking himself home.

The ball was firmly in your court.

“What the hell was all that?” Emily whispered in your ear as you both watched him leave alone. “What happened to the plan?” You smiled awkwardly, not wanting to admit how fucking horny the man made you feel, and how it was affecting your work performance so badly that avoiding him was the only way to keep your job.

“We had the talk, everything’s fine.”

“The two of you aren’t walking out of here hand in hand, so obviously everything is not fine, Penelope, tell me I’m wrong.” The other woman had stumbled into the bullpen upon landing and Emily had immediately drawn her into your hushed conversation as soon as Morgan had made to go home as well.

“What’s going on, hot stuff, I thought you’d be enjoying every second of your marital bliss by now.”

“He’s too distracting.” You whisper shouted at him. “He kissed me again last night and I almost let him take me in the lobby. And Morgan and JJ almost caught us, so yeah, he’s too distracting.”

“Oh god, you’re horny for Reid.” Emily laughed slightly at the implication as if it had just dawned on her and you hadn’t had an entire conversation where you fawned about how good in bed he was.

“Yes, I’m horny for Reid, okay, now please stop laughing, I’m in pain.”

“Well you know there’s only one solution, right?” Penelope said as if it were clear as day. “You need to go have sex with him again. See if you can be normal with him when you’re not so pent up.”

“I don’t know, Pen….” You were still staring at the elevator doors, even after it had been so long since he’d left.

“What is there to not know? You like him, he likes you, you’re married. Like you said before, it’s not like you’re having sex with a stranger, he’s your husband.” Having your words thrown back in your face gave you the boost of confidence that you needed, and you sprang from your chair.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Emily repeated and you looked back down at the two women.

“Okay, I’m gonna… I’m gonna go seduce my husband, I guess?” You turned on your heel and left, marching out to the sounds of whoops and cheers from the two women behind you.

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 11 months

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It’s gone midnight and I’m thinking about Six of Crows so y’all know what that means: it’s time for a long rambling thought process that will hopefully have some interesting insights into the books in it.

I want to talk about the animal, mostly bird, symbolism of these books because although it’s obviously something we’re very aware of I also think it’s something that runs a lot deeper than we necessarily always realise/talk about. Even when people aren’t being directly involved in bird metaphors (crows, pigeons, peacocks) they are often described as “squawking”, “flapping”, or with other phrases that further this semantic field.

Now the crows is obviously the main source of the symbolism, and it’s openly talked about in the book with the speech on how the recognise human faces and how they support each other. I’ve also seen a few people online talking about the Crows in conjunction with a poem/nursery rhyme about crows (it’s one of those that has many different versions spun of it, some know it was counting magpies rather than crows) wherein 6 crows symbolises gold, of course greatly linked to the plot of the novels as well as their anti-extreme capitalism message. It’s also key to mention that crows are massively underestimated birds in the general public view; they’re far ‘smarter’ animals than we would typically expect. Crows have a very high brain to body mass ratio, I believe the highest of any birds but don’t quote me on that, and although we understand very little about the brain the size ratio is currently considered a very good indicator for the general intelligence level of the animal. Crows can make tools, hide their food, mate for life, and - VERY interestingly for this book analysis - have even been suspected to hold funerals. Now I want to be clear I’m working on a mix of random knowledge and the first helpful looking website that came up when I googled ‘fun facts about crows’ so I am by no means an expert here, but to my understanding the practice that was initially considered to be a ‘crow funeral’ is actually a process wherein crows will gather around a dead crow to look for potential danger. So I feel like the links I’m establishing here are relatively obvious, the point is that, like the birds themselves, the Crows are undervalued, underestimated, and unexpectedly successful. But the symbol of the crow in these books arguably goes even further.

The crow-headed handle of Kaz’s cane represents everything about the crow I’ve already mentioned on top of his own symbolic layering to the cane as a sign that no part of him has not been broken, and no part him is not better for having been broken. So in Chapter 27 of Crooked Kingdom, when Kaz returns to the Slat and fights the Dregs before leading a coup against Per Haskell, the cane with the fake crow’s head that Haskell has contrived to mock him effectively represents the failing of everything the Dregs represent. They’re last, the remnants, the people with nowhere else to go: they are the people who have been broken and have made something new for themselves. Except Haskell. So the sheer ridiculousness of him mocking Kaz’s cane, something he clearly thought would win him favour and success, in the end becomes one of the biggest aspects of his downfall. Inej describes the moment when the Dregs begin to support Kaz, the way the look at Per Haskell with discomfort - “the feathers in his hat, the canes in his hands” (and then she goes on to highlight how they’ve seen Kaz use his cane in fights, “wielded with such precision”, whereas Haskell is washed-up, pathetic, never could have taken the fight Kaz did and walked out the other side). Of course they realise, then, how completely and utterly wrong all of this was. Because when they’re confronted with both of those canes they realise something. They know what Kaz’s cane represents; it’s power and strength in spite of a world that has that has scorned him, it’s taking something that was broken and not fixing it but emphasising it and making it into a threat, into a symbol, into a strength. They know that, even though they don’t know what happens in Kaz’s head, because they see themselves in that. The Dregs; the literal bottom of the Barrel, who have been broken and who have clawed their way to survival. They cannot see themselves in Haskell’s mockery cane. Haskell is not a man who reflects what the Dregs are at their core, but Kaz is. The emphasis on the feathers is also really interesting, because I think it’s implying a sort of gaudy, colourful feathering that (despite fitting in with the style of the Barrel) does not represent the symbol of the crow; it is not something shadowed, something half hidden that could have an unexpected bite. It’s almost more akin to Heleen’s gaudy peacock feathers than it is to anything the Dregs understand, or represent through being Crows.

The pigeons I don’t really see anyone talking about, but I think it’s pretty interesting. The idea of ‘the pigeon’ is the same as ‘the mark’; they’re the victim, the fool who’s easy to swindle. I think the imagery of the fools being pigeons, ie being everywhere and massively populating big cities, is really clever to show a divide between the few, the Crows, and the many, the pigeons. However, it’s not only the Crows who remark on others being ‘pigeons’, but other gangs as well. When Kaz confronts Pekka about the scam he ran on him and Jordie, he says “you were just two pigeons, and I happened to be the one who plucked you”. I’m not gonna lie to you guys I’m losing my point slightly, but I just googled ‘crows and pigeons’ and the first thing that came up was about how crows sometimes eat pigeons so I reckon that’s pretty relevant.

Ok I’m really tired and I feel like I’m clutching at straws here, so I dunno I guess if this does well then I’ll cover peacocks, lions, and the general semantic field of birds in another post. I hope at least some of this made sense, thanks for reading it if you bothered to get this far

#grishaverse #leigh bardugo #six of crows #crooked kingdom #inej ghafa #nina zenik #kaz brekker #jesper fahey #matthias helvar #wylan van eck #kanej #wesper #helnik #crows #soc #fantasy analysis #fantasy books #book analysis #assorted analysis - grishaverse

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 2 years

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things I do to unstick my book

(I’m a pantser!)

Ask if this scene really needs to be a scene or if I can just summarize it

Ask if this summary really needs to be summary or if I need more scene

Write a very focused, very pretty sentence

Circle back a couple scenes & ask if one of them is causing “symptoms” later in the book

Get in and get out (push through a tough scene as fast as possible & then run forward and fast like wind to the next bit)

Add an exciting element (a new character, a change of location, other… things ;))

Pause and revise if I’m feeling destabilized

Be specific about what I DON’T like (example: I can’t get past this scene because the dialogue is so mechanical instead of “ahhh I hate it all”)

Read what I last wrote aloud (to hopefully sink into some momentum) OR get a robot to read it to me

Try a teeny tiny writing sprint (1-5 minutes of nonstop writing)

Write a flashback (bonus points if it’s connected emotionally or plot-wise to the fictive present)

Read from a literary godparent (this is when you pull out the books/stories/poems etc that make you excited about writing!)

Write or brainstorm every possible direction of a scene (sometimes grueling, sometimes worth it)

Sit and think (in a bathtub, on a walk—try to immerse yourself in your story like you’re a random character who got plopped in there; what do you see?)

Method write

Find a word that excites you and use that in your next scene

Double check if you’re hitting the right story beats (or if you skipped one, spent too long on one, spent too little on one, etc)

Write “bare bones” and come back to fine tune it later (similar to get in and get out)

Write with your eyes closed (be warned of incomprehensible text if you can’t type with closed eyes)

Break down your causal chain bit by bit (even the boring parts) and see if there’s a broken link. Then delete the boring parts (sometimes we just need to see how EXACTLY we got to a place and how EXACTLY that leads us to the important bit--I find I missed something critical when I do this).

Rely on crutch words, boring details & trust you can edit it later (sometimes the idea of perfection in draft 1 can be unproductive)

Ask a friend to read the work & tell you what they think (sometimes we need help; writing is hard)

Ask a friend for a compliment read (sometimes we just need to be hyped up)

Change the tense (temporarily & be warned that different tenses may require different approaches when drafting, I only do this when I’m not sure what else to try)

Talk myself through the problem as if I’m talking to a friend (I pull up my notes and literally start typing: “so I’m struggling with XYZ scene right now for XYZ reason and I don’t know what to do. What if XYZ happened, or what if I changed XYZ?”)

Take a break—sometimes I’m just tired/burnt out/not in the mood to write (that’s okay!)

I post more tips I’ve picked up along the way on youtube!

#writing #writerblr #amwriting #writeblr #writing community #writing tips #not me posting this just so i can compile #my favourite tips in one place lol #because i keep forgetting!!!#and i'm like!!!#you already have!!!#solutions for this!!!

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naughtyneganjdm · 5 months

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Naughty or Nice - Chapter 13

Summary: Negan and Y/N get ready to leave her family's farm, but when certain things are revealed it leaves an explosive amount of emotions for everyone.

Characters: Negan, the reader (OC), Maggie, Glenn, Hershel, Beau, etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51464518/chapters/134344273

Warnings: Swearing, severe angst, etc.

Notes: This is my second to last chapter. It's long. It's very angsty and I love you guys who put up with this the whole time and those who have taken the time to comment! I appreciate you all.

You can tell yourself that it’s going to be easy breaking up with someone, but it never is. Especially when it’s someone you consider to be an overall good person. A person where there is really no good reason for breaking up with them. Other than you just don’t love them and they aren’t for you. So many people would tell Y/N that she was crazy for giving up Glenn. He was sweet. He was caring. He was cute. But he just wasn’t someone she was in love with. Standing before his bedroom door this morning had her feeling awful about the decision she was about to make.

At first, she considered actually sitting down and talking with Glenn. That was probably the most kindhearted option and the best thing to do, but she couldn’t gather enough strength to wake him. Negan and Maggie had broken up the night before, agreeing that they didn’t belong together. Telling Glenn that to his face when Glenn was actually good really made things hard. Because of that she decided to write Glenn a letter. It was vague, but it just stressed that she found someone else that she realized she was in love with and it was an attempts at letting Glenn down easily instead of hurting him.

Thinking back on her relationship with Glenn, it was always pretty obvious that the only reason she continued on with the dating part was because she actually enjoyed his company. When Glenn showed up in Y/N’s life, she was always busy and deep into work. It didn’t really give her time to socialize or date.

There was no plans on having Glenn in her life. Hell, he was just a guy that delivered her pizza to her late one night that was nice to her. Both of them just enjoyed talking to each other. Glenn confessed that most people didn’t treat him like a human being and she lacked connection with people outside of her job. They hit it off in that sense. But what she really needed was a friend and Glenn provided that for her.

Asking Glenn on a date was more so a way of her trying to get him to spend more time with her instead of her having to order pizzas every time she wanted to talk to someone. What was nice about everything was being able to have someone to share moments with. To not feel like she was alone, but she never truly felt like she was in love with Glenn. They only had sex because Y/N felt like she had to after how long they had essentially dated. For her, she never felt connected to it. She loved Glenn in the friend way so it only felt awkward any time she had to get intimate with him.

When Glenn asked her to marry him, it was on a vacation they had taken together to France. They were in front of a bunch of strangers, miles away from home and they were going to be stuck together for days. The only reason she told him yes was to avoid hurting him and making things awkward. Sure, she wanted Glenn in her life, but not in the way that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

Quietly turning the doorknob, Y/N was hoping that Glenn was still sleeping. Thankfully when the door partially opened, she could see that he was deep in sleep. Stepping into the room, she gazed over Glenn and felt her chest ache. Hopefully by the time that he woke up she would be long gone. Setting the letter down on the corner of the dresser that was in his room, she took a look at Glenn and sighed. Grabbing a hold of the engagement ring that Glenn had given her, she tugged it down her finger and held it between her fingertips. It felt weird taking it off after this long, but she knew this was genuinely the best thing for both of them. Setting the ring down on top of the letter, she knew that he would be confused, but this had to be done.

Taking another look at Glenn sleeping reminded her of the past. Glenn was a good-looking guy, there was no question in that. Most women would be lucky to have someone like Glenn in their lives. That was why she always felt bad for wanting more. Glenn was enough. Just not in the terms of what she needed in her life. Sure, this wouldn’t be the last time she would see Glenn. This was just the easiest way of breaking up with him and making things easier for both of them. Knowing this wouldn’t be the last time seeing him made things easier. Although she assumed he may never want to see her again after all of this.

Backstepping toward the hallway, she wanted to make sure that she didn’t make any noise to draw him to wake up. Glenn was a pretty light sleeper so this made it hard enough as it was. Taking extra time to close the door, she realized she likely looked silly in how she was acting, but those extra steps to keep him asleep were necessary. Once the door clicked closed, she waited outside of it. Listening closely, she was thankful that she didn’t hear the sounds of Glenn moving around inside telling her that she successfully escaped. Standing still for a moment longer, she finally tip toed back toward the stairs that led to the attic.

Originally, Negan had talked about them revealing things to her family, but that was before he had broken up with Maggie. Truthfully? She was happy they changed their plan. Instead of sticking around, they were just going to leave before everyone woke up. It was the only way that made sense for her. She had written letters for everyone. Everyone except for Hershel. Everything that she had to say had been already said to her father. Once she was done with them, she put them on the counter and addressed each letter to the person it went to.

So it was very important to still move quietly throughout the house. Avoiding conflict and confrontation was key. After everything from the night before, she didn’t want to fight with anyone. And as strong as she was, she knew that she probably couldn’t tell Maggie to her face what she had done. This was good enough. It was easy for everyone and it avoided more fighting.

Closing the door that led to the attic, she moved slowly up the stairs. She was sluggish in her movements. Both from depression and her trying to be quiet. At the top stair she heard a squeak that made her wince. Damn this house for being as old as it was. Standing beside the bed was Negan attempting to prepare the shirt that he was about to put on. Hearing the stair squeak drew him to look over his shoulder at her, flashing her one of his charming smiles.

In his eyes Y/N could tell that he was still tired. They had talked most of the night. If anything, they might have gotten an hour of sleep together. It was nice having someone to talk to. With Glenn, Y/N never felt like she could truly connect with him. A lot of her feelings were deep and Glenn was always so positive. It took someone like Negan who could see both the positive and negative in life to help her hear what she really needed.

“Hey there beautiful,” Negan was cheerful in his delivery, turning slowly on his heel. “How’d everything go?”

“I’m a wimp,” she confessed, throwing her hands up when she realized everything she had done was to save herself from more stress and drama. Wiggling her fingers in the air had Negan smirking, but his eyes narrowed showing that he was confused. “My hand hurts. I wrote everyone a letter. I know that was the plan with my family and I thought about talking things out with Glenn, but I just couldn’t bring myself to actually do that. So I wrote him a letter too.”

Heading over to the corner of the room, she rest back against the wall to stare out at Negan who dropped his arm down and was holding his shirt at his side, “I couldn’t even have the decency to break up with him to his face. I just left the letter and the engagement ring on his dresser. I didn’t even go into details in the letter. I just told him I found someone else that I realized I was in love with. That he was a perfect guy and I still cared about him, but I just wasn’t in love with him.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Negan quipped, his eyebrow arching in curiosity. By the expression over her face, he could tell that she didn’t think it was a good way to break up with someone. Moving across the attic, Negan outstretched his arms to place his hands over her hips. Drawing her near him, he tipped down to press a loving kiss over her forehead and she sighed.

It was a loaded question. There were so many things wrong with how she decided to break up with Glenn, but she didn’t want to talk about them. Not right now.

Brushing her fingers through the dark curls of hair that covered Negan’s chest, she gave him a weak smile and looked down. Negan’s jeans were hanging low at his hips giving her plenty enough of a view to have her heartrate quicken. The v-line on Negan’s hips were incredible and she loved his body. A lot of people were attracted to the muscular type, but she was in awe of Negan’s slender physique, “Did I just miss you putting your pants on?”

“I did just change out of my pajamas,” Negan snickered, tapping his fingers against her chin. Leading her to tip her head back, Negan’s expression grew arrogant and she knew that he liked her being naughty with him. “What? Is seeing me shirtless not good enough for you.”

“Come on Negan. Play fair. You know that I love every part of you,” she frowned, sliding her hands down from his chest toward his slender abdomen. Negan’s eyes fluttered to a close when she reached the area just beneath his bellybutton where there was a softness to his flesh. Even the small smirk he gave when she dragged her fingertips further down had a fire growing inside of her. “I’m just suggesting that maybe seeing you changing out of your pajamas and into your pants would have helped me get through the day.”

“Is that so?” Negan’s right eyebrow arched, a growl falling from his throat. Stepping back, Negan unhooked his belt that he was wearing after tossing his shirt back on top of the bed. Dropping her gaze, her lips parted and her breathing grew louder. It was hard to really focus on what with Negan. His body or his incredibly attractive features? Because it was hard doing both. “If it’s the only thing that can help you make it through the day, then who the fuck am I to keep that from you?”

There was something sensual about the way that Negan dragged his fingers across his belt and over the button in his pants. Being sexy wasn’t something he had to try hard at, but he was doing his best to put on a show for her right now. Even the way he dragged down the zipper of his jeans had her heart skip a beat. Ever so slightly, he began to tug at the material of his jeans. Inch by inch he started to reveal his body to her, stopping when he reached the area to reveal the dark curls of hair that surrounded the base of his cock.

“Is this good enough for you?” Negan taunted her, very much aware of the fact that she wanted more.

“Now you’re just being a tease,” she alerted him with her throat growing dry at the sight of him.

“Oh? I’m a tease?” Negan dramatically repeated, turning on his heel and lower his pants just enough to reveal his small bottom her. His antics had her rolling her eyes, but his laughter was cute in itself. “Is this better?”

“I thought you wanted to be good to me,” she played back, sucking faintly at her bottom lip when he shot her a flirty glance over his shoulder.

“Oh, it wasn’t my ass that you wanted to see?” Negan rambled, turning to face her again. Enthusiastically pushing at the material of his jeans and his boxer briefs had them pooling at his ankles. Throwing his hands up in the air in an arrogant fashion and giving her the biggest, cheesiest smile had her laughing. “Better?”

“You’re ridiculous,” she confessed, stepping forward to brace her hand in over the center of his chest. Tipping up on her toes, she brought their lips together having him hum against her flesh between their kisses.

“And you love me anyways,” Negan slurred, his tongue brushing out between her lips. Pulling her flush against him had her gasping out, her right arm hooking around his shoulders. Behind heavy eyelids, Negan stared down at her and shook his head. “I love you so fucking much.”

“And I love you,” she assured him, dragging her left hand down over the side of his face. Stroking her fingers through his short beard had him leaning into her touch and sighing. “You’re a sight I could never get sick of.”

“I do have a pretty nice dick,” Negan admitted causing her to roll her eyes and laugh. “Hey, you’re the one that came in asking to see it.”

“You do, I agree,” she whispered, drawing her finger across his bottom lip. With him pressing faint kisses at the pad of her thumb, she knew that she needed to be able to focus. “But I meant in general. Fully clothed, partially clothed, completely naked…I could never get sick of you.”

“That’s good,” Negan snickered looking down between them and she did the same. “Every part of me belongs to you.”

“So that?” she tipped her head down to stare at his semi erect body. “That’s mine?”

“All yours,” Negan snorted, burying his head against the side of her neck to press wet kisses over her flesh. “If you want, you can touch it a few times, but that’s probably it. We need to get out of here before everyone is up and about. Maybe later tonight after Santa delivers the presents under the Christmas tree, you can let him come down your chimney.”

“Oh wow. That sounds like quite the offer. I don’t know, is Santa going to be dressed up in his suit?” she lowered her hand down between them to curl her fingers around the root to his masculinity hearing him growl. Pressing his forehead to hers, Negan smirked and shrugged his shoulders. “Because I think I’d be more willing to let him come down my chimney if he was dressed appropriately.”

“If that’s something you’re interested in, we can make it happen,” he whispered, his eyebrows furrowing when he looked between them to watch her touching him in delicate strokes. “I just have to warn you it may be the skinniest version of Santa Claus you’ve ever seen. He’s been on a bit of a diet.”

“I can work with that,” she nibbled at his bottom lip having him faintly moan when she gave it a small tug. “It’s too bad we can’t get in a quick session before we go.”

“I kind of fucked myself over in this situation,” Negan informed her with a growl, grabbing a hold of her wrist to stop her from getting him completely rigid in her touch. Damning himself, Negan licked his lips and huffed. “I already have Beau and Erin up. They are packing their things. If I didn’t I would have had no problem doing that.”

“I guess we will just have to wait until tonight to get that visit from Santa,” she chuckled giving him one final kiss before stepping back and away from him. Huffing out, Negan looked down and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You’re not wrong. We do need to get out of here before everyone wakes up.”

“Fuck,” he grumbled bending down to grab his boxer briefs and his jeans. Working them back up his body, Negan took some time to adjust his length in a way that would be comfortable enough for him to zip his jeans back up. “I didn’t think you would be ready to go for another round this morning. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have woken them up.”

“I’ll survive,” she assured him, patting him on the chest and then heading over to the bed. Snatching the shirt that he threw on top of it, she tossed it back to him and he caught it. “The buildup for tonight will make it that much better.”

“I feel like you have to flash me your ass or your tits to only make this fair,” Negan explained which made her laugh at the bluntness of it. “I just gave you everything here.”

“You’re almost fully erect Negan, is that really what you want?” she pointed down toward his groin hearing him huff him response. Stepping forward, Negan brought her in closer to him and hovered his lips in over hers. Gasping out, she felt Negan’s fingers caress up under her shirt to trace his rough fingertips over the lengths of her back. When he slid them back down, his fingers sank beneath the material of her pants to caress at her fleshy bottom. Purring against his lips, she felt her heart rate quicken and she shook her head. “You really do like torturing yourself, don’t you?”

“Probably,” Negan scoffed, giving her bottom another firm squeeze before pulling back and away. Pulling his shirt on had her laughing with the expression that he was making. “I promise to be a good boy from here on out.”

“You better,” she noted heading over toward the window that was in the attic to stare out at the land with the sun only just starting to come up. Thinking about everything she had already accomplished today made her let out a loud exhale. “You don’t think I’m a bad person for breaking things off the way I did with Glenn, do you?”

“You didn’t just take off with no explanation,” Negan reasoned with her going back to packing his things for them to leave. “I think what you did was appropriate enough. I told Maggie the same thing you did in your letter to Glenn. So what makes mine any different than yours?”

“You actually broke up with her to her face?” Y/N suggested, looking back over her shoulder at Negan to watch him gathering his things. “You’re stronger than me. I don’t think I could have dealt with Glenn’s reaction to him finding out I was in love with someone else.”

“Glenn will be fine honey,” Negan stood up from where he was and headed over to where she was standing. Cupping her face in his hands in a tender grasp, his eyes connected with her and he tried giving her the support she needed. “I know you are going through a whirlwind of emotions right now, but you have to trust me. Everything is going to be okay. I promise you that.”

“I’m sorry for being all over the place with my feelings right now. I just feel like a terrible person,” she frowned allowing Negan to pull her in closer to him. Placing her hands in over the center of his chest, she looked up at him with her saddened expression and he shook his head. “After everything that has happened, I don’t know.”

“You’re not a terrible person,” Negan hushed her dragging his thumb out over her bottom lip. “You just want to be happy for once and I really don’t think there is anything wrong with that Y/N. You deserve happiness just like everyone else does.”

“With what Hershel said last night,” she started, but Negan hushed her trying to keep her from letting her thoughts linger with her father.

“What he said doesn’t matter. Nothing he says matters because it’s a bunch of bullshit. He’s a liar,” Negan stressed lowering down enough to press a tiny kiss over her lips. “We’re going to get you away from here and then you are going to realize that everything is as it is meant to be. You will be happy, I promise.”

“How do you think people will handle us leaving together?” she inquired, her face flooding with contemplation. “I forgot to leave the keys with Glenn, but I will set them by the door when we finally do leave.”

“I don’t know. You pretty much told me that we were terrible at hiding things,” Negan replied, letting out a long sigh. An arrogant smirk tugged at his handsome features when he clasped her jaw between his thumb and his index finger. “Maybe the whole family knows at this point. I mean last night, when you first came in here, we weren’t quiet. I think we almost put a hole in the wall with what you were doing originally.”

“I was upset,” she reminded Negan who simply nodded. When she came in here, she just wanted to feel like the center of Negan’s world. Maybe she was too rough, but he handled it well in swaying her to what she really wanted. “I just wanted to feel something else other than the pain. My father tried to suggest that both you and Glenn liked Maggie more than you did me. I told you the things he said last night and they were just eating away at me.”

“I know what you were doing because I’ve been there,” Negan assured her capturing her lips in another kiss that lingered. “I just know that rough sex is not the way to fix a broken heart. You needed to be made love to and if people heard, well then…fuck them. We don’t have to deal with them again after this. What these people say to you just aren’t true and you deserve so much better.”

“Well, Maggie will probably have to get her things from your apartment and Glenn with mine since he does live with me,” she acknowledged realizing how awkward that was actually going to be when the time came.

“I can send Maggie her shit,” Negan suggested with a bounce of his eyebrows. After last night, Negan was not stressing about things as much as Y/N was. Things were done and cleared as far as he was concerned. If Maggie still wanted to be part of his life in some fashion. Alright. If she didn’t, that was okay too. He didn’t care what everyone else thought. “And with Glenn, I can go over if you need me to. Hell, you can just give him the apartment because you can move in with me. That’s the plan anyways.”

“I haven’t even seen your apartment yet,” she pointed out with a laugh knowing that they were just jumping right into things. “You really think it’s going to work out, don’t you?”

“I know it will,” Negan answered her giving her another quick kiss. Stepping back, he moved over toward his things again and made sure that they were packed away. “We should get going though. I have some ideas for what we can do when we get home. That way you can get settled in better.”

“All of my stuff is by the door ready to go,” she reminded him, heading over toward the bed to sit down on the edge of it. Bracing her hands back on the bed, she looked up at the decorations she did for Negan at the start of this trip and observed the room. “I’m taking everything in. This will be the last time I see this place.”

“Your room and this room is definitely something I will always have fond memories of,” Negan snickered, shooting her a glance back over his shoulder. “Oh man. And the barn. I’m serious about the two of us getting a farm together after we get married. Just so we can recreate that little session we had in the barn. Your father would shit his pants if he knew what we did in there.”

“Yes, he would,” she agreed with Negan, a smile tugging at her lips. “Good. He deserves to get angry over the shit he has pulled.”

“Yes ma’am,” Negan slurred, standing up from the ground to pull his things over toward the stairs. Snapping his fingers, Negan headed back for the bed to grab his backpack that was sitting on it, letting out a frustrated sound when the things fell out of it. “Make sure that fucking thing is zipped up before you fucking grab it Negan.”

“Talking to yourself is a pretty solid thing,” she teased him, lowering down to help him pick up the odds and ends that had fallen out of his backpack. Reaching for the thing that had slid under the bed, she felt her heart skip a beat when she realized that it was a jewelry box. Kneeling back, she opened the box and let out a hesitant sound when she saw that it was an engagement ring inside. “Negan?”

“What?” Negan’s smile was big when he lifted his head, his eyebrows bouncing up in an arrogant motion until he realized what she was looking at. The color drained from his face when he attempted to grab it. “Hey…”

“Was this for Maggie?” Y/N inquired, her somewhat happy expression turning to confusion when she observed the ring closely.

“It’s complicated,” Negan went to reach for the box, but she pulled it back and away from him. A sense of panic flooded his veins when Y/N stood up from the ground and headed over toward the corner of the room with a chill flooding down her spine. “I can explain.”

“Go for it Negan because I know it’s not for me. You told me clearly the other day that we were going to get a ring when we went back to New York, so why don’t you explain this for me?” she couldn’t take her eyes off the ring feeling her heart hammering in her chest. Her limbs went numb and hot. It felt like the room was spinning around her. “You always stressed to me that things weren’t very serious with Maggie, Negan. So why the hell do you have an engagement ring in your backpack?”

“I bought it weeks ago,” Negan reasoned with her, stepping forward and placing his hands together in attempts to get her to look at him. “Maggie kept talking about wanting to get married. She wouldn’t stop talking about it. So I got confused…”

“You were going to ask Maggie to marry you on this trip?” she pushed for information watching Negan’s head tip from side to side. “You told me it wasn’t that serious Negan. You repeated multiple times that you two weren’t even living together so I had nothing to worry about. And you have an engagement ring for her?”

“Now hold on a minute,” Negan requested, his voice getting raspier when she snapped the box closed. Damn, he should have hid this fucking ring better. Both Beau and Y/N got upset by it, even knowing that there were no plans to actually give it to Maggie. “This was before anything happened with you. Okay? I bought the ring, I considered asking because I knew I hated being alone. Maggie was getting antsy and I don’t know. It was a buy that I regretted the moment that I did it. The box sat in my top drawer the whole time. When we were packing to come here, I was looking at it and Beau came into the room. I panicked and I shoved it into my bag. I didn’t really consider asking Maggie to marry me after the moment we spent together.”

“That’s bullshit Negan. You wouldn’t have been looking at it if you weren’t considering it,” she countered hearing a breath catch in Negan’s throat. “You threw all that shit on me when we first slept together about how we were meant to be together and you still brought an engagement ring just in case.”

“Y/N, come on,” Negan snickered finding himself uncomfortable that she was getting so upset with things. “What’s going on here? Yes, I bought her a ring before the two of us were together. Yes, I considered asking her to marry me here before we got together. But right now, we’re broken up and I’m ready to start my life with you. I want to be with you.”

“It means that you were in love with Maggie. Like genuinely, full-fledged in love with Maggie,” her words were coming out broken, tears burning at her eyes when she thought about everything that her father said the night before. “Hershel was right. Maggie was always the perfect one.”

“No. No she wasn’t,” Negan noticed that she was picking up on the insecurities of the things that her father had said. “I did it because I was afraid of being alone. Not because I thought Maggie was the love of my life Y/N. It’s because she was acting like she was going to run and I got worried.”

“Which means you were scared of losing her,” she repeated having Negan let out a confused sound. “God, I just confused you Negan. You were in love with Maggie and this ring says everything. You are going to realize the mistake you made. I took my sister away from a man that actually did love her. This is…”

“Hey!” Negan snapped his fingers to try to pull her thoughts back to him, his eyes narrowing when he tried to reason with her. “What does it matter Y/N? Why are you acting like this right now? You love me.”

“Of course I love you, but you were in love with my sister and I took the man that she was in love with. The man that was going to give her everything and…” she felt the guilt tearing away at her when Negan attempted to reach for her wrists. “God, I’m everything my father says I am.”

“No, no you’re not,” Negan tried to pull her to him, but she yanked away from him and he could see that she looked like she was about to be on the verge of a meltdown. “You are reading this all wrong Y/N. It doesn’t matter what I felt before I was with you. This ring, it was the same exact thing you did in your relationship with Glenn. You agreed to the things that Glenn wanted because you didn’t want to be alone. You wanted to feel close to someone, even though you knew that you didn’t love him. We’re the same. The two of us are exactly the same. If you take a moment to really think about it. You will see that.”

Anxiety and her fears were clouding her judgement. Negan could see that in her eyes and her expressions, “That night we first got together, I had no idea you were related to Maggie and I knew that I wanted to be with you. You are this close to having everything you’ve ever wanted and deserved. Don’t let your family ruin this for you.”

“I’m ruining the perfect life for my sister in order to be greedy. Sooner or later you are going to realize that Maggie is the one that you want to be with,” she insisted with a whimper going to step back, but Negan shook his head, his facial expression becoming stern. “I can’t do this Negan. I’m breaking Glenn’s heart, I’m ruining my sister’s future, I’m only confusing you right now because…”

“You’re not,” Negan pulled her in closer to him trying to grasp her face in his hands to get her to focus. “I know you are going through things right now and we will get over this because we love each other. The two of us are meant to be together Y/N. You have to understand that. You’re my soulmate and…”

“Your soulmate died Negan and you just got confused because I got tangled up in your web,” she reasoned with him feeling like she could drop at any point. It felt like her face was on fire. Everything ached the more she thought about all the details of everything she had missed. “I’m no good for anyone Negan. Getting with me is just going to make things toxic and…”

“You have been in this family way too long Y/N. You’re just upset because you are here,” Negan whispered, his head pressing forward to try to rest it against hers to have her relax. “When you are away from them, you are so strong and you don’t care about anyone’s shit. But your family has a way of getting under your skin and breaking you down. You’re not the bad guy Y/N. You never have been. You were the victim and they are gaslighting you right now. You have to fucking see that. Please don’t overthink this.”

“This is a hard thing to forget Negan,” she lifted the box and Negan took it, sliding it into his back pocket. “You loved Maggie enough to want to keep her with you. Even at the office, I was the first person to make the move. I knew you were dating someone and I didn’t care. I just found you so appealing and…”

“We cheated. So fucking what?” Negan scoffed, throwing his hands up in the air when she pulled away from him. “Yes, we cheated and we had incredible sex, but we also connected on another level that I haven’t done with someone in a very long time and I fucking know you feel it too. If I loved Maggie like you are saying that I do, I would have never let what happened between the two of us happen. So please just take a minute and realize…”

“I can’t,” she frowned, turning on her heel to head down the stairs and Negan was quickly stumbling after her. “Negan. I just think I should leave on my own, okay? I have to go.”

“No. No, you’re leaving with me, Beau and Erin,” Negan claimed with apprehension in his tone, his body locking up when he followed her down to the second level. “Please, think this through. If you weren’t heart broken because of your father right now…”

When they reached the bottom, Negan stumbled over his own feet and almost fell over. Grasping a hold of Y/N’s hands before she could take off, Negan had hopes that he could appeal to her to stop her from freaking out. Before he could say anything else, the sound of a door being pulled open was heard. Gazing back, Negan rolled his eyes and cussed out when he saw that it was Glenn standing in the doorway to his bedroom holding the letter that he had obviously read and Y/N’s engagement ring.

“Motherfucker,” Negan scowled, his face scrunching up in anger. “This is just my fucking luck. Come the fuck on.”

“Can we talk about this?” Glenn ignored Negan’s frustrations, moving into the hallway with Negan still holding onto Y/N’s hands. Tugging her hands from Negan, she shook her head and shoved her hands into her pockets to keep Negan from touching her. Red flooded into her face showing the discomfort she had with Glenn running out and interrupting them. “I think this is something we really need to talk about.”

“Now is not the time buddy,” Negan warned with a huff, finally getting Glenn to notice that he was there. Anger flooded into Glenn’s brown eyes with Negan telling him what to do. “We are going through something right now and…”

“I think I can decide when it’s the right time for me to talk to my fiancée,” Glenn exploded on Negan, his voice growing louder and it made Negan step back.

“Ex fiancée,” Negan stressed that word because in his mind? Y/N was his fiancée now after what they had experienced together on that loop of decorations the other night.

“Excuse me?” Glenn was visibly ready to fight until the sound of another door opening followed.

“What’s going on out here?” Maggie’s surprised eyes gazed upon the commotion that was happening outside of her room. Glenn looked like he could die on the spot, but also appeared to be enraged. When her eyes fell upon the ring that was between Glenn’s fingers, she let out a gasp. Clutching the door, Maggie turned white as a ghost. “What’s happening?”

“I’m leaving,” Y/N claimed, holding her keys up in the air letting them jangle. Heading for the stairs, she was eager to make a quick escape since this situation was only getting worse. This was not how she wanted to have Glenn learn about things. She was meant to be gone by now.

“Wait!” Negan snapped following her down, but he wasn’t the only one. Maggie and Glenn were on his tail which only irritated Negan more. Once she got downstairs, Y/N grabbed her things and she was quick to make it to the door. Heading toward the car, she threw her things in the trunk and they were all outside with her. “You are rushing this without thinking.”

“All I’ve had is time to think Negan,” she vented letting out an upset breath with Glenn and Maggie approaching them.

“I still don’t understand what the hell is going on,” Maggie demanded some kind of an answer, throwing her hands up in the air trying to get everyone to pay attention to her in the moment. “Why the hell is Y/N leaving? What is going on? Someone needs to start giving me some answers.”

“She wrote me a letter breaking up with me and she gave me the ring back,” Glenn informed Maggie, fear in his voice when they stood in front of the car door not allowing Y/N to leave. At this moment Y/N was both annoyed and infuriated. This was embarrassing that it came to this. Glenn shifted on his feet, his shoulders shrugging when he spoke in a whisper. “Are you leaving because of us?”

“Glenn!” Maggie scolded Glenn in something close to a whisper.

“Because of you?” she repeated, looking between Maggie and Glenn. Both of them looked like they could die on the spot with her questioning Glenn’s response.

“What’s going on?” Hershel called out from the steps and Negan’s overwhelmed growl of frustration filled the air. With her father bringing the attention to him, it allowed them to see that not only was Hershel out there with them, but so was Shawn, Annette and Beth who had obviously all heard the commotion of their bickering. “Do you all know what time it is? You’re out here screaming at one another.”

“What the hell is going on right now?” Y/N let out an uncomfortable laugh noticing the guilty features over both Glenn and Maggie’s faces. Having Hershel ask that question too was also borderline amusing. Pointing between Glenn and Maggie had them turning their eyes back to her instead of her family. “You want to know why I’m leaving? I’m leaving because Hershel requested me be gone in the morning.”

“And we’re going with her!” Negan spoke up, his tone determined when Y/N spun on her heel to glare back at him. Waving his hand about, Negan wanted to make sure he made everyone aware of what their original plan was together. “Beau, Erin and I are going with Y/N. We’re all going back to the city. Back home.”

“No, you’re not!” Y/N bickered in frustration trying to pull away from Negan when he attempted to touch her arm again. “I’m going alone.”

“Give me a fucking break Y/N,” Negan begged of her, sadness behind his eyes that she was having a breakdown of this caliber. “You know this is what we planned. It’s what we’ve had planned all along. Don’t let your father ruin this for you. Your father asking you to leave only sped up this plan by two days.”

“Daddy asked you to leave?” Maggie wondered looking back over her shoulder at Hershel who had his hands buried in his pockets from where he was standing on the porch. It was like Maggie was completely ignoring the things that Negan had said to Y/N. “Why?”

“He demanded me to leave. Told me he wants nothing to do with me and I plan on giving it to him,” Y/N answered and the sound of Annette getting upset from Y/N’s confession was heard. Refusing to look at the rest of her family, Y/N bit back on her emotions and gave a simple nod. Having her eyes locked on Maggie’s made sure that she had her full attention with Maggie. “You should feel so good though Maggie because he let me know that you are better than me in every way. Negan sees it. He sees it. Glenn sees it. Apparently, everyone knows that I’m trash and you’re better than me.”

“Why does that whole statement feel like you are angry with me?” Maggie was offended that it felt like Y/N was mad with her over the things that Hershel undoubtedly said the night before. “It’s not my fault that daddy is the way that he is with you. It never was,” Maggie asserted herself and there was fury in her green eyes when she spoke. “I told you last night that talking to him about your mother was going to end up with you in pain. It was going to ruin things. I asked you not to do it.”

“I tried listening to you,” Y/N reminded her of how she tried to leave with Maggie, but Hershel trapped her in the kitchen. Maggie was there, she knew that it took a while for Hershel to force Maggie away. “I didn’t get an answer anyways. I was just reminded again about how imperfect I was. How awful I am. I know it’s not your fault Maggie, you really are perfect. And I know that.”

“No she’s not,” Negan threw his hand up in the air drawing Maggie’s eyebrows to bounce up. “No one is fucking perfect and certainly not Maggie.”

“What the fuck Negan?” Maggie scowled at her ex-lover when Negan shot her a glare and his hands found his way to his hips.

“No one is perfect,” Annette tried making her way down the steps to get everyone to calm down. “I don’t know what happened, but we should probably head back inside and talk things out. Your father may have said something ridiculous last night, but this is my home too and I have a say in who stays and who goes.”

“I agree with her,” Negan blurt out, his hands pointing in the direction of Annette. “We are all emotional right now and I think we need to talk some things out. Rushing into decisions fueled on confusion and anger will only hurt people more.”

“Wait, I’m really having a hard time understanding…” Glenn pushed forward into the group still holding onto the letter and the ring that Y/N had left behind for him. “If you don’t know about Maggie and me, then why did you break off the engagement and want to leave without me?”

“Come again?” Y/N stammered, her lips parting when everyone in the group went silent. Turning toward Maggie, Y/N let out a hesitant laugh and looked to Glenn. “What do you mean about you and Maggie?”

“Listen,” Maggie held her hands up in a pleading motion to try to calm the situation. “There is an explanation here.”

“I’m all fucking ears Maggie,” Y/N chided, her hands curling up into fists at her sides when she felt her heart begin to hammer in her chest. “What explanation is that?”

“I was spending a lot of time with Glenn because there was always things going on. And we started really enjoying being around each other,” Maggie slowly spoke out, her hands gradually raising up to try to hint for Y/N to keep calm. “One thing led to another and we ended up…sleeping together.”

“Good lord,” Hershel scoffed from where he was standing on the porch, lowering down to bury his head into his hands when he listened to the drama that was going on in his family. Everyone made some kind of noise in response to what Maggie had said aloud.

“It was an accident and we didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did,” Maggie explained to her sister drawing a laugh from Negan’s lips when he looked to Glenn with a shocked expression. “We just realized that we had so much in common and I know that he’s your fiancé, but things just happened and we wish we could have changed it, but we can’t.”

“Glenn?” Negan repeated pointing toward Y/N’s fiancé letting out an amused breath. Cutting through the anger with his laughter had others looking to him confused. “Fucking hell Glenn, you were supposed to be the good one between the two of us.”

“I’m not a bad guy,” Glenn claimed, placing his hand in over the center of his chest. This was not a situation Glenn was comfortable in and he hated being the center of attention with all eyes on him. “I kept trying to tell Y/N yesterday about things, but I just…”

“Got interrupted,” Y/N finished looking to Maggie knowing that Glenn was on the verge of telling her something last night, but Maggie stopped him abruptly. “So it was just the one time? That’s what you are trying to tell me here? That’s it? Nothing more between you because you realized it was a mistake?”

There was a silence that followed causing Y/N to let out a stressed sound and shake her head, “That’s a no.”

“You obviously don’t like good sex,” Negan commented getting a frustrated expression from Glenn and Maggie threw her hand up in the air. “Come on Maggie, Glenn was a virgin when he got with Y/N. You really think I’m supposed to believe that he’s a good lay? That tells me you definitely fell for the personality because a sex god Glenn is not.”

“You told him I was a virgin?” Glenn seemed upset when he turned to look at Y/N with upset in his eyes. “That’s not something you should be telling someone Y/N.”

“I told her too,” Y/N stated looking to Maggie who seemed like she was about to drop from all of this happening. “I don’t know if she knew before you slept with her or after, but she knew that you were a virgin too.”

“That doesn’t make things better,” Glenn fought back, the color growing more vibrant in his face. “I told you I was a virgin because I didn’t want to make things bad for you. Telling everyone about it makes it seem like I’m horrible at sex.”

“It’s not always about the sex Negan,” Maggie looked to her ex-lover hearing Negan let out a laugh. Folding his arms in front of his chest, Negan was amused to hear this shit coming from Maggie. “Sometimes it’s about connecting with someone on a level that you may not understand, but it’s there. That’s what happened with us. We were just connecting and things happened. It doesn’t have to be good sex for it to happen more than once.”

“Are you saying I’m not good at sex?” Glenn huffed, turning to look at Maggie. There was a silence between all of them and Negan gave a tip of his head. “I’m not bad at it. I thought you enjoyed it with all the times it happened.”

“All the times it happened?” Y/N chuckled repeating the words of Glenn which only worried Maggie more. Glenn seemed more upset that Maggie said he was bad at sex than he seemed upset over what was actually going on here right now.

“Don’t worry bud, with more practice you are bound to get better. Hopefully,” Negan mocked Glenn, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder firmly. Shoving Negan’s hand away had the two girls groaning out in disgust over the two men’s reaction. “I’m just trying to be positive here.”

“By mocking me?” Glenn went to bicker with Negan further and it only had Negan chuckling in amusement.

“Not everyone is good at sex Glenn, some people have it,” Negan started, pointing toward his chest before pointing back to Glenn, “Some people don’t. That doesn’t mean people aren’t going to want to be with you.”

“I can’t believe this was going on under my roof,” Hershel seemed overwhelmed while he rubbed at his face. A loud sigh followed when Annette moved in beside Y/N to get her to try to calm down. Moving closer to the group of them, it was obvious Glenn looked like he was about to pounce on Negan for embarrassing him. Y/N looked like she was going to freak out and Maggie appeared to feel like she just wanted to disappear from the moment. Stepping in beside Glenn had Y/N’s eyes raising up to Hershel. “You see what you caused by coming back here?”

A loud exhale escaped Y/N’s lungs with how that seemed directed at her, “What I caused?” Y/N snapped back at Hershel, a rage flooding through her veins. Pushing through the crowd and toward her father had Annette trying to reach out to her. “Maggie fucks my fiancé under your roof and I’m the problem? I caused this?”

“I told you,” Hershel advanced toward her, shaking his head when he looked to Maggie and Glenn, “you would have known last night if you would have just listened. Anyone with eyes could see the boy was smitten with Maggie. When it comes to you and your sister, people are always going to pick your sister.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Negan called out from where he was standing, attempting to move forward, but Y/N placed her hand in over the center of his chest to get him to stop before he could get in Hershel’s face.

“This is the second time that Maggie has done this to me,” Y/N reminded her father, her tone getting even more upset hearing her father defending what happened with Maggie and Glenn. “First, she did it with Shane and that fucking destroyed me. I was just a teenager dad. And then she does this with my fiancé and it’s my fault? How did I cause this?”

“Maybe if you spent more time on him and less on worrying about me, it might have not actually happened,” Hershel grumbled under his breath and he knew what it was going to do to Y/N with tears burning at her eyes. “You were so damn busy focusing on hating me that you allowed the two of them to spend time together. Can you blame the boy for falling in love with your sister?”

“I don’t know if you genuinely believe you’re a decent fucking person, but you’re a vile piece of shit,” Negan spat trying to get around Y/N, but she did her best to keep the two of them separated. “Who the hell says this kind of shit to their own child? No wonder she feels so shitty about herself with the way that you talk to her. You deserve to be knocked on your ass old man.”

“Negan, please…” Y/N begged doing her best to keep Negan from getting himself in trouble. “I can handle this myself.”

It took Y/N touching his face to pull his attention away from Hershel. Behind his angry hazel eyes, Negan obeyed when she asked him to stop. Even though he wanted to rip this fucker limb from limb, he allowed her to take control of the conversation.

“I don’t even love Glenn, but to hear that coming from your mouth is so fucked up,” Y/N declared, her voice breaking from all the yelling and upset that was going on between them. “You have no idea what you do to my self-esteem Hershel.”

“You didn’t love me?” Glenn spoke in a whisper instead of Hershel responding to Y/N. It wasn’t the person that she wanted to talk to, but it pulled her to look away from her father toward Glenn. Lowering the letter and the ring down at his sides, Glenn visibly looked upset to hear that.

“Why are you acting upset? You didn’t seem to care when the two of us were together? Yet all of a sudden last night you have a change of heart?” Maggie pushed finding herself fed up with the way that Glenn was responding to things. “You told me that you loved me.”

“I love how this was sold as a mistake and now the two of you love each other,” Y/N shook her head with disappointment behind her voice. “Is it real this time Maggie or was it your attempt to actually upset me again for something I’m sure I’ve done to scorn you?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you Y/N,” Maggie suggested throwing her hands up in the air. It was horrible that her whole family was hearing all of this. “What happened with Shane was me being an awful person. I did terrible things back then and I know that. I want us to be close again Y/N. I wanted things to go right. Having this happen with Glenn was the last thing I wanted.”

“Now Maggie has two men fighting over her and then there is you,” Hershel waved his hand in the air pointing over toward the car. “Weren’t you leaving?”

“Okay old man fucking river,” Negan couldn’t hold it in any longer stepping forward, urging Y/N behind him in a protective stance. “I have had it up to here with your fucking nonsense with the way that you treat Y/N. If you weren’t so fucking old, I would knock you on your ass and I’m still considering doing it. I don’t know what the hell is wrong inside of you that makes you want to treat one of your children, one of your own flesh in blood like you do, but you are one sick son of a bitch. And I’m not fighting anyone for Maggie because Maggie and I broke up last night. Reason being, she told me she cheated on me and I told her I was doing the same. And you know what? I’m head over fucking heels in love with your daughter and it’s not Maggie. It’s Y/N and I’ve had it up to fucking here with the way you treat her.”

Again, every person in the crowd made a sound that was either shocked or upset, but Negan didn’t give a shit what they thought.

“Hello Jerry Springer,” Shawn whispered heading over toward the swing that was on the porch to take a seat on it knowing that this was only going to go south from here on out.

“I really don’t care what you fucking think of it either. Y/N is perfect in every way fucking possible and because of you she can’t fucking see it,” Negan was already so upset that Y/N was so prepared to leave since Hershel left her with some terrible thoughts last night. “All I want to do is be with her and she’s so goddamn focused on the horrible shit that you say to her.”

Everyone still seemed so shocked about the truth that he dropped, but Negan just felt his anger building up further inside of him, “Since you’re so big on fucking rules Hersh, I fucked your daughter in your house so many fucking times. We did it in the barn. We did it in her bedroom. We did it in the attic. Both your daughters have called me daddy Hersh. And you know what? I’m a better daddy to both of them than you ever will be. At least I made them feel fucking good. You on the other hand are a miserable piece of shit.”

A gasp fell from Maggie’s throat when Hershel’s face grew red, his breathing growing stronger. There was silence and it was broken up by Beth letting out an amused chuckle, “Holy shit.”

“You’ve been sleeping with Negan?” Maggie called out from behind them getting Y/N’s attention. Hershel had stepped back and away into the house when Maggie approached the two of them. Looking to Negan, Maggie pointed over toward Y/N noticing the way that Negan nodded. Maggie lifted her hand like she was going to speak before turning to quickly bring her knee into Negan’s groin. A groan filtered through the air when Negan fell forward into the snow, his hands clasping onto himself. “That’s really low Y/N.”

“Maggie!” Annette chastised her stepdaughter for what she did to Negan who was down on the ground in pain.

“What I did is low?” Y/N lowered down in attempts to check on Negan with his face buried in the snow. His face was red and the vein at the side of his neck was bulging after how hard Maggie kneed him. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. You slept with my fiancé. I slept with Negan the night before we came here. I didn’t even know he was your boyfriend when the two of us slept together the first time.”

“Bullshit Y/N! This is because of what I did with Shane. You slept with Negan to get back at me for the stuff with Shane,” Maggie insisted which in follow had Y/N rolling her eyes. “You know that I’m right. You always held that Shane shit over my head, so when you had the chance to get your nails into my boyfriend…”

“You have no fucking right to be saying this when you were sleeping with my fiancé,” Y/N corrected Maggie on the way that she was acting, amusement flooding her veins at the thought. “I knew you would pull the Shane thing over me. I should have seen this coming a mile away. I actually did. I told Negan I had to break it off with him originally because I knew it was the way that you would react.”

“Because it’s fucking true,” Maggie bickered with her younger sister while Negan continued to lay between the two of them after Y/N slowly got up to stare down her sister. “There is no other reason for it.”

“I had no idea that Negan was your boyfriend. We were alone at the Christmas party for our work. We got to talking and then we got intimate with one another,” Y/N thought back on what happened with her and Negan. Lifting his hand up, Negan reached for Y/N’s hand and she helped him back up to his feet. Negan’s hand was cupped firmly over his groin holding himself and Maggie scoffed. “I didn’t know he was your boyfriend Maggie because you refused to be in my life over something that Hershel did when we were kids. If you actually tried to stay in contact with me, then this would have never happened. I was just so in love with Negan that I couldn’t stop what we started before we knew you two were together. I’ve never felt for anyone the way that I feel for Negan. I love Negan very much.”

“And so did I,” Maggie suggested making Y/N roll her eyes. “I did.”

“You only liked being with Negan because you thought he was a good fuck and because he had a big dick,” Y/N reminded her of the things that Maggie bragged about when they were alone together about Negan. “You didn’t care about Beau, Erin or the things that made Negan tick. You just cared about whether you got off or not.”

“I am so uncomfortable right now,” Glenn whispered under his breath after what Y/N just blurt out in front of everyone.

“Good for you,” Shawn waved his hand about in the air and Annette hushed him. “Hey, if he’s got it you gotta give the man credit.”

“Shut up Shawn,” Maggie demanded of her stepbrother and he threw his hands up in the air. “It was more than that.”

“Was it though?” Negan could barely get a line out without wincing, but he shook his head. “Our relationship wasn’t that deep Maggie. You and I both know that.”

A loud booming sound went off that drew all of them to jump and they looked back to see that Hershel was standing on the porch with his shotgun in his hand, “Listen here. I’ve heard enough of all of this. You’re going to gather your things and you are going to get the hell out of here.”

“Holy shit,” Negan laughed when he realized that it was him that Hershel was pointing the shotgun at. An amused rumble fell deep from within his throat when he shook his head. “What are you gonna do Hershel? Fucking shoot me?”

“If you want your kids to still have a father, you are going to gather them and you are going to get off my property,” Hershel asserted himself, stepping down from the porch. It didn’t scare Negan that Hershel had his gun on him, instead Negan actually laughed. “I’m warning you son.”

“You’re not gonna…” Negan cussed out, stumbling backwards in the snow after Hershel shot at Negan’s feet, but ended up just missing him. “You crazy old son of a bitch.”

“Hershel!” Annette called out to her husband trying to draw him to knock it off. “What in God’s name are you thinking?”

“Daddy!” Maggie gasped attempting to try to help Negan up to get away from Hershel.

“Why the hell are you shooting at only me and not him?” Negan demanded to know, scrambling back in the snow again realizing how close he was to getting shot. “Both him and I did the same exact thing, yet I’m the one that is getting shot at?”

“Hey,” Glenn stepped back with Negan pointing back at him. “I don’t need to be getting shot at for this.”

“That would be a hate crime Negan,” Beth suggested drawing everyone to look back at her. Having all eyes on her felt uncomfortable, but they were all floored with her answer. Shrugging her shoulders, she pointed toward Glenn and shook her head. “I mean, it would be.”

“What is going on?” Beau’s voice called out from where he was standing at the door after hearing the gun go off. A sense of worry flooded his veins when he saw that Hershel pointed the shotgun back at Negan again. “Erin is upstairs! What in the world are you doing Mr. Greene?”

“You get up there and you grab your things! Leave!” Hershel demanded only to feel Y/N reaching for the gun. Fighting with her father, she finally got it from his hands and heard Hershel releasing a frustrated growl.

“Hey! Hey!” Beau moved forward on the steps, holding his hands out. “How could all of you be doing this when Y/N is pregnant? The stress and getting physical with her won’t be good for the baby! You need to stop this right now!”

“The baby?” Maggie repeated with a sense of shock and even Y/N’s eyes got big. “You’re pregnant?”

“I’m pregnant?” Y/N questioned looking to Negan with a confused expression and Negan half laughed.

“He took the whole trying for a baby thing very seriously,” Negan answered Y/N when Shawn came over to reach for the gun in hopes of taking it away. When Shawn disappeared back into the house to put the shotgun away it made Maggie let out another upset sound.

“You two are trying for a baby?” Maggie couldn’t help but be upset hearing all of that. “Please tell me that you are joking. We broke up last night!”

“Come on Maggie, we’ve been on the offs for a long time,” Negan reasoned with her knowing that it all sounded bad, but it was just how things were. “Yes, we want to have a baby together. Yes, we are trying for a baby and we are engaged. We are going to get married on New Years.”

“How are you engaged when we were engaged?” Glenn still seemed so confused by everything watching Y/N lower her head into her hand. “I don’t understand how the two of you are planning this future together when you were engaged to me.”

“Because she didn’t love you,” Negan answered for her, finally getting up and wiping his hands off on his pants. “And I really don’t think you have a right to be offended there Glenn. You and Maggie cheated as well. Acting so surprised isn’t a good look for you.”

“I can see why Hershel shot at you,” Glenn hissed, stepping forward in the snow to push into Negan’s chest.

“Enough!” Y/N screamed out, finally tipping her head back and letting out an overwhelmed sound. With so much bickering, she couldn’t help but think this was genuinely all her fault for causing all of this drama. “You all need to just stop this shit. You want to know why Negan is the one being shot at?” Y/N turned to her father feeling her heart hammering inside of her chest. “You might think it’s because Negan is disrespectful. No. That’s not it. And it can’t be because he slept with both of Hershel’s daughters. Hell, Glenn did the same thing. Glenn even had sex with Maggie under the same roof which Hershel acted like that was sacrilegious to do. The thing is the reason that Hershel shot at Negan is because Negan cheated on his sweet, sweet Maggie. It has nothing to do with the fact that Negan and I got intimate all over the place. It’s not because Negan says it like it is. It’s because Negan fell in love with me and he dumped Maggie.”

A silence fell over all of them when she called Hershel out for his behavior. And when they thought about it, it did actually make sense what she was saying, “Come on Hershel. Tell me that I’m wrong. When you found out that Glenn slept with Maggie, you told me that it was my own fault. That I deserved it. You didn’t get upset with him for cheating on your middle child. You shot at Negan because he cheated on your favorite.”

“Wow,” Glenn muttered, his words coming out quietly when he actually thought about what Y/N was saying. “Mr. Greene, I did do the same thing that Negan did. It may even be worse what I did because I was engaged to Y/N.”

“Are you asking me to pull the shotgun out on you son?” Hershel questioned, his gaze locking with Glenn who shifted on his feet uneasily. “Then don’t speak up.”

“Yeah, how dare Glenn make a good point. How dare he have the common sense to add two and two together,” Y/N went off on her father feeling her body shaking with how upset she was. Hershel’s face was red and he was saying nothing. “Glenn was engaged to me and he found love with Maggie. Which hey, good for them. I’m glad for them. I find love with Maggie’s boyfriend, not knowing that he was Maggie’s boyfriend and suddenly we are the ones that are wrong? This only confirms everything I’ve said with the way that you are with me.”

No one said a thing and Y/N sighed loudly knowing that her father would never admit to the things that he did that were in a negative light toward her.

“Daddy,” Maggie finally spoke up, folding her arms out in front of her chest. “She’s not wrong. It doesn’t look good. Negan has two children here and you did that. We broke up last night and we were just going to keep it between the two of us until after Christmas because I knew that you wouldn’t handle it well. You do have a clear bias when it comes to me.”

Hershel scoffed and Maggie sighed, “I am in the wrong daddy. Glenn was Y/N’s fiancé and I knew that. I knew what I had done in the past with Shane and how much it hurt her, but I still let it happen. If you’re mad at Negan and Y/N, you should be just as upset with me and Glenn too.”

“What’s really sad is that I’m head over heels in love with that man,” Y/N declared, her words coming out shaken when she pointed to Negan. “When I’m with Negan and his family it is the only time I’ve ever felt seen and loved in my life. And I love his children too. Beau, he’s the most incredible boy I’ve ever met and he has the biggest heart.”

“Then let’s leave,” Beau spoke up, moving down the stairs toward Y/N seeing that she was getting emotional. “We can all leave together. We don’t have to be here. Let’s just go.”

“Beau, your father loved Maggie before I got involved with him,” she insisted feeling Negan moving in behind her to try to touch her and she shook her head. “More than anything, I want to be with you and your family Negan. I do. But I know better. I have to leave.”

“Please don’t do this,” Negan begged, his expressive eyebrows furrowing when he tried following her toward the car that she had already packed to leave. “You’re emotional right now and you just don’t know what you are doing.”

“I know what I’m doing Negan,” she frowned, shaking her head and letting out a long sigh. “I’m doing what’s right.”

“Please,” Beau reached for her this time instead of Negan, his young features visibly upset with what was going on. “Just wait for me and Erin to get our things out here. Then we can leave. You don’t have to run away. We aren’t like your family.”

“Beau,” she whispered, stepping forward to brush her fingers throughout Negan’s son’s hair. “You were the best part about this whole trip. I’ve loved every minute that I’ve gotten to spend with you because you are awesome. I’ve never met someone so talented and capable of so much at such a young age. You have the biggest heart and you stand up for what is right. Your mother and your father raised you to be such an incredible boy and I know things are going to be good for you in the future because you are amazing Beau. You really are. But my father isn’t wrong.”

Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around Beau and gave him a big hug, squeezing him tightly in her arms, “I ruin everything. If I was in your life, I would somehow end up destroying your life like I have everyone’s here. In a perfect life, I could be part of your family, but I’m far from perfect,” she stepped back and away, tears still burning at her eyes when she reached for the door to her car. “Thank you for being the best part of these days for me.”

“Hey,” Negan attempted to reach out to her seeing that she still got in the car and wasted no time in pulling away. Beau stood beside him upset, not sure how to react and Negan’s hands found their way to his hips where they rested. Silence surrounded them and right now all Negan felt was anger. Anger toward these people that they all had a hand in breaking apart one of the most amazing women he had ever known. Finally moving, he stepped before Hershel and there was still anger in Hershel’s eyes from everything that went down. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

There was no response. That was a shock.

“Go get your things and grab your sister,” Negan instructed looking back at Beau with a frown. “We’re leaving.”

----

Digging through the drawers in her office at work, Y/N continued to grab a few more things that were personal items. After packing them into the boxes that she brought with her, she leaned back in her chair and took a look at her office. Once she made it back to New York City, she tried going home to her apartment, but her mind was still going crazy. Lingering thoughts built up inside of her and it led her to come to work. Most people weren’t here because it was Christmas Eve. There were still a few people that came in to finish some things, but she was thankful that she would be left alone for the most part. Right now, what she needed to be was left alone.

If you would have told her when she was younger that she would have been one of the top people at an advertising agency in New York City, she would have never believed it. This right here was everything that she dreamt of growing up. When she was younger, New York City was the one place that her and Maggie used to always talk about. It was the one place she longed for the most because it meant she finally made it. It meant that her art wasn’t a waste of time and everything she did to get here was worth it.

Even her office was a dream come true for anyone. It the corner office is one of the taller buildings in New York City. Two walls of her office were large windows that gave a stunning view of the city and it was part of what she loved about her job here. The views were stunning and always inspiring.

When Y/N left home and finished college, she just went to the nearest city and worked her way up. So when she got a call from a rival agency in New York City it almost didn’t seem true. Convincing Glenn to go with her at the time was hard. Their original home was near his family, but he wanted to be with her. If Glenn hadn’t found love with Maggie, it might have made her feel guilty that she ended up dumping him, but it seemed like she helped him find something more anyways.

Outstretching her hand, Y/N grabbed a photo that was on her desk of their group at the company. When she got to the company, everyone was very welcoming to her. Back then, the people that were on Negan’s team were originally uneasy with her because they thought Negan would be the one in charge. It reminded her of how she treated Negan at first, always giving him a hard time. It was hard being a woman in charge considering most men never liked it. Even though Negan was always good with her, when she thought back on things, she realized that she definitely could have been better with Negan herself. It was surprising that Negan fell so hard for her because she knew that she could have been better to him from the start.

Before all of this, she knew that this was the job that Negan wanted more than anything. And at the moment? That ate away at her. She stole this job out from under Negan. For years Negan worked at this company and helped build it up to what it was today. Yet, given the chance to jumped right into this position and took it from him. There were no questions that this job really should have gone to Negan. Those in charge just wanted to prove something when they were able to steal her away from their rival company.

“You need help with anything?” a voice beckoned her from her thoughts drawing her to look to the door to see Simon standing there. “I’m going to head out and go be with the family, but I wanted to make sure that you were good before I left.”

“I’m fine Simon. Go be with your family,” she waved her hand in the air dismissively. It was obvious that Simon was curious as to why she was in her office packing things up, but he never questioned it. He just let do her thing and she appreciate that he left her alone.

“Are you sure?” Simon offered up a final time pointing back toward the rest of the open office area. “I can grab you a coffee or a dessert or something? I brought in a yule log that my wife made. It’s really good.”

“I think I’m good Simon, thank you though,” she appreciated that he was trying with her, but she almost assumed that he wanted her to unload on him and right now she wasn’t even sure what she was doing for the most part. “I want you to have a good holiday with your family.”

“Yes boss,” Simon gave a wink and tapped his hand against the doorframe before stepping back. For a moment he lingered and it looked like wanted to say something, but instead he pulled his jacket on and left.

It was weird having Simon being so nice to her since he was one of the people that hated her at first. And she didn’t blame him. His team was originally destined to take over at this part of the company, but then he had to remain where he was.

Getting up from her chair, she headed over toward the corner of her office so she could look out at the city. There were so many things running through her mind and she wished that things would be easier than they were.

The sound of her office door closing was heard and she sighed to herself, “I appreciate what you are trying to do Simon, but I really wish you would just go home to your family.”

“While I would love to go home to my family, I was hoping that you would be willing to talk,” that familiar raspy voice responded causing her heart to sink, a sharp exhale falling from her lungs. Lowering her head, she immediately knew who it was and she let out an uneasy sound. Footsteps approaching her made her cuss to herself when a warmth pressed in behind her. “What are you doing Y/N?”

“I’m packing up my things,” she responded, closing her eyes and wishing that he wouldn’t have come here and found her. “This job should have gone to you Negan. It was always yours and I stole it from you. I’m going to quit and suggest that they give you this job. You’re the one that should have had this whole time anyways. Everyone here respects you and knows that it should have gone to you.”

“Did you already quit?” Negan wondered, stepping in behind her when she finally turned to face him. It was obvious that she had been crying most of the day and she likely looked like shit. “Did you?”

“Not yet. I was going to wait until after Christmas. I was just packing things up to make it easier,” she explained looking to the boxes that were on her desk. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for you,” Negan stammered, his long eyelashes fluttering before he moved over toward her desk. Opening up the boxes, Negan frowned and grabbed a few items from them. Watching him start to unpack the boxes had her letting out a frustrated breath. Negan was putting everything back where it was before and it upset her. “You’re not quitting this job Y/N. I won’t let you do that.”

“I appreciate what you are doing here Negan, but you know just as well as I do that this job should have gone to you,” she didn’t know whether to stop him or not while he continued to return her things to where they were previously. “You know that you are better in this position anyways. The people respect you, you do better work…”

“No,” Negan shook his head, ignoring what she was saying because he thought it was bullshit anyways. “You see, I like the position that I have. I like my boss and I think I’ve been the most productive I’ve been in a very long time because you and me? We make a good team. So no, you aren’t quitting because you belong here. You have always belonged here.”

“Please stop,” she begged of him when Negan finished up with the items and stacked the empty boxes to place them near the door. She wasn’t fighting him. Her body was just frozen when he stepped before her, his hazel eyes full of emotion while he looked her over. “You know just as much as I do how much you wanted this job.”

“Yeah, I wanted this job,” Negan agreed with her sucking at his bottom lip and shrugging his shoulders. “But you got this job and I realized how much I genuinely liked working with you. Trust me. We’re better together than we would be apart. I’m comfortable where I am at this place. And I don’t want it to change. This company is the best it has been in years because of us being a team and working together.”

“Negan,” she lowered her head when Negan stepped forward, his hand lifting so he could stroke his fingers in over the side of her face.

“I’m doing what you deserve,” she protested and she genuinely believed it. “I’m just going to move back to the old city that I was in and see if…”

“If you quit, I quit,” Negan vowed drawing a scoff to fall from her lips. “I don’t want to be here if you aren’t here. So if you’re thinking of leaving this place, then they are going to lose me too because I don’t want to be somewhere you aren’t.”

“Negan,” she frowned hating to hear him say that, but when she lifted her eyes, she knew that he was being serious. Here she was trying to make things better for him and give him what he wanted originally and he was giving her shit. “You’re being stubborn.”

“I am fucking stubborn,” Negan threw his hands up in the air and shrugged his shoulders. “We know that. We’ve know that for a long time now. But I don’t want to be somewhere you aren’t. So unless you want me to leave this place to…”

“You love this job,” she reminded him, a shuddering breath falling from her throat when cupped her face in his hands. “You really love this job.”

“I love you more,” Negan countered, his eyes falling up on her lips when he gave a simple shrug. “I don’t want to be here if you’re not going to be the person in charge because I’ve grown to enjoy where I am in the company. I don’t want it to change. I know the two of us make a good team. Like I said, we’re better together than we are apart.”

“We won’t be able to work together after everything,” she suggested hating that the warmth of his hands comforted her while he stroked over her face in attempts to calm her. “I don’t even know how you knew that I was here…”

“I have my ways,” Negan responded with a long sigh when she turned away from him and headed over toward the window to look out at the city.

“In other words, it was Simon,” she thought aloud knowing that he was the only person that could have told Negan that she was here.

“You know,” Negan began, his voice sounding sad when she gazed out at the city. “I wish you wouldn’t have run off like you did.”

“It was better for everyone that I did,” she claimed still feeling incredibly emotional about everything that happened back at the farm. “I was just going to make things worse and it was going to cause more fighting. It was better that I left.”

“Me and the kids left immediately after too,” Negan informed her stepping forward to caress in over her shoulders. Even though he knew she was upset and she was confused about how she felt with things, he wanted to show her that he was still supportive of her. “I don’t think you realize how much me and the kids do actually love you.”

“I hear you,” she whispered, shaking her head when the warmth of Negan’s body pressed in closer to hers. It was never a question of if they loved her or not. She knew that they loved her. They showed it in their actions and their words. It was just the truth that she knew about herself that kept her from them. “The problem is exactly what I said though Negan. I have so much baggage and I’m a mess…”

“As do I,” Negan reminded her, tipping down to nuzzle his nose in against the side of her neck. God, she hated that her body loved him as much as it did. Even the smallest things he did had chills filling her veins. “I’m a fucking asshole who pisses everyone off. I have loads of baggage that comes with being with me so it shouldn’t bother you. Your baggage is something I’m very willing to take on and help carry with you. Because I love you.”

There was so much that she wanted to say, but she just couldn’t. Instead she stayed in front of the window with Negan wrapping his arms around her to hold her tightly in his grasps, “I fucking love you so much. I understand that you are a broken. I’m broken too, but for the first time in a very long time I feel whole again. And it’s when I’m with you.”

Urging her to turn in his arms, Negan brushed her hair back behind her ear and shook his head, “I know why you feel the way you do and I understand everything being overwhelming. Your family is overwhelming and they have trained you to always blame yourself. To always feel bad about who you are, but I like who you are. I love you. I love everything about you. Waking up with you in my arms over the last few days has been the best possible thing I could think of because it’s the one time that I truly feel alive. Where my heart finally feels like it’s beating again. I always felt cold to everything, but with you, I feel that warmth again.”

Having Negan confess his love to her in this situation had her crying. After everything that happened, he was still doing his best to try to convince her of his love.

“You are beautiful. You are sweet. And you hold my heart in your hand. Everything I am is yours,” Negan peppered kisses over her face with every word he spoke drawing her body to shake. “I meant what I said when I told you that if I couldn’t be with you, it would fucking destroy me.”

“I know that’s what you think Negan, but being with me would be worse for you than being apart from me,” she tried to suggest and the expression that he gave her showed that he felt otherwise. “I’m serious Negan. It might hurt right now, but if you were with me, you would feel more pain in the long run.”

“You have a very skewed view about the woman I love,” Negan stated with a firm shake of his head, his thumb and index finger capturing her jaw to get her to look up at him. “I see you for who you really are Y/N. Not this version of yourself that your father has made you believe that you are.”

A shuddering breath fell from her throat when Negan knelt down before her on one knee, his hand grabbing a hold of hers while the other reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a jewelry box. Pulling open the top, Negan revealed a gorgeous engagement ring that took her breath away and she felt her eyes tearing over, “Erin and Beau helped me pick this one out. We all agreed it was the best one for you because it reminded us of you. Regardless of how you feel about things, you stand out to us Y/N. You are beautiful. You lighten up a room and you shine like no other when you let yourself shine.”

Holding the ring up, Negan’s dimples became more prominent with his smile expanding out over his features, “I love you with everything that I am Y/N. When I’m with you, I feel whole and when I’m not, I’m in physical fucking pain. Everything hurts when you’re gone because I love you so fucking much. I want to be the person that you come to when you’re sad. I want to be the arms that hold you when you need that comfort. I want to wake up every morning and see your face because your face makes me the happiest. I love you so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

It was quiet. Most people were gone, so it was actually scary quiet how everything was when Negan wasn’t talking, “It’s Christmas Eve Y/N. I know this ring isn’t as sweet as our previous one, but I think it was perfect for you. Y/N, will you make me the happiest fucking man alive and do me the honor of marrying me?”

A whimpering breath escaped her lips. She was crying. He was crying. This was what she wanted more than anything. This was a perfect proposal in a place that actually meant something to her. Yet, she didn’t answer. Lowering her head had Negan letting out an uncomfortable sound because she didn’t respond like he thought she would.

“You have can have that perfect life Y/N. We can make it, together,” Negan stroked his thumb over the top of her hand, lowering his head to try to get her eyes to connect with his. “We’ll get married on New Years. You can move in and we can start a family, together. With the four of us, we will be the thing that you always deserved. A family that loves you, that wants you happy. We can keep trying for a baby together. We can have the perfect life, all you have to do is just say yes.”

Y/N’s face scrunched up and a saddened sound fell from her throat, “I know that you are upset about what happened at your family’s home, but they are just a mess. They have been victim blaming you all along making you think you are the bad person, but you’re not. Don’t let those people determine your future and your happiness Y/N. Let me, Beau and Erin give you the love that you always deserved.”

“Negan,” she began, using her free hand to reach up to wipe at her eyes with the back of it. Call her a fool, call her what you want, but she knew that she was not what was best for Negan and his family. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Pulling her hand away from his had him letting out hurt exhale when she moved around the office to go over to the couch to sit down on the edge of it. Negan remained still in the position that he was in, his body slouched over and his hand that was holding the ring lowering down to the ground. Turning down the best proposal she would have ever likely gotten was against everything that she wanted, but she felt like saying yes would be greedy and hurt those that she actually cared for.

“You and your family deserve better than me,” she made it clear how she felt hearing Negan’s breathing loud while he braced his hands on the floor of her office. “You are a gorgeous man, with an incredible job. I know you can find better than me.”

“There is no one better than you,” Negan whispered, finally get back to his feet. When his eyes met hers, it took her breath away to see that he was actually crying. Full on crying over how this was going. “Why can’t you see how much I fucking love you? I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want to keep looking. I know how my heart feels and it loves you. It wants to be with you. No one else. Stop letting your father fucking rule your life Y/N. You aren’t the person he let you believe that you are. You found someone who loves you more than life itself. Someone who would do anything for you and they would go to the ends of the Earth to make you happy, yet you are denying yourself that happiness. Because of what some angry, old farmer said to you? I love you Y/N.”

“I love you too,” she whispered feeling the noticeable chest pain that she had because it hurt to hear Negan upset and to see him that way. “I love you so much. It’s crazy how much I love you Negan. I meant everything I said. With you is the only place I’ve ever felt like I belonged in this world…”

“Then marry me,” Negan begged one final time, a tremoring breath falling from his throat, but once again it was followed up with a shake of her head. “I don’t understand why you are doing this to yourself. To me.”

“I just can’t Negan,” she whispered, her breathing uneven when he dropped his arms down at his sides. “I can’t. I’ll consider staying at this job, but us? We can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

Getting up from the couch, she stepped forward to drag her hand down over the side of Negan’s face. There was misery in his eyes when she headed for the door leaving him alone in her office. It hurt seeing him like that, but she knew deep down if she were to marry Negan, she would only give him more trouble in the future. She wanted him happy and, in her mind, the only way he could be happy is he found something better than her.

----

Tags: @slutlanna976 @fuckthis-and-fuckthat @jennydehavilland @de-gabyconamor @ibelongtonegan @smallsadjellyfish @labyrinthofheartagrams @msjamesmarch @thebeautysurrounds @hotfornegan @redmercysugar @caprithebunny @tuttifuckinfruitty @emoryhemsworth @a-girl-interupted @akumune @stoneyggirl2 @xsarcasticwriterx @haleygreen23 @xhannahbananax03 @sanctuaryforthelost @burningredaffair @killaweiser @dead-of-niight @ayumi-wolf @hollyismentallyillhelp @promiscuousbarnes @tone-stark @lanadelnegan @flippittygibbitts @stickyhuesos @dilfsandmartinis

#jeffrey dean morgan #negan #negan fanfiction #Negan x reader #The Walking Dead #twd fanfiction #Negan Smith #negan x you

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moonpascaltoo · 3 months

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╰┈➤ 18+ none of these stories belong to me! this is a masterlist of all jim hopper stories i’ve read and reblogged! just thought it would be nice to have them all in one spot! (if your fic is on here and you wish not to be, please let me know!) some with have summaries if provided <3

MASTERLIST • STRANGER THINGS MASTERLIST • 03/21/24

☼ noise complaint by @huntinggoodwill

↟ hopper finding you drunk at a party, throwing you over his shoulder, driving you home and helping you sober up by holding your head up and holding the glass to your lips while you drink water and ramble about the ginormous crush you have on him is simply something so special to me.

☼ workplace gossip by @darling-i-read-it

☼ request by @luveline

↟ hopper visiting reader in the hospital after she was almost posessed by vecna

☼ ride home by @empresskylo

↟ you have always thought chief jim hopper was hot. and you knew he thought the same about you, he just tried to hide it because he thought it was wrong since he knew your dad and you were still in high school.

however, after hopper crashes a house party, you ask him for a ride home. hopper briefly loses his self-control.

☼ some legs are meant to be broken pt2 pt3 by @boogiewrites

↟When Hopper breaks both of his legs, and you’re the newest employee at the station, it means you get recruited to be his babysitter. Would he be as frustratingly difficult to deal with as you imagine

☼ the duality of jim hopper by @wannabespacesmuggler

↟ Ever since Joyce introduced you to the local chief of police, Jim Hopper, you’ve thought maybe this town is a little too small. You’re certain that there is no truth behind the rumors until you take one hell of a beating and Hopper wants answers.

☼ his girls by @ashwhowrites

hopefully all links work, let me know if not <3

#jim hopper #stranger things #jim hopper x reader #jim hopper smut #jim hopper one shot #stranger things x reader #jim hopper masterlist #jim hopper imagine

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littlestpersimmon · 8 months

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Rbs are off because I don't want this to take too much attention from more important things. But I currently only have 4 teeth left on my upper mouth- have been saving up for almost 3 yesrs now for a tooth implant bc I don't want my entire upper row of teeth to be just dentures;; I've neglected my dental health for years due to homelessness and perpetual poverty in the global south.. and because my parents are both very disabled... and because of a fear of the dentist. I currently have two jobs- one is industry work, and the other is doing commissions. I swear on everything I am working as much as I possibly can, but for the past few days my mental health has been very very bad, and I've not been able to work as much as I usually can. I'm nervous because I was not able to draw anything for patreon this month, so am rushing to work on both patreon, and my other two sources of income / workload. A few days ago I collapsed, and ended up hurting my lower jaw / cracking my tooth and experiencing significant paint. I would absolutely love to go to the dentist this month or next month. Hopefully I will just open commissions once I finish the batch I am working on, but atm I just.. I don't have the time or strength or health to draw as fast as I can. I have a tipping jar.. and maybe if you guys like my art, maybe you could send me a small tip. I'm sorry I've not been able to draw of late; I've not had a single proper/ planned day off since August. Thank you for reading, and please stay safe.

(Links are still broken, so pleade just remove the a href thing that tumblr adds)

https://ko-fi.com/littlestpersimmon

https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/littlestpersimmon/

Thank you. This is a pic of my cracked tooth; (not graphic, but under a readmore bc it's a part of my face / embarrassing)

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cuckoo-on-a-string · 1 year

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Civilian Asset 1.

Polyamorous/femme/female reader x multiple

Summary: Your job was supposed to be easy. Just take a flash drive through customs. Now there's blood under your nails and a threat to your life.

Master List / Next chapter Warnings: Violence, peril, panic attack/anxiety

Inaccurate military because COD MW is inaccurate (it's a fantasy, friends, and we're treating it like one).

A/N: Don't ask. I don't know what I'm doing here either. Hello, new fandom?

There’s glitter stuck to the blood on your hands.

It all twinkles and shines in the sickly yellow glow of the alley’s one unbroken street light, and you wonder how long it will take the blood to dry, to turn flaky and dark in the crevices of your palm. It’s already going tacky. As the bass inside the club jars your heartbeat out of rhythm, you settle back into the skin under the blood, remembering you have your own, and you don’t want it to join the puddle seeping into the cracks of broken concrete at your knees. You wonder how much time you’ve lost.

Run, he said.

It isn’t the kind of order you sit and think over. It’s a do-or-die command, and you’re struggling to do much of anything as pins and needles creep through your legs. How long have you knelt there? How many songs have rolled through the speakers while you drifted? Probably too many.

Run.

He admitted he might’ve been followed. You remember that. And you remember the intel whispered in your ear as you pushed down on the bullet wound in his abdomen, fighting to recall every first aid lesson you learned in high school and college. Pressure – actively bleeding wounds needed pressure, so you’d put your weight on your hands as the party music pulsed through the cracked-open door you thought you’d slip back through after the usual handoff. But instead of taking a thumb drive or notebook and getting a little tipsy before calling it a night, you tried pushing his soul back into his body as the blood welled up between your fingers.

You tried. It wasn’t enough.

The body already smells. You didn’t know corpses stank so quickly after death. Now you do. It was a gut wound. Maybe it’s his last meal you smell, turned half to shit in his bowels.

Fuck.

You need to run. You need to get out of the alley. You need to stand up and wipe the blood off your hands so you can slink onto the Tube without getting the cops called on you.

With a clear series of actions in mind, everything switches to autopilot, and you move without really meaning to. His jeans work as a towel for the worst of gore, and a discarded wad of bar napkins near the door are clean enough to sponge away the red from between your fingers. Rust colored stains linger around your fingernails, but your dress has pockets – something you’d thought absurdly wonderful a few hours ago – and hopefully no one will be looking that closely, anyway.

Your numbed legs wobble as you approach the main street, making you look a little drunk without conscious effort, and you slip into the current of university students and tourists heading to the Underground. You board a train back towards your hostel, and pat your pocket as you sit, subconsciously checking for the intel. Of course, it’s empty, and a spike of panic flairs in the split second it takes you to remember there is no physical evidence this time. Your contact broke the rules and poured dangerous secrets into your naked ears. The mole was compromised. The dead drop became a little more literal and a lot more dangerous, and the man barely had enough time to pass his info on by word of mouth to the next link in the chain. That link, the handler, scurried away with a hole in his gut and just enough time to meet you, the courier, passing along word of the threat like a burning coal to scorch you.

You aren’t supposed to know anything, but you can’t keep your eyes closed and your hands clean, because you’re the only one who knows anything at this point. Every safeguard between you and immediate danger is dead.

It isn’t supposed to work this way. You’re just a courier, a very literal civilian who can add a USB drive to her collection without suspicion on your way through customs. A digital nomad with lots of stamps in her passport and dozens of good reasons to be in any convenient country. Nobody important, but a very useful mule.

Keeping your eyes off the data you carry is supposed to keep you safe.

In theory.

In practice if keeps the people you deliver to secure. You don’t get names. You get meeting times or dead drop coordinates. But tonight…

Tonight it’s all gone to shit.

And somewhere out there, someone wants you dead.

You don’t even flinch when the man across from you heaves into the middle of the carriage. Everyone else cringes and shouts, but the specs of vomit on the tips of your ankle boots aren’t the worst thing to touch them in the past hour.

Those filthy shoes march with you from the train, up the stairs to the surface, down the lane to the cheap hostel where you’ll have space to fall apart and figure out what the fuck you’re supposed to do. You don’t leave bloody footprints as you move; you check over your shoulder to see if you’ve left a path for the killers to follow. Nothing. Like you’re just one of the backpackers cackling over drinks in the lobby common area.

You’ve never been more grateful for having splurged on a private room as you unlock your door and sprint for the toilet. It’s your turn to puke, and you shake as burning tears and snot stream out with the bile.

Fucking dammit.

Each heave wracks your gut, your chest burns, and your throat is on fire. You know your head will hurt the second the adrenaline wears off – if you live that long – after all this crying.

How do you fix this? Is this something people can fix? You couldn’t even keep enough blood in the man’s body. You literally could not run for a solid – what? – fifteen minutes? Thirty?

You’re going to die.

Another heave locks you in place with a strangled scream as your belly tries to eject your panic and fear. There’s nothing left, though, not even water. You’ve wrung yourself out, so maybe it won’t smell as much when bullets, or knives, or fucking plastic shivs aerate your torso. Maybe it won’t be as awful for whoever finds your body. You’d hate to pass on that curse.

And it hits you, as you pant for breath, a string of saliva dangling from your chin: A lot of other people are going to die if you don’t get yourself together.

That’s enough. Just barely. But you shuffle back from the toilet, wiping your face with toilet paper before climbing the sink. The cool porcelain grounds you, and the cold water on your face and in your mouth helps, too.

The water in the basin turns pink, and you remember the blood in your cuticles and under your nails as it fades and spins down the drain. It hasn’t stained. It lingers along the bed of your nails and the ridges that will turn into hangnails eventually, but if you scrub, you’re sure you can get it off. For a minute, you’d forgotten you could wash blood off skin, that it wouldn’t sink in and brand you. It’s a relief. A stupid relief, sure, but it pulls some steam from the whirlwind of angst trying to launch another round of dry heaves, so that’s good.

A few specs of glitter still flicker up at you, twinkling under the bathroom lights like so many little eyes.

Okay.

Right.

Okay.

You can do this.

Figure out what it is you’re doing first, though.

You can just leave. Check out of the hostel, get a new plane ticket, and get the fuck out of the country. You can also pretend it didn’t happen, just continue as normal. Your original flight back is booked for the day after tomorrow, which seemed like nothing a few hours ago. Now those hours stretch into oblivion.

The problem is this damn city. London. City of a thousand cameras. The Nanny State. It was almost impossible to get around without getting caught by a few dozen electronic eyes, and if the people powerful enough to take out two trained agents wanted to see who the handler met in the alley outside the club, they probably could.

You should assume as much, at least. So, staying was out. But was it safe to just zip off to the airport? Would they be watching?

There was one other option. The option you’d always been told wasn’t really an option until you had no other choice. They had you memorize a phone number, only to be used in the direst emergency, and insinuated that you should think twice even if you had a knife to your neck. You hope that means it reaches someone important. There’s no time to play climb-the-chain-of-command.

Your shaking fingers punch the wrong numbers three times as you struggle with smooth glass and shattered nerves, but eventually you get the right sequence, you lift the phone to your ear, and the call goes through.

A click. A woman’s voice. “Yes?”

“This is, uh.” You stammer your name, your location, but when you get to the situation, your thoughts start falling apart. “They’re dead. And he may have been followed? And I don’t know what – I don’t know what to do.”

A chair squeaks on the other end of the line, and you can hear the focused frown sharpening the stranger’s words as computer keys rattle. “Take a breath. One thing at a time. I need to understand what’s happening. Now, who’s dead?”

You follow her advice, because breathing is always a good idea, and you’d like to keep doing it as long as possible. Her other instructions help more, though. They give you a sense of direction, a clear path forward.

“The handler. I never know the names, but he – he’d been shot when he came to the meet, and he said his contact died, too.”

“Was he able to complete the hand-off?”

Cool lips coughing up secrets against your ear, a shaking hand fisted in the front of your dress to keep you close, fingers going slack and falling from your arm.

You hesitate, only a beat, and try to wipe the blood from your memory. “Sort of.”

“Sort of isn’t good enough. Did he give you the intel or not.”

“He told me the intel.”

“He… told you.” She confirms, with tone alone, that this is bad news.

But now you can tell her, and everything will be okay. That’s how this is supposed to work, right?

“He said –”

“This line isn’t secure.” She cuts you off, and the bright hope curdles in your chest. It isn’t over, then. “You need to debrief somewhere safe. You need to get out of that hostel and wait for the team I send to retrieve you, understood?”

“Understood.” You want to shake, purge the anxiety from your system like sweat. The fear vibrates inside your bones, but the phone stays steady in your grip. You’ve turned into a statue, a marble shell wrapped around an earthquake. “Where do I go?”

She gives you an address to a safehouse, tells you how to get there without drawing attention to yourself. Hopefully.

“Any advice?” The chaos inside needs an outlet or distraction, and maybe the woman at the other end of the line can hear that, because she plays along.

“Move fast. Keep quiet. Stay alive.”

Shrugging as you pull on new clothes that won’t draw as much attention as your little black dress, you nod along. “I’ve heard worse tips.”

“You’re a step ahead of anyone trying to track you,” the stranger says. She speaks low and slow, like you’re a skittish horse ready to bolt, and even if you feel marginally infantilized, you appreciate the fragile illusion she weaves: that everything’s under control, that you know what you’re doing, that everything will be okay.

With the last of your things stuffed in your backpack, you grab your room key and head for the door. The hostel has remote checkout. You just need to drop your key in the box. “Leaving for the safehouse now.”

“Good. I need to brief the team coming to meet you. Keep your phone handy, and call me when you arrive.”

“Or if something goes wrong?”

“Or if something goes wrong. Be careful.”

The line goes dead, and you begin your trek through the dark. Stepping out of the warm, lively hostel and into the night feels like stripping naked and jumping into the water with sharks. Sure, the hostel wasn’t a great place to defend yourself, the doors were thin and the locks fragile, but it had walls. It felt safe. Now you’re exposed, and the vulnerability creeps over your skin like ants.

You take a night bus in the wrong direction, laying a false trail in case anyone is trying to follow you through camera feeds. Then you cut across ten city blocks on foot to find a new line heading the right way, and sit in the illuminated interior like a product in a butcher’s display. Dead meat. You feel obvious. Foolish. You’re following the woman’s directions to the letter, but inexperience gapes under your feet like an open pit, waiting for you to trip and fall so far down you’ll never get back up again.

Every stranger reads as a predator. Every camera holds malicious eyes.

It takes thirty minutes to walk to the safehouse from the last bus stop, and you make the journey with a white-knuckled grip on the strap of your backpack and a pulse so loud you struggle to hear over the drumming in your ears. The light pollution blots out the stars, it’s a new moon, and the streetlights only make the shadows beyond their miniscule pools of light darker.

By the time you find the safehouse and fish the key out of the little box hidden in the bushes, your hands are shaking again. The tension crackles like static through your nerves, blunting your focus even as your senses sharpen to the point of discomfort. Is the rustle behind you just that plastic bag rolling down the street, or is someone stalking you? The breeze feels like breath on the back of your neck, and every hair stands on end as you wrestle the key into the lock and trip through the door.

You slam it closed behind you, past caring about disturbing neighbors or drawing attention. This is like walking the long dark hallway to pee in the middle of the night as a child. You know there’s a monster behind you, but if you look it will eat you. If you run it will pounce. And once you reach safety, you gasp for air the same way you do after diving to the bottom of the pool. All you did was walk, but you feel as if you nearly drowned.

Your ass meets the floor, knees folding with the door at your back. Quivering fingers press over your mouth, trying to silence the wavering pants that may just turn into sobs if you can’t stuff them back down.

“Fuck.”

Blindly groping over your head, you find and turn the deadbolt. It takes more energy than it should, and you allow yourself a minute to recover before tugging out your phone and making the promised call.

The woman picks up after the first ring.

“I made it.” You take a deep breath. Let it out again. Your head drops back and your eyes slip shut as your heart gradually stutters down to a reasonable pace. “Locked the door and everything.”

“Good.” She sounds like she’s smiling, and you wonder if she’s actually amused or doing the whole horse-taming schtick again. “Your escort should arrive inside two hours. Just sit tight, okay?”

You haven’t even turned the lights on. You’re afraid to let anyone know you’re there, and it’s nice to be the one waiting in the dark this time. “I can do that.”

“I’ll let you know when they’re approaching.”

“Thanks.”

She hangs up without pleasantries. And you’re entirely alone again.

In the silence, you listen to distant traffic and a handful of dogs sounding off on the twilight bark. The world waits outside, but you feel like a weed yanked halfway free of the soil. You fit into that steady rhythm yesterday. Maybe you ferried some secrets to try and make the world a slightly better place, but fuck if you weren’t ordinary.

The debriefing is the goal, retrieving the intel you carry. Keeping you alive and relatively safe until that can happen makes sense, and you don’t blame the stranger on for focusing on the immediate issues. But you can’t help wondering what happens after that.

You consider for the first time since the alley that even if everything goes well, you might not make it home.

#x reader #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #soap x reader #soap mactavish x reader #captain price x reader #john price x reader #141 x reader #cod mw fanfiction

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lizablee · 2 months

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I think I've worked out a way to make an FCG reincarnation attempt satisfying.

Reincarnate obviously needs to be attempted. The party is not going to do any less for FCG than they did for Laudna, and they will have access to the spell through Fearne or Keyleth. Having said that... it might be a mixed success.

Here's what could play out:

1. Choice Matters

FCG chose to sacrifice themself. Reincarnate requires a willing soul. Matt could rule that as FCG's soul departed willingly in their sacrificial death, it would not return during reincarnation. This could be pointed out gently by Keyleth.

2. Core Problem

Maybe, unlike regular humanoids, the only body part an Aeormaton needs to live is their core. Maybe the metal plates and wires and shit are all just cladding, able to be removed and replaced at will. Maybe that means the parts of FCG the Bells scavenged are not enough - maybe it NEEDS to be the core, because the rest is the equivalent of clothes.

Trying to reincarnate FCG based off anything but their core would fail, and their core was incinerated. They are gone.

3. Aeormaton based complications

When originally deactivated in Aeor (probably by the Calamity) FCG lost their memories almost completely. They were reborn with no past just a few years ago.

There are a few options here. FCG could reincarnate with no memory, just like before, and the Bells could mercifully let them stay on Exandria in safety, making a sacrifice of their own and hopefully leaving FCG to start a happy new life as a flesh-and-blood being.

Secondly, FCG could reincarnate using their current, reborn age - a 2-4 year old child. They come back with a mess of memories in the body of a toddler, knowing they want to help but realising they can't. They are emotional and confused but a cuddle and a drink of juice helps them cheer up. The Hells realise that FCG deserves a real childhood (instead of being thrown into service from the point of creation) and refuses to take them, leaving them with a trusted adult... like the fate-stitcher Morrigan. FCG gets to have a whimsical Fearne-like childhood with the hag they once designed team-building exercises with, and Nanna gets a fascinating reincarnated centuries old robot-turned-mortal with a heart of gold. The Hells can visit whenever they want, and if Orym's deal somehow hasn't broken, he can raise FCG like a son.

Finally. Okay here's my theory. It's possible that a unique type of resurrection applies to Aeormatons, given it was still possible after centuries to start waking them up. It could be that an intact core is required to link soul to body, so without their core, there would be no resurrecting FCG. On the other hand, as cores don't decay like regular humanoid bodies, they don't have a time limit for resurrection - hence FCG's activation a few years ago. Maybe D casts resurrection-related spells on all the Aeormatons with cores to wake them up. If the process fails, they sell the Aeormaton body to keep funding their efforts to search and rescue their people. Maybe selling FCG was an honest mistake - they thought resurrection didn't work, but FCG just needed a little more tuning to wake up - or maybe they wanted FCG to be cared for by someone with mechanical skills so they could have regular tune-ups. We haven't seen any resurrection or revivify spells cast on FCG - who knows if they would work? Maybe reactivation is always a challenge for Aeormatons, and the Hells just hadn't encountered it yet. Maybe getting in touch with D is the ONLY way to bring FCG back, core or no core.

In meeting D, the Bells could learn that a core is required for reactivation, and that there never was a hope for FCG. It would be cathartic because they'd know they had done everything in their power, but FCG would be allowed to rest.

I don't think Matt would have put such weight on making sure Sam understood his decision if this was going to be a simple case of casting a spell to fix it. But the table has to try. Don't be discouraged when they start pursuing reviving FCG, just know it's a pathway to more storytelling. Really, everything is.

#rip fcg #critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #critical role #cr3 #cr fcg #fcg #sam riegel

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rosie-b · 25 days

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True Blue

Chapter 14: The Balcony Scene, Reprise

Surprise!!! New chapter is out!

When he saw her, Adrien dropped the cookie he’d been about to eat.

“Bluewing!” he exclaimed. Then his expression hardened. “What are you doing here? Are you stalking me? Trying to make me susceptible to an akuma? What’s your goal?”

Bluewing spread out her hands in a hopefully non-threatening gesture and lightly tossed her fan to the side of the room. It landed far away from Adrien, but he tracked its motion with an attentive glare.

“Hawk Moth doesn’t know I’m here,” Bluewing said.

You can read the rest on AO3 or below!

Throughout the rest of the school day, Marinette texted Adrien as often as she could. They never talked about anything serious; they traded jokes and memes and talked about safe topics, but there was an unspoken agreement between them to avoid mentioning the kiss or the nightmares they’d had. Last night had been awful enough, and they both needed time to recover before they could talk about it, even in daylight.

Marinette was grateful she had Adrien to distract her from the horrible new reality she’d wandered into. She’d told him about Nathalie leaving her job, and he’d expressed a similar confusion to hers. They’d spun out a few theories about what had happened before giving up and moving on when they realized all it was doing was making them feel helpless and a little angry, the perfect mix of emotions for an akuma to prey on.

Marinette didn’t want to think M. Agreste would akumatize his own son. He’d shown a lack of control over his akumas recently, though, and especially after her dream and finding out that Nathalie had left, she found herself less and less willing to trust M. Agreste as completely as she once had.

She didn’t want to think about what it meant if he was really the reason Nathalie had left. She didn’t want to consider the possibility that her nightmare’s warning was right, and Hawk Moth was not really the hero he tried to be.

So, she distracted herself while she half-heartedly filled out a few worksheets and pretended to understand the material she was supposed to teach herself. (Really, what kind of school day was this?)

When Adrien couldn’t respond to her during his classes, she found her mind wandering to Duusu’s strange behavior yesterday. She knew M. Agreste didn’t want her to talk to them, but Marinette was determined to heal the kwami so that it would be easier to communicate with them. It was only because of the broken Miraculous that Duusu was acting like they were, well, crazy, so if they could be healed? That should take care of the problem. Finally, Marinette would be able to interact with her kwami, if she could figure out a way to make this work.

Yes, it wasn’t just Marinette and Emilie that needed the potion’s magic, Duusu had to need it, too. However, as a semi-incorporeal being (from what she’d gathered), Duusu probably wouldn’t be able to heal just from exposure to the vial of potion. Marinette needed a better way to get the healing magic to affect the kwami. Well, since Duusu was linked to the Miraculous, which always existed in a physical form, then maybe healing the Miraculous would heal Duusu! In fact, if the potion could heal the Miraculous, maybe doing so would provide a once-and-for-all solution.

Maybe there was a way to make sure the broken Miraculous would never hurt another holder again.

With this goal in mind, Marinette waited until her scheduled study hours were almost over and then slipped into the atelier. She knew the safe’s password from watching M. Agreste punch it in so many times when he was retrieving the brooch to give her for a mission, so getting in was a breeze. The only problem was the fact that her actions would show up on the security cameras, but she wasn’t doing anything wrong exactly, and if Gabriel was busy finding a replacement for Nathalie, then he was probably too busy to check the camera feed until after Marinette had finished what she’d come here to do.

Marinette reached into the safe and took out the brooch. Her heart was racing, with memories of her first horrible time putting on the brooch plaguing her mind, but she had to do this. If she could just repair the brooch, Gabriel would probably let her keep it with her, right? She could hide it under her clothes, just like he did with his Miraculous! They’d never have to worry about a third incident like Dark Cupid’s or Sandboy’s ever again. She would always be able to help with akuma attacks, whether she was at home or in the mansion.

After all, what reason could be good enough for him to keep her from having the Miraculous once it was repaired and Duusu was safe to talk to?

Marinette took out the vial of potion she’d brought with her. Without Nathalie’s help, she only had a limited amount of supplies left. She’d be out soon, so she hoped her idea would work!

As she held the broken brooch steadily in front of her, Marinette uncapped the vial of potion and tipped it over. As a large, golden drop hit the cracks in the Miraculous, she firmed her belief that this healing attempt would work. It had to, or else she would be disobeying M. Agreste for no reason and harming herself in the process.

“This potion will work just as well as it worked for me,” she whispered, squeezing the brooch tightly and rubbing the potion into its cracks. “Miraculous, repair yourself!”

At first, nothing happened. However, after a short moment, a bright light surrounded the brooch. When it faded, no cracks could be seen in the brooch. It was just as good as new.

“It worked,” Marinette breathed, and a smile spread across her face. “It really worked!”

Now, she could only hope that this repair would be a permanent one. Otherwise, the Miraculous would not need to be healed after each time she used it.

Still, Marinette had a good feeling about the brooch’s healing. This time, she was sure she’d found a permanent solution. And she wasn’t about to let it go to waste.

Marinette wanted to pin the brooch on and talk to Duusu, to see if they were okay. Before doing that, though, she needed to talk to M. Agreste. It was nearly time for her training hour to start (for fashion, though recently, this time was more often used for an akuma attack), so all she had to do was wait for Gabriel to come down to the atelier.

While she waited, she locked the safe again, but kept the Miraculous with her. She’d need to show it to M. Agreste, otherwise, he’d never believe her.

Gabriel strolled into the room, frowning lightly, a few minutes later.

“Ms. Dupain-Cheng,” he greeted her. “I apologize for being late. It is harder to find a competent secretary than it seems, these days. I plan to hire one young enough that I can train, anyway; interviews will begin before the hour is over. In the meantime, I...”

His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the brooch sitting in the palm of Marinette’s hand. His eyes sharpened, and Marinette resisted the urge to flinch. It might not look like it now, but surely he’d realize what a helpful thing she’d accomplished for him.

“Marinette. What is that,” he snarled rather than asked.

She raised her chin and lifted the brooch higher for him to see.

“It’s Duusu’s Miraculous. I repaired it with a drop of my potion, and now the cracks are gone. The negative side effects of using it should be gone entirely now.”

Gabriel fell back a step. “What? But how?”

Marinette smirked. “I told you, sometimes a solution really can’t be found, and sometimes you just have to create it. With any luck, even Duusu’s madness should be gone now. I’m sorry for opening the safe without your permission, but it was for a good cause, just like your akuma attacks. The Miraculous is completely safe now, which means that with your permission, I’d like to take it home with me. I can hide it with a scarf, the way you hide your own brooch, and no one will question my fashion choices, so no one will find out that I’m Bluewing. What do you think?”

Gabriel’s jaw clenched, and he stepped forward, taking the brooch from Marinette’s hands and examining it closely. After a moment, he cautiously pinned the Miraculous on, and Duusu spiraled out of it.

“Whee! Oh, Master Gabriel, it’s good to see you again! It’s been so long; your hair is gray now! Oh, the years passed by like a long nightmare. How are you— oh! There’s another person here, too!” Duusu flew over to Marinette, squinting. “Do I remember you? You look familiar.”

“She is your current holder, Duusu; I am only borrowing your Miraculous. Only speak to her if you need to, and do not lead her astray.”

With those words, Gabriel unpinned the brooch, and Duusu vanished. He turned the Miraculous over, frowning at it. Then he slowly handed the brooch back to Marinette, who looked up at him questioningly.

“Well?”

“It appears to be fixed,” Gabriel admitted. “Still, I have reason to be concerned. Not the least of which because you know the password to my safe; I will need to change it before the interviews begin. You think you can take the Miraculous with you and keep it hidden?”

“Yes,” Marinette responded immediately. “In fact, I think it’s the wisest thing for us to do right now. Now you can create an akuma at any time and I’ll be able to help you. Just let me know before you do, and make sure to keep the akumas away from Adrien and me.”

Gabriel didn’t speak, instead staring at the picture of Emilie behind Marinette.

She wet her lips and tried again. “This gives us an advantage, M. Agreste. I want to help you save Emilie before it’s too late, and with the brooch, I can do that more reliably and faster than I could if it stayed in the mansion. Won’t you please consider it?”

Gabriel’s expression was muted, as if he was far away from the room and Marinette and the brooch that had killed his wife.

“She deserved better than this,” he whispered. “It’s all the fault of that kwami, you know. She led Emilie astray, made her think creating a sentimonster with two amoks was safe to do. I lost my wife before Adrien was even born.”

He snapped to attention, staring directly into Marinette’s eyes with a cold gaze.

“You may keep the brooch for now. But don’t talk to the kwami,” he ordered. “And don’t tell Adrien a word about this. I’m taking a big chance in trusting you, Marinette. Do not compromise our mission by giving secrets away to the boy; he is too emotional, like his mother. He cannot be trusted with knowledge of the Miraculous. Do not let him get near the brooch; do not give him his amok. I will not permit his presence to interfere with my mission again. Understood?”

Marinette frowned. “Understood, sir. I wasn’t going to tell him, anyway.”

Gabriel nodded, satisfied, and dismissed her. As the Gorilla escorted her back to the bakery, Marinette wondered what Gabriel meant by not letting Adrien interfere again. He hadn’t done so before, right?

On top of that, though she was pleased she was trusted with the brooch now, Marinette was offended on Adrien’s behalf. He was not too emotional; he was kind and caring and sweet, not weak or given to whims. She trusted him. Marinette wanted to tell him everything about the brooch, about his mother and the reason Hawk Moth wanted the Miraculous, about the reason she was so possessive of the ring she wore on her finger.

Unless there was something Gabriel wasn’t telling her, Marinette saw absolutely no reason not to trust Adrien or Duusu.

Furthermore, she was sure Duusu hadn’t planned on killing Emilie. Duusu was already protective of Marinette and seemed completely loyal to their holders even while they were driven crazy by their Miraculous; why would they be worse now that they’d been healed? No, Marinette was sure that she could trust them.

She hated to think it, but Marinette trusted Gabriel even less now. She needed to know that he wasn’t lying, that he wasn’t just keeping her in the dark about Adrien and Emilie’s fate and the other people who’d been affected by Duusu’s poisoned brooch.

She needed to know that this was really the right thing for Adrien. After all, if Emilie was too far gone for the potion to heal her, as Gabriel thought (and as might be true, if it hadn’t helped her yet) then what good would stealing the Miraculous do? Was a Wish really powerful enough to bring back the dead?

It must be. The mission had to be the right thing to do; Gabriel had planned it for years, it couldn’t be as ill-thought-through as his akuma last night had been. He knew what he was doing.

Marinette still wanted some kind of reassurance, though. And while she had the brooch, she had an idea of where she could get it.

She transformed as soon as she got up to her room.

Bluewing didn’t want to cause a disruption like she had last time she went out without an akuma, so she stuck to the alleyways and rooftops high enough that no one would spot her as she made her way back to the Agreste mansion.

Then, knowing that Adrien would have just gotten back from fencing practice, she leapt down to his windowsill and slid in through the window she found left ajar.

When he saw her, Adrien dropped the cookie he’d been about to eat.

“Bluewing!” he exclaimed. Then his expression hardened. “What are you doing here? Are you stalking me? Trying to make me susceptible to an akuma? What’s your goal?”

“Hawk Moth doesn’t know I’m here,” Bluewing said. “I’m not stalking you, I’m not trying to get you akumatized, and my goal is... mostly unrelated to my normal one. Kind of.”

Adrien kept glaring and crossed his arms.

“Just hear me out, okay? I know the public thinks I’m a villain; I would have, too, before I knew what I know now about Hawk Moth and his mission. But I promise, there is a good reason for what we’re doing. We’re doing the best we can—”

“The best you can at being evil,” Adrien muttered.

Bluewing’s heart broke a little at his words.

“No! I’m not evil, and I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it would help people more than it hurts them! Please, I just, I need to explain myself to someone and know that at least one person thinks I’m doing the right thing. Please listen to me!”

Adrien raised an eyebrow. “You’ll tell me all about why you and Hawk Moth are terrorizing Paris? Even give me your secret identity?”

Bluewing huffed. “Not that. But I... think you might be more likely to understand than most. You see, Hawk Moth lost someone important to him. He needs a Wish to heal h— them.”

“I see why that would hurt,” Adrien said. “And I think I know why you came to me now. But lots of people lose someone. There’s nothing you can really do about it except hold onto their memory and move on with your life. It sounds like Hawk Moth is just trying to escape reality, but he can’t. And neither can you.”

Bluewing swallowed. “I understand. But it wasn’t a normal loss. You see, there was more than one person affected. And the problem wasn’t natural, or even a plane crash or war or something. It was my brooch,” she said, tapping the Miraculous on her chest.

Adrien’s eyes widened. “What? Wait, you’re telling me there are other Peacock holders out there?”

Marinette pursed her lips. “Well, only a couple are alive. They used its full power after it was broken, which slowly poisoned them, and... it’s not good. Even I was affected, before I figured out how to repair the brooch. You might notice my unsteadiness in some older Goldenblog videos—”

“You’re telling me that Hawk Moth forced you to wield a broken Miraculous, slowly poison yourself, and possibly die while knowing exactly what was going to happen?” Adrien interrupted, practically yelling. He sounded furious, angrier than Marinette had ever heard him before. His fists were tightly clenched, and his face was twisted with rage.

Bluewing flinched. “Yes, no, I volunteered,” she babbled. “I found out about the brooch by accident and put it on. He had no choice but to tell me about the Miraculous, especially after I figured out that he was Hawk Moth. He explained his mission to me and gave me medicine to hold off the poison for a while. Since I was already affected and he clearly needed help fighting both Golden Bug and Chat Grise, I offered to become Bluewing. He didn’t force me. I hope that shows that his cause is good,” she added meekly.

Adrien’s expression softened, but not by much. “Prove it,” he demanded. “I still don’t believe you.”

“Okay, the medicine doesn’t work entirely. Without a Wish, everyone who used the brooch is doomed to die, slowly and painfully. Some already have died, and their spouses were left all alone to raise the children that they...”

Marinette hesitated. She wasn’t sure how much to say. This visit hadn’t been planned, after all. She had to stop acting so impulsively!

“The people that they... what?” Adrien prompted, sitting down on his couch. He looked up at her with an open expression, but his eyes tracked every movement she made, as if she’d strike at any moment.

Bluewing rubbed her arm. She knew she technically shouldn’t tell Adrien about the senti-children, but she wouldn’t be disobeying Gabriel’s orders if she only told him the basics without revealing that Adrien himself was a senti, right? Besides, Marinette had wanted to tell Adrien about this from the beginning. If she could at least lay the groundwork for him to understand his origins later, when she was allowed to tell him about them, that would accomplish something good.

She looked at Adrien, determined to tell him some of the truth she knew he was entitled to.

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but this is going to sound weird. Um, and it takes some getting used to, but that’s okay! So,” she said, nervously twisting her pointer finger back and forth, “As you probably noticed, I’ve never used my Miraculous’ real power. There’s a good reason for that, or else I would have been more help against Golden and Grise!”

Adrien watched, his face dubious, as she tapped the brooch pinned to her chest.

“See, this is the Miraculous of emotion, and with it, you can create life. Whatever kind of being you want, with whatever power you want. The magic goes into an amok, which holds the sentibeing’s life force, and it can be used to control them, though that shouldn’t happen. The Peacock has a very dangerous power, and it needs to be used extremely carefully. Well, the past few holders used it to create their own children. So, senti-humans, which are mostly just like normal people. Instead of IVF, they were created with magic. Kinda cool, right?”

Adrien gaped at her. “Senti-humans? You mean, like, they’re real humans, or do they have powers? Are they immortal, or do they die easily? How easy it is to break their amoks? Are they a threat to Golden Bug and Chat Grise? You— you said their amoks control them? How is that possible?”

Bluewing tried her best to respond. “They’re just like real humans, as far as I know. I’ve met one, and he’s just the same as every other boy. I think they have normal, human life spans, since they were created to be humans. I don’t know how easy it is to break their amoks, but I protect the one I have with my life. They’re not threats to Golden Bug or Chat Grise, any more than you are. And no one should ever control them. Senti-humans deserve the same rights and respect as normal-origin humans. That’s why I don’t use my power. I’m terrified of abusing it; that would make me the monster.”

“I see,” Adrien said thoughtfully. “I’m glad you aren’t abusing your Miraculous, at least. But I’m not convinced about this Wish; are you sure it’s the only way? Wouldn’t it have repercussions of its own?”

Bluewing crossed her arms defensively. “As far as I know, there are no side effects.”

Adrien brought a hand up to his chin, considering. “How about the akuma attacks? How can you justify the chaos, the damage? What happens when you win and Golden Bug can’t repair everything Hawk Moth’s akuma did? And the victims who get akumatized, how can you be okay with manipulating them if you’re hesitant to do the same thing with your brooch’s powers?”

“Oh, Hawk Moth asks them for permission before he akumatizes them,” Bluewing said, happy that she had an answer ready for this.

Adrien did not look convinced. “Even the baby? The toddlers? Are you sure that he asks them all, every time? Do you see him do it?”

“W-well,” Marinette faltered. “I don’t see it every time. I did witness it once or twice, but usually I’m already busy getting transformed and heading out to help. Um, but he did ask the baby! That’s what he said, at least.” Her voice grew quieter as she spoke, and she fought the urge to fidget nervously.

“You don’t sound very sure about that,” Adrien noted. “Are you sure Hawk Moth isn’t lying to you? Because there’s no way the trauma he’s given this city can just be erased. We won’t forget what he’s done to us. And I really doubt that a baby can give consent to becoming a villain’s accomplice. Would it even know what the words Hawk Moth spoke to it mean?”

Bluewing steadied herself. “Hawk Moth wouldn’t lie to me,” she said defensively.

But as Adrien glared accusingly at her, she found herself reminded of Emilie’s warning last night. Don’t trust Gabriel.

It wasn’t real. It was just a dream, she told herself.

“Look, I can’t vouch for everything he’s ever done. But I’ve seen the damage a broken Miraculous can do, and I’ve seen the pain of losing someone to things you can’t understand or explain. I know the only way to set things right is to use the Wish, and since Golden and Grise won’t give us their Miraculous even after Hawk Moth explained the situation to them and asked nicely, we have no choice but to use the akumas to get the Wish.”

Adrien stood up. “Really? There’s no other way? And yet Golden Bug and Chat Grise, who know more about their Miraculous and what they can do than you or Hawk Moth, still think a Wish isn’t worth it. They’re not giving you their Miraculous, ever, and all you can do by continuing to fight is cause more harm to Paris. So, maybe you should just give up.”

Bluewing frowned at Adrien. Hadn’t she just explained why she needed to keep fighting for the Miraculous? A Wish couldn’t possibly be as bad as Golden Bug and Chat Grise thought it would be. They were just selfish! Jealous of other people who could use their power to do more good than they ever could!

Meanwhile, Adrien kept talking, gesturing earnestly as he did.

“Take my friend Marinette, for example; she’s the most creative person I know. She’s always doing things I think are impossible, but even she has her limits. Look, it sucks that people got hurt because they used a broken Miraculous. But if they’re dead, they’re dead. You can’t just go around making exceptions to the laws of nature for people you like. If I was going after this Wish, for example, what makes my mother so different from the girl whose father died of cancer, or from the person who got infected while swimming and died from a parasite infection? What makes anyone more worth saving than anyone else? Nothing. But if we just bring back everyone we love who dies, the order of the world is broken. Life is beautiful, but it isn’t complete without death, as much as that sucks.”

Fear squeezed Bluewing in a tight vise. This was not the way she’d wanted this visit to go. Adrien had to be wrong; they were doing this for the right reasons! The Miraculous shouldn’t have killed its wielders! Adrien deserved his mother!

...More than anyone else who’d lost a parent?

“Another thing,” Adrien continued, “I wouldn’t trust anything Hawk Moth tells you about Golden Bug and Chat Grise. He hates them. I doubt he ever tried reasoning with them. I think he attacked before bothering to ask for the Miraculous; otherwise, why did he make his demand during Stormy Weather’s akumatization? He wouldn’t have needed to if he’d explained his situation to the heroes first.”

“You must be wrong,” Bluewing fought back weakly. “I know him. He’s a good man. He’s doing this for his son, for his family. And for others, too. This is the only way.”

Adrien frowned. “Sure. But I have just one more question before you leave, then. When you first put on the brooch, did you actually transform with it? Or did you not know how to? You’d only just discovered it, right?”

Bluewing nodded slowly. “Right, I only pinned it on. I wasn’t sure how to transform yet,” she confirmed, feeling her stomach churn uneasily. “Why do you ask?”

Adrien stared at her for a second, looking sympathetic for once. “Just wondering,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot. I don’t blame you for it, but if you ask me, Hawk Moth has been pulling your strings. My advice is to leave him while you still can. I think you knew the truth once. It’s time to rediscover it.”

Bluewing had no idea what to say, but it seemed that Adrien was done with the conversation. He guided her over to the window by her elbow, making it clear that it was time for her to leave.

Well, it’s probably for the best, Bluewing thought as she waved nervously, said goodbye, and ducked through the window. This meeting was a hot mess, anyway.

__*__*__*__*__

That evening, she sat alone on her balcony, fuming as she tried to work through Adrien’s words and how her visit had gone so wrong. Hawk Moth wasn’t lying to her! He might hide some things, but that was fine. Everyone had a right to privacy! And the baby might not understand words, but it could understand tones! Plus, the show during Stormy Weather was mostly for the public’s benefit, so they would understand what Hawk Moth was doing and what he was after, so they’d be less afraid of his akumas once they knew the akumas were only after Golden Bug and Chat Grise.

Marinette forced herself to stop thinking about it. Any more hard thinking, and she’d get a headache from all the stress.

Well, a headache was coming her way, regardless, in the form of one yellow-suited hero.

Marinette didn’t even have the energy left to react when Golden Bug landed on her balcony.

He raised his brows at her lack of reaction and hummed.

“You know, normally the only people to give me such a cold welcome are akumas,” he commented. “What’s bothering you, Marinette?”

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

I need to respond normally, or he’ll know something’s up, she fretted.

But he already suspected something was up, so she shrugged as she looked at him and said, “Everything. Nothing. It’s been a bad day, but I’ll be fine, I swear. So, you don’t need to watch over me for akumas. Go on with patrol, or whatever.”

Golden Bug frowned, apparently not convinced by her display (and honestly, who would be?). “You don’t seem okay. And what kind of hero would I be if I left innocent civilians alone when they’re vulnerable to being akumatized?”

Marinette sharply looked away. “Not much of one, I guess.”

Golden Bug sounded cheerful as he responded, “Great! Then it looks like I’m staying until you feel better. Glad we agree.”

Marinette’s eyes widened. Slowly, she slid her gaze to the left, where Golden Bug stood. She’d walked right into that one!

Leaning against the balcony railing, Golden Bug shot Marinette a grin. “So, what can this hero do to help? Antenna me what’s wrong.”

All Marinette could do was stare at him. Golden Bug seemed a little too invested in her mental health right now. Or was he?

He’d rescued her from her nightmare last night. He cared deeply about all the citizens of Paris, she had to admit that. Even back when she was targeted by Evillustrator, Golden Bug had gone above and beyond to make sure she was okay! This visit was probably just a normal check-up for him, another way for him to take care of the people he sincerely thought he was protecting from Hawk Moth.

Marinette found herself fighting a blush as she realized that Golden Bug was taking time out of his day to check on her, not because he suspected her of villainy, the way she’d thought he was the first time he did it, but because he genuinely wanted to! He cared about her.

Not like that. But still!

So, she offered him a smile and sat down on her chair to talk to him. The least she could do right now was be as kind to him as he was to her.

“Well, I still don’t need therapy,” she said, watching as Golden Bug seemed to relax at her willingness to talk. “So don’t bother putting on that silly mustache again.”

Golden Bug smirked. “Really? But I need it; it’s part of my charm!”

Marinette rolled her eyes affectionately. “As if.”

She paused, remembering that none of her current problems were really safe to share with the person in front of her. Doing that would be more likely to land her in a prison cell than make him leave.

“I guess I just still feel like a failure,” she admitted in a low voice. “Every time I think I’m making progress, it’s one step forward and two steps back. I just want to help people, like you do! But I end up feeling powerless and confused. I just need a win, you know?”

Golden Bug hummed. “I know. Believe me, the public might thank me for my help against Hawk Moth, but I still feel like I’ve never won against him. Every battle is a lost opportunity to take his Miraculous back and end his reign of terror. Each time he gets away and I don’t even get a lead, I...” He clenched his fist and looked away. “I also feel like a failure. Like I’m buckling under all the pressure on me. And, I don’t know, maybe we are a pair of failures. But I try to remember that every step forward really is progress, even if it feels like you slide back two steps afterwards. We can learn from our failures. Me, I’m always learning how to protect my Miraculous from Hawk Moth better. I can’t let him make that Wish, or else the entire world will be rewritten, and who knows what will be lost!”

Marinette stiffened. “What?”

Golden Bug looked over at her, his expression cooler than butter as he raised an eyebrow.

“What are you confused by? That’s pretty much my job description.”

“The Wish, you said it would rewrite the world? I thought it would be more like a wish from a genie,” she said, trying to laugh her comment off.

“Well,” Golden Bug said in an ironic tone, “You still have to be careful with those. You never get exactly what you wish for. And yes, a Wish made with Grise’s and my Miraculous would lead to this world being restarted, remade from scratch. Forget one little detail, and people, or entire civilizations, could be wiped from existence. A Wish needs to be worded perfectly, which is an impossible goal. There’s a price to pay for it, too. For example, if you use a Wish to bring someone back to life, someone else will be killed. The world’s balance is delicate; even a Wish can’t tilt it too far.”

Marinette gasped, feeling tears sting her eyes. Emilie. The other parents. Healing the survivors would injure others? Bringing back the ones who died... would doom others to take their place in death?

The shock was nearly too much to bear.

Did Gabriel know about this? He couldn’t have, or he would have told her.

Maybe Golden Bug is wrong, Marinette thought desperately.

“How do you know that?” she asked quickly, nearly tripping over her words. “Are you sure that’s what would happen?”

Golden Bug’s face was solemn as he nodded. “It’s the truth. That’s what the Guar— that’s what the man who entrusted me with my Miraculous told me.”

The man who gave him his Miraculous? The Guardian. The one who refused Gabriel’s first pleas, who lied to Golden Bug and Chat Grise and sent them out to fight a grown man!

Marinette clenched her jaw. There was no way the Guardian had told Golden Bug the truth about this. It had to be one of his lies!

Relief shot through Marinette, and she relaxed back in the chair, not having realized until then that she’d sat up in her panic.

“That’s horrible,” she commented. “I’m glad you and Chat Grise are doing your best to make sure that won’t happen.” I’m sorry the Guardian lied to you. I’m sorry you’re trapped in his service.

For some reason, Golden Bug blinked at her. “I’m, uh, happy to serve.”

Marinette smiled at him. “Well, thanks for stopping by! I feel a lot better now. Do you want a cookie or something before you leave?”

Golden Bug tilted his head. “Uh, sure? Thank you. Hey, are you sure you’re okay now? Last night had to have been difficult for you. It’s okay if you’re still affected by it.”

“I’m okay, really. I just have to keep pushing forward. I’ll get there eventually!”

Marinette considered her words for a moment. Something was missing.

“Oh, and I’m sure you’ll catch Hawk Moth soon! Try throwing him off again. Do something unpredictable, like, maybe trade Miraculous with Chat Grise for a few days again? Practice so he can’t throw you off if you’re attacked while you have the wrong Miraculous, I don’t know.”

It wasn’t the best advice, but it wasn’t horrible, either. And if he wound up taking it? It would provide the perfect opportunity for her and Hawk Moth. They just had to strike soon, before Golden Bug and Chat Grise could get used to using their partner’s Miraculous.

A hum startled Marinette from her thoughts.

“I’ll think about it,” Golden Bug responded. “Grise and I will have to discuss it together before we do anything. We’re partners, you know? It’s not fair if one of us makes the decisions for both of us. I value what she has to say.”

“Oh, of course,” Marinette responded immediately. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from the two of you. You work really well together.”

“Thanks!” Golden Bug said with a smile. He looked surprised and pleased by the compliment.

Marinette smiled back at him. Even if he was her enemy, and she was trying to get over him still, she had to admit that he looked cute when he was flustered.

“So,” she started to say, “If you still want something from the bakery, you can just—”

She was cut off by her phone vibrating in her pocket, which startled her into jumping from the chair. When she pulled the phone out of her pocket, she saw that she was getting a call, and when she saw the caller ID, her eyes widened.

“It’s M. Agreste,” she told Golden Bug. “He might have news about school or my internship; I have to take this!”

Golden Bug nodded, quickly said goodbye, and swung away from her balcony.

Marinette accepted the call. “Hello?”

“Marinette.” Gabriel’s voice came through crisply. “I have finished selecting a new secretary. She won’t start until Monday, so I have decided to akumatize my next champion today, while we have time to kill. I have my eyes on someone in the 15th arrondissement. Transform quickly and begin making your way over. Does that sound acceptable to you?”

Marinette nodded and then stuttered out a confirmation when she realized M. Agreste couldn’t see her. “Y-yeah, yesh, yes it does!”

“Good,” M. Agreste said. “You don’t have to report back to the mansion unless you think it’s necessary. I’ll be in contact.”

He hung up, and Marinette gulped. This would be the first real test of the potion’s power!

Reaching under her overshirt, she unpinned the brooch and held it up to check for cracks.

There was nothing, not even a scratch!

Marinette smiled as she pinned the brooch back on, checked for Golden Bug or any leftover paparazzi still hoping for a scoop on Adrien’s ‘girlfriend,’ and transformed.

Things were finally looking up.

#bluewing au #true blue #ml fanfic #rosie-b writing #miraculous ladybug #kwami swap

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