Tumgik
#but i’m clearing out the archives & came across this & thought you might enjoy
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your property
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balshumetsbaragouin · 2 months
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Chapter tweleve is out! What's that? What happened to chapter eleven? Eh, it's fine. You can catch up by reading both these chapters at the same time!
In this one, Danny visits Technus to try and get some answers and gets more than he bargained for.
Chapter 13 is still on for Saturday, and this week is a double Danny feature! We'll still be in his POV come Saturday.
Still not convinced you want to read? Have a taste of the story below!
He relaxed into the loamy, green dirt on top of a floating island only a few hundred meters from a large energy nova. Every pulse of his core drew in more energy, filling him with a heady rush of power and a cooling tingle of blissful ecto-energy. Novas felt impersonal, distant, like the rays of the sun, as long as he floated far enough away. The woozy feeling that left his head spinning, and the weakness jitterbugging through every heavy limb, abated with every brush of energy along the skin facing towards the Nova. He breathed in the energized plasma of the Zone, feeling it spiral though his form to wrap around his core before settling inside. After a few more minutes enjoying the pleasant silence and whisper of energy across his body, he forced open his heavy lids with the crowbar of his will. He sat up, pushing past the creaks and pops in his spine, and took a look around this part of the Zone.
Behind him, still within sight, sat the swirling green of the Fenton Portal. To his left and right, spreading out into the infinite horizon, floated glowing green outcroppings of sparsely vegetated rocks. Above him glowed the Nova, and it cleared out the space around it of floating islands or purple doors. The Zone side of the Fenton Portal used to be crawling with ghosts waiting to squeeze through the opening into the human world. Now, though, after a little over a year of beating back the hordes, low level specters stayed away. The overall ghost activity in Amity hadn’t dropped, so he figured they popped through the much more numerous temporary portals instead of rushing his family’s.
He let himself float off the surface of the island, a task made much easier by the weak gravity of the paltry grouping of stones, and rubbed his temples to relieve some tension. That was a close one. He reached into his pocket for his cell, taking in the time, and glanced back at the Portal. He could wander around, soak up some more rays, and speed up his recovery. But now that he’d made it to the Zone, another thought nagged at him. The last major ghost he’d fought before everything went to shit was Technus. In the days after the technology-obsessed ghost blew into school, the animal and even the blob ghosts had vanished. Then, everything electronic came to life. Weaker ghosts often got scared of more powerful ones, choosing to vacate their territory instead of risking a confrontation. If the machine plague was Technus’ doing, and the wimpier ghosts sensed his energy around, that would explain their disappearance. 
He tossed his phone back and forth in his hands, thinking things through, before opening it to fire off some texts. I’m already here, might as well make the most of it. First, he messaged Valerie through the admin channels. No point in keeping her worried I kicked it in the Fenton household. After that was a group message to Team Phantom, explaining his idea and promising to be careful. Jasmine was out with friends, and Sam and Tucker at the arcade, so he didn’t expect an immediate response. He’d usually bat an idea like this around the group chat, but Technus’ Lair door wasn’t far. If things got out of hand, he’d have backup soon enough. 
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kirliao · 1 year
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evermore: short series
fandom: top gun maverick
character(s): various members of the dagger squad
a/n: wrote the initial draft after watching an episode of quantum leap. yall raymond is so good in it?? and if i could get myself back to giffing again, i could make logan aus. anyway happy top gun fall! let’s get our hearts broken :)
track two: champagne problems ( aka “i broke my own heart writing this” )
his callsign harkens back to a blissful, serene afternoon back at your shared alma mater. well, it was a blissful, serene afternoon before you had foolishly tripped over something and in a swift second, worksheets and notes flew around you like giant confetti for an incoming pity party. you felt that it disturbed the peaceful scenery you had been enjoying. that, and the glass face of your watch had cracked upon impacting the ground after you’d tripped. great.
you felt that you had disturbed it and you felt a heavy weight in your heart for being such an embarrassment and why were you so clumsy and -- well, your thoughts never did finish when a young man came out of nowhere and offered to help you with your notes. so.. coordinated and orderly and he'd returned most of the papers to you before you could even think about asking for his name.
"i'm logan. logan lee. we have sociology together." he introduced himself anyway. he had a great smile, you thought.
you ended up seeing more of his smile as the two of you became friends, later study buddies, then eventually, lovers.
logan had told you of his dreams to fly. how he thinks that mankind was meant to touch the heavens. you thought it was the most romantic thing in the world. you thought he was the most romantic man in the world.
he’d shown it consistently, not just with his words but his actions. lavish dinners both in his apartment and when you both go out to restaurants. nights spent at his place cuddled together on a plush sofa. he looked after you and made you feel special. in turn, you helped him wherever possible. loved him with what you had.
truth is, there was a part of you that felt like it had to end at some point. logan was nearly perfect in so many ways. the problem was that you didn't think you were.
always feeling like you were two steps behind, lagging in what should be a path that you could be walking in side-by-side with him.
you'd found yourselves perusing through the school archives one day. one of you had some project due for a humanities class when you came across some history about the dorm you had  stayed in during your first year at yale.
"huh. turns out it was a mental institution back in the day." logan noted, causing you to give a wry smile and to utter out a reply before you could stop yourself. "well, looks like it's made for me then."
you could feel his eyes boring into you, a suspended smile before he cleared his throat and carried onto other information about other things. the silence from that moment never did leave your mind.
failing a class or two led to you graduating later than him. then the dinners with his family when you finally let him introduce you made you feel out of place. not awful, per se, just....inadequate.
the lee family were nice enough, but they all had that air to them; or maybe it was just amplified insecurity stemming from years of hearing (and listening) to the voices in your head.
that they were better than you, this whole family of overachievers. legacy graduates from well-repute universities and their accomplishments displayed alongside the goofy childhood pictures of logan that both his mom and sister were all too eager to share after dinner. the exchanges were warm, but it stopped there. it was as if you couldn’t quite reach out or connect.
you never did tell logan after that maybe spending more time with his family was in the cards for you. you couldn’t. not after they had been so welcoming and nice. how could you even explain that it might not have been enough?
however, about a month or two before the holidays, logan had planned for the two of you to spend some time somewhere in the mountains. he had rented this gorgeous cabin; something out of a magazine that you'd read at the doctor's office before your sessions.
upon seeing the rest of his family's cars parked outside when you both arrived, you could already tell something was off.
logan's family was fancy. however, they were not throw-a-party-whenever-they-like kind of fancy. strike one.
the bottle of dom perignon on the foyer table meant business and you weren't sure it was the kind of business you liked. you and logan would never splurge for something like that, for whatever reason. strike two.
and while the two of you liked to dance, you usually did it in the privacy of your apartments. this slow tune guiding the two of you into a familiar, yet nervous, dance could almost bring tears to your eyes. and not the happy kind. strike three.
"you had made me the happiest man for all these years we've been together..." was how it started. the rest of it seemed to blur together. his warm smile, his romantic words..
it didn't hit you that the look in his eyes turned from strikingly loving to concerningly desparate until he was on both knees, your hand in one of his and his other one holding a box containing the most beautiful ring you've ever seen laid neatly inside.
"please..i want you to marry me."
you let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding and you pulled your hand back.
your lips quivered, "i'm sorry. i'm..i'm so sorry, logan. i .."
it didn’t register that the heels that clicked against the floor was yours until you realized that you were slowly stepping away from him, his pained expression slowly blurring as tears took over before you turned and all but ran away. "i.. i'm sorry. i’m so, so sorry..."
cinderella was one of your favorite fairy tales as a child. the part where she ran when the clock struck midnight gave you a thrill when you first read it. inwardly cheering her on to get home before the world could find out that she really wasn’t the princess they thought she was. hoping for her to be safe, away from the glaring judgment of the world she lived in. this felt like your cinderella moment, but you were grown enough to know that it wouldn’t have a happy ending.
upon returning to your shared room, you had packed your things and left almost immediately. out the backdoor through the kitchen and you walked. through the winds and the dropping temperatures, you walked until you had reached a convenience store in order to gain your bearings and call a cab to the nearest airport. buy the last ticket for a flight back to your apartment. 
no more words needed to be said.
you just weren't ready.
years later, you'd hear about logan again from mutual friends. they said he'd found someone new. admittedly, some of them think that the new one looked like you.
they said he also managed to get into this prestigious program called ‘top gun’. high chance that he had finally flown like he’s always wanted, like he’s always told you he would.
there was a time he promised to fly you; promised he’d make you see the world differently. that the world was so much more beautiful once you’ve seen it from up high. there was a time you would’ve agreed.
sitting on your desk was the watch that had a crack on it, back from the day you two first met. he had offered to get it fixed, but you couldn’t bring yourself to have it done. call it practicality or some weird sense of sentimentality, but the damn thing still functioned. and now, after all these years, it did the double duty of reminding you of him.
you made circles on the fogged up windows of your apartment; light snow in the northern states reminded you of that night. and while it was painful to remember just how much you've hurt and how much he's hurt, you preferred all of this over the what if.
because the what if wasn’t a happy ending. you knew that yourself. it would just be a bandaid to a much bigger problem.
and you knew that you'd rather have him be happy, even if wasn't with you. 
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tearh0seok · 3 years
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For all you c!Wilbur and c!Quackity enthusiasts/ people who just like some good old fashioned c!karlnapity angst, this ones for you. Enjoy!!
—————
My Tears Ricochet
And I still talk to you
(when I'm screaming at the sky)
And when you can't sleep at night
(you hear my stolen lullabies)
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The bag hits his back with a solid thump, causing him to stumble forward and grunt from the weight of it. He instinctively reaches out for the nearest wall and steadies himself. He holds his breath for a second, prepared to hear the rustling of bed sheets as someone wakes up due to the noise, before he releases it in a quiet, cynical laugh. He is, as he had been for a while now, alone. No one around for him to hold, to talk to, to wake up, to care about. As he makes his way out into the streets of Las Nevada’s, he scans the area for any sign of life. Slime and Fundy must have turned in early enough, and Foolish had long stopped working on his latest big project. He strolls through the streets quietly, humming to himself as he takes in the nation, his nation. At night, the buildings and area look like a mirror image of the man who owned them: empty, cold and alone. He shakes his head trying not to think about it too much. Now was not a time for self-pity or grief. No, now was the time for revenge. The kind of revenge that he just couldn’t drag the others into, they’d never understand. In fact, they’d all think he was insane. They’d leave him behind, all alone, just like before, with-
“Quackity?”
The voice causes Quackity to drop his bag, the thud echoing against the pristine buildings of his city. He looks up at the road ahead of him, and finds Wilbur Soot leaning against the Las Nevada’s sign, a shadow under the bright lights, with his face illuminated only by the red hot glow of his cigarette. Quackity sees his lips twitch up into a tired smirk, and it immediately makes him want to punch the other man in the face. “You’re on my land, Wilbur,” he growls, picking the bag back up, and throwing it back over his shoulder. His grip on the straps tighten as he hears Wilbur laugh quietly. “I thought we put that in the past, Big Q. You know, healthy competition and all that jazz?” Wilbur says tauntingly. Quackity barely spares him a glance as he trudges past the sign, staring straight over Wilbur’s shoulder to where he can see the glow of the burger van in the distance.
“Yeah well, we’re both closed for the day so I didn’t see a need for any of the formalities,” Quackity mutters, praying that the conversation ends there. But of course, to no avail, as soon Quackity hears footsteps behind him and has to resist the oh so demanding urge to punch this guy in the nose. “Then, off the record and completely out of curiosity, as an old friend, may I ask where we’re going?” Wilbur says, as he falls into step beside the smaller man. Quackity digs his heels into the tarmac and stops, turning to the man beside him. “ We are not going anywhere, I have some business to attend to, and you are going back to wherever you came from and forgetting you saw me,” he grunts, poking Wilbur in the middle of his chest to emphasize his point.
He continues walking, and due to the lack of footsteps he assumes the other man has taken the hint and is heading home. However, he hears the sound of shoes approaching, and suddenly Wilbur is at his side once more. “Oh but now you see, my friend,” Wilbur sighs, voice laced with amusement, “now I’m intrigued. What is this so-called business, why is it so secret, and why-“ Quackity feels a slight pull on his back as Wilbur tries to peek into the bag. He quickly whips around, face to face with Wilbur, hoping the other hadn’t seen the contents of the bag. Unfortunately, the fire dancing in Wilbur’s eyes and the wild grin that covers his face suggests otherwise.
“- Why do you have so much TNT and a flint and steel, Quackity?”
It’s said quietly, but the tone of his voice is so menacing that it causes Quackity to shudder. This is really not how tonight was supposed to go, and the more time Quackity spends here talking to Wilbur, the more time he has to contemplate and regret the decision he’s about to make. So he lets his guard down, briefly, and murmurs, “It’s personal, Will, and I’m already starting to regret it, so the last thing I need is to feel guilty about dragging someone else into this too.” And with that, he slowly turns away, head hanging, and begins mentally bracing for what he’s about to do. He just needs to clear his head, and remind himself that this isn’t his fault, it’s everyone else’s for pushing him away, pushing him to this point, and for leaving him alone, AGAIN-
“Do you need some company?”
The voice is quiet and wavering, and if they hadn’t known each other for so long, Quackity wouldn’t have recognized the unsure tone of Wilbur’s voice. He looks over his shoulder at the other man, whose face, illuminated by the moon, is covered with hesitation.
“Wilbur, I just told you, I don’t want to drag anyone else-“
“I didn’t ask if you wanted company, I asked if you needed it, Quackity.”
The words stop him in his tracks. He feels all the air rush out of his lungs and finds himself struggling to breathe. He looks down at the freshly paved road below him, willing away the hot sting of tears. No one, not even Slime, has asked him that in a very long time. The last person to ever say that to him was probably-
“Listen, I know what it’s like, carrying all of this awful stuff on your shoulders. And I have no doubt that what you’re about to do is going to be something you add to the list of things you regret, but you had to do in the moment. I’m not offering to help, as I can tell this is something you need to do for yourself.” He feels a hand on his shoulder, and looks up to see Wilbur with a grim, but soft smile. “What I’m offering is my presence, just so you don’t have to go through it alone.”
Quackity pauses for a moment, taking in the weight of Wilbur’s words, but soon realizes that if he thinks about them too much, he might break down in tears. So he takes the bag off his back and dumps it into Wilbur’s arms. The other catches it with a quiet “oof”, as Quackity grunts, “Let’s go then, we need to get this done by sunrise.”
And just like that, they head off into the night.
~~~~~~~
Wilbur soon realizes that, in hindsight, he should have known where Quackity was headed all along. Quackity didn’t have any major enemies that Wilbur knew of besides Dream and Techno, but Dream is in prison and Techno is god knows where. Quackity also doesn’t seem like the type to commit an act of violence without some sort of motivation, and Wilbur’s 90% sure he wouldn’t do it to threaten someone. Really, using that reasoning, Wilbur should have known their destination. Even as they trekked across the hills and plains, Wilbur should have noticed the direction they were going in. However, it wasn’t until they came to a clearing that opened up onto a shoreline, that he saw their target. While he knows there’s no other option it could be, he still asks the question.
“Why are we at Kinoko Kingdom?”
There it stood, across the water in all its shining glory. Though it was silent in the dead of night, the nation still looked warm and inviting, a sharp contrast to Las Nevada’s at this hour. Wilbur looked at the man at his side, hoping to gauge a reaction, but Quackity’s face was hard as he stared across at the nation like it was the bane of his existence. “I thought you were here to keep me company, not question me,” Quackity grinds out, looking like he’s holding himself back from screaming, or crying, or both. And so Wilbur just shrugs, and places the bag down. Immediately, Quackity throws it open and so the work begins.
Wilbur watches silently as Quackity takes out as much as he can carry and starts making his way around the edge of the shore to the first building he can find. He looks back briefly at Wilbur, indicating for the other man to follow. And while his face remains stony, just as he turns away Wilbur catches a glimpse of the other man’s face crumpling. He watches Quackity let out an unsteady breath, before readjusting the materials in his arms and marching into Kinoko Kingdom.
Quackity, Wilbur is learning, is quite the expert when it comes to TNT. The man is methodical, precise in his placement, ensuring that each piece is in the perfect location to do maximum damage. Although Wilbur said he wouldn’t help, he eventually can’t take the boredom of just standing around, and starts to help. He hears no objection from Quackity, and so he assumes that he is alright to continue. They work in near silence, the only sounds coming from the occasional animal or monster in the distance. Suddenly, a thought comes to Wilbur’s head, and so he stands up and walks over to where Quackity is kneeling, fixing a stick of TNT into place. “Quackity, what about Sapnap and Karl?” He asks, and immediately realizes his mistake. He watches Quackity’s entire body tense up, and the man turns to him, face thunderous.
“What about them?” He asks coldly, and for the first time in a very long time, Wilbur is fearful of the man in front of him.
“Are you just going to leave them here? To…. you know….?”
Wilbur doesn’t finish his sentence, knowing that one wrong word could lead to him having a similar fate to Kinoko Kingdom. However, Quackity relaxes, ever so slightly, and turns back to his work. “They’re not here. They went hunting this morning and I heard from Foolish that they would be gone until tomorrow,” he states, voice wavering slightly, but otherwise filled with certainty. Satisfied with Quackity’s answer, Wilbur picks up some more TNT and begins positioning it near a massive pond in the heart of the kingdom. As he’s working, he hears a small voice cut through the silence.“I couldn’t do it with them here. It’s hard enough without them around, but if they were here - it would be impossible.” Quackity has never sounded more vulnerable, his voice soft yet even, but Wilbur can tell there’s a whole world of pain built within those words. So he leaves any questions he had to the side and continues to work through the silence, with only the moon, stars and the loneliest man in the world for company.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When everything’s done, despite the circumstances, Quackity is weirdly proud of himself. He doesn’t take too long to admire his handy work though, as it may cause him to just take it all back and go home. He begins connecting everything together with one long line of red stone. This surprisingly doesn’t take him too long, and soon he and Wilbur are making their way out of Kinoko Kingdom and back to their perch on the other side of the shore, trailing red stone behind them. Once he’s far enough away, Quackity dares to look back, and regrets it instantly. He sees Kinoko Kingdom for all it is- a clear representation of who Sapnap and Karl are, to others, to each other ,and it’s almost as if you can see the love that lives there. And then, on top of it all, protruding and ugly, is the TNT- Quackity’s doing. Quackity’s mark on the place. That is all he represents; destruction and ruin. Quackity knew there must have been a reason they left him behind, and now he sees it; pure, unadulterated evil . He is the cause of his own pain, his own problems. He gets left behind because when people get to know him- when Sapnap and Karl, his boys, got to know him, all they could do is run in fear. From now on, he is the one calling the shots, because Quackity refuses to ever be left behind again. And if that means being alone, forever, then so be it.
He sniffs and wipes his eyes as he walks, feeling like all of the armour he had put on his heart has fallen away, his wounds have reopened and he’s bleeding out. Over the dull white nose in his ears, he hears Wilbur’s voice in the distance, asking if he’s ok. However he doesn’t pay it any attention, simply connecting the chain of red stone to a button placed on the floor in front of him. He looks up one last time, at the place the loves of his life call home. And then, he presses the button.
If you’d asked him how he wanted this to go, Quackity would’ve described it exactly like this; quick, so quick that you’d miss it if you blink, and then so, so, slowly, like you were watching the life drain from the place. That was exactly what they got. The TNT detonated almost all at once, sending earth and debris flying everywhere. It was almost mesmerizing to watch as in the blink of an eye, something so beautiful was completely maimed. Then came the fire, spreading ever so slowly through what remained of the godforsaken place. As Quackity watched the flames grow, he felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. He let out a light chuckle, until soon he was gasping for breath as he cackled, all the while tears rolled down his face. Soon his laughter mixed with heavy sobs, and he felt Wilbur grip his shoulder, pulling him to face the other man. Wilbur’s face was glowing orange, almost as if it was ablaze along with the city they had just destroyed.
“QUACKITY! Pull yourself together!” He shouted sternly, shaking Quackity by the shoulders harshly. Quackity shoved him off, pushing him away with such force that Wilbur fell back into the sand.
“NO! You know what, fuck you Wilbur!” He spits, pointing down at the man beneath him, “ you don’t get to fucking tell me what to do, when you did the exact same fucking thing not too long ago. Remember that? You did it too, so fuck you. Fuck you for being here, for helping, for listening to me, and fuck you for all the shit you did in the past.” With that, Quackity whips himself around to face the destroyed kingdom in front of him.
“And fuck you!” He screams, not caring who hears or how much his voice wants to give out, “Fuck you and your perfect little kingdom, and your perfect little life. Fuck you guys for telling me you loved me.” His voice cracks at the end of the sentence and slowly his screams turn into heart-wrenching sobs. “Fuck you for pretending you cared. Fuck you for promising me that you’d stay .”
He rips both rings off of his left ring finger and throws them into the water, with such a force that he stumbles forward. He collapses to the ground, the weight of his own heartbreak too much to bear. He feels Wilbur drag him up into his lap, cradling him like a child. When he looks up at Wilbur, the other man gently brings a hand to his face, and wipes the tears from his cheeks. It’s been so long since Quackity has been held like this, that it just makes him cry even harder. He buries his head into Wilbur’s shoulder, crying hysterically into the rough fabric of his coat. His last sentence comes out as nothing more than a whisper, broken and defeated by the pain in his heart.
“F-fuck you guys for promising you would never leave me, a-and then doing it anyway.”
~~~~~~~~~
Wilbur sits in silence as Quackity continues to sob into his chest. He watches the last of what was once Kinoko Kingdom burn and crumble, until there is nothing left but smoldering rubble. The sight was almost soothing, like the quiet that comes after a hurricane. He watches as the sun rises, the night turning into a pale, eerie dawn, sky almost grey, and the tide lapping gently against the shore. The only sound for a long time is Quackity’s uneven breathing, along with the occasional hiccup, until he hears voices in the distance. “Quackity, be quiet,” Wilbur hushes him. Quackity looks up, about to say something when the voices get louder in the distance. They both pause and look over at the remains of Kinoko Kingdom, just as Sapnap and Karl emerge from the tree line. Wilbur hears Quackity suck in a breath as they watch the couple’s faces fall in horror. Karl immediately runs forward, and even from this distance, Wilbur hears him gasp and say, “Oh my god, what happened?”. Meanwhile, Sapnap remains silent, shock plastered across his face as he takes in the rubble. Karl turns back to his fiancé, and Wilbur sees the moment Karl’s shoulders sag and his head drops. “It’s all gone, Sapnap,” he hears him say, and then Sapnap is running forward to catch Karl as he collapses into his arms, crying quietly. Sapnap just bundles his lover up into his arms, tears streaming silently down his own face. After a moment, Sapnap begins to lead them back into the forest, presumably headed for a place to stay near everyone else.
Only when the pair have gone, does Wilbur notice the whimpering. He looks down and finds that Quackity is crying again, quietly this time, and is already staring up at Wilbur. He clutches Wilbur’s jacket and stares at him, eyes pleading for an answer.
“W-why don’t I feel better, Wilbur? Why did that make me feel so much worse?”
And because he doesn’t have an answer, Wilbur just embraces him once more, holding the man close to his chest as he cries.
~~~~~~~~~
“Hello Quackity of Las Nevadas, where have you been?”
If Slime notices Quackity’s puffy eyes, he doesn’t say anything. Wilbur had left him in the same place they began their journey, by the sign at the entrance to the nation. Quackity had been hoping to sneak back in undetected, but of course the innocent creature had been waiting for him at the base of the tower. At least it wasn’t someone like Foolish or Fundy, who would’ve been able to see right through him in his current state. Quackity runs a hand through his hair, and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Sorry Slime, I went out for a walk early this morning.”
Slime simply tilts his head, curiosity written all over his face.
“Where did you go?”
Quackity sighs, racking his brain for an excuse. It’s too early, and he’s too tired to be doing this. He gives up on trying to lie.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He starts making his way back to his tower, ready to fall into bed, when Slimes pipes up once more.
“It doesn’t matter? Why? Is it because you’re home now?”
Quackity stops.
He takes a breath, willing the tears down.
He turns around, eyes shining and gives his friend, his true friend, a small, sad smile.
“Yeah Slime. I’m home.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sapnap kicks a stone out of his way absentmindedly, strolling through what’s left of his kingdom. He came back to see what he could salvage from the wreckage, after dropping Karl off at Bad’s house to rest. As he strolls by the beach, he stops to pick up a piece of wood lying in the sand. As he does so, he spots something shiny lying just on the edge of the water. He crouches down, and picks it up, only to find 2 engagement rings, each with an initial engraved on them.
S
K
He clenches his fist around the rings, heart breaking all over again. He’d recognize those rings anywhere, and he knows what it means, finding them here. He brings his fist up to his lips, pressing a kiss against it, hoping, in vain, that his other love will feel it. He looks out at the water, tears flowing, and prays that someday, they can be what they once were. For now, he places the rings in his pocket carefully, thumbing them over slowly. Before he leaves, he turns back to look at his kingdom once more, and whispers,
“I’m sorry.”
And with that, he heads back to Karl, his fiancé, his home .
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I didn't have it in myself to go with grace
'Cause when I'd fight, you used to tell me I was brave
And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed
Look at how my tears ricochet
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stardust-kenobi · 3 years
Text
Let Me Help You
Obi Wan x Reader
Summary: Obi Wan isn’t very tech-savy, and he wants you to help him with his computer while you two sit in the Jedi Temple library. You offer your assistance, and decide to help him in other ways, too.
Warnings: smut, dub-con!!, male oral receiving, public oral sex
Word count: 2k
A/N: ⚠️please DO NOT read if you’re uncomfortable with dub-con. It’s not for everyone. (In this specific plot it’s used because Obi Wan is trying to be a good Jedi) Consent is slightly more clear right before the act.
This was requested by anon! Thanks lovely, hope you enjoy 💕
(my gif)
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Obi Wan’s face became more frustrated by the second. You sat across from him in the Temple library. You’d joined your friend today because he wanted the company while he completed some tasks undoubtedly related to his Jedi duties. 
“You alright?” You inquired, attempting to withhold a giggle at the sight of a man who is so usually calm becoming annoyed at technology.
“This datapad is going to drive me mad” he huffed. His fingers furiously tapped away at his attempted tasks.
“Sounds like a user-error” you teased him while continuing to stare at him. He looked up at you, obviously trying not to smile back. “And it’s a desktop computer, so, not technically a data pad” you jokingly corrected him.
“Well, whatever it is, it doesn’t like me very much” he remarked and returned his attention to the illuminated screen.
“What exactly are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to navigate the archives here but it keeps telling me I’m typing in invalid coordinates” his voice grew more annoyed.
“Would you like my help?” You offered kindly
“No, that’s not necessary.” He politely declined.
You waited, not responding, knowing he’d change his mind after another failed attempt. His eyes shot upward at you across the table and quickly looked back down, but then hesitantly returned to your gaze.
“Maybe I could use your help, y/n” he finally admitted.
“Mhm, that’s what I thought” you rose from your seat and headed around the table. You observed the room, and no one was around. You hadn’t seen anyone in the library since you walked in. You could probably hear a pin drop in the vast silence. You came around behind his chair and leaned down next to him. Obi Wan’s eyes could not have been less discreet as they peered over to your chest that was now at his eye level. Your shirt was low cut, and perhaps a little too tight, but nothing you wouldn’t normally wear. You noticed but said nothing to Obi Wan, just flattered that he wanted to look.
“Let me try and enter the coordinates. What were they?” You inquired. He gave you the same numbers he had been typing in. You unfortunately found yourself having the same issue he was having. Obi Wan laughed, mocking you for thinking it was his fault.
“User-error, was it?” He teased you. You shook your head and giggled.
“Let me try something else” you said. You attempted other methods in order to make it work. 
“Why don’t you pull up a chair?” He suggested.
You looked around, there were no chairs close, except for your chair on the other side of the table.
“Oh no, that’s alright” you shrugged, but then an idea crept into your devious, sexually deprived head. You checked your surroundings again, no one was in the library. It was late, anyways, so it wasn’t unusual.
Obi Wan’s lap sat there, open and empty, legs spread open, as if it was waiting on you to fill the space. You slowly moved your hips downward and over onto his thighs. He didn’t say a word, protest, or even make a sound, until you were fully seated on his unprepared lap.
“Oh, um...alright then” he stuttered, unsure what to say, but didn’t reject you either.
“Sorry, I saw a perfectly good seat and took it. That okay?” You clearly played innocent.
He roughly cleared his throat and breathed out hard. His built up sexual tension was obvious, and you preyed on it guiltlessly.
“No problem at all” he chuckled, finally responding to you. Continuing to work at the computer in your new found seat, you rotated your hips side to side subtly, pressing more firm into him. Hardly any time had passed before you felt him grow aroused under your ass. You smirked, loving the effect you were having on him.
“Oh, there we go, it worked!” you announced suddenly. The screen displayed the archive location that he searched for, after tweaking with the settings for a bit.
“What worked?” He breathed out, clearly more flustered than the last time he spoke. It was as if he was snapped out of a trance. He was incredibly distracted and couldn’t even recall for the moment what you were even helping him with.
“The...computer?” You stated the obvious, turning around sharply to meet his eyes.
“Right!” He shyly remembered.
His erection was continuing to grow and he wondered if you could feel it against you.
“Something wrong, Obi Wan?” You asked him, Both of you were fully aware of what was happening, but the lack of direct communication refused to acknowledge it plainly.
“Oh, I’m fine” He replied, clearing his throat again.
“You sure? You seemed flustered” You pushed the conversation further.
“Y-yes I'm, uh, I’m sure” he stumbled over his words.
“Seems like you’re having a hard time with your words there, Master Kenobi” you purred, wasting no time dancing around the idea. “Well, something is hard” you smirked, getting close to his face while sitting sideways across his thighs.
His breath hitched in his throat when he heard your voice turn sensual. Obi Wan said nothing because he wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted you, that you could tell, but a man that lived so strictly by the Jedi code would be hard to crack. And in public? He’d be insane to let you seduce him.
“Y/n...” he groaned deeply. His body language communicating how hard it was to restrain himself.
“Yes?” You whispered while moving your lips to his bare neck. You placed your lips at his supple skin and pecked slowly and lightly.
“As lovely as this is, I can’t” he protested. “It’s forbidden for me to engage in this, y/n, you know that”
Regardless, your lips continued working at his neck. A hum, almost resembling a moan, crawled from his mouth.
“You’re telling me, that if I got on my knees, right now, right here in front of you, that you wouldn’t want me to suck your cock?” You purred so softly directly into his ear. You observed the chills that cascading down his body and you smiled against his skin.
“Stars, y/n, I’ve never heard you talk like this” He avoided the question, his breathing still tense. You felt his hips buck slightly up into your weight.
“I know how stressed you are, Obi Wan, let me help you” you offered. He looked into your eyes for a moment. Desperation was hidden deep in his gaze. He wanted a release, but had to make a decision of his morality and his loyalty to the Jedi Order.
“You want to do that to me...here?” He inquired the absurdity of your offered actions and especially there in public. His tone was so innocent and clueless to your attraction to him.
“Oh, Master Kenobi, it’d be my pleasure” you called him by his formal name yet again, even though you’d only ever called him Obi Wan. You assumed it might turn him on. You were right.
You softly press your lips onto his. He received your lips hesitantly, but then eagerly. You moved to straddle him, placing both legs on either side of his hips. You pushed your hips forward, curling them into his bulge. Becoming more comfortable with your touch, Obi Wan’s lips danced with yours passionately.
Butterflies fluttered in your belly as you finally acted on your eager built up desires for him.
“But, y/n, the Council -” he began again, breaking the kiss, and still worried for his long list of ethical restrictions on his life.
“I don’t see them here...do you? And we both know Anakin doesn’t follow the rules, does he?” You persisted.
“Well, no. I suppose you’re right” he whispered back, laughing quietly at your comment. He was nervous, but it was impossible for him to hide his new hunger for your lips around his cock.
“Allow yourself some fun, Master”
“Y/n, I want to, but I’ve never done anything like this before” He admitted casually.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you” you sweetly assured him.
“Okay, darling, but I do believe we must make this quick” he finally fully accepted the idea, but looked quickly around the very large room to confirm you were alone together.
“Oh it won’t take me long at all” you winked at him.
Removing yourself from his lap, his eyes never left you as he was unsure of your next step. You got on your knees in front of him, as you promised. His hands eagerly fumbled to pull his trousers down. You met his hands halfway and took over.
His cock begged to be let free from its restraints. Once the cloth passed his full length, it sprung out and met your eye level. He was so adorably nervous. You released a moan at the sight of him exposed to you.
You wrapped your hand around him and the contact made him twitch. He breathed out heavily as he’d never been touched like this by another person. Your eyes met his lustful gaze. You raised your eyebrows, non verbally asking If he was ready. He nodded his head, and you proceeded.
Your lips parted widely to bring him into your mouth. Your eyes locked as you lowered your mouth completely down his length, taking all of him into you. A feeling so unfamiliar to him caused Obi Wan to grip the arm rest of the chair. He breathed in sharply, and exhaled the sweetest moan. Using the moisture from your mouth, you glided yourself up and down slowly.
“Oh my stars, y/n” he whispered. You two knew you still needed to be quiet, in case someone was close.
Obi Wan was so sensitive and touch starved beyond belief. No matter how hard he tried to muffle himself, he was unsuccessful. Your ears were graced with the delicate sounds escaping his lips as you brought him more pleasure than he’d ever experienced before.
“Fuck” he cried, already so close to his climax from your skilled motions. Vulgarity flying from him was a new sound to you and it earned a warm sensation inside of you.
An aching formed between your legs, a feeling of pleasure that was all too familiar to you. You wanted him to take you right then and there, but you’d surely get caught. Another time, you thought.
Removing your mouth to rest your jaw, you pumped your hands around him. You looked up at him, his eyes had still not broken contact with you while you created a euphoric form of pleasure for him for the first time.
“Y/n...” he whimpered
“Yes, Master Kenobi?” You cooed and smiled at him. He formed a grin down at you that quickly turned back into his O-face as you pumped him faster.
“I’m...oh my” he started, his body couldn’t stay still.
“Are you gonna cum for me?”
“Oh, yes, y/n. I’m so close. I’m gonna cum” he whined.
You returned the moisture of your mouth back to his cock and sloppily, yet rhythmically, sucked him continuously, responding to the way his body moved and the sound of his moans. The veins in his length twitched and his hips shifted.
Obi Wan threw his head back in ecstasy and just then you felt your throat become coated in his hot cum. The suppression of the growls that formed from his climax was intense and deep, somehow loud and quiet simultaneously.
You swallowed him up and removed your mouth from his sensitive parts. Obi Wan’s head was still laid back, you watched as his chest rose and fell with the effort to catch his breath.
“Was that alright?” You asked, giggling, knowing the answer already.
“Well, I...darling that was...incredible” he finally expressed in between his deep breaths.
You helped him pull his trousers back up and plant a kiss on his cheek as you stood.
“Glad I could be of some assistance for you tonight” you winked.
He was blushing, still in disbelief that you two just engaged in such an act. He was so precious and shy about the whole thing, but enjoyed every single second of it.
“Perhaps maybe I can help you next time, hm?” He suggested. You bite your lip, already growing eager for the next time you’d be alone with him.
Kinda wanna make a part 2??
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lesbianlotties · 3 years
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five times Deena and Sam met in secret (and one time they didn’t)
Chapters: 1/6 Fandom: Fear Street Trilogy (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Fraser/Deena Johnson Characters: Deena Johnson, Samantha "Sam" Fraser (Fear Street) Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon, High School, Cheerleaders, Band, Teenagers, Teen Romance, First Meetings, First Love, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Fluff, Happy Ending
Secrets.
Deena and Sam met by accident. They fell in love in secret.
But how long can they last together like that?
Chapter 1 - secret places
From one end of the football field, Deena stormed away from band practice. She had trouble accepting the fact that she was required to do an extracurricular activity to get through high school. She had chosen band as a result of pressure from her best friends. Kate was cheerleading captain and Simon was the school’s mascot. It was convenient to join band and at least have their company during the school’s games. Besides, she could get away with a lot because the guy in charge of the band had always had a crush on Kate, and he was aware Deena was her best friend. So, she could sneak away from practice, go sit down under the bleachers, and entertain herself thinking about how there’s hardly a good thing about living in Shadyside. Unbeknownst to Deena, a beacon of light and hope was heading her way at that exact moment.
From the opposite end of the field, cheerleading practice was going on a small break, which Sam was aggressively thankful for. Her mind was a jumbled mess, and the worst part? It was all her fault. In retrospect, she knows she went into cheerleading because she longed to be in those girls’ company. Maybe she should have expected that same thing would be the worst part about it. She was professional, respectful, not a creep, she repeated in her mind again and again. But just one fleeting touch, one particular twist in a girl’s skirt, represented a great distraction. It made her think about things she didn’t feel even close to prepared to think about. Her thoughts got carried away, she felt overwhelmed, she needed to run away. How could she have known she was running straight toward the greatest distraction, the biggest challenge, the momentarily worst but eventually best thing that would happen to her…
One girl resenting the world around her. One girl troubled by her own thoughts and feelings. Both of them holding their heads down, walking fast, searching for a hiding place, and running right into each other.
“Fuck!”
“What the hell?!”
“Hey, watch where you’re going you…”
“I’m sorry, I was just…”
After they looked into each other’s eyes, there was no turning back. Because Deena gazed into crystal clear blue eyes and she didn’t see fear, she saw the light of a blue sky at the end of a dark tunnel. Because at the same time, Sam saw her brown eyes and couldn’t care less about the anger in them, she only felt the warmth of a home she hadn’t even met yet.
Nothing had prepared Deena for the moment she saw Sam for the first time. At her age, she felt almost surprisingly confident about herself, her feelings for other girls, and what that would mean for her life. But one thing was knowing she was interested in girls and a very different thing was being interested in one girl. This immediate attraction, this feeling of shocking delight, and being rendered speechless, that was completely new.
Similarly, Sam felt at a loss. Movies, songs, books, other girls’ stories had prepared her for this moment. However, they all pointed at the fact that it should be a guy standing in front of her, she should bat her eyelashes at him, he should pick up her dropped books, and someday they would get married, simple as that. But instead, she got Deena, wild hair, delicate features, and her band’s hat fallen in the ground in between them. Someone should pick that up. Sam’s eyes quickly looked around. No boys to bat her eyelashes to. No one watching. Just her and this girl and the opportunity to follow her instincts. Be herself.
In a flash, Sam had kneeled down, picked up the ridiculous hat and stood back up to give it to Deena. Miraculously, Deena seemed to get back to herself by the time she was staring at Sam’s face again. Even if “herself” was experiencing contradicting feelings. Defense mechanisms of apathy and toughness threatened to flare up. Hopeless kindness and attraction insisted on peering through. In the end, she accepted her hat and mumbled, “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam repeated, “I was, um…”
“Furiously running away from something?” Deena raised a curious eyebrow.
It made Sam laugh. She wasn’t sure if she laughed at the joke, or as a nervous result of hearing Deena’s voice. Either way, she softly shook her head and started smiling as she introduced herself. “I’m Sam.”
“Deena,” the brunette replied. “So, was something chasing you, Sam?”
“No…” Sam answered. Her hand came up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. As if hearing Deena say her name wasn’t overwhelming enough, now she had to come up with a reasonable lie. “Cheerleading,” she blurted out, “can be, uh, overwhelming, sometimes.” Not completely a lie. But the other girl seemed to see straight through her.
“Right,” Deena said.
Her tone was enough to know she didn’t completely buy Sam’s words, but she wouldn’t dare pry for more information. Partially, out of politeness. Mostly because Deena didn’t really want to know more. She wasn’t known for being invested in many other people, her school, or her town. She had more than enough with her own problems. She really didn’t need anything else. But she couldn’t help it. Because on one side was Sam, nervous blue eyes, flushed cheeks, obviously anxious in her cheerleading uniform. Then across from her was Deena. Deena and her unexplainable instinct to offer a hand to this girl she just met and fight for her whatever kind of monster had made her feel like she needed to run and hide.
“Well, Sam. I hate to break it to you but,” Deena paused for dramatic effect and for the newfound pleasure of watching Sam’s eyes stare at her expectantly, “this is kind of my spot, you know?”
“Oh?” Sam stuttered, curious.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone needs a place to hide from Shadyside’s many horrors. And this place right here? It’s taken.”
“I see,” Sam nodded slowly, as a smile started to form on her pink lips. “I suppose you don’t want my company, do you?”
Deena studied her silently for a second, holding back her own smile. It was incredible the way that the more Sam seemed to relax and smile more, Deena did the entire opposite, her heart sped up considerably, feeling like it might burst out of her chest. She did everything she could to maintain her composure though, for the sake of the easy banter they had going on. Then she replied, “I’m not really the type that enjoys company.”
“So, I should go, right?”
Sam even took one step back and turned her body a little, as if she would willingly walk away from the most fascinating encounter of her life. This step she took also brought to both their attention the fact that somehow, during their conversation, they had moved even closer than necessary, closer than they had been at the beginning.
“No, you don’t,” Deena blurted out as soon as she saw Sam’s poor attempt at moving away. “You can stay,” she said, reaching out and just brushing her fingertips to the back of Sam’s hand. She didn’t mean for it to be a life-changing action, but the sparks of electricity that ran through both their bodies at once were undeniable.
“Are you sure?” Sam asked, a little breathlessly after that touch.
“Just don’t make it a habit,” Deena smiled at her. She had no way to foresee the months and months she would spend with Sam in that very spot. “And don’t tell anybody. I have a reputation, you know?” Then, she winked.
While she worked on recovering from that wink, Sam followed Deena to the best spot to hide from the world or, at least, the rest of their school. “Fine,” she replied finally, as the two of them smiled at each other, “It’ll be our secret.”
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strawwritesfic · 2 years
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Bruce Banner x Female!Civilian!Reader: Oh My Dear [Ch. 9]
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Summary: For [F Name] [L Name], Manhattan was nothing but a hellhole. She got out and wasn’t ever coming back. When a set of cut-rate superheroes tears the city apart, however, her grandmother sucks her back into that familiar life of loneliness and angry customers. Even worse, one of those superheroes has decided to use [Name] in another crazy plan to “help” his best friend. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Tony’s plan just might work-if only for a few months.
Challenge:  “#1 AVENGERS ULTIMATE CHALLENGE!!!!“ by DancingBubbles on Lunaescence Archives.
Ratings/Warnings/Tags: T (foul language; sexual references; manipulative friends who won’t take no for an answer; dead parents; difficult relationships with family members; some language that might border on verbal abuse from a family member; angst; contrived coincidences; a generally unresearched depiction of paraplegia; set post-Avengers (2012) and pre-Age of Ultron; Tony & Bruce friendship)
Pairings: Bruce Banner/Female!Reader; Tony Stark/Pepper Potts; Past!Bruce Banner/Betty Ross
Tag List: @imaginesfire​
Master List
Chapter 9: From a Different Point of View
“Careful, [Name]. Careful!” Above the sound of the carefree chatter emanating from the crowd came Nana’s gentle cry.
Knuckles already white around the handles of her wheelchair, you only just pulled her to a halt when a toddler pranced across the aisle. You allowed yourself a moment of relieved pause, then dipped your head closer to hers. “You okay?”
“Well, I know why you don’t have your driver’s license.”
As you stood back up, you had to blow a bit of your hair from your face. “I don’t normally cause near hit and runs involving small children on my own, Nana.”
“I know, dear, I know.”
Once the “road” was clear, you looked about the bleachers for a vacant seat. People milled about chatting; the Sunday lacrosse game had yet to start, meaning socialization was more important than keeping eyes glued to the field. Thankfully, even with the constant shifting, you spotted a seat with a space next to it perfect for Nana’s wheelchair.
“It’s nice to have a day off, isn’t it?” she asked as you wheeled her down the ramp toward the front of the bleachers. The metal rumbled underneath her chair.
“Yes, it is,” you answered truthfully.
“I can’t even remember the last time I got out of that old apartment.”
You adjusted Nana carefully into her spot, then sat down in yours. “You had a doctor’s appointment two weeks ago.”
“Pah. I mean for something fun.”
“Lacrosse is fun?”
“I forgot. You never saw a match while you were here.”
A sudden upswing in noise caused you took down at the playing field. Both teams traipsed into view to great aplomb, putting an end to that particular argument before it could even start.
“Oh, look, Mr. Kanklefritz’s son made the team,” Nana cooed.
Your shoulders slumped as you relaxed. You were there. Might as well enjoy the match.
“Excuse me, but is this seat taken?” a familiar voice asked.
As soon as you looked up, all hopes of a normal day went flying into the stratosphere. “Miss Potts?” you asked, then leaned forward in your seat. Sure enough, there was Dr. Banner, playing with his fingers and looking resolutely anywhere but toward you. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s Pepper,” she answered as she sat down and slid her bag off her shoulder. “Tony decided to do some actual work today, so Bruce and I are on our own.”
“And you came to see a high school lacrosse game?”
“We thought it might be nice to get out of the tower for a bit. Hello, Doris.” Pepper directed these last words at Nana. Despite the comfortably cool weather, you could feel your body heat rise with your blush. What if Nana said something?
“Miss Potts!” Nana cried with delight. “Fancy seeing you here. How are you?”
Pepper smiled. “I’m doing very well. How are things?”
“Oh, they were touch and go after Frank died. But,” Nana reached out and grasped your hand, “I have [Name] now.”
“I’m so glad to hear that.”
“I hope she hasn’t caused you too much trouble?”
“No! Not at all. We were quite satisfied with our trade off.”
“That’s good. She is trying.”
“Nana…”
She squeezed your hand a final time and then released it. “And how is Mr. Stark?”
“The same as always,” Pepper answered with a roll of her eyes. “Actually, he wanted me to ask [Name] something.”
“Oh? What’s that? Has she messed up another order?”
“Nana,” you said again in a strangled voice. “Are you even going to watch the game?”
“No! Of course not. Actually,” Pepper turned toward you, “he was hoping you would go to dinner with us.”
Although one of the teams had certainly just scored their first goal, your little section of bleacher became completely silent. Every eye (presumably excepting Dr. Banner’s) turned toward you. You rolled your shoulders before opening your mouth to attempt a response.
“Us?” you asked very intelligently.
Pepper’s smile widened. “Tony and I, and Bruce, of course.”
“Oh!” Nana’s hand again patted the back of your own sitting stiffly in your lap. “How nice, [Name]!”
“W-Why?” you managed to stammer, while at the same time feigning immense interest in the game. Leaving the apartment to do something other than work had sounded like a good idea when suggested. Now you wished you’d just stayed curled up in bed.
“To say thank you,” Pepper said. Your heart lifted somewhat–at least until she continued. “Besides, Tony said it would be nice for Bruce to have some company.”
You could barely see through your horror and embarrassment. “I don’t…what?”
“Honestly, you’d be doing me a huge favor as well. Sometimes Tony can forget we’re in public.”
Dr. Banner needed company? Oh God. Oh God. If Nana figured out that the man sitting on Pepper’s other side was the same man you’d gone on a date with, you weren’t sure you would be able to save either of them from the ensuing tantrum. On the bright sight, Nana didn’t want you to date, so no way was she going to let you go.
“You should go, [Name]. Mr. Stark has been a very good customer of ours, since your grandfather started the store practically.”
Thanks, Nana. Thanks a whole lot. Suddenly the dirt under your fingernails seemed very interesting. You examined it closely as you hedged, “I’m not sure. When would it be?”
“We were thinking Wednesday?”
“Well, I have a lot of work to do at the store on Thursday. Knowing Mr. Stark, we’d probably be out late.”
Something that sounded an awful like an amused snort came from Pepper’s other side. She did not seem to notice. For a moment, she bit at the corner of her lip, then her eyes closed before popping open again.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes Tony forgets that other people have schedules. We could find a better time, I’m sure.”
“I–”
“[Name]!” said Nana. “You should go!”
“Nana–”
“I’m sure you’ll have time to go after work. You can do the stocking in the afternoon on Thursday.”
Mr. Banner was planning to be there in the morning, but you couldn’t say that. Instead, with your mouth hanging a couple centimeters open, you looked desperately between Pepper and Nana. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“I would really like you to come,” Pepper said, with such sincerity in her voice that you couldn’t find it in yourself to doubt her. “I haven’t had another woman to talk to since Natasha went out of the country. Please?”
Nana nudged your shoulder. Although you doubted that anyone else could see, her hand was wrapped around yours so tightly that little pricks of static stabbed the tops of them. Doing your best not to wince, you looked back at Pepper.
“Besides,” she said when you didn’t give an immediate answer, “Tony is right. It’s not fair for us to always do things as a couple and expect Bruce to tag along. You’ll really be helping all of us.”
What, was Dr. Banner mute? First blackmail and then…whatever it was Pepper was doing. Nothing could ever be said that would convince you that Tony Stark did not know exactly what he was doing when he asked Pepper to ask you–even if she didn’t. You were going to absolutely kill him. To do that, you would have to be somewhere he was physically present.
“All right. It’s a date,” you said.
“Great! I can’t wait.”
“I probably shouldn’t even bother to ask, but do you know where we’re going?”
“Not in the slightest. Tony is a fly by the seat of his pants kind of person. I’ll catch a ride with Happy and come pick you up.”
“Happy?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Happy is Tony’s bodyguard. He also does the driving.”
“Um, fancy. Thanks.”
“Not at all.”
At last, Nana relinquished her vice-like grip on your hand. “Oh, [Name], this is wonderful! You’re making friends.”
“Thanks, Nana.”
Fortunately, after that all conversation became rendered impossible when a fight broke out down below. In the confusion that followed, you manged to lock eyes with Dr. Banner. You weren’t sure if you saw anything there to assuage your fears at all.
******
Between Pepper and Tony, Bruce didn’t know how long his life was going to last in that semi-peaceful state. First dating and then insisting he accompany people to sporting events? Really, even with his more recent track record as it was, he wasn’t entirely sure a high school lacrosse game was really the best place for him. At least back at the tower, he could count on Tony suiting up and taking him out.
That wasn’t even the worst of it, though. Surprise, surprise, there you were, sitting with your grandmother and probably hoping you’d never see him again. As much as Bruce tried to stay out of the conversation, he wasn’t deaf. He heard exactly when Pepper asked you to accompany him on a double date.
“Pepper,” he said as he followed the woman out of the stadium and toward wherever Happy was waiting to take them home. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Pepper replied, frowning.
“That.” Bruce gestured behind him. Although they could no longer see you, he had no doubt that you were still there trying to maneuver your grandmother through the crowd. “Asking her to come with us to dinner on Wednesday.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t even know we were supposed to go out to dinner that night. I honestly figured I’d be eating celery sticks alone in the kitchen at 10 PM again.”
Pepper stopped walking so quickly that Bruce nearly ran into her. For half a minute, he remained blinking at her back. Then she turned around, her brown eyes narrowed.
“Tony.”
Although he hated to ask, although Bruce really already knew, he squeezed his eyes shut and shoved his hands in into his pockets. “What about him?”
She heaved a sigh and looked at Bruce with concern flooding her eyes. “Did he tell you about this at all?”
“About the double date? No.”
“I should have known! Why wouldn’t he have had you ask? I just really–” Whatever Pepper was, however, she seemed to be unable to find a word bad enough to describe it. She pressed two fingers to her temple and then exhaled sharply. “Bruce. I’m so sorry. I didn’t–Is this okay?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters! I wouldn’t have asked if–Tony said you liked her!”
He had to smile at that. Tony worked quickly, if nothing else good could be said. “Actually, what I said was that I wanted him to drop the whole thing and leave her alone.”
“Oh my god. Bruce. I just–Do you want me to go back and call the whole thing off?”
“Kind of too late for that, isn’t it? They’re probably halfway home by now.”
“But why would Tony lie about that? Don’t answer that. I know. Because–”
“Because I have to learn sometime. So going back and rescinding the invitation won’t do much good. He’ll just make it happen some other way.”
“Are you guys going to get in the car?” Happy asked through an open window.
Pepper held a finger out toward him without even looking at his face. “Just one second, Happy. We’re in the middle of something.”
“Is it Mr. Stark related?”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
The window rolled right back up. Pepper took a step closer to Bruce, who had to concentrate very hard to not widen the space again. Old habits died hard.
“Bruce, is there anything I can do?”
“Not unless you can actually get Tony to stop, which I doubt.”
She bit her lip and looked up toward the sky. A moment later, Pepper’s eyes focused once again on Bruce as she shook her head. “I can’t think of anything.”
Bruce barked a single laugh. “Yeah, that’s kind of the thing about Tony.”
At last, Pepper turned and opened door to the car. “I’m going to kill him. I’m absolutely going to kill him.”
“Well, if you’re going to go that far,” Bruce said with a wry smile as he followed her inside, “I’d at least like to be present.”
“I’ll let you hold him down.”
“You’re very kind.”
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lisbonsteresa · 3 years
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You’re Once (In Any Lifetime)
🥳 🥳 HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAY( @eddiediaz)!!!!  🥳 🥳  (little late is better than never fingers crossed. a little something for my drew crew bestie who i have never yelled at, cajoled into watching a show, or threatened with a knife emoji. hope you like the...kind of au of the au of the - let’s just call it the 7th generation of an au 😘)
                                 ___
“She’s lingering again.”
“Call a spade a spade Bess.” George grumbled as she entered the kitchen with an armful of dirty dishes. “At this point she’s loitering.”
Nick glanced up from where he was reviewing that month’s order form at the prep table with a slight grin. “Don’t know if you can go that far. I mean she did pay for her dinner.”
“Oh please,” George shot back with a roll of her eyes. “It’s been 45 minutes since she paid her bill and she’s still nursing that iced tea like it’s a long island.” As if she knew they were talking about her, the redhead in the corner booth looked up from her glass and gave a small, unsure smile across the sparsely-seated dining room in their direction. She did not receive any in response.
“What I don’t understand is why she keeps coming here, of all places. I mean it’s not like our food is good.” An offended grunt came from Bess’s right, and she spun around to see the Claw’s cook pressing a burger to the grill with a wounded expression. 
“Oh no, Charlie,” she backtracked frantically, hands held out in a feeble attempt to placate the older man. “I just meant compared to what they must have at the yacht club.” 
Charlie gave a noncommittal shrug, apparently forgiving the unintended slight before moving down the line where he hopefully missed Bess’s whispered  “Or anywhere else…”
“Guys, come on.” Ace cut in, voice calm and measured even as he scrubbed determinedly at a rusting lobster pot. “It’s not like we don’t have other customers keeping us here. What’s so bad about Nancy lingering a bit?” 
“The fact that she’s not just ‘Nancy’, Ace.” George admonished as she tipped her dishes into the full sink in front of him, raising the water level until it sloshed dangerously close to the edge. “She’s Nancy Hudson. You know how the hill-toppers treat us townies -”
“When they’re not wheeling and dealing in back rooms to screw us over while they’re sitting pretty in their ivory towers.” Nick interrupted, his attention still on the sheet in front of him.  
“Exactly.” George gave her boyfriend an appreciative look as she leaned up against the prep table next to him. “And now what, I’m supposed to be happy that one of them deigned to grace us with her presence?” 
“Yes, and I had to take her hill-topper order.” Bess lamented, pouting near the line window until she noticed Nick looking at her with raised eyebrows. “What?”
“You know you’re a hill-topper, right Bess?”
She turned towards him, her expression scandalized and defensive. “That is completely different, Mr. Multimillionaire.” (Nick held his hands up in amused defeat). “I only just became a Marvin; I wasn’t born and raised a hill-topper, unlike some people.” 
“Besides,” she glanced back across the dining room with an insulted wrinkle of her nose, “the Hudsons and Marvins are long-standing enemies; it was humiliating to have to serve one of them.”
“The Hudsons and Marvins, maybe, but not you and Nancy.” Ace countered, leaning the lobster pot against the back of the drying rack before reaching into the increasingly murky water to start on George’s dishes. “You two barely know each other.”
Bess paused, playing with her necklace and staring into space as if considering this fact for the first time. “Well, I guess that’s true…"
“And she’s been spending her gap year here in town volunteering and helping Hannah Gruen set up a scholarship with the Historical Society.” Ace continued with a glance over his shoulder at Nick.
“I mean, that’s great, but -” Nick stopped, eyes narrowing “wait, how do you know that?”
Ace’s hands paused their motions, just for a fraction of a second, before he resumed rinsing a plate and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Must’ve seen it in the paper somewhere.” He muttered offhandedly. “And -”
“And nothing.” George cut him off, crossing her arms across her chest with a scowl. “A few good deeds don’t change the fact that this time next year she’ll be 300 miles away with a full ride to some Ivy League school just because of her last name, and the rest of us will still be stuck here cleaning grease traps in an old clam shack.” Ace’s shoulders tensed more and more with every word that left her mouth. “And since when did you start defending Hudsons anyway?”
“I’m not defending the Hudsons, I’m defending Na-” Ace spun around to face the room and froze, realizing that his raised voice had turned three sets of interested eyes in his direction. (Well, four, if you counted Charlie.) “I’m not defending anybody.” he continued after a beat. “I’m just saying you can’t help who your family is, and at least she’s trying to be better than hers. It wouldn’t kill you guys to try and see that.” 
No one said anything - this was the most upset any of them had seen Ace get since the time that nor'easter put a tree branch through Florence’s windshield. “Anyway, dishes are done; I’m gonna take my break.”
He tossed the towel that had been slung over his shoulder down onto the counter and stomped down the steps towards the storeroom. The back door slammed shut a moment later, and the others turned back towards the dining room to see that Nancy had at last abandoned her iced tea and was heading towards the exit with the air of someone in a rush trying very hard to appear relaxed.
“So…” Bess began, her eyes flicking back and forth between Nancy’s booth and the door. “when do we tell him we saw them making out by the loading dock last Thursday?”  
“I say we make him sweat for a bit.” George said with a shrug as she straightened and headed out to clear the table. “Serves him right for thinking he could keep something like this from us.” Bess and Nick shared an amused smile behind her, then got back to their own work.
If any of them noticed that Ace arrived back from his break 20 minutes late with his hair in disarray, they kept it to themselves.
                                   _____
“Great. I’m going to be picking seaweed out of my hair for a week. Thanks a lot Bess.”
Bess paused her efforts to wring out her dress to shoot an incredulous look in George’s direction. “I’m sorry, how is this my fault!?”
“It’s my birthday George!” Came the response in a mocking imitation of the Brit’s accent. “Just close for inventory George! It’ll be fun George!” 
“Well excuse me for trying to enjoy a nice beach day!” Bess shot back. “How was I supposed to know we’d be attacked by that kelkey-whatever??”
“Kelpie.” Nick corrected, stopping the bickering for a moment while all three turned their attention towards the redhead kneeling in the sand and frantically running her hands over a soaking wet and slightly dazed Ace. “That’s what you called it, right?”
The second Nancy realized she was being addressed, her hands dropped from Ace’s body like they had been burned. “Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, a kelpie. They’re Scottish horse spirits that drag their victims underwater and devour them. That silver necklace Bess had was its bridle, and -” she paused, looking around to see the others staring blankly at her. 
“Sorry.” Her voice sounded almost sheepish. “I volunteer over at the historical society a lot, and there’s some…interesting stuff in their archives.” Another moment passed. No one’s expression changed.
“…Anyway the bridle can be used to control it, so I think it attacked you to try and get it back. And since you didn’t know what it was, it just seemed easier to grab it and toss it then try and explain why it was making the giant horse spirit angry.” She finished with a weak grin, as if she’d been explaining the weather and not the most terrifying thing most of them had ever seen. 
No one spoke for a while longer, and then Bess’s quiet  “Oh.” broke the silence. “Well…okay. For a second I thought you just really didn’t like my necklace.” 
The tension broken, the others looked at her with varying levels of amusement before she let out a gasp and turned to address Nancy directly. “Wait my cousin Cassidy gave me that last night! You don’t think…”
“I don’t think she knew what it was.” Nancy replied with an almost fond smile. “When the historical society got the request to put the necklace in one its deposit boxes, the record just said it was a Marvin family heirloom; brought over aboard the Governance.”
“And the kelpie followed it all the way here?” Nick asked, eying Nancy sideways as he tried to shake water out of his ear.
She shrugged. “There are some records that say kelpies are bound to follow their bridles, wherever they go. They can’t leave the water though, so it could have gotten into the bay and then…gotten lost, I guess.” Bess was already nodding along as if everything Nancy was saying made perfect sense. “We didn’t realize the necklace was anything out of the ordinary until Cassidy came to request it and Hannah thought she recognized it from her research.”
“Well good thing she did, or this might’ve been Bess’s last birthday.” George smirked. “Never thought I’d say this,” she continued, ignoring her friend’s offended huff and turning towards Nancy, “but I’m glad you were around, Hudson.”
“Thanks.” Nancy sounded like she wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered or insulted by the statement. “I was looking for you guys, actually. When we realized what the necklace was, we called Cassidy and she said she’d given it to you for your birthday, and since you were coming to the beach Hannah and I were worried that getting it too close to the water might -”
“Wait, how did you know we’d be at the beach?” Bess interrupted.
Nancy stilled, her eyes darting over to a still-groggy Ace then back to the others so quickly that they might have missed it had they not been watching her so closely. “I must have overheard it the last time I was at the Claw.” Her voice was measured; almost deliberately calm. “When it’s slow there your voices tend to carry.” 
Bess and Nick gave each other an uneasy sidelong glance at Nancy’s implication, while George’s expression grew into something approaching begrudging respect. “Anyway,” Nancy stood, brushing sand off her pants and looking anywhere but in Ace’s direction, “I should get back to Hannah and let her know everything’s okay. See you around.”
She turned and started heading towards the parking lot, and Ace watched with worried eyes as his friends had a rapid fire non-verbal conversation. Bess nodded towards Nick, who responded with a shrug. They both looked over at Ace with small smiles, then turned to George; Nick with one eyebrow raised in question and Bess with what could only be described as puppy dog eyes. George glanced at Ace before letting out a labored sigh and rolling her eyes as she called down the beach: “Hey Hudson!” 
Nancy turned, hands twisting in the strap of the messenger bag. “You wanna meet us at the Claw after we get cleaned up?” George asked. “We’re closed for inventory - it’d be a good place to talk about all…this.” (Bess cleared her throat pointedly.) “And we have cake for Bess’s birthday.”
The smile that bloomed on Nancy’s face was beaming, even at a distance. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
                                 ______
It had been three weeks since the kelpie incident, and for all intents and purposes, Nancy had settled in as the fifth member of their little group. She and Bess had gotten along almost immediately, despite some awkward encounters when they had run into family while together. 
Nick had warmed to her considerably once she started helping him with his plans for a youth center in town. (It certainly hadn’t hurt that she’d ‘misplaced’ her grandfather’s application for the building on Spring St. until Nick’s bid had already closed). 
And while George and Nancy bickered almost constantly, they (usually) did it with smiles on their faces. If asked, they might not call each other ‘friends’, but they were definitely heading in a good direction. 
The first Friday afternoon of July found them sprawled out across the dining table of Nick’s loft, brainstorming ideas for that year’s ‘Still Summer at the Bayside Claw’ event. (Or rather found most of them. Truth be told, Bess’s focus might have been more on her online shopping.) They’d been working for an hour or so when a noise like the rapid honking of a clown nose suddenly interrupted the conversation.
“Shit,” Ace muttered, grabbing his phone and snoozing the alarm, “I’m going to be late for Shabbat.” He gathered his things in a rush, exchanged a quick “Bye” and kiss with Nancy, then froze. 
His eyes moved rapidly between the others - Nancy’s wide-eyed panic; George’s look of shock and disgust; Nick’s eyebrows shooting up his forehead; Bess’s almost giddy expression - before seeming to make a decision.
“Uh…Nick,” he croaked out before anyone could react any further, making his way over to where his friend was sitting with an air of forced normalcy and kissing him like it was something he did every day. “thank you for having me.”
“See you tomorrow, Bess.” He continued, leaning over and giving her a peck on the cheek, causing a giggle to escape her barely-maintained composure.
He turned towards the other end of the table, eying George the way an antelope might eye a lion. “George -”  
“Don’t even think about it.” She cut him off with a glare.
“Right. ‘Course.” He glanced around the room one last time as he backed towards the door, eyes skipping over Nancy as if he was afraid of what his expression might reveal if he focused at all on her. “Um, have a good night everyone.” And then he was gone, the door slamming behind him as his rapid footsteps echoed down the hallway.
A minute passed in complete silence, then another. 
Nick looked absolutely mystified, his fingers stuck halfway to his lips like he couldn’t quite comprehend what had just happened. George’s grimace was slowly turning into an amused smirk, and Bess looked seconds away from breaking into complete hysterics.
Another minute passed before Nancy, staring at the table with a face almost as red as her hair, broke the silence. “So…how long have you guys known?”
“Since before the kelpie incident.” George answered bluntly, while Nick shook off his daze and turned his attention towards Nancy and Bess took a calming breath and tried to bite back her laughter.
“Oh.” 
Nancy’s eyes darted between the table and the door as if trying to decide if it would be worse to try and explain herself or just cut her losses and run. “Ok, well, we were going to tell you, we just -”
“You can relax Nancy.” Nick cut in, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. She flinched at the touch, but finally turned to see an understanding smile on his face. “You wouldn’t be here right now if any of us still had a problem with you.”
Bess nodded rapidly, reaching across the table to cover one of Nancy’s hands with her own. “You make Ace happy, and that’s what really matters to us."
A wobbly smile began to grow on Nancy’s face, before she blinked and turned towards George with apprehension and a bit of challenge in her eyes. 
George’s expression stayed firm until Nick cleared his throat and gave her a pointed look. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but the grin she gave Nancy was genuine.“Plus I guess you’re not horrible.”
That pulled a laugh from Nancy, even as she blinked back touched tears she knew George would make fun of. “Thanks guys. I really appreciate that.”
(To say Ace was confused when she walked into the Claw the next morning and kissed him in the middle of the dining room would be an understatement, but he definitely wasn’t complaining.)
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eldritchqueerture · 3 years
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Point of View - Original Statement Fic
Point of View (5004 words) by LadyNikita Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Statement Giver(s) (The Magnus Archives) Additional Tags: Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), this was intended as the eye but evolved into the vast as well, happens, cosmic horror, attempt at Eldritch Madness, unreality, Discussions of pointlessness and meaninglessness, Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), from the eps about space, Mentions of Death, Compulsion, discussions of free will (kind of), Dissociation, Panic, Mentions of addiction, Leitner Book (The Magnus Archives), except it was not possessed by Leitner, Pretty Colours <3, Neurodivergent Protagonist, Queer Protagonist, because I can project a bit as a treat, Can Be Read Without Prior Knowledge of the Podcast (I think)
Summary: "Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?" --- Statement of Lyria Ellison regarding a different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.
Notes: Hiiiiii <3 I've been reading Lovecraft recently and as much as I hate the dude, The Colour Out of Space gave me so much inspiration that I immediately sat down and produced this in one sitting. I've been meaning to play with the concept of eldritch madness for a while; something about this trope is really appealing to me and I'm really enjoying my attempts at shaping it with words. Lyria is a preexisting OC of mine, I will give some background on her in the end notes because I love her very much. This is a form of practice for me; I'm playing with horror themes and I'd like to get acquainted with them to better incorporate them into my overall writing. Therefore I will accept constructive criticism if anyone wants to give it, but only in the form of DMs, either on Tumblr (your-queer-vampire-dm) or on Discord, if we know each other through a server. All of the warnings I think should be mentioned are in the tags, but if you think something should be added then please tell me!
Date: May 10th , 2018
Name: Lyria Ellison
Subject of experience: A different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.
How do you start telling a story that changed your heart, your mind, and your soul so profoundly that you can barely still function in a society? How do you say all that without sounding borderline insane? Nobody knows what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I know they would all say I’ve hallucinated it all and should seek treatment. But I know it won’t help. I know… I know so much now. Too much and not enough. Never enough. I know what happened was real . I don’t have proof so I’m guessing you won’t believe me either, but I need to tell someone about it. So I might as well tell you.
My name is Lyria Ellison and I’m a neuropsychology major. Ex-major, I should say. I dropped out after… Yeah. I dropped out; there’s not much point in continuing studying things about the feeble, insignificant human brain. Utterly pointless venture.
Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?
Just a year ago, I was convinced I was going to finish my degree. I was so passionate about it too, eager to learn more and more, to research and seek knowledge. Curious and fascinated by the world around us. What a foolish thing it was to give into that drive. My mind was open to the supernatural, although I always approached it scientifically; I never said the supernatural existed, but I also never said it didn’t. It was plausible; all in all, every scientist must accept that there is still a vast amount of knowledge we don’t have about the world.
The ignorance was a blessing. But I shall not get ahead of myself.
It started around December last year; my dad had died, and my girlfriend, Shawala, and I were clearing out his house. There wasn’t really anyone else to do it; my mother had passed a couple years prior, I had no siblings, and extended family was out of the picture as well; and my dad had gathered a lot of things in his adventurous life; he was a traveller, and he loved the world, loved learning about it, just like me. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all; my dad meant a lot to me back then, and Shawala proved an excellent support at that first shock. She promised to do some first view assessments of the ground floor, while I went to scope out how things looked in the attic.
It’s always either basements or attics, isn’t it? I used to read horror, Lovecraftian was my favourite – how ironic, isn’t it? How stupid . How utterly ignorant. The hubris of the human race at its finest.
Anyways, the attic was half-lit from the small windows in the roof, and dust was swirling in the faint light of the afternoon sun. It was cold here, but I didn’t pay much mind; the house was old, and it wasn’t surprising that there was draft. To say the space was cluttered would be an understatement; I could barely walk around the numerous boxes, old furniture, crates, and overflowing bookshelves; all of which made something in my chest curl tight, bringing tears to my eyes. I steered my steps towards the nearest bookshelf; I’ve always been a bookworm, fascinated by nearly any tome I came across; I’ve been reading popular science books since I was eight. So naturally, I was drawn to the books, taking huge steps above the cardboard boxes and careful not to hit anything else.
The books were old, of course, and dusty. Some of them had loose pages, and I treated them very gently, almost reverently. I have a little bit of a bookbinder streak, and I decided I would take them home and try to put them back together. As I rifled through them, I saw they pertained to a vast variety of subjects, from poetry, drama, and history, to science, metaphysics, and maths. The deeper I looked into this stunning collection, the more reverence rose in my heart; at my fingertips I had the oldest and the biggest accumulation of knowledge I had ever seen. I saw some books dated back even two hundred years ago.
At that point Shawala called me to check if I was alright. I put the book I had in my hands back and my knuckles brushed against the black leather cover of the next one on the shelf. I felt pleasant tingling in my palm at the touch and my heart leaped at the prospect; I didn’t know why –  the book seemed ordinary enough on the shelf and there was no title on its spine.
I sometimes wonder if I could have just left it there and gone downstairs; chosen to come back later and then maybe, it wouldn’t have enticed me as it did. If, by that point, I had had any choice left on the matter.
Alas, intrigued by the book, I placed my palm on the spine and took it out. The leather was soft and smooth, probably sheep, with familiar subtle grains all over the texture. I remember it striked me as odd that it was warmer than the rest of the books in the drafty attic, but I shrugged it off. The front cover had a title, small but visible in the centre, etched in gold – Punctum Visus .
I, by all means, cannot read or speak Latin, but I figured it was something to do with vision. I opened the book, an unknown anticipation buzzing in my stomach. The pages were worn and old, their texture was slightly rough but pleasant under my fingertips; as I opened the front page, I saw the title again, this time in thick but still elegant, black letters, and the smell came up to my nostrils.
I tried to describe it in my head countless times after. I always loved the smell of old books, and I knew it very well, so it came to me as a surprise to realize it wasn’t the only smell I could feel from the book. It was… cold, somehow, distant but prickling at my nose, a little bit the way peppermint tastes. It reminded me of the night sky and distant stars somehow. The smell awakened an unease within me, as I couldn’t quite place what it was and why it seemed so weird , but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant. It was… enticing. Like a promise of a mystery.
I breathed it in again through my nose, closing my eyes, and for a moment I lost all feeling in my body. I was untethered and immaterial, somewhere in deep darkness that seemed to envelop me whole. It felt cold on my mind, stretching it thoughtlessly in the empty vastness, and I saw distant flickering lights of stars. Before I could form a coherent thought, I was back in myself, panting and shaking, staring at the front page of the Punctum Visus . I looked around with shaky breaths; the attic looked the same, and Shawala’s steps on the stairs reached my ears, with her voice calling my name. A shiver passed down my spine, causing goosebumps to bloom on my skin; was it the draft, the dread, or the excitement I couldn’t tell.
I knew I had to read this book, no matter what it took for me to do so.
I took it home, almost forgetting about the rest of the books upstairs. It had spent the next month laying in my room, as I dealt with the formalities and moving the rest of things that weren’t sold from the house either to my place or to charity. After the day we left the house for the last time, I collapsed in my bed, exhausted, but instead of closing, my eyes fell on the book unassumingly waiting on my nightstand.
A surge of excitement passed through me, waking me right up. I sat up and reached for the book. It was still warm; I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but warm it was. I think it made me subconsciously assign it more… being? Like, even before I knew anything, I somehow subconsciously accepted that it was more than just an object; that it was, in a sense, alive on its own. I brushed my fingers on the cover, feeling the texture of the leather and the etching of the letters. In the meantime during this month I had checked the meaning of the title – Point of Sight; a position from which a thing is or is supposed to be viewed. It makes so much sense now.
But then I didn’t know what dangers it held; or I didn’t want to think about them. I do remember feeling anxious, my hands trembling every time I opened the cover, but it was so mingled with exhilaration of the certainty I was discovering something important that I must have disregarded it. As I turned the pages, I wasn’t surprised to find the text in Latin; though I still felt a pang of frustration that it meant I couldn’t read it for now. I rifled through the pages, looking curiously at the letters that formed words yet unattainable to me. There was a hunger inside of me; a hunger to Know. As I turned the pages past various symbols, illustrations of the constellations, and of Earth, I determined it must be some sort of a metaphysical work. The point of view on the world around us.
Normally I just skim through works like this and leave them. While they are an interesting read sometimes, they’re not my favourite genre and, looking objectively, putting in the effort of learning a whole language just for the sake of reading a treatise on the meaning of cosmos by an unknown author seems strange at best. But somehow it seemed obvious to me that I had to read it. It called to me, sang into a part of my being that begged to be filled, promising knowledge that would finally leave me satisfied. I know now that it’s impossible. Once you’ve tasted the hunger for knowing, you will never find satisfaction; it’s like an addiction. You just crave more and more, and the knowledge never ends. After a certain point you know too much and when it all connects, when it starts to make sense… you slip. I didn’t know that, even though maybe I should have. I didn’t know what those things I was feeling meant then and I didn’t stop to question them; I gave into it as soon as it touched me. I was stupid.
What followed were a busy couple of months. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent keeping up the pretence of being interested in my major (back then I only thought it a brief hyperfixation, of course, and wouldn’t have called it a pretence at all), I was learning Latin online or staring into the incomprehensible words on the pages. This period of my life is a blur; I remember my friends checking up on me if I was alright, since I wasn’t particularly social anymore. Shawala got progressively more worried, but it fully escaped my mind to care. I know that staring thoughtlessly at the book took up more and more of my time; once, I remember, I returned from my classes at three PM and took the book out; when I came back to myself it was well past midnight. That’s when I started to feel truly uneasy about it. It was the second half of April; I looked back on what I’ve been doing these past months and this cold dread started creeping up to my throat. I realized I didn’t know why I wanted to read the book so much and I remembered the “vision” or the hallucination I had that first time in my dad’s attic. I had set it aside completely as unimportant, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. I started shaking and theorizing in my head about the book being able to influence my mind somehow, to control it. Had my actions not been my own? How much of it was my own will and how much was the book? Was it even possible for it to influence me like that; could it be that it was supernatural in some way?
The house became cold, unnaturally so. It was dark and all the windows were closed, but a chill draft managed to find its way into the corridor I was in anyway. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, trembling in panic. I was all alone in the flat, everyone I knew was surely already asleep in their homes, and I was small and weak in the face of something that maybe could have controlled my mind. I suddenly became aware of the leatherbound book in my hand, and I threw it along the corridor at the front door with a whimper, as far away from me as possible. The book thumped against the door, then the floor, and opened on a random page.
I’ve read enough horrors. I knew that the page would be significant, and that knowledge made me sob and hug my knees tighter. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt like I’d just woken up from a months-long dream… and perhaps I was right. The recent past felt alien.
I felt tears sting my eyes and that’s when the smell reached me. Again that mixture of old paper and peppermint cold, distantly sweet but freezing the blood in my veins. My breath came in ragged and shallow, and tears streamed down my face as I stared at the open book that was calling me in an inaudible whisper. The logical side of my mind was trying desperately to make sense of it, to assign the dissociative feeling to my father’s death and yeah, it was plausible, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. The whispers sounded again, swirling around my head, the golden sound almost touching the back of my neck, making me wince. It was enticing and promising, but this time, I felt terror instead of excitement. Disregarding how my mind was trying to rationalize the situation, I knew the book was cursed somehow. I knew that I was its victim. And I knew that I would not be strong enough to resist it.
I don’t know how much time I sat there, trembling, and sobbing into my knees, before I calmed down from the panic and decided I had to do something. I had to find out what this book was and how it found itself into my dad’s library. I couldn’t remember seeing anything in his diaries that would mention it at all, but then again, I didn’t read them all cover to cover. On wobbly legs I carefully made my way back to my room and searched the Internet until the sun started peeking out of the window; I found nothing about any book titled Punctum Visus . I tried all the libraries that I’d known of, that had their assortment online, all the research databases; nothing.
So, at the crack of dawn, with a fast-beating heart, I stood in the door of my room, staring out into the corridor, where the book still lay by the front door, unmoving. The golden strings of a wordless melody made it to my ears; it promised an explanation; that this time if I looked close enough, I would find what I was looking for.
What was I looking for?
Where else could I find the answers if not in the book itself?
I could feel its cold fingers slowly wrap around my mind, steering me to come closer. It called me with a hypnotising voice that awakened all the red signals in my brain, telling me to run and hide, but I didn’t. The voice meant danger, but I knew it also meant knowledge.
Dangerous knowledge. The pull dragged me through the corridor step by step; I hadn’t been fighting it as strongly as I could have had and I was about to start, since I was getting closer to the book, but suddenly I felt the chill of the influence let go, hovering close but out of reach. It was still compelling me to come, to Look, but I could move my own limbs. I had a choice to make.
Knowledge of danger. Did I believe my own warning thoughts that I would regret looking into the book? Did I take my own logical, rational side seriously? Was I ever good at resisting my own impulses?
I’ve never been addicted to anything, but then again, I never really had the opportunity, as it were; my friends were more of a no-alcohol types and I really ever smoked cigarettes once. I’ve never seen drugs in real life. So who’s to say if I’m not an addictive personality? And this, this was addictive. The thrill of mystery, the exhilarating process of learning, the anticipation of the answers.
Was it ever really my choice?
No supernatural force guided my steps that night; no cold fingers made me kneel next to the book and carefully cradle it in my arms, looking at the page with a shaky breath and tears in my eyes, as if I was coming back home like the prodigal son. But I’m sure it was by some paranormal means that this time I could understand the text on the pages.
I honestly don’t remember what it said. As I read the unfamiliar words, the meaning presented itself in my mind, not entirely unlike that first “vision” I had in the attic; as soon as I started reading I knew that I had made the choice and there was no turning back. That cold draft enveloped me, sat on my skin, and started to bite; I felt that smell again, stronger than ever before, something intangible but unmistakably inhuman . It was then that I realized that’s what had felt wrong to me about the smell since the beginning. It was inferior and alien. My hands started shaking as my eyes, glued to the text, moved now on their own down the page, drinking the words in. I was terrified out of my mind, but the pleasant tingling along my nerves was back, the anticipation of the promised understanding.
My mind was drowned with the tide of knowledge. This was just a prologue; a true discovery would require preparation, but I was almost ready. The voice said I was chosen, that I was a perfect candidate to bring It what It needs and that I would be rewarded. I cried tears of amazement and horror at the sheer scope of the voice – it seemed to encompass the entire world. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I didn’t know then that it was a blessing. I wanted to know, I craved to know what It was and how I could be of use to something so powerful, so huge. Divine. That was a word that crossed my mind, as much as I don’t like that. I don’t like many things, but I can’t change any of them.
The voice said I’m on the right path. I would Know and Understand. First, I needed to do something. As It told me what that was, doubt started to creep up to my mind. What was I doing? What was happening? How could this be real?
I came to on the floor by my front door, the cursed book in hand, with a tear-stained face and a bloody nose.
I knew what I had to do to get ready and, as I calmed down and went over everything in my head, I was surprised by how trivial it was. Honestly, by this point I was kind of afraid It would tell me to hurt someone, so I was glad this was just about reading a bunch of words in a specific location at a specific time. I was aware of the fact that this was most probably a ritual, and I was quite apprehensive. I kept arguing with myself in my head, over and over whether I should follow through, but deep down I knew that I would, no matter what I told myself. This part, I think, scared me the most; how compelling the promise of knowledge was, how reverently I’d found myself thinking of the book and its owner (which I assumed was the voice), how fanatical some of my thoughts sounded. I’ve never been religious, never really felt idealistic either. I was always focused on facts, on the here and now. Can knowledge be an ideal? Can you be a fanatic of Seeing and Knowing?
How much had I changed since I’d found Punctum Visus in that old attic.
I found a good, quiet spot, on the north-west side of the New Forest National Park near Southampton. I told no one about this, deeming it unimportant. I would come back after my big discovery, I would explain everything. I laugh at myself now; at my naivety.
The night of April 28 th was clear, and the starry sky looked back at me as I parked my car on the road in the forest and locked it. I tied a piece of a long red string to the wheel, not to lose my way in the forest, and started to walk forward. I held the book close to my chest, as if it could protect me from the dark, eerie outlines of the trees, swaying gently on the wind and whatever the darkness around me held. I didn’t light the torch; the moon was nearly full, bathing everything in its gentle light, and besides, for some reason it seemed that the crude yellow light would somehow break the sanctity of what I was about to do. I could see the ground in front of me and managed to lose sight of my car and everything else besides trees pretty fast.
I stopped when I found a small clearing. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on me like a big eye; I didn’t know why this comparison seemed the most fitting, but it did. I took a deep breath, feeling a chill plant little dots all over my skin, making my hairs stand on end. The wind died down and the trees froze, as if in anticipation. I felt something watching me closely; I was not alone here anymore.
The realization made my breath catch in my throat and the last streaks of sanity broke through my thick skull. Run! Drop the book and run! I didn’t. My hands trembled, my muscles tensed, and I stood there, frozen with fear as something stared at me, seemingly for eternity. Something bigger than me, bigger than anything I have ever seen was watching me, waiting. My eyes dropped to the book in my arms. The black leather was warm, as always, but this time I felt a pulsating sensation from it. A heartbeat.
I screamed. The book landed discarded on the ground, and I stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in the grass as well. It was cold and wet, and it glistened with something in the faint moonlight. At first I took it for water, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the grass itself that glittered – a shy rainbow, glowing iridescently in an impossible way. I froze, stunned, for I have never seen such colours before. It seemed utterly alien, something unfitting for the human eye to see; simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.
As I looked around, I noticed that everything alive in the forest – the trees, the grass, the bushes, the plants – had taken on that iridescent mixture of faint light that prickled my eyes and sent a shiver of terror down my spine. It was beautiful, utterly gorgeous in a way that nothing a human eye can perceive could be. It was horrifying in how different, alien, and other it was. My senses could tell this is not of the Earth; not of this reality, not of this world; everything in me that still had common sense tried to recoil from the inferiority of this magnificence and the danger it brought, but I had abandoned common sense a while back. Maybe even when I touched the book for the first time. I stared then, breathless and trembling, at this scenery as if from a fairy tale and decided to lock away my rational thoughts. I wanted to See, to Know; I wanted to experience and if this was the death of me then hell, it was a pretty good way to go. To behold such a sight, I thought, was a reward in and of itself.
Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. I slowly rose to my knees and patted the ground down until I felt the book. It still pulsated with this heartbeat and the letters etched in the leather glowed with golden light. My hands were sweaty, and I didn’t know whether I was shivering from fear or the cold. I opened the book on the first page.
What I saw was not what I had expected. I remembered that the first page, after the titular one, was the beginning of the introduction, that much I had understood, but now it was a big picture in black and white; a night sky, with an almost full moon and strewn with stars. It was a shot from the ground and treetops could be seen at the edges of the picture. As the book swayed in my hands, the stars glittered, and the perspective shifted ever so slightly, as if it was in 3D. Stricken by a surge of dread and cold certainty, I looked up. My suspicion was right – the picture in the book depicted the exact image that was now above me. I gasped quietly and looked down at the book—
And this is where things started to really go horribly, horribly wrong.
The book was gone. What’s more, the ground was gone too and suddenly everything was not where it should have been. I blinked but it did nothing to ease the dizziness; and when I composed myself enough to register what I was seeing I froze, the most intense horror I have ever experienced crushing my body from all sides and inside out.
I realized that I was Seeing. I was finally Seeing, and I Understood it all.
I don’t know how to convey in words what I saw. I don’t believe it’s possible; humans were never made to see and understand such things. I should have never touched the book, I should have never asked for knowledge. All my life I believed that knowledge was the point; it was a tool, and it was power. I don’t know what I think anymore. I think some knowledge should always be hidden because we were not made to know everything. We can’t , it’s physically impossible for us to comprehend.
For one moment in my life. For one moment I became something else, and I saw the world in the way It sees the world. For one moment I shared a mind with an eldritch being, a thing that is Fear itself, and I saw the Earth through Its Eye. I can’t… I can’t tell you just how horrible it is. How… How meaningless; we’re all intertwined things, guided by strings of web that lead us through life, and we’re all connected in this maze of fear . We’re not individuals; we’re not special. We don’t have souls and none of our experiences matter. We’re just fear. These… These entities are a part of all of us. They’re our fear and they live inside of us, inside of every living creature that can feel fear. Can you comprehend that? How can you be sure you are yourself when there’s a cosmic entity, a power as old as life itself, living you ? And no one has any idea. Nobody knows and if I tell someone they’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy. But deep down I know what I saw. I know it was real. And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that this Being of eyes that I became a part of watches everything I do. I feel Its presence here very strongly, and I guess it makes sense. It will never leave me. It’s a part of me, just like the rest of them; just like they’re all a part of every one of you, yet you have no idea. But I know. And I know I’m all alone with that knowledge, the knowledge that I can’t comprehend, but I know I could in that one moment. It’s a very lonely place to be and I’m scared.
I’m scared as I have never been before; this fear doesn’t leave me anymore. Every second of every day I’m aware I’m watched by something as great as cosmos. I’m aware I shared my mind with that being and it makes my skin crawl.
I don’t know what to do now, but I don’t expect any advice from you. I’m leaving the book with you, as proof. Its heart doesn’t beat anymore, and I’ve seen what I was supposed to.
Don’t read it.
Notes: If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment!! For people interested in a little bit of background: Lyria is a D&D character I have created that still awaits her chance to play in a campaign. She's an arcane scholar that has a dark little secret of actually being a warlock of a being she doesn't know a lot about. She's in love with knowledge and she seeks to learn about her powers as well as the world around her. I'm currently DMing a Ravenloft campaign and I just couldn't miss the fact how much potential for a corruption arc she has. Then I listened to TMA and I was like, she would definitely become the Avatar of the Beholding.
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shera-dnd · 3 years
Link
I do believe we’ve gone too long without a good antagonist, so it’s time I introduced two in one go.
Also there is a joke there that I wrote before I even started writing the fic itself and I’m sure y’all will immediately recognize which one that is
“Amitola.”
Ilia blinked awake. It was a cold morning in their little camp, and her body was still sore from last night’s sparring session. She wished for nothing more than to stay inside her bedroll just a little longer, but a feeling of unease kept her from resting once more.
She recognized the voice, she certainly recognized the name, but there was no possible way she had actually heard that. That must have been a dream or perhaps she had simply misheard something in her half asleep state.
That didn’t matter, the sun had risen, and there was no doubt her dutiful knights were already awake and waiting for her to join them. So she quickly placed her usual glamour upon herself, donned one of her fine dresses, and stepped out of her tent.
“Good morning, my fair lady,” Weiss greeted cheerfully.
She sat by the campfire, preparing their breakfast as Belladonna watched her in amusement. She clearly didn’t expect the Schnee to know how to cook.
“Morning, Schnee,” Ilia replied, “what has gotten you in such a pleasant mood?”
“It was you, of course,” she explained, “last night has brought me such great joy.”
Ilia should not have expected the Schnee to know how to mind her wording, if the black knight’s grin was anything to go by.
“Is it safe to ask what has happened in this camp while I was gone?” Belladonna asked.
“I cannot say,” Ilia replied, unamused, “is it safe to ask why you’ve been gone all night?”
Weiss looked between the two of them in confusion, “is it safe to ask what you two are on about?”
“Oh, no, it certainly is not,” Belladonna chuckled.
“Then I believe a change of subject is in order,” Weiss declared, trying her best to evade whatever it was her companions were talking about, “Lady Rose and Lady Polendina have invited me over for target practice today. If my lady would allow it, I’d like us to make our way to their camp as soon as we’re done with this meal.”
“I…” Ilia wasn’t sure how to answer her. Her dream had left her unnerved, and spending time with the lovebirds would do nothing to ease her worries.
“I find myself indisposed today,” she settled on.
Weiss was visibly disappointed, but was quick to hide it behind the mask of a dutiful knight, “then I shall let them know we won’t make it today.”
“No, wait!” Ilia interrupted, not because she cared about the Schnee’s feelings, but because she did not want to spend all day in the company of a moping human, “just go if you want to. Don’t let me keep you.”
Weiss’s eyes went wide, clearly taken aback by this response, “are you certain, Lady Ilia?”
She scoffed in annoyance, “I wouldn’t have said so if I weren’t.”
At that the knight-to-be smiled at her in a way that certainly did not set her heart a flutter, and most definitely did not ease her worries like she were some fretting damsel. In fact, the only thing that got any reaction out of Ilia was when the Schnee decided to go on a tedious ramble, going on about how she would not forget such an act of kindness.
“Yes, yes, I’m a goddess amongst mortals,” she interrupted, “now shouldn’t you be making us breakfast?”
“Of course!” She agreed, promptly returning to the task at hand.
The resulting meal was surprisingly not deadly. In fact, as loath to admit it as Ilia was, it was in fact quite good.
“That was quite the astounding meal, Lady Weiss,” Belladonna praised, “I did not expect an atlesian noble to know how to cook.”
“Do not inflate her ego any further,” Ilia chided, “just be grateful the Schnee did not poison us.”
At least an attempt would have made her unease feel more warranted.
“You both flatter me,” Weiss replied. Though her smile was proud, it was closer to that of a farmer being recognized for their hard work, than that of a lord listing off their titles. It was charming in a way.
Not that Ilia would ever say that out loud.
“Great, you’ve made the Schnee happy, what a way to spoil my meal,” Ilia complained, though neither of them bought it, “shouldn’t you be on your way? Wouldn’t want to keep the lovebirds waiting.”
“You’re right, of course,” Weiss surrendered, getting up as she spoke, “I only request that you do not miss me in my absence.”
“Never has a request been so easy to fulfill,” Ilia replied, rolling her eyes, “now be gone.”
With that Weiss left them. Though Ilia assumed she’d get a moment of peace, it was clear Belladonna had other plans, for she kept looking at Ilia with the most insufferable of expressions plastered across her face. She knew what that look meant, she knew the conversation that would follow, and she most certainly did not want to partake in it.
“Not a word, Belladonna,” she threatened. It was a futile endeavor, all that did was work a smirk into that unbearable face of hers.
“You and ‘the Schnee’ seem very close,” she commented, to her own amusement and to Ilia’s great pain.
“I do not appreciate the implication in your tone, seelie,” Ilia complained.
“You have yet to tell me what has gotten Lady Weiss in such a cheerful mood,” Belladonna insisted.
“We sparred,” she replied, “nothing more to it than that.”
“Funny, that’s just what me and Yang did last night as well,” Belladonna commented.
“I still cannot comprehend what you see in that human,” Ilia shook her head.
“She eats for ten men and could take down just as many with her bare hands, and yet she could name every constellation in the sky and every flower in these fields,” she explained, her voice was sweet, but tasted like bitter jealousy to Ilia’s ear, “she fights like a mad woman, but speaks like a poet, and I have yet to decide what attracts me most.”
It was harder than it should have been, to accept Belladonna’s happiness, to be happy for her as well. Even now, so many years later, a part of Ilia still wished that her friend would speak of her in that way, that they could be more than just friends.
But she had accepted that this was not meant to be, and if the chieftain made Belladonna happy, then she should be happy for her as well.
“I take that to mean that you wish for her to speak poetry between your thighs,” Ilia joked. It was somewhat forced, but she tried.
“I cannot say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind,” Belladonna replied, “though for now I’m content with our walks and our sparring sessions.”
“Do you plan on telling her what you are?” Ilia asked. Jealousy aside, that had been her primary concern when it came to that human.
“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” she assured her, though that only served to confuse poor Ilia, “I believe she has figured us out already.”
“She has what!?” Ilia demanded.
“She has been slowly wearing less and less iron around me,” Belladonna explained, “yesterday I caught her taking off her bracelets before coming to greet me.”
“How could she even know!?”
“I’m not certain,” she replied, “regardless, it was very sweet of her.”
“How so? Iron doesn’t seem to have any effect on you,” Ilia asked, though there was a near accusatory tone to her words, “she might as well be removing that cloak of hers for all it matters.”
“It isn’t for any practical reasons really. it’s simply that she cares enough about my comfort to do so,” she replied, “hasn’t your human done the same for you?”
Her human?
Though the thought itself wasn’t entirely unpleasant - it had been far too long since poor Ilia had anyone to call hers - the fact that it was aimed at the Schnee of all people soured it for her. Certainly Belladonna knew she had better taste in women.
“Please, never refer to her in that way ever again,” she complained, pinching the bridge of her nose, “and besides she has put away the armor for her own comfort, not for mine.”
“Clearly,” Belladonna replied, amused, “of course our favorite knight wanabee has abandoned her signifiers of knighthood of her own volition, and only for her own benefit.”
“You’re a fool if you believe the Schnee cares for anyone other than herself,” Ilia bit back.
“And you’re a fool not to see how devoted she is to you,” Belladonna countered.
“I did not ask for devotion!” She shouted, “I did not ask to be her damned quest!”
With that shout came silence.
Neither of the fae had much to say from that point on. Though she did not enjoy having what had almost been a pleasant conversation sour so quickly, she also did not regret her outburst in any way. The simple idea of Ilia ever being with the Schnee in any way was both impossible and insulting, and the both of them just had to accept that.
“Amitola,” whispered the winds of the forest, like they had in the depths of her dream.
Ilia looked around frantically. There was no one around besides her and Belladonna. None who could know that name, or even what it meant. She turned back to her fellow fae, but she hadn’t reacted at all, still just sulking as she stared into the dwindling embers of their campfire.
“I should be going,” Belladonna said, seemingly unaware of anything wrong, “I’ve been neglectful of my duties to my order. I should rectify that.”
“Yes, of course,” Ilia replied, masking concern with bitterness, “return to your beloved humans.”
“Ami… Ilia,” she called, “you know I still care for you and for our kind.”
“Of course you do,” she almost hissed, shrouding her own unease with familiar venom, “now be gone already.”
Belladonna sighed, “as you wish.”
In little time she had suited up and set off to serve humanity once again, leaving Ilia alone to deal with the voices in the wind. She wasn’t a fool, she knew this was the doing of her people’s magic, and she recognized their summons when she heard them. What had worried her was that very few people knew that name, and fewer still had the means to travel this far north.
“Amitola,” the name echoed again, not spoken with a voice, but made to be from the wind itself.
This time Ilia answered its summons.
She ventured into the woods by herself, stripping her body of her glamour as she travelled further and further, far away from nobles and knights, from their pointless titles and empty oaths. Until once more she stood within the domain of the fae.
The forest was quieter here, a little pocket of peace set aside for her and her host.
“Amitola,” twin voices called in unison. That name, her name, was loaded with disappointment and contempt.
“Fennec,” Amitola greeted, lowering her head, “Corsac.”
From the shadows among the trees emerged the large gestalt form of the fae twins. A singular body of orange and white fur, caught somewhere between the shape of a man and a fox. It looked down on her with its four eyes, gleaming in the light that came through the branches.
“It has been too long, sister Amitola” Fennec spoke, and his voice felt like wind.
“We didn’t think we’d find you among the humans,” Corsac followed, and his breath smelled like embers.
“It makes one wonder why you left so suddenly,” the twins commented.
It was an unsettling sight to behold.
“I do not seek to join them, if that is what you’re insinuating,” Amitola returned. She was no traitor like Belladonna, and she would not be treated like one, “I seek to infiltrate them.”
“Of course,” Corsac agreed, “but what is it you have to gain from this?”
“I--”
“Don’t tell us you forgot to plan ahead, little sister,” Fennec added.
“I did plan ahead!” Amitola insisted, “I wished to…I wished to see the human world. I wanted to know the things they’ve built from our suffering. The festival felt like the best opportunity I’d get.”
“So then, did you come here only to bolster your hatred of their kind?” One asked.
“Or did you only wish to don a dress and play pretend?” The other followed.
As they spoke they circled her like a predator, their words following much the same. They had not yet betrayed violence in their intent, but it still unnerved her to be treated like prey.
Though words failed to come to her defence, her rage at being interrogated like this still burned bright, and it took the form of the same glare that had many times targeted her companions over the past few days.
The twins laughed.
“Do not worry, little Amitola,” Fennec reassured her, condescension weighing heavy on her name, “your goals may be shallow.”
“But your skill can still be put to use,” Corsac noted, “after all, you have acquired not only the perfect disguise.”
“But also their trust,” they spoke together once more, wind and fire amplified by one another, “and you will put it to good use.”
The shared body of the twins stood before her, larger, more fearsome than any singular being could ever dream to be. Under their gaze it was easy for rage to die down, and for fear and guilt to take over.
“You will do this for us, won’t you, Amitola?”
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tessiete · 3 years
Note
If you still take prompts: Rumors of the Duchess of Mandalore (bc patriarchal bs and misogynistic beliefs about female leaders) potentially getting married reaches Coruscant and Obi-Wan copes as well as can be expected. Cue sad boi sadness with maybe fluff at the end? Or go full angst I’m ok with either
I AM! I am still taking prompts, and I know this took a while to get around to because I’m also sloooooow at filling them. But here we are, dear anon. I hope you enjoy this little snippet! <3
THE GRAVITATIONAL DEFLECTION OF LIGHT
There is some silly, selfish part of him that he never outgrew, and like a weed in his gut it twists and writhes when he hears that the Duchess Kryze is to marry.
And suddenly, he finds himself thinking of her more often, and more frequently during situations where his attention would best be put to use elsewhere. In council, he is forced to ask Master Windu to repeat a question he’d failed to hear, his mind being drawn by the gleam of light off the Senate dome on the horizon. During a sparring match, he takes a hit he’d never have missed except that Anakin threatens to deliver him a close shave at the end of his saber, and he’s struck dumb by the memory of her hand upon his cheek. There are peace lilies in a vase in the Archives, and pure beskar changes hands in a deal he’s meant to disrupt at a Separatist camp, but by far the most egregious lapse comes in the midst of relief efforts in a small village on Taskeed. He is caught, for a moment, by the sight of a woman with blonde hair and a young boy on her hip turning away from him. His focus slips. A blaze of light flashes more quickly than he can see, and by the time he hears the retort of a blaster rifle he is already on the ground.
The clones close ranks around him. Cody kneels, calling in a medevac even as Obi-Wan tries to rise. 
“No, sir, stay down,” he says, laying one hand against his shoulder. Obi-Wan winces at the contact. His muscles strain at the effort, the nerves at the site of his injury ruptured and ragged.
“Cody,” he chokes out. “There’s a hostile.”
His second is a merciful man and makes no comment on the idiocy of that statement. Instead, he bites open a pain tab, and shoves it between Obi-Wan’s teeth. Then, so rapidly he has no time to protest, he removes his belt, and tears apart the fabric at Obi-Wan’s waist, sprinkling sulfa powder over the gory wound, and pressing a bacta patch down to cover it.
There is no more blaster fire to mark their passage back to the ship, but the wound is too serious to treat on board The Negotiator. He is sent back to Coruscant as a consequence of his foolishness.
There, he is dipped in bacta, where he doesn’t dream, and he spends the next week of his convalescence thinking of her.
It had never been this bad during their first separation. The months following her ascension to the duchy had been painful, that he cannot deny, and he spent hours in his room lonely, and self-pitying, but he had been a child then and he can forgive himself now of the folly of youthful indiscretions. There followed more than a decade between them and he had gone days, weeks - upon the outbreak of war even months - without thinking of her at all.
But with one touch of her hand, he’s fallen again, his resolve crumbling into dust as though his indifference to her were only a veneer grown thin and brittle with being stretched over so much time.
The Duchess of Mandalore is to marry.
Why should that matter to him? They are friends. Hardly that, and nothing more. And it was he who had defined those terms. So why should he be restless, and anxious, and fretted up like some craftsman’s handiwork at the thought of it? It is silly. It is demeaning - to her, and to him.
And yet...he wants to know.
Who is she to marry? And when? How did they meet? Is he a Mandalorian, like her? Or did she meet him here? Did they meet at the Senate while he walked in the Temple only a few klicks away? Have they much in common? Do his political aims match hers? Does he long for peace like she does? Will he stand by her side in upholding it? Would he die for it? Would he die for her? Does she love him?
She must, he thinks. She must love him. She would not choose him, otherwise.
And that, perhaps, is the cruelest thought of all.
He is confined to medbay with nothing to occupy his time but his holopad, his dispatch reports, and her when he sees a news story flash on his screen.
At Last! The Lily is Plucked
He cannot help himself as he reads about a chance meeting, a whirlwind romance, and plenty of private assignations held at various hotels and restaurants across Capital City. There are holos, too, and reels. He sees her leaving the Bal Silvestre on the arm of Corellian senator, Garm Bel Iblis.
Senator Bel Iblis is older than her, and seems a bit unkempt, his long hair pulled half back in a simple style. Obi-Wan knows of him by reputation, and heard him called a rake. His politics brand him a maverick, and a rogue, and he has been known, once or twice, to engage in backdoor negotiations in order to ensure a vote swings one way or another in his favour. Beside him, while he stands smug in his dark brocade, she shines. She is spotless. Luminous. They are not well matched.
He scours the net for more, and because he is looking, he finds it. There are many articles - hundreds. Some map out timelines of their courtship (they met years ago, apparently, at some gala held while Obi-Wan was still helping Anakin with Basic), some tell the history of their previous romantic entanglements (he was engaged to a woman now dead. She was once rumoured to be promised to a Vizsla. Obi-Wan’s name is not mentioned). Some merely provide pictures of their exploits, and comment on their mutual friends, making conjecture after conjecture about how their romance came to be, and what must happen next now that the flame has been rekindled. It is torturous. And tedious. And soon, Obi-Wan loses track of the details that appear in one article, and again in every other.
But one thing remains clear to him: Satine Kryze is going to be married. She has forever slipped his reach.
A reach, he pathetically reminds himself, he never intended to extend. All this self-flagellation is for naught. He is being ridiculous. 
So he thumbs off his pad, turns out the lights, and tries to sleep with the image of Satine, smiling and resplendent flickering in his mind. The next morning, feeling no better for the little rest he managed to steal, he deletes the history of his pad, and determines to feel absolutely nothing at all about Satine Kryze.
Then Padme comes to the Council and requests a padawan be sent to Mandalore’s aid.
It is Ahsoka who goes. Of course it is. He takes small solace in the fact that it had not been he who suggested her, but since she was assigned, he feels well within his rights to enquire about the Duchess upon her return.
“She seemed fine,” Ahsoka tells him. He has invited her for tea following her report to the Council, hoping he might, in his hospitality, coax a few more personal details from his grand-padawan. “I mean, there was a moment where Almec - that’s the Prime Minister, or rather was - anyway, there was a moment where he had her in a shock collar, but like I said, the cadets and I managed to sort it out.”
“Right,” he concedes. “As you said.”
A moment passes between them. Obi-Wan sips his tea, struggling to swallow as the fist around his throat grows tighter and tighter. Ahsoka, blissful in the aftermath of a successful solo mission, grabs another biscuit and a strip of perami gammon. 
“And tell me,” he ventures. “What of her - her consort? Any word of him? Where was he during this mess?”
“Her consort?”
“Her husband.”
Ahsoka scrunches her nose, and cocks a brow at Obi-Wan’s wild inquiry.
“She had a nephew,” she says. “But no one ever said anything about a consort.”
“Ah,” he says. “Perhaps he was occupied elsewhere.”
“Maybe,” she agrees, amicable and amenable to letting the whole thing slide. He only hopes she won’t think it significant enough to mention to Anakin later. His curiosity won’t be as easily sated with tea and deflection.
--
He is not a lucky man.
Anakin comes blazing into his room with an ambitious stride, and a grin that speaks of imminent mischief.
“Heard you were asking Ahsoka about the Duchess’ consort,” he says, throwing his cloak over the back of a chair and dropping to lounge across Obi-Wan’s low couch.
“I was asking about her mission,” he corrects. He turns his back to set some water to boil, knowing that such an entrance by his padawan indicates a visit of extended duration. “And the key players, therein. Purely professional.”
“Purely.” Anakin smirks.
The subject is dropped when Anakin is diverted by the service being laid before him, and the inclusion of several of his favourite confections.
“Noorian memba tarts!” he cries. “Where did you even find these?”
“An old recipe,” Obi-Wan says. “But I remember you enjoyed them when we dined on Belasco and thought I’d try my hand at it.”
It is not a bad effort either, judging by Anakin’s display of enthusiasm. He eats the first with some degree of etiquette, but the fourth, fifth, and sixth are gone with no display of decency or shame whatsoever.
Obi-Wan sips his tea. He is thinking of Tahl while Anakin is thinking of the sweetness on his tongue, and making excuses for his absence the previous night.
“I’m sorry, Obi-Wan, but I was unavoidably delayed after the Senate recessed for the evening. I had to - to assist a delegate with a personal matter.”
Obi-Wan says nothing, but remembers how Qui-Gon, too, used to invent reasons to disappear unchecked. He invents nothing. He only cleaves to his duty, while time and fate conspire to keep him absent anyway. 
Anakin must hear something in his silence, because his expression loses the tension of equivocation, and he falls to studying Obi-Wan’s face.
“I was only teasing, master,” he says. “Before. I didn’t think to ask Ahsoka anything about the Duchess. She spent most of her time with the nephew, but he seemed a bright kid. Close to Satine. I can ask her to ask him if he knows anything -”
“Absolutely not,” says Obi-Wan. The words are soft, but definite. He rises swiftly to clear the detritus of their meal. “Thank you, Anakin, but Duchess Kryze is only a friend. I merely inquired out of a desire to assure myself that the report issued to the Council lacked nothing in the thoroughness of its presentation. I should hate to think that such a personal association might be overlooked as an avenue for effecting harm.”
“Oh.”
“But I thank you in any case. Ahsoka’s report was well done, and you should be very proud of your padawan,” he says. “As I am of you.”
He turns to Anakin then, smiling and benign. His padawan meets his look with a vaguely skeptical one of his own, before patting him on the shoulder, and shrugging back into his cloak.
“Alright, master,” he says. “I’ll let her know how thorough she was.”
“Goodbye, Anakin.”
“Goodbye,” his friend replies. Then, just as he crosses the threshold of the door and moves into the open hall, he looks back. “Oh,” he says. “There’s a quick supply run being made to Mandalore for relief in light of Ahsoka’s investigation. Scheduled for tomorrow, but unfortunately, I’m needed back at the Senate. I meant to ask - you wouldn’t mind making the trip for me, would you? You don’t even need to get off the ship.”
---
There is nothing he can say to Anakin, so of course, as contrived and embarrassing as the whole thing is, he goes. And he does get off the ship.
Satine is there to meet him.
“Master Kenobi,” she says, extending her hand. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
He drops a brief, and reverential kiss then lets her go. 
“Cleaning up after my padawan and his padawan, it seems,” he says. “Apparently, a master’s work is never over. Congratulations on your recent engagement, Duchess. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”
The look which passes over Satine’s face is one he cannot decipher. He thinks she looks in equal parts shocked that he has heard, disgusted by his presumption in speaking of it, embarrassed by his boldness, and wearied by his presence. But she doesn’t deny it, so he makes his excuses to leave.
“Excuse me, Duchess,” he says. “But this was only meant to be a very brief visit, and I should prepare for departure.”
“Can you not stay for midmeal?” she asks, and he hesitates upon the precipice of her invitation. “Surely you don’t mean to tease me with a visit as brief as this? And surely your men would enjoy some rest and repast before you go?”
The troopers at his back shift, and he can feel their eagerness undulate in the Force. It would be cruel to deny them for the preservation of his own fragmented dignity, so he relents.
“Of course, your grace,” he says. “We would be most honoured.”
“Captain,” she says to the Protector at her right. “Have these men fed and watered immediately. The kitchens and my staff are at their disposal.”
He clicks his heels, and disappears, while she steps forward, and wraps her arm around Obi-Wan’s as though completely uncaring of any beau or consort or husband who might see.
“You, my dear master,” she murmurs slyly by his ear. “Are to be attended elsewhere, at my discretion.”
He does nothing to resist as she pulls him along.
Soon, they are at the Palace. Soon, they are sat at a small table in her private quarters, drinking Mandalorian kava, and eating freshly baked land’shun. Soon, they are alone.
She sets her drink aside, and dusts her hands on a fine silk napkin before broaching the subject trapped between them.
“Now, what is this about my nuptials?” she asks. Her blue eyes are steady upon his own, and he feels his palms slick with sweat. She is radiant. She is regal. There is no holo or reel or word that could do justice to the beauty of this woman in the flesh, and he feels that insidious root of jealousy writhe with agony.
“Satine -” he begins.
“No, no,” she protests, seeming to anticipate his deflection before he has begun. “I should like to hear why you think I ought to accept your congratulations, and why you felt you ought to offer them personally, in particular. Mandalore seems a rather dull trip for a High General to make.”
“I came in Anakin’s stead, actually,” he replies pertly. Another sip of kava lends some sophistication to this claim.
“Of course,” she says, but she does not look away. He can feel her gaze upon him. He can feel her glittering in the Force. She is laughing.
And he cannot bear it.
“Forgive me, your grace,” he says, rising to his feet. He sets the cup upon a saucer where it clatters inelegantly against the pot of sucre next to it, overturning the dish and sending the crystals spilling across the table. “Forgive me,” he says again. 
She lunges forward to right the pot, and still his hand beneath her own. For a moment, he doesn’t breathe. Then, he pulls away.
“I read about it on the net,” he says. “I saw the holos, and the reels. I only wanted to see you one last time, to see...I wanted to see that you were happy. That’s all.”
“Oh, Ben,” she says, his name like a sigh upon the breeze.
“It is nothing,” he says. “A foolishness all my own. I am sorry if I have troubled you, and I offer you my sincerest congratulations.”
He bows, though when he raises his head, his eyes do not rise with it, so he does not see the look of sorrow upon her face. Still, he imagines it as pity, and moves to make his escape. She is faster than he is. 
“No,” she says, standing between him and the door. “I will not accept your congratulations, and I will not accept your departure on such callous terms as these.”
“Duchess -”
“Ben,” she counters, leaning on the name. “I am not engaged. I am not married. And I do not intend to be, no matter how devoted to the idea of it you are.”
“I - devoted?” he asks, his voice rising to the height of his indignation. “I am devoted to no such thing. I have only - only been reconciled to it for weeks, thinking only of you and your happiness.”
“And your own misery, too, I’d wager.”
He chokes on his denial because he knows it is too big a lie to fit through his lips, and stares at her in dismay. She is smiling. Force, he thinks. She is incandescent. Like she has swallowed a star, and he can’t look away. He would that he could be consumed by her too, and finally, he gives in.
“Yes,” he says in an admission of guilt so great it brings relief. “I was miserable. I am, I think, an infinitely miserable person.”
“You are,” she agrees. “But I am not getting married, I am not engaged, and I am only as in love as I ever have been. And if you are foolish enough to forget that, then you are deserving of every misery you heap on yourself.”
“Have pity,” he begs.
“None,” she says.
“Have mercy,” he pleads.
“For you?” she says. “Always.”
They fall together like gravity and sunlight, and for a moment, whole galaxies bend to their will.
81 notes · View notes
kenanda · 3 years
Note
It was hard to decide but... 101 for smut prompt please? 👁️ (do I need to write lonelyeyes or is it default?)
Prompt: 101 - “you’re not wearing anything under that, are you?”
Eye, you absolute genius! Thank you for the prompt and for the beta read! I hope this is to your liking; I certainly had a grand old time writing this piece!
Disclaimer: These characters AREN’T mine. They belong to Rusty Quill’s The Magnus Archives. 
Warning: This work ISN’T SUITABLE for minors. It’s a NSFW piece of slash fiction. Therefore, if you’re a minor or in any way squicked by what’s in the tags, DO NOT READ!
WORTH THE WAIT Words: 2,9k Pairing: LonelyEyes; Jonah!Elias / Peter Lukas Rating: EXPLICIT  Tags: established relationship, University!AU, Young!LonelyEyes, unrequited crush, drinking, rimming, handjob, exhibitionism, mild dirty talk, rutting, fingering, touch averse!Peter, Slut-&-Proud! Elias, prompt fill
            FILTHY LONELYEYES BELOW THE CUT, MY BELOVED!!!!!
WORTH THE WAIT
-
There has to be some sort of cosmic joke at play for Elias to develop a crush on someone from his uni class and that said someone happens to be Peter Lukas. 
Because you see, as likeable and polite as Peter is, there’s something about the guy that keeps people at a distance. Try as he might, Elias never seems able to bridge that gap, much less make it understood that he wants Peter as more than a colleague or a friend. 
It has occurred to him that Peter may not be interested in romance or sex at all. The first seems more feasible; the latter, not so much. Elias is always keeping an eye on Peter (perks of living across the hall from one another) and has seen him bring people to his room on more than one occasion. 
Not often, no, but enough to make Elias wonder — about Peter, about those people, and what they could be doing together just across the hall. It takes Elias a while to fall asleep on those nights.
In class, Peter sits next to him and makes light conversation, but it never goes beyond that. Elias is annoyed that Peter doesn't seem to have any interest in him, especially when Elias is handsome, manly, and has an ass that looks great in joggers — which he makes a point to always wear to their study sessions.
If anything, Elias is patient. If he has to keep wearing joggers and asking Peter out with hopes that he will one day finally say yes, then so be it. Though that isn’t to say Elias will breeze through his trials with a smile on his face: by the end of another month of repeatedly getting turned down, Elias is snapping even at his mates.
It's surprising that this mood is what causes Peter to initiate conversation that’s not about class.
"Something bothering you?"
Elias blinks a few times because he isn't sure he heard it right. 
"A few things, yeah."
"I've got something for that in my room. Come by tonight if you want. Will help you relax a bit."
Elias hopes that it isn't too evident that he’s essentially dancing in his seat from then on. Talk about a mood change: one could even call him cheery.
When night comes and the halls are quiet, Elias showers with such intent that his skin becomes red; he scrubs every nook and cranny, but doesn't apply perfume. He knows that Peter doesn't like it. 
Elias puts on something easy to remove: grey joggers, a sweatshirt and nothing else. At least he can pull the sweatshirt down and hide the fact that he's half hard (he’s been on the very edge of horny from the moment Peter asked him out). 
He never considers the possibility that Peter might have meant anything other than sex. When he gets there, Elias is hit in the chest with the sight of a cramped room. Four people are there besides Peter, sharing a now half empty bottle of vodka.
Elias' mood sours.
"There's the man! Mr. Bouchard! Took you long enough mate, thought you weren't coming," chimes Tim, a chipper guy from their class that Elias has no idea why Peter is even friends with.
Elias does his best to smile. "Yeah, I overslept a bit."
They welcome him inside with friendly pats on the back. Peter eyes him curiously, but doesn't say anything.
Elias wants to storm off and find better things to do with his joggers clad ass. But he's here already, isn't he? One doesn’t always get a chance to drink expensive vodka.
It doesn’t take the six of them long to finish the bottle. When midnight rolls around, Elias has had time to allow his alcohol addled thoughts to simmer. He can't believe he had hoped today would finally be it. Look at him now! This is so humiliating that he almost feels exposed, knowing that only a flimsy piece of fabric keeps him from being butt naked among these guys.
"Right," Tim says at some point. "I've got an assignment due tomorrow that I need to finish up."
“You mean due today,” Peter points out, and the others laugh. Elias rolls his eyes.
Tim’s departure is their cue to go as well, but Elias stays behind (perhaps due to some remaining fool’s hope). He knocks back whatever vodka is left in his cup and puts it aside, savoring defeat. He stands up. 
"Well, I don't suppose you have another bottle hiding somewhere, so I guess I'll be going too."
Peter smiles. "I don't, but I don't believe that would help you."
"What do you mean?"
Peter scoots to the edge of the bed. 
"I'm just saying you look as constipated now as when you first came in."
Elias can't help but laugh, and Peter’s grin widens. 
"You have yourself to thank for that."
"Oh? What did I do?"
Should Elias tell him? Should he really dig a deeper hole for himself? Well, fuck it, he’s here already. And to make it worse, he is just on this side of drunk.
"Better yet, what you didn't do. Are you daft or what?! I thought I've been quite clear up until now. 'Something to help you relax'. Bullshit. You're full of bullshit, Lukas."
Peter's frown only lasts a second before realisation hits him, followed by the same old amusement. If Elias didn't spend most of his time wanting to blow the guy, he would've punched Peter in the throat.
"Oh god..." Peter says. 
Elias clenches his jaw and juts out his chin. "Took you long enough," he spits out, but Peter's caught up on something else. 
"You're not- You're not wearing anything under that, are you?"
Elias does his best not to wobble, but the wave of dizziness that hits him is real; his stomach sinks. He had somehow forgotten that fact.
"What if I’m not?!" He growls defensively. Why should he be the one to feel embarrassed when Peter was literally an oaf? "Hell, I'm out of here."
"Hold on," Peter calls, because Elias essentially bolts for the door. Elias pauses with a hand on the handle.
Peter sighs audibly. 
"I figured. I mean, I had a pretty good guess when you kept showing up all commando, but I thought 'hey maybe the guy needs more room down there',” he snickers.
"Fuck you, Lukas."
"Sorry. I know." 
What he says next is something Elias never thought he'd hear. 
"Let me make it up to you."
Elias turns around with both arms crossed. Peter beckons him closer with a no-nonsense look. 
Elias goes. Apparently, he's just that stupid for this man. He doesn't know what it is about this Lukas guy that has him betraying every single one of his self-preservation rules, but he finds himself breaking them more often than not. Maybe it's that gentle voice that Peter never raises, or the sharp wits and strong build. Perhaps it's the fact that even after a year, Elias hasn't managed to learn any more about him than that.
Peter is a mystery, and Elias is nothing if not curious. 
Elias stands in front of Peter, who leans back a little in bed. 
"Hell, you are pretty to look at."
Elias only raises his eyebrows. As if he didn't know. 
"Come on. A man has to play safe."
"Don't bore me with politics, that's your family’s business." 
Though, if he was being honest, the praise did feel good.
Peter smirks. "Take your top off."
"Pardon?"
"You want this, don't you?"
Elias ponders for a moment. Yes, he very much does, even if he's angry. The setting isn't great, so he'll have to work with what he has. He only wishes that Peter weren't so smug about it, because it's making Elias want to make him regret it.
When Elias goes to take it off, Peter tells him that there's no rush. His voice is calm, but the command is clear enough. 
Elias takes a deep breath to ground himself and throws the sweatshirt next to Peter. Elias knows that he paints quite a picture even if he isn't ripped or anything; he still has a bit of a tan from his last vacation, and Peter eats it all up: from the eye tattoo on the centre of his stomach, to the tiny studs piercing both his nipples.
"Nice," Peter says. 
"I know."
Peter smiles at him and Elias takes note. So he enjoys show offs. Well, good for them both, Elias had never been the shy type. 
"Put a hand in your trousers," Peter tells him. 
It's clear that Peter wants a show. Elias can sympathise, for he himself enjoys a bit of watching, too. 
Elias doesn't get to do it much these days, but whenever the bathrooms are empty, he pulls himself off in front of the mirror. He knows exactly what to do to make it good, and the risk of getting caught has him coming harder and faster than usual.
He slides both hands down his chest and abdomen, keeping one at the waistband of his joggers while the other disappears beneath the fabric and takes hold of himself. He's half-hard and every one of his motions is clear, so he takes his time.
It doesn't feel good at first. The build up has been all wrong, and the fact that his hands are cold and dry doesn't help. But then he takes one look at Peter and the thrill of being watched sparks it all to life. 
Peter doesn’t take his eyes off of him; his own hand is working in his trousers. He's big, Elias notes, and the thought has him fully hard in seconds. It doesn’t take long for a wet spot to form on the front of his joggers. 
When Peter tells him to stop, Elias obeys, hoping that this is when Peter also has him kneel and put his mouth to work. Instead, Peter asks him to turn around. 
"Show me," he demands. "You know how."
Elias slides his trousers down with a sigh. He hears Peter shuffle forward behind him. 
Elias would hate it for Peter to miss any details, so he grabs his buttocks and kneads them open, stepping astride to let Peter see it all. Elias a bit damp down there, but he keeps himself shaved as a rule, and that earns him some praise.
"Oh fuck," Peter breathes. "Bend forward a bit."
"Like this?" 
Elias doesn't expect an answer. Peter's hand is working fast and from the sound of it, his cock is very wet. 
"Yeah, just like that. Put a finger in."
Elias teases, but doesn't. "Can't. Too dry."
Peter curses softly. "Get over here."
Elias is almost shaking with anticipation. He hasn't been eaten out in ages, and he's so here for this.
"You O.K. with spit?" Peter asks. 
"Very."
Peter grunts in approval, then spits right onto his hole. Elias lets out a shuddery breath, then slowly works a finger in. It's hard doing it all by himself, and soon his arm gets tired; he flags a bit, lets his head hang. 
"You gotta give me something here," he tells Peter. This isn't begging, he tells himself. This is negotiating. 
"I know. Fuck."
Elias straightens up and gives Peter a side glance. "Problem?"
"See, usually I don't touch them."
Elias frowns. That's news. 
"So you just-"
"I'm not a fan of touching, let's put it that way. And it's enough to just do this. Most of the time, that is."
Elias nods, but there's something to unpack here. "Well, you are turned on. Why isn't it enough?"
Peter's hand, motionless for a while now, withdraws. 
"You, I guess."
Elias scoffs. "I'm sorry my asshole isn't to your tastes."
"I haven't tasted you. That's probably why."
Elias has the decency to blush. His heart has never beat so fast with anyone before, but he tells it to get a grip.
"Well I'm right here, aren't I."
Peter takes a deep breath. Elias can almost see the moment that his resolve locks into place. 
"C'mere."
Peter doesn't go straight for it. He places both hands on Elias' hips and caresses his sides, making Elias aware of him (as if he isn't already). The act makes goosebumps rise on the skin, and Elias’ cock fills out again. 
Peter kisses the low of his back and up his spine, where he can reach from a sitting position; then his cheeks, against which his shallow beard feels rough. Peter sinks his teeth into them, just enough to make it twinge. Just enough to make Elias' cock twitch and invite a hand to wrap around it. 
Peter takes his sweet time biting his ass and pulling him off. Elias is ready to drive nails by the time Peter finally makes him bend forward and starts working on his hole. If Elias moans and pushes against his tongue, well, he's only human.
For someone who doesn't like touching, Peter is surprisingly good at this. Instinct or perhaps patience makes him into quite an attentive partner; he'll stick to any actions that elicit a more intense reaction from Elias; it isn't long before Elias loses it and reaches behind himself. 
"What are you doing?" Peter rasps. 
"I need-" Elias breathes, pushing a finger inside. "Keep going."
Peter does; they work together, establishing a rhythm that feels comfortable for them. 
Elias will come from this, that is for sure, but it will take a while to get there. His arm keeps getting tired, which forces him to slow down. If Peter would just- If he'd just- 
"Come on, come on," Elias whines in frustration. "Fuck me."
Peter grunts, burying his face deeper into his ass. Elias removes his hand and locks it around Peter's nape with a tight fist in his hair. 
That's it, he thinks, and pushes Peter’s hand out of the way to give his cock what it actually needs. 
Peter pulls back and sticks a finger inside. The girth of it is a perfect stretch, it makes Elias let out a broken curse and come a little just then.
"Shit, you're so hungry for it," Peter says. "Bet if I put my cock in you, you'll come right away."
Elias smiles at the idea. "Wanna bet?"
Peter snorts. "Another day, yeah. Wanna take my time with you."
"It's a date then."
Peter works his finger deeper, finding Elias' sweet spot. 
"Here?" he asks, but the soft whimper that Elias lets out leaves no room for doubt. 
Elias bears down on it. "Keep doing that. God, just- oh." 
Maybe he had underestimated how turned on he was. He comes, sudden, dripping all over Peter's floor. It's so thick and heavy that Elias is somewhat embarrassed. 
"Holding back, have we?" Peter observes. 
Elias would kill him if he wasn't thrusting inside him so good. 
"You would too if you had a schedule like mine."
Peter hums. "Drop by when you feel like it. It'll be my pleasure to help."
Peter pulls his finger out and stands up. Gently, he brings Elias to himself by the hips. 
Elias lets him because fuck, Peter is so warm and large...The way he’s kissing Elias’ nape is sending shivers up his spine. Funny though, it’s almost as if Peter is unsure about it. 
"First time doing this?" Elias asks. It couldn't be. 
"No. But it's been a while." 
Elias hums. Peter's cock is pressing against his ass and that’s quite distracting. "Want some help with that?"
Peter groans and rests his forehead on Elias’ shoulder. "Fuck. Can I- can I come on you? I won't put it in, just rub it against you."
Elias would be very much down to taking Peter all the way if he weren’t so spent. He had come here ready for it, anyway. Right now though, he’d have to make do.
"Sure," Elias says. He shuffles onto bed on his knees, spreads his legs and presses his chest to the mattress, to give Peter full view and access.
"Fuck, you don't hold back, do you?"
"Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, love."
Peter doesn't hesitate, only pulls his trousers down, holds Elias by the waist and starts rutting against him. 
It feels brilliant even after coming. Elias moans into the mattress, getting off on imagining the picture that they must paint. 
Peter taps his hole with the tip of his cock, grazes against it. Elias never would’ve thought that Peter was the cursing type, but tonight is proving otherwise. 
When Peter comes, Elias can feel it dripping down his balls and onto bed. They're both breathing heavily, but once Peter recovers, he pulls up his trousers and grabs some tissue to wipe Elias. 
Elias had half-hoped that Peter would lick him clean, but maybe that was pushing the boundaries a bit too far for a single night.
Elias gets dressed and they face each other. Peter seems awkward — who would've guessed, when he seemed so in charge earlier.
"So," Peter says. "Hope I made it up to you."
"Are you fishing for compliments, Mr. Lukas?"
Peter laughs and scratches the back of his head. 
"If I am, will you tell me?"
Elias considers it. "No. Maybe. Say pretty please."
"Goodbye, Elias." 
Peter shows him to the door. They don't kiss; that would be a level of sentimentalism that might make Elias gag. That is, any other time it would have. Now though, they say goodbye and Elias goes back to his room wishing that they did.
36 notes · View notes
valhallanrose · 3 years
Text
Hummingbird
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Because I’m a sucker for a first kiss and I love Them. 
Milenko belongs to @sunrisenfool​.
3.5k. No CWs apply. 
Title: Hummingbird by The Gothard Sisters
Had anyone else been nearby, Astoria might have asked to be reminded the next time Nadia hosted a staff dinner how absolutely droll they could be. 
They were certainly appreciative - it was the Countess’s display of gratitude for all departments of palace staff, regardless of level in their respective hierarchies. Dinner did feel like a rather unfitting term, though, as Nadia had a tendency to throw parties rather than simply asking them all to sit around a table and chat about the weather. It wasn’t a requirement, though. It was a chance to mingle, to have some good food and a good time, but they were almost routine after a little while. If you’d been to one, you’d been to them all, and if you were an introvert, they were particularly draining on the social battery. 
Astoria was also very much an introvert.
They almost hadn’t come that night, but something told them they should, if for no other reason than to get a slight change of scenery. 
As the night went on, guests trickled in and trickled out, some familiar, some not. Among those to arrive was Nana, whose arrival was almost expected - rarely did he fail to appear - but Astoria hadn’t expected him to bring a plus one, and especially not Milenko. Not that he was an unwelcome surprise - Astoria just didn’t think he’d have been interested in the affair, though he seemed to blend easily with the crowd as Nana introduced his cousin to some of his colleagues. 
For a while, the two of them had been trading lingering looks here and there, smiles pulling at faces and a step taken toward each other before one of them got pulled into someone else’s conversation. At one point Astoria almost laughed at the near pout on Milenko’s face when Nana snatched him away to introduce him to a face they couldn’t name, shaking their head and giving him a cheeky wave before they let themself get pulled into a healthy debate with a colleague from the archives.
Eventually, Astoria managed to slip away from it all, stepping out onto the balcony with a sigh of relief. Crisp winter air swept over their face and carried the evening bird song to their ears, easing the tension in their shoulders as they pulled their shawl a little tighter around themself. 
They didn’t know how long they stood out there, watching their breath turn to fog and tuning out the chatter they could hear beyond the door that led back inside, but it was long enough for them to not notice the door open and someone approach them once it fell shut. 
The lower edge of a ceramic mug tapped their shoulder, making them jump a bit as they turned to meet Milenko’s warm smile and the outstretched cup, the handle turned toward them for them to take. 
“Thought you wouldn’t want to miss the cocoa when it came out.” He said, and Astoria smiled, nodding as they pulled their hands from their pockets and gratefully accepted the warm drink. 
“Oh, I forgot Nadia likes to bring cocoa out when the weather gets cool. Thank you.”
“I think we’re well past ‘cool’ and into ‘terribly cold’.” He teased, and Astoria snorted into their mug as he leaned forward to rest his forearms on the balcony railing.
“Should you ever have cause to visit Rosinmoor, you’ll be grateful for Vesuvia’s kind of winter. I thought my first winter here would be much worse and I was woefully over prepared for it.” Astoria glanced down toward his feet, then frowned a little, head tilting curiously. “Where’s Ursie? It’s rare I see one of you without the other.”
Milenko gestured loosely over his shoulder, making Astoria look toward where Ursula sat right next to the door - nose pressed to the glass just so to reveal her front teeth - enjoying the warmth of indoors while she kept an eye on her human. 
Astoria couldn’t help but laugh, turning around to rest their back against the railing and sticking their tongue at Ursula playfully, snickering under her breath when a pink tongue slid across the glass as if to answer. 
“Can’t say I blame her for staying in. Nattie would be doing the same if she were here, but I couldn’t wrestle her out of my bed. She’s probably still asleep in my blankets. I’ll probably be joining her before too long, if I’m honest.”
“Tired?” Milenko asked, and Astoria shook their head, letting out a soft sigh. 
“More so bored. I come to these mostly because I don’t want to be rude to Nadia for all the effort she puts in, but...they’re not really my cup of tea. Or cocoa, I suppose.” They raised their mug a little at that, and Milenko chuckled, standing to lean against the railing with them instead.
“I don’t think these are really my scene, either.”
“Didn’t you come as Nana’s plus one tonight?” 
“I did, but I didn’t really come for the party.” He nudged them lightly with his elbow, making them pause mid sip and look up at him. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Astoria raised a brow, watching as he swigged the rest of his cocoa and set the mug neatly on the railing. “Get out of here?”
“Yeah. Neither of us are having a good time here, so...maybe we can go snag a bite to eat and chat for a while before you head home.” Milenko held out his hand, wiggling his fingers lightly as if trying to tempt them to take it. “Unless you’ve got a hot date that you need to get back to.”
With a snort of laughter, Astoria drank the last bit of their cocoa and dropped their hand neatly into his palm - their own mug left behind to sit beside his. 
“Absolutely I do not. Lead the way, poet man.”
“‘Poet man’?”
“Shut up, you know I’m not good at nicknames.”
Snickering, Milenko pulled their arm to loop it neatly through his, dramatically looking around as if to make sure nobody was watching their escape from the dining hall. Astoria, for their part, was more focused on stifling their laughter until they were out of earshot, swatting at his arm playfully as they went. 
Astoria didn’t catch the amused shake of Nana’s head when Milenko threw a wave at his cousin, though they were sure to be teased when they came to work in the morning. 
*     *     *     *     *
The pair had ducked into the first tavern they’d come across, Ursula slipping under the table as they snatched the last empty booth and squeezed into the bench seat. Astoria could feel her tail against the back of their ankles, knowing she’d taken up a space between the booth and the back of Milenko’s legs. They were seated close enough together for his arm to brush theirs as he poured them a glass from the bottle of wine they’d bought to share, close enough that when he turned to pass it to them they could see the way the light bounced off his earrings and danced on his cheeks. 
“There we are.” He murmured, and Astoria couldn’t help but return his smile, tapping the edge of their glass lightly against his when he extended it. “Cheers.”
“Slàinte mhath.” 
“Bless you.”
Astoria choked on the sip they’d taken from their glass as they laughed, spotting his teasing grin and swatting at him after they managed to catch their breath again.
“You know what, I take back my toast, I wish the worst health upon you.” They laughed, shaking their head when Milenko gave them those big brown puppy eyes that killed them every time and trying to steel their resolve -
“Would you really wish ill upon me?”
Mission failed.
“No, but I’m still going to pout about the fact that my nose burns now.” Astoria wrinkled the feature in question before they cautiously sipped at their glass again, giving him a teasing side eye of sorts once they set it down. “But you can make it up to me by telling me more about that article you’re working on. The one you were talking about on our way in?”
Milenko nodded, curls bouncing as a smile pulled across his face. “Right, I was. I think I’d just told you I passed it along to my editor…”
The two fell into easy conversation, flowing between them like the ale from the taps or the water in the side canals mere feet beyond the tavern door. 
Astoria had always enjoyed his company. Milenko was warm and welcoming, the smile that came to his face amplifying the natural presence he had about him. They tried to return that friendly warmth as well, but they had come to realize that those feelings of friendly warmth had changed into something new. Not that they minded - in fact, with him, they’d welcome the sort of romantic affection that was blooming if it were reciprocated. 
But for now, with one hand propping up their chin as they listened, they let the world narrow down to just Milenko. 
He made their heart feel like a hummingbird, beating so fast in their chest every time they crossed each other’s paths that they thought it might pop straight out from their ribs and follow him when he left. 
They weren’t sure anyone had ever made them feel this way before. They’d attempted relationships a few times in the past, but the connection never felt like it was there. They were too strange, too work obsessed, too cold - that one had particularly hurt - but always too much for things to work out.
Milenko saw them as they were, and hadn’t been put off by what he’d seen. In fact, he’d embraced it fully, all the way down to their last peculiarity, and seemed to always come back for more. 
They snapped back to focus when they heard him mention that if his editor gave it the all clear, his article would likely be published before the end of winter if all went according to plan. 
“I hope everything goes smoothly, then.” Astoria said with a smile. “Do let me know when I should keep an eye out for it. I’ve always enjoyed reading your work. The content is always interesting, but I find that the way your passion and your intrigue seeps into your writing so enthralling. Usually when I pick it up I can’t put it down.”
“I didn’t know you read my writing that closely.” He said after a moment, a warm flush coloring his cheeks, and Astoria’s gaze dropped sheepishly to stare into the burgundy wine.
“It’s important to you, isn’t it?” They gave him a light smile, tracing the tip of their finger around the rim of their glass. “You listen so intently when I tell you about bones, or heartbeats, or the time I went on a thirty minute tangent about how butterflies are - how did I put it?”
Milenko tried - and failed - to hide his grin behind his drink. “‘Badass little bastards’, I think.”
“Right, badass little bastards.” Astoria was about two seconds from repeating said tangent before they felt their face heat, clearing their throat in order to continue. “But you know it’s important to me, so you listen. And I know your writing is important to you, so I read it whenever I can.”
“I hope you don’t feel like you have to read it just because I listen to you.” He said after a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. “I listen to you because I’m interested in what you have to say.”
“No, no, it’s much the same for how I feel about your writing. I do find the topics you choose fascinating, so it’s also particularly easy to get invested in. The fact that you wrote it is a fun little bonus. And...” 
Maybe it was the wine - definitely not, knowing their own tolerance - but they hummed softly for a moment, mulling over their thoughts as they tried to piece together what they wanted to say. 
“I think you’re strange.” Astoria said after a moment, and Milenko let out a bewildered laugh, giving them something of a bemused look as he set his glass aside. 
“I do hope you mean that in a good way.”
Astoria laughed, nodding as they pushed their drink away from the edge of the table. “I do, I do, I promise. That was poor phrasing I mean that I like you because you’re strange. I’ve always been peculiar, what with my bones and my heartbeats like we said and my preference for dead people -”
“I know, I’ve been flattered to make the cut of breathing individuals you spend your time with.” Milenko laughed as Astoria smacked him with one of their gloves, the leather flapping harmlessly against his arm and their disgruntled look ruined by the smile they failed to hold back.
“I’m being serious, Milenko, only one of us is good with words so let me have this.”
He raised both hands in playful surrender, and Astoria tucked their gloves into their pockets with a lighthearted roll of their eyes, drumming bare fingertips idly on the surface of the table. It took them a few moments to gather their thoughts, but when they did, their eyes were fixed on their empty glass, watching the light and shadows dance across the surface. 
“I don’t often find myself in the company of the living because I know my peculiarity puts some people off. I am still grateful that my observations on your heartbeat did not do the same, though usually when I mention it to someone, I don’t get asked to have an extended conversation about matters of the heart.” Astoria’s mouth twitched up at the corner as they cast a bemused look at him out of the corner of their eye. “But I’ve come to know you. You are strange too, in your own way, and unabashedly so. It’s endearing. And I want to experience more, but...I’m not sure how I can just yet.”
“What do you mean?” He asked gently, and Astoria made a noncommittal sound that was far more casual than how they actually felt. 
“I’m quite awful at reading people.” Astoria shrugged, reaching for the bottle of wine again. “I don’t know what you’re willing to share with me, so I intend to follow your lead. But your writing lets me learn a little more about you, in a way, and a little more about what you’re willing to share with me. So I keep reading.”
Milenko fell quiet for a moment, but out of the corner of their eye, they could see him looking at them - watching as they poured a little more wine into their glass - and when they turned slightly, they poured some into his own, watching as his gaze shifted to the flowing liquid as it swirled and caught the light. 
“I’ve only ever seen you make that look before you take a dip in the canals.” They teased, and Milenko snorted, an amused look on his face as they set the bottle down. “Did the wine have some secrets to share?”
He laughed a little at that - Astoria knew he’d said once before that he’d once had visions manifest in flowing beer - and shook his head, pushing the glass aside rather than taking a drink from it. 
“No, only an inkling this time.” Milenko rested his cheek against his hand, elbow propped against the table as he watched them take a small sip of wine. 
“But if you want to know, it told me you could kiss me tonight.”
Oh. 
Oh. 
Had he not been a foot from them, they might have screamed when it finally clicked. 
Had he really been flirting all this time? They knew they were oblivious to some social situations, but damn, this was a new one. They could practically hear Edrine laughing at them for how oblivious they were in the next letter they wrote home, but perhaps it was worth it. 
When they managed to compose themself internally, they let out a slow breath through their nose, trying to steady their sudden nerves at the realization that those romantic feelings might not be so one sided. 
Maybe he’d been sharing more than they’d though.
“Did it, now?” They mused, setting the glass down and pushing it back from the edge of the table. “Presumptuous of the wine to think I’ll do all the work. You could kiss me instead, you know.”
They didn’t flinch when Milenko’s fingertips skated across the back of their ungloved hand, instead smiling lightly as they turned their palm over and felt his hand settle on their own. His other arm rested along the back of the bench seat, warm against their shoulder as he gave them such a soft, pretty smile it made them feel like mush.
“Well, if I kiss you, I would hope you’d kiss me back.” Milenko said softly, and when he began to lean in, Astoria was more than ready to lean in themself.
He met them halfway - Astoria had slipped her free hand up onto his shoulder, toying with the ends of his curls lightly before giving him a soft, chaste kiss that made everything else feel like it had disappeared. 
It was gentle and sweet, a kiss with not an expectation beyond it. It made them so warm, from the crown of their head to the tips of their toes, as they melted nearly completely into him with the gentle weight of his hand falling upon their back. 
When they broke apart after a moment, Astoria blinked once, twice, before they blurted out a “This isn’t just because of the wine, right?”
Milenko looked at them somewhat owlishly. “What?”
“The wine. You’re not inebriated, are you? I know I’m certainly not, but I don’t want you to do this if this is the wine making your decisions for you.”
“No, I’m not drunk.” Milenko chuckled a little, lifting his hand to gently rub his thumb across their jaw as they let out an audible sigh of relief. “Were you that worried?”
“Only a little.” Astoria smiled sheepishly. They leaned in after a moment, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, then to the corner of his mouth, warmth heating their cheeks as they met his eyes again. “Mostly because I wanted to ask you for another, and I thought it would be a very poor thing to do if you weren’t thinking clearly.”
Milenko smiled at that, the hand against their jaw shifting to gently tip their head up once again. Their hand slid down to rest against his chest, hardly any space between them as they cracked a smile at the feeling of his heart beating rapidly under their palm. 
“Your heart is racing.” Astoria teased, as if their own didn’t feel like it was going to leap straight from their chest. “I thought perhaps another kiss was in order, but if I do you might make the hummingbirds jealous.”
“You’re full of shit.” Milenko chuckled, laying his free hand over the one on his chest and giving it a gentle squeeze. “May I?”
Astoria was already leaning in again, meeting him in another kiss, this one deepening slightly and lingering rather than being chaste. They could have turned into a puddle right there as they started to notice a bit more beyond the kiss this time - the warmth of his hands against their skin, the sound of their own heart in their ears like wingbeats, the smell of parchment and ink that lingered on his skin for all the writing he did. 
When they broke away this time, their foreheads pressed together, Astoria couldn’t help but match his smile as his nose rubbed lightly against theirs. 
“Let me walk you home.” He said, voice soft, and to Astoria’s amusement, sounding entirely like he didn’t want to follow through with what he’d said seconds prior. 
Astoria hummed softly in thought, a playful tone clear in their voice. “Done with me already?”
Milenko’s chuckle made them smile, closing their eyes as he pressed a kiss to their brow and slid out of the booth.
“Alas, I just heard the last call, and it’s late. But tomorrow is a new day, and I’d be more than happy to take you out for lunch.” When they slid out behind him, Astoria tucked her hand into his, gloves shoved neatly in their pockets and coat wrapped snugly around them. 
“My schedule just so happens to be clear.” They said, and Milenko laughed, giving their hand a squeeze as they made their way back onto the streets.
“Then lunch it is. Think about where you want to go.”
Together they’d begin the woefully short - in Astoria’s opinion - walk to their apartment, where Milenko would give them one last kiss to bid them goodnight and tell them that he’d pick them up at eleven thirty for lunch wherever they chose. 
And Astoria would dream that night, face buried in Nathaira’s fur, of red wine kisses and ink stained hands to hold them close all over again. 
9 notes · View notes
nad-zeta · 4 years
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Hello, my dear! I just stumbled upon you yesterday and read a good portion of your archive until 7 AM. I don't know if you know this, but you are an amazing writer. I seriously enjoyed reading everything you've written. If you're still taking requests, might I request two reactions, one for the IkeSen boys (Masamune, Hideyoshi, Nobu, Ieyasu and Yuki) and one for the IkeVamp boys (Comte, Leo, Arthur, Theo, and Napo) in which the femMC gets involved in a girl fight and she goes 21st c on them? ❤️
Hi, hi, dear! ❤ omw staaaaap ya making me blush😳😳😳 thank you so much for the kind words 🌻Thank you so much for the request! Hehehe I got super excited when I saw this!❤🌻 I think I’m gonna try and focus on HC this week! 🔥🦊Lol also as for the other Ikesen bois... I will post that HC tomorrow or the day after, hope you don’t mind, but I combined it with another pretty similar request! 😊🦋Hope you enjoy this, dear! And I hope you have a super good day! ❤
Headcanon: MC getting in a girl fight! feat; Comte, Leo, Arthur, Theo, and Napo
Comte
You and Comte had been in a relationship for a while now, so you were used to the lavish balls and endless nights spent socialising and dancing with your dearest love (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
Tonight was another one of those occasions
Comte had invited you out to a ball hosted by a dear friend of his, except what he failed to tell you, was that this friend of his was actually a woman
⚆ _ ⚆
Now you were not the type of woman to lose your marbles over Comte having female friends
BUT
This woman was clearly trying to steal your man, right from under your nose (;一_一)
The moment the two of you had arrived at the venue, she was at the door to greet the two of you (◕▿◕✿)
She gave Comte her biggest brightest smile, and when she looked at you he eyes grew dark and her smile turned strained
“and who might this be my dear Comte?” she asked with a forced smile as she looked you up and down (◕⍸ ◕✿)
“Ah my apologies, it seems you have not yet heard the news, this is the love of my life,” Comte gave your cheek a quick kiss as he flashed you a charming smile ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ
The hostess of the party was furious, she had, had her eye on Comte since the first day she met him, and now some stranger just swoops in from out of nowhere to steal him away (¬_¬)
UNACCEPTABLE
As the night progressed you and Comte danced and chatted away, you started getting a little thirsty from all the dancing, so you looked up at his golden eyes, “I will be right back, just want to get some water.” 
Before Comte could offer to get some for you, you were already off to the drinks table 
He chuckled as he watched you weave your way through the crowed 
The hostess saw you break away from the crowd and decided that if she were to do something now would be the time.
“Hey you!” the woman yelled as you took a sip of water. “Who do you think you are stealing what is mine.” ╚(ಠ_ಠ)=┐
You looked up at the woman confusion painted on your face, she wasted no time leaning in close and while she dumped a glass of champagne out on top of your head she whispered, “stay away from Comte or else.”
(┛ಠДಠ)┛彡┻━┻
“If you think I am going to stay away from my soulmate, then you have another thing coming.” You glared at the woman threateningly, if she wanted to fight you were ready ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ
The woman blinded by rage, attempted to smack you across the face, little did she know, this wasn’t your first chick fight!
You caught her hand mid-air and pinned it to her back(╯°□°)╯︵( .o.)
The woman then started screaming and tried hitting you with her other hand. 
You simply smiled and kicked her knees until they buckled, pinning her to the floor. (─‿‿─)
Just then Comte came over to see what was happening, as sometime during your argument a crowed had started to form around the two of you ( ⚆ _ ⚆ )
Comte’s eyes widened in surprise to see you sitting on top of the woman as you pinned her arms behind her back in an effort to restrain her
He rushed to your side to see if you were okay, “Ma Cherie, are you unhurt, oh dear your hair is all wet, come let’s get you cleaned up.” (◕▿◕✿)
He gently took your hand in his, smiling at the way you managed to take down the woman without even throwing a punch 
Arthur
So, it is no secret that before meeting you, Arthur had had a few laps around the block, if you catch my drift (~˘▾˘)~
He was an incredibly well-known flirt and well clearly some woman still didn’t take your relationship with the Arthur seriously
They low key thought you were just some one night stand, yet little did they know Arthur was serious about you (°ロ°)☝
The two of you were leisurely strolling through the markets with Vic
(❍ᴥ❍ʋ)
When suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere a beautiful woman appeared and tackled Arthur in a big hug planting a kiss straight on his lips ʘ‿ʘ
This of course had you pissed (눈_눈)
Arthur gently pushed the lady off him and gave you an apologetic smile before turning back to the woman, “Beth, I would like to introduce you to my dearest love, the one who had stolen this old playboys heart.” ಠ‿↼
The woman scoffed slightly at the statement, “Surely this can’t be true Arthur, I give it two weeks with this drab little thing and you will be out on the rebound.” She looked you up and down, disgust clear as day on her face ¬_¬
“Why don’t you ditch this little girl and come and have some fun with me and the girls,” she said with a flirty unfaltering smile (^̮^)
Before Arthur could do anything you pulled the woman away from Arthur and glared daggers at her, “Perhaps you didn’t hear him, he is in a happily committed relationship and if he is in need of a night companion I am more than capable of fulfilling that role, thank you.” your tone was authoritative and slightly possessive ノಠ_ಠノ
Yet the woman continued, “Oh I heard him alright, and I stick by what I said,” she got up real close and personal as she whispered in a taunting tone, “he will leave you within the week sweetheart and come crawling back to me.” (¬‿¬)
You honestly snapped, and before you knew it you punched her smack in the face, her eyes widened in shock and disbelief for a moment, before a dark look closed over her face  (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
She fought back, and soon the two of you were engaged in a full-blown chick fight  (ง'̀-'́)ง
Some bystanders help Arthur in pulling the two of you apart, “Come, love, she is not worth it.” (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)
Arthur now had you held in a tight hug, restraining your arms from throwing any more punches (σ≧∀≦)σ
Soon the police got wind of the fight and started running to the scene with the intention of catching and locking up all those who was involved in causing the ruckus.
Arthur quickly grabbed your hand and dashed away with you trailing behind him, he ducked into one of the alleyway holding you tight in his arms  ᕕ(╯°□°)ᕗ
“You are quite the little bobcat aren’t you love,” he said while looking down at you wearing the most dashing smiles ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
You let out a loud sigh, “I can’t believe I got into a fight, over a flirt none the lest,” you then started laughing, you really couldn’t believe you got into a fight over your possessiveness of your playboy boyfriend  (◕‿◕✿)
Arthur then burst out laughing at the thought of you being so jealous of the woman and fighting for his honour, “ahaha, I must say Luv your jealous face is, A-DOR-A-BLE.” (づ ̄ ³ ̄)づ
The two of you continued to laugh in the alley over the little incident
Leonardo
You and Leo were out strolling around the streets of Paris helping people, as per usual (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
You were enjoying the relaxing stroll in the summer sun when all of a sudden a woman bumped into you 
She gave you one look up and down and scoffed
As she made her way past you, she whispered in you ear, “filthy commoner.” ◉_◉
Your eyes widened as you looked back and watch her walk-off
Sensing your slight distress Leo squeezed your hand and stole your lips in a quick kiss, “Pay her no mind Cara mia, yes, she clearly is uncomfortable from the stick so far up her butt.” ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
You laugh as the Italian tried to lighten the mood with the phrase you had taught him after encountering a very rude woman at one of Comte’s balls
After a full day of helping people you and Leo were exhausted (*ノω-)
The two of you walked back down the familiar road, slowly making your way back to the mansion 
When the smell of coffee filled your senses
You smiled over at Leo who also caught a whiff of the delicious hot drink, “Would you like one, Cara mia,” you smiled and nodded finding a park bench to sit on, to rest for a moment (◕‿◕✿)
That is when the rude lady from before stormed up to you
“Found you, you thieving street rat,” you looked at the woman super confused ಠ▃ಠ
“Thought you could steal my brooch and get away with it,” you were now even more confused, but the woman was not backing down getting even closer to your face and spitting out more accusations ლಠ益ಠ)ლ
“Ooooh if you didn’t steal it then what is that?” she said pointing to a small brooch of a butterfly that Leo had gifted you a while back.
“Give it back, and i’ll forget this little incident ever happened” she said in a matter of fact tone as she folded her arms (¬_¬)
You covered the brooch with your hand and thought for a moment, “No this was a gift from my Compagno, it is not my fault you were careless with your belongings” you said meeting her challenging gaze (¬_¬)
That is when the woman reached out and decided to take the brooch by force
Of course things escalated, and you were now in a full-blown fight with the woman (=゚ω゚)つ)゚∀゚)
Leo spotted the two of you fighting and his eyes widened in shock, he paid for the coffee’s and strolled up to where you were fighting (ʘᗩʘ')
He contemplated helping you for a minute but then decided to let you handle the situation on your own, as you were a “strong independent woman.” 。◕‿‿◕。
And strong and independent you definitely were, it took no time at all for you to end the fight and come out victorious 
You dusted off your hands and looked at the woman who was now being held back by a companion of her own. The man looked at you apologetically for his partner’s behaviour and accusations, to which you just gave a simple shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“brava cara mia,” Leo said with a lazy smile as he handed you your coffee
The two of you continued your leisurely walk home, as you told Leo about the few fights you had gotten into back in the future 
Theodorus
The two of you were out in the bar as per usual after a long days work at the art gallery 
Theo was rather popular among the woman of the bar ಠ_ಠ
Well who wouldn’t be with a wingman like Arthur
The two of you liked each other, yet neither of you had confessed your feeling for each other yet 
So in the eyes of the woman at the bar he was a free man (▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿)
“Oi Theo, watch my drink ill be right back, just need to quickly run to the ladies room.” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
It wasn’t even two-seconds after your departure, that a woman stole your seat and decided to pounce on the rugged man
Theo being Theo, ignored the woman but when she refused to leave he decided to say something, “If you haven’t noticed mutt that seat is taken,” he glared daggers at the woman as his frown deepened ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
“Tsk just what was taking his hondjie so long” (;一_一)
You returned from the bathroom to see a woman laughing and touching Theo’s hand, honestly you were gonna kill that woman and then you were ganna kill Theo ಠ_ಠ
“well well what have we here, I’m gone for a minute, and you already replaced me with a new drinking partner (¬_¬)
The woman turned around and looked at you, you could tell by the redness of her eyes that she was obviously drunk
You reach past her to grab your drink
Thinking this was an attack the woman punched you in the stomach, “bad move” you said gritting your teeth from the pain ╚(ಠ_ಠ)=┐
You then pulled her by the shoulder until she was successful of your seat, not giving up the woman grabbed a glass intending to break it over your head. o(メ・・)=日☆
Luckily for your quick reflexes, you dodged the attack with ease, but the small squabble had now turned into a full-blown brawl.
You were going 21st century on her ass. (*'Д')ノシ)゚ロ゚)
Things got so heated that Theo had to pull the two of you apart and hold you back, thankfully the bartender helped Theo by grabbing hold of the woman. ( ⚆ _ ⚆ )
Theo carried you out the bar like a sack of potatoes, “Geez what are you hondjie, some kind of a junkyard dog.” Although his tone was harsh, he was wearing a big smirk  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Definitely low key impressed him that you could hold your own in a fight
Napoleon
You and Napoleon were out teaching the street kids how to read and write
It was a nice sunny day and during the break you decided to sit on the park bench and soak up some summer sun (◠‿◠✿)
You watched the children play with Napoleon, jumping on his back and swinging on his arms
Quickly losing interest in climbing all over the former French emperor like a jungle gym some of the kids started to play a game of tag
You smiled watching the children run around with a carefree smiles on their faces (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧ ✧゚・: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)
Just then a noble lady came strolling down the street, most likely on her way to some or other fancy boutique (͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°)
Immersed in the game of tag, a small little girl, ran straight into the woman. 
Big doe eyes stared up at the noble lady as the little girl started apologising profusely.  (。◕‿◕。)
The noble lady however wore an incredibly displeased frown on her face, “Why you filthy little street rat, have you any idea who I am.” ಠ_ಠ
The woman than griped her umbrella tightly and swang it back, “Clearly a lashing is in order to compensate for your filthy little hands ruining my expensive dress.”  (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
You ran as fast as your feet could carry you, you made it just on time to catch the umbrella before it struck the child, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size you prissy little missy” you said with a dangerous smile ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
“Don’t threaten me you, you disgusting peasant, perhaps I shall teach the both of you a lesson you won’t soon forget,” the woman let go of the umbrella and swang her fist toward your face 
Thankfully you had been spending most of your time with Napoleon an excellent boyfriend and an even better fighter 
After weeks of nagging he finally gave you some self-defence classes, even teaching you how to wield a sword
You easily dodged her every attempt to hit you, taunting her every time she failed to land a punch (p゚ロ゚)==p)`д)
Just than you heard Napo call out your name, you turned your attention to him for a second, giving the woman the perfect opening to land a punch
She kicked your knees causing you to go down, as you fell you grabbed hold of the woman pulling her down with you
As the two of you rolled around on the ground, you gave this woman a 21st-century beat down, one which she would never forget. 
(╯°□°)╯︵( .o.)
The children stated to circle the two of you, cheering you on (≧∇≦*)
Napoleon legit sprinted to your side and watched you beat down the prissy noble, he honestly had no words
He simply watched as you pinned her down and pushed her face in the dirt, “Yield” you simply said giving the woman an out to the fight. 
Yet she remained silent trying her hardest to struggle in your grasp, “Yield and apologise to the little girl for the way you treated her.” (≖︿≖✿)
Eventually the woman relented, “Fine, I yield.” You loosened your grip slightly wearing a smug smile, “and aren’t you forgetting something.”
The noble lady stood up with a huff and dusted herself off, she apologised under her breath and limped off  (T_T)
Napoleon looked at you with a stern expression, “what was this all about nunuche” Before you could explain the little girl ran and tackled you in a hug “Merci for protecting me” (。◕‿◕。)
Napoleon watched the girl hug you and started laughing, “I’m glad to see the self-defence classes paid off,” he ruffled your hair and gave you a big smile, “Good job giving that woman a-, what do you call it again-, ah yes… a twenty-first century smackdown.”(。◕‿◕。)
I hope you enjoyed this, dear! And thanks again for the request! 🦋🌻🌈
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queensdivas · 3 years
Text
Peonies Chapter 8
It has been a while since I've posted about Grigor or The Great. Y'all I have been busy with finals and another fic on archive that has been my favorite thing to write. If you've ever watched The Terror from AMC then you'll enjoy this.
But I haven't forgot about one of my favorite fics. Never.
Other than that! Here we go after weeks of not writing.
Previous Chapter
Masterlist
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The idea of falling asleep after today just sounds nauseating. Seeing the horrors in front of me then coming back to my apartment for Peter wanting to kill me. Then for Grigor to storm off due to the fact that he thought I would lay with my own cousin by marriage. Yes I’m well aware that’s still a common practice amongst the Monarchs of the world but not in my book!
Turning my head to watch the flames slowly begin to die down before my eyes. The room was beginning to spiral into that infamous Russian cold. I didn’t feel like throwing another log on since part of me thinks I deserve to be in the wintry world that I have chosen to live in.
This plan for making Catherine the ruler of all Russia is becoming stale. What have we done that’s been achievable anyhow! Go to the front to feed a bunch of soldiers! You saw what happened when I alone tried to help Peter! Catherine influenced a new Patriarch yet the women of the court still find Catherine to be an annoyance. There has been absolutely no effort or somewhat change Catherine has done to make things more in her favor. God she is a child thrown into a world that she has no idea what she's doing. Although I should be guiding...but...
What good am I doing here! I feel as if I’m just now a fuck toy for Grigor to feel a womens touch since his wife is with the Emporer on a daily basis! Throwing the blanket off me to march over to the nearest vase and chuck it across the room!
A screech left my body as I cleared everything off the vanity onto the floor. I could feel the blood rushing through me for this anger to spiral out of control! This stupid country! Grabbing a book to throw it against the wall!
THIS STUPID COUNTRY!
HOW CAN ONE FUCKING BELONG TO THIS COURT!
HOW CAN ONE SINGLE HUMAN BE SUCH AN ABSOLUTE MORON! AND YES THAT HUMAN IS ME!
WHY DOESN’T HE TRUST ME!
I’M NOT HIS WIFE!
THIS STUPID GOD DAMN COUNTRY!
IT’S MAKING ME QUESTION EVERY SINGLE THREAD OF INSANITY I HAVE BECAUSE THE MAN I’M BEGINNING TO FALL FOR HAS MAJOR TRUST ISSUES! CAN’T HE SEE THAT I AM A ONE MAN ONE WOMEN SORT OF WOMAN!
YES I’M A WHORE TO A MAR….
Huh...would you look at that Chiara? All because he lit a fire under your own ass because everyone else around you stays clear of it.
I…..
I feel nothing….
Maybe the cold will make me feel something in this empty body. Grabbing the handles of the window to pull them out. They smacked against the walls for the wind to soar through my room. It flew through my hair for the first few seconds for it to stop. The cold swaddled me up but I didn’t move from the window.
I do not deserve the things I have been given in life. For I am a cold hearted bitch with almost no remorse in my actions. I could possibly kill a hundred people and proclaim it to be for the greater good. No sense of remorse or sadness.
How could Grigor want to love someone as vile as me..I am cold..evil. Someone like me doesn’t deserve the warm embrace of what love is. This lust is beginning to form into the most dangerous tool one can have in their life. For it can bring life and destroy it in a matter of seconds.
I miss his touch..the way his fingers would glide across my arm as we snuggled together on the bed. The way he kissed my forehead after a long time of making love. Him showing me his drawings and I know he’s drawing me in my sleep! It hurts to feel this sort of way! I don’t want to feel anything! This feeling is almost heart wrenching and...beautiful.
My breathing began to choke till the only warmth that was on my body was the singular tear that had escaped my eye. I’m not a crier. Though we Italians embrace our emotions and turn it into something beautiful, I think this tear is a sense of relief. If I didn’t feel anything. I wouldn’t be whimpering in front of an open window.
A gentle beat from the door echoed through my room as I didn’t even move. If Peter was sending his soldiers to kill me I get the feeling there would be no knock. Please let it be Grigor. I need to feel his touch and tell him the truth. Not all of it but at least enough that I don’t spoil my plans for Catherine.
I closed the window to hurry over to the fire and toss a log in. If it’s Grigor then he probably would prefer something a little warmer. Please him please. Grabbing my robe to put it on as I opened the door. My eyes expanded from the confusion of who was standing before me in my bed robes.
“Elizabeth?” Well if she was coming to kill me I imagine my room has some sort of secret entrance and would’ve done it in my sleep.
“I hope I didn't disturb you. I think we need to have a little chat.”
“We do?” Dear God if Peter opened his mouth about what he started and what I finished I’m going to go kill him myself!
“Yes. May I come in?” Taking a step back for the door to open. She was in her bed clothes as she noticed the mess I had made in my room.
“The work of Peter no less?” I kept my mouth shut for once waiting for her to say something more. She’s going to defend Peter as much as she can. Probably for his own father who I imagine she secretly loved. From my understanding Peter the Great was also quite promiscuous just like his mother. A family of harlots.
“I heard from Peter what happened here early today. I highly doubt that you called him a bastard since he can be quite over dramatic.” So she’s aware that he’s a sniffling bastard whose inability to rule is quite prominent.
“Not talking much tonight are you? Usually you have a comment to say if I were in here talking about Peter.”
“For once Elizabeth. I could truly give a shit about Peter and his antics. I’m not here to please him and make him happy. I’m here for Catherine and making her more comfortable with her new station.” Try not to think that we might kill her own Nephew in a good amount of time. If not by Catherine then by the military.
“You’re not angry that he was in here and wanted to kill you?” She sat down in front of the fire in the love seat for me to stand before here.
“Your nephew. My cousin by marriage is a harmless little bug in my life Elizabeth. His actions were not even worth a single drop of sweat from my brow.”
“Did the stabbing of a major General not scare you? As an outsider I thought it would have scared you horribly.”
“Not scared. More gasping which then leads to utter annoyance. I am more than capable of handling Peter when he’s in a state of anger trying to kill me. What do you even want because I would like some sort of rest.”
“Be more gentle when it comes..
“Just because his mother was a horrid woman does not excuse his actions Elizabeth! That’s saying Zeus should be considered a kind man even though he raped Leda because of his own mental state. Peter thinks of him as Zeus when in reality he is worse than Hades himself! Life is horrid Elizabeth and constantly blaming his issues on his mother is disgusting and you standing here trying to defend him holds you accountable for his actions.”
“What an interesting comparison. You are a very bright woman and that wicked tongue is able to strike anyone down.”
“I can strike down anyone with tongue and steel.” Taking in a sharp breath to walk over to a full bottle of sweet red wine.
“Would you like a glass?” Asking for her to nod. Popping off the court to grab two glasses then bringing two glasses over for us. Sitting down across from here to begin pouring her a glass. She motioned for me to stop for me to pour myself some as well.
“I apologise dear Aunt Elizabeth. I sometimes forget to catch my tongue before it falls out of my head.” We both took a long drink to the point when we were done I had to pour a little more between us.
“It’s quite alright. I’m just grateful you didn’t kill my beloved Nephew before it was too late.” Before I could answer the doors bursted open.
“Excuse me mam?” Turning to see a serf was standing by the door of my world. Did something happen to Fernanda?
“Zasha? What is it?” Elizabeth stood up from my chair to approach her.
“It’s the Emperor. He’s fallen gravely ill.” Well. That is going to solve our problems much faster than I thought it was going to happen. She wrapped herself around her robe as we began walking out of my bedroom.
“Why are you coming? I thought you despised him” She asked for me to nod but was still walking.
“We’re family by marriage. He is now my cousin whether I like it or not.” Turning the corner to see that Orlo, George...and Grigor were waiting outside the room. Splendid. I imagine his wife was ready to lay in bed yet stumbled into that mess.
“From what I’ve seen and heard it sounds bad. A lot of vomit and blood.” Orlo told us to stand next to Orlo. One of the priests that was in the room came out with the black mask on his face to then take it off before us.
“You may not enter the room. For it might be contagious till the doctor tells you differently. For he’s running a high fever, a lot of vomiting, and has been seeing strange visions. The Archbishop is there with him now. He’ll tell you more once he comes out.” Is...Is that vomit on his mask? Or...dear god. He walked past us heading down the hall towards the apartments.
“How is he?” Catherine came in with a very well detailed look of uneasiness.
“Very ill.” Elizabeth told Catherine for my eyes to drift over to Grigor. He was holding onto George but staring directly at me. Stupid man. Stupid man!
“Can we go in?” Catherine asked Orlo but I’m assuming not.
“Well everyones being kept out here.”
“In fear of contagion.” Finally looking at Grigor again for us to lock eyes for a brief instant till I turned to Catherine.
“He’s been vomiting continuously throughout the night, and he runs a high fever, and he has fits of wild delirium.”
“The Doctor and Archbishop are with him.” I told her to place my hands on her shoulder to give some comfort to this poor wife and my cousin. The door opened for a child to come out with a bowl filled with blood and vomit. Not to mention his entire body was covered head to toe in Peters upchuck...and from the smell..the back door was also used as well.
“Excuse me.” Oh the smell! Covering my nose for Grigor and I to look at one another again. He doesn’t look concerned. Is that a smile?
We all leaned into the doorway to see what was happening in there since we could only hear the sound of Peter vomiting and coughing more and more. I did the sign of the cross to hold onto my cross necklace. I don’t pray for Peter. But I pray for the Doctor inside the room that he stays safe from whatever disease has fallen upon Peter. Peter could go to hell for all I care, but I have to keep up appearances.
The Archbishop popped in the doorway for us to straighten our backs. He came out of his bedroom to close the door behind him. Grigor inched a little closer to me to the point I could sense the warmth radiating off him.
“How is he?” Grigor asked for the Archbishop to stare directly at us.
“Extremely ill. The fear is that it may be Cholera.”
“Cholera?” That’s a rough sickness. Even I wouldn’t wish that sort of death on my enemy.
“Which I suspect he will have caught from a possessed, nocturnal animal. Probably a badger.” If I ever get sick in this country I would rather just endure the ride home and die in a carriage. These doctors are not touching me with a ten foot pole!
“Where would he have come across a possessed badger?” Catherine asked thankfully. That sounds absolutely unrealistic and not how you even got Cholera. Not that I don’t know how you get Cholera but I imagine it’s not from a possessed badger.
“If it is Cholera, he will die, will he not?” Holding her a little tighter as a cue to sound a lot more concerned. You have to make it believable that you’re distraught that he might die!
“It’s a strong possibility that we must face.” Looking at Orlo who kept the same straight face he usually has.
“Oh my little man.” THE POOR BABY! I WILL WEEP WITH A BOTTLE OF WINE AND GLORIOUS MUSIC!
“The Doctor is working hard on cures. It may be something else.”
“Has he said anything? Is he talking?” Why would he be concerned if he’s talking? Grigor might as well give a shit if he truly dies or not.
“He speaks intermittently. Much of it is deranged. Said he was a wolf, and wanted to eat Swedish children for breakfast. And there was some talk of what he’d like to do to Chiara and with various ladies of the court. I’ll spare you the details.” My body ran cold for Catherine to turn and face me. The blood in my body felt as if it dried up as I wanted to vomit. Looking at Grigor as I felt so disgusted with myself.
“Before more bouts of diarrhea and vomiting.” The Archbishop went back in for Grigor to take in a deep breath.
“I will go in to see him.” Say what?
“Do not risk your life.” Elizabeth told him as he stopped in the doorway.
“I want to be there for my friend.” Bullshit! He could give an absolute shit about Peter at this point!
“I had no idea your husband was so brave, Georgina.”
“Oh yes famously so.”
“In more ways than one.” Adding into the conversation for George to turn and face me.
“Just being honest.” An angry snake she is when I add my own little comments. Settle down hypocrites.
Orlo, Catherine, and I huddled into our own group to see the expression of Catherines face change from the fake grieving widow to an excited future ruler. Must admit this is a little exciting for me as well.
“If this is Cholera, he could be dead within the day.” Orlo told us as Catherine was beginning to smile slightly but trying to control herself.
“Right. That means..”
“Yes. Yes it will be yours. You will rule Russia.” By God it’s going to actually happen.
“After all our planning..it just..”
“Falls right into your lap.” Orlo finished as the doors opened back up. The ArchBishop came out of the room to take off his mask. Remember when I said that this planning became stale? I stand corrected and I was completely wrong. This just made everything better.
“In light of this terrible situation, a meeting is being called to deal with the possible transition of power.”
“To me.” Easy Catherine. That’s a little too exciting for someone who's losing their husband.
“Indeed. It seems so. You are the next...should the worst happen.” Seems like the worst is about to happen right before them. If it’s going this quickly then I might be going home soon! Finally an end to this horrid nightmare and cesspool!
“Prepare with prayer, and the senate will be called.”
“I look forward to it.” Damn it Catherine!
“Not him dying. That is bad. And sad. And we hope for the best and a speedy recovery.” If I could slap my own face I would without making this seem like we’re excited that Peter is dying.
“God will be with us. He always is.” The Archbishop left the hall for Catherine and Orlo to talk amongst themselves. I need to talk to Grigor. I can’t stand being apart from him at nights for it is his warmth I believe that is keeping me sane. I don’t think I can tell him that I think I’m starting to love him but atleast telling him I need him is a good start.
*Grigors P.O.V.*
DIE! DIE YOU HORRIBLE HUMAN! YOU THINK YOU CAN SLEEP WITH MY OWN LOVE BECAUSE YOU’RE THE EMPEROR! DIE DIE DIE! I WILL KILL YOU AND WILL LIVE PEACEFULLY IN MY OWN LIFE!
Removing the pillow to see that he was still breathing! Bastard! Slamming the pillow back onto him to push down even further in hopes that I might finish the job! Just die! How hard is it to kill someone who's already dying! Talking about Chiara as if she’s just a common peasant!
“What are you doing!?” George yelled as I continued to push down harder and harder.
“What is right and you know it George! I have to do something!”
“Fuck!” George pulled me back as we stopped to see Peter was still breathing. Dragging me from his bed towards the middle of his room.
“I was given the choice to be a man or a child! I’ve decided to become a man for the sake of my sanity!”
“You poisoned him?”
“Arsenic. From the wall in his borscht!” Feeling the cold slap from George as she was in full rage of my actions.
“What happens to us when he’s dead? Think what Peter provides for us!”
“You...you..”
“You’re a stupid fool Grigor!” She took a deep breath to calm herself down.
“Our situation is complex. Yet also simple! We have a safe life with Peter! Luxury, security, a place in court. Who’s he gonna be replaced by? Catherine!? We’re nothing to her! What happens to us then? Not to mention Chiara is making it much more difficult to handle this situation. No thanks to you!”
“So you may have a lover but I may not!” I love Chiara and this marriage is non-existent!
“Grigor?” Peter called for me as I turned to see him barely awake and moving. Say something George! You hypocritical bitch say something!
“We’re here.” George, like a mother goose, flew to Peter's aid. Well. It’s very clear now on where my life stands now. George has made her bed and it is time for me to make my own with a Duchess who isn’t afraid to get the job done when it needs to be done.
Letting go of the pillow to march out of the room and slamming the doors shut. Taking in a few deep breaths to calm myself before scampering off to Chiara. Chiara? Where is she? Perhaps in her chambers!
It was like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel heading to her apartment! The outline of the room was glowing before my eyes. Chiara..my love. The only woman in this world that can make my knees buckle to bow at her feet. That fire is intoxicating to the point that I might die of happiness.
Slamming the door open to see Chiara was in front of the flames looking directly into them. Her head slowly turned to face me with a somber look. A bottle of wine sitting next to her looked thoroughly used. Oh my precious flame. Closing the door to sit down next to her as she went back into looking into the fire.
“I placed my blade against his neck threatening to take his life away. Why didn’t I slice it open? Tell me why I didn’t Grigor?” She asked for me to place my hand on her cheek.
“What happened before I came in?”
“He was mad that I helped Velementov at the front for strategy. He drew a sword on me and I fought back. I won and threatened him that if he were to ever draw his sword on me that I would win. I...I should’ve sliced his throat open and strung him up as if he was game to place on my wall.” I feel like I should tell her that I’m the one that poisoned him. That he is dying in his own bed because the world would be better without him! She was literally going to kill him before I even came into the room!
“Chiara. I’m the one who caused him to become ill. I poisoned him in the borscht while he was eating dinner.” Her expression was the same as before till it clicked in her mind. Her entire face went from a beautiful red to a ghostly white in a matter of seconds.
“Holy shit..” She whispered to turn her attention to the fire. Is she going to tell Catherine? Not that Catherine might care much but what if she does? Would she tell the court? No...no what have I done!
“I would ask why but that..oh my god.” Turning her head to face me as I gulped.
“If it helps, I did it for you. For us..for everyone in the court that his idiocy will go away.” Her lips were slightly open with her breathing beginning to rise.
That lovely color began returning to her cheek as she climbed on top of me and wrapped herself around me. Those entrancing lips striked against mine as my hands traveled up her back to pull her shirt. She stopped to place her index finger on my lips.
“For you committing such a horrendous act. Allow me.” Removing her finger to place a kiss on my lips, to my cheek, then right underneath my jaw line. I could see the stars from how well she was working those luscious lips. Her hand gripped my cock to start playing it through my pants. God her touch. It’s almost too delicious to even allow. My eyes rolled back for me to lay down on the rug for her kisses to start moving down my body.
I love her...I hope that she knows that I would kill an army for her without regret...
~~~
@mirkwoodshewolf @bonafiderocketqueen @johndeaconshands
@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels @amethyst-serenade @radio-ha-ha@i-have-a-wonky-eye-too @deck-heart @actuallyanita @the-baby-bookworm @ewanmcgregors​ @panagiasikelia​
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raendown · 3 years
Link
This follower milestone gift fic is for @nobodysperfect2133 with the prompt word woolage.
Pairing: HashiramaMadara Word count: 1268 Rated: T+ Summary: In which only one man in the whole world has the sense to properly appreciate Madara's hair.
Follow the link or read it under the cut!
KO-FI and commission info in the header!
The Man, The Myth, The Legendary Mane
Madara’s hair did not bother Hashirama. It bothered lots of other people though. 
It bothered his enemies for pretty obvious reasons, the inherent taunt of all that long tangled mass streaming behind him in battle like a vivid declaration. You can’t touch me. The amount of times he’d watched someone try to get a hold of it couldn’t be counted even if Hashirama used all of his fingers and toes but he never really worried. No one ever got close. Madara did always like to say he was dancing and Hashirama often thought that yes, that sounded right. He danced out of reach, danced across the thirsty earth, danced to the tune of battle drums with hair that streamed like ribbons. 
It bothered Izuna for more personal reasons. Mostly because he was far too old to still be crawling in to bed with his brother after a nightmare and certainly far too old to be complaining about waking up with a mouthful of hair the next morning. Also partly just because he was a little brother with all the bratty trappings that came with such a title. Anything Madara liked he was determined to find fault in for no reason other than teasing his most precious person. Their bond was just like that and though Hashirama could never understand it he supposed it was fine as long as they both came away smiling every time. 
It bothered Tobirama because literally everything about Madara bothered Tobirama despite the fact that they had finally managed to settle down in to some form of bickering friendship. As far as Hashirama could tell the only valid reason Tobirama had for disliking Madara’s hair was the way it always seemed to create its own breeze, shifting loose papers with every step and turn, and Tobirama despised the very notion of untidiness. If either one of them had ever so much as considered the option of just tying it up out of the way they’d never said anything. Anyone else watching them could be forgiven for not believing they were actually friends - and honestly Hashirama wondered sometimes. 
It bothered the council of advisors and the elders of the Uchiha clan and just about anyone else that Madara had taken to hiding away from behind the wild bush of his own hair. Creating his own little shadowed alcove was so convenient, he said once, the perfect place to hide his scorn for others’ words. Lectures about his hair were much preferable to even more lectures about how he should respect his elders and supposed betters. Hashirama didn’t really agree with the spirit of it all but he did have to give the man that one.
Sometimes it felt like Hashirama was really the only one in the world who liked Madara’s hair. It was messy and wild, forever tangled in such a way that one wouldn’t be surprised to find sticks or lost pencils hiding within, and when weighted down with water it actually fell longer than Hashirama’s own. Those weren’t really the true reasons he enjoyed it, just qualities, but he’d long been of the opinion that one had to take all of Madara’s qualities as a whole to really understand him rather than picking and choosing pieces to be loyal to. No, the reasons he enjoyed Madara’s hair had a lot less to do with the hair itself and much more to do with the man underneath. Hashirama was an honest person. He could admit those kinds of things. 
“You’re staring again.” Madara’s voice broke him out of his reverie and Hashirama offered one of his infamous smiles. 
“I’m not sorry.”
“S’there another twig or something? Get it out and get back to work.”
“No, no twigs.” 
Shuffling the papers on his desk, Hashirama dropped his eyes back to the work he’d been trying and failing to concentrate on for the past hour or so. He really should get this done. These all needed to be reviewed as soon as possible. Unfortunately his mind was far away from the latest proposal from his sanitation committee, much more interested in the sway of Madara’s hair as a soft summer breeze from the open window gently flirted with a loose bunch of strands. 
“I swear to god if you make one crack about a brush I will stab you with your own paperwork.” 
Hashirama coughed in an effort to clear his throat. “Ah, no, no I wasn’t going to- ahem.”
“The fuck do you keep staring at me for then?” Madara demanded. 
“Was I? Ah, ha ha, I didn’t mean to!”
“Don’t be daft.” His friend scowled, chin tucking down to glare out from behind his messy fringe. “It’s the hair, you’re always staring at the hair. Everyone else’s got something to say about it; you got something to add now too?”
In his defense, Hashirama really meant to say nothing. Or rather he meant to deflect with something meaningless just as he had a thousand times before. That was the flavor, the rhythm, that their friendship had fallen in to over the years. Hashirama watched and yearned until he was caught and then stepped back out of reach with half formed apologies, never asking for things he was sure weren’t on the table anyway. 
His mouth seemed to have other plans today. 
“Just wondering what it feels like,” he heard himself say. Madara visibly startled at the admission. 
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It just looks really soft.” Hashirama listened with a muted sort of horror as the words kept falling out, powerless to stop himself. “You’re always hiding in there so it must be nice; I was wondering what it would be like to do that myself.”
“To hide in my hair?” Madara demanded.
Hashirama gave a helpless shrug, finally managing to clench his jaw shut. 
The two of them stared at each other for a very long time. Watching the visible parts of Madara’s face cycle through so many different emotions in such a short amount of time would have been wonderfully amusing if not for the fact that Hashirama was terrified of which one would eventually win out. He might be hopelessly in love but he wasn’t blind to the fact that his friend had a temper - or that he wasn’t afraid to use it on anyone. It should probably bother him more but that, like the hair, was just another item on the long list of things that made Madara so Madara and Hashirama couldn’t possibly love him any other way. 
“You have no tact, Senju, you know that?” 
“Huh?”
Pulled from his thoughts, Hashirama was so busy trying to cover them up he almost didn’t see the flash of pink on the tips of pale ears. Madara slouched a little farther down in his seat, eyes firmly on the scroll open before him, and he grumbled, “Wanna shove your face in a man’s hair you should at least ask him out to dinner first.”
“Oh. Oh! Um. Do you...my place?”
“I’m not tidying up for the likes of you so don’t be expecting that.”
“That’s fine, Madara. That’s more than fine. You know I like you just how you are.” Wild messy hair and all, though he refrained from saying as much out loud. 
When Madara retreated just a little deeper behind his own tangles Hashirama bit his lip trying not to laugh for the sheer joy filling his heart. Well how about that, he thought. Maybe he should have shown his appreciation sooner for all the little details that bothered everyone else but him. 
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