#drifting ash veil

[tacticiankate]

chibis of my exalted party (minus one, cause they kept changing their character lol)

in order: shimmers-among-silk (full moon lunar), hides-behind-teeth (changing moon lunar), drifting ash veil (night caste fireball sorcerer solar), hope-tearing tyrant (fire aspect dragonblooded)

[inknopewetrust]

𝔉𝔬𝔬𝔱𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔭𝔰 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔰

summary: in the blistering summer evening heat, you and felix play a little game. [felix x fem reader. WC: 2.6k]

warnings: smut. minors dni (18+ only). p in v, fingering (fem receiving), saltburn bathtub, slight voyeurism, dirty, dirty talk, some degrading language, not the dirtiest thing but still like… kinda hot?

Though the sun had set long before, the lingering scorch of the sun sat like a film on your skin. Its thin veil dry and aching to shrivel against the boiling water of the tub. You felt the sticky nature disappear under the trails of steam that painted the surface of the water.

A bead of sweat pebbled from your temple to cheek to chin to neck.

But you lit a cigarette anyway. And if you listened close enough, you could hear the crackle.

A blistering bud sizzles; the porcelain was drawing cool waves against the skin of your arms and for once, in the vast nothingness of the bathroom, the heat that rose from its surface made the ghosts vanish.

It made them disappear in house once home to Kings.

Now, as it boiled under the night sky, it was home to something other. It had bled itself into the walls and the ghosts wished to witness not the haggard scrounging of wealth that festered within.

But you imagined Henry the Eighth liked to stare as you bathed. They all did. Felix had told you that once a few summers ago.

How they all wanted to touch you in the ways that he did. How they wanted to whisper in your ear that they were better than him. No one truly was and it kept you crawling back with the poor souls who got sucked into a heated whirlpool of pity each and every summer.

Nevertheless, you envisioned Henry in the corner itching to touch.

They all trembled to flutter their hands onto your skin, onto your breasts, squeezing pieces of you dipped below the waterline.

If his ghost could smile, Henry’s ghastly teeth gleamed.

‘Fuck off, Henry,’ you saw the paunchy apparition lounging in the chair in the corner with a bead of sweat dribbling from his own temple.

Oh, envy, King Henry.

A bit of ash fell onto the tiles below.

“You’re making a mess of it.”

You tapped the cig on the side of the tub as another bit of ash wilted to the cold floor.

Felix hummed.

Stocky Henry vanished. If you gazed toward him, Felix’s eyes bore deep. Heavy and brooding, downcast at a peak of what existed beyond the bubbled suds.

Dinner had long passed. Everyone was supposed to be in bed.

He could feel you in inches. The soft skin of your back, the plush thighs that laid between his own. A hand of his traced over the skin of your collarbone gently as the ash continued to drift.

You were nearly on fire. In the swelter of the stone walls and the patterns of the paper before him, you glowed in a red sweat.

“You’re letting it die.”

“I was thinking,” you murmured.

“About what?”

“King Henry.”

“King Henry?” Felix’s voice peaked. His head leaned to rest on your shoulder, his smile leaving a trail as it grew. His nose drew a delicate line on your dampened skin.

You liked Felix in this way. So quiet and removed. But Saltburn always kept pace in the background.

“Yes, King Henry,” his hand glided along your own, gently taking hold of the cigarette and placing it between his lips.

The smoke of the puff rose high into the air beside you. It’s curls twisted like your insides aching for a touch too far but never too close.

“I like to imagine them sitting… staring at us now.”

“Now?” Felix questioned. “So erotic in an ugly tub. I can see him now,” he pointed to the corner of the room, “he just popped one. Can’t you see it? In his trousers there.”

You grinned. Your laugh filled his chest with a shuddering life. So fulfilled and free yet trapped in this same world as he.

And he was never far away. Here, in Saltburn, always waiting in the same shadows for the opportunity to strike while the others weren’t around. No sister or friends or parents or mewling poor fighting for his attention. They were retired for the evening; all snuggled in beds with curtains drawn and fantasy dancing in their heads.

“He isn’t the only one.”

You tipped your head to the side. The profile of your face meeting his forehead as he dipped his own downwards. The cigarette still burning from his fingertips. It was a mere bud now.

You could feel what waited for you on your lower back.

“I can feel that, you know?” You feigned an innocence he liked. Keen and blatant, but cunning with sin.

“Is it Henry that makes you feel that why?” You whispered, lips ghosting his chin.

Felix breathed in deeply. The same chest that shuddered with joy in anticipation.

Every summer.

The excitement would stir within his bones as the gates would open wide and beside his family would be the one steady thing he had everything to give.

“I hope,” Felix hushed, “for your own sake that’s not the fucking case.”

“So it’s me?”

Felix groaned as you pushed against him. The gentle pressure of your body arching into him without a touch, he begged to put his hands on you.

The cigarette fell to the floor in its end.

Felix took his hand and turned your head back to face him with a firm grip on your jaw. The water around you sloshed. It cleared the bubbles from your chest.

“I want to play a game,” he suggested in a dusty, breathless tone. “Want to play, darling?”

“Can I win?” You suggested. His hand loosened, letting the fingers dance along the column of your neck before beckoning up toward your mouth once more.

His index finger traced the outline of your lips. In a slow glide, Felix pulled your lower lip out slightly, gathering the wetness with his finger before inching it back to the space where your lips had parted.

You kissed his finger with your tongue as it found purchase in the suction of your mouth. The plushness of your tongue, the slight drag of your teeth as it emerged from between your lips.

“I don’t want to play if I can’t win, Felix,” you whispered.

His eyes now hooded with a thick want. He watched his finger redraw the lines of your lips again as you begged with doe eyes to win. A near child’s play of a woman’s ability to seduce.

“You can win,” Felix huffed as his other hand snaked itself from the edge of the tub to your torso under the water. “But I’ll need you to be quiet. We have guests and as much as I do love our dear, sweat guests, I can’t have them imagining the way I fuck you, can I?”

“No,” you relished in the way his hand returned to the base of your throat and squeezed with the slightest amusement. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Good,” Felix smiled at you. Your heart squeezed in the same way your cunt ached for his fingers to gather the strength to follow through.

“What do I win?”

“Whatever the fuck you want. You just have to be quiet.”

You smiled deviously that the thought.

“I can’t see how we’d be able to look a boy like Ollie in the eyes if he heard the sounds that come out of your mouth.”

His hand swooped past your center and to your leg, drawing one over his own which sat you straighter in his hold. You felt his cock jump at the pressure of you pushing on him. Felix flitted his finger tips from your knee to waist, switching hands to bring his wet palm to your breast while the other perched your opposite leg over his other.

The pebbled nipple was taut as he kneaded the skin in circles. He pressed down hard, pulling up on your nipple to elicit the sounds he wanted so badly to hear but knew you’d repress.

You were like him in many ways. He too wanted to win a game of control.

With you in his hands like a play of putty, he felt in control but with one hand on the wheel.

As he palmed your breast, his hand gripped your thigh. His mouth traced a pattern of hot breath along your neck as his tongue relished the salty sweat that had gathered at its leisure. The goosebumps that rose from your skin welcomed his breath kindly.

“I want this house to ourselves,” Felix moaned. “So we don’t have to be quiet.”

“Tell me what you’d do,” you asked him, placing your hand over his own and bringing his fingers to you. He cupped your heat as you groaned, guiding him back and forth to gather the wetness he could feel different from the water of the tub.

“Tell me what you’d do to me.” You spoke faintly. “Tell me and I’ll be quiet.”

You guided one of Felix’s fingers in you as he shushed the sounds that threatened to speak themselves into existence.

He put his lips on your ear as he began to pump his fingers in and out of you with a slow glide. So plush and tight, he thought to himself. It sucked him in and dared not to spit him out.

“I would fuck you on the floor,” he breathed out against your cheek. “I’d spread you wide and taste your sweet pussy as the sun bathes the floor. And when I’m done, we go to the pool-“

Felix pulled out his finger, tracking it along your folds before going in with two. You arched against his back, drawing up as he pulled you back down and rested his hand on your waist.

You curled the toes of your right foot down the edge of the tub.

“-we’d go to the pool and sit out in the sun. You’d give me head in one of the chairs and I’d paint your fucking face with my cum.”

You clenched around his fingers. His thumb pressed into your clit, another jolt aching to send you squirming but he held you down as he patterned circles on the gentle flesh.

“You like that, don’t you?” He breathed in the smell of you. “And maybe we’d go for a walk through the maze after dinner. I’d fuck you in the center and you could scream as loud as you fucking want. No one could get to us. No one would hear us.”

“F-F-“

“No, no, no, shh,” Felix shushed. “Good girls only win by being quiet, yeah?”

You nodded, clenching onto his fingers again as a strangled ‘fuck’ tumbled out of his lips. He could imagine the coil building. Felix wasn’t going to let you finish alone.

Felix pulled his fingers from you and felt the disappointment in the wither of your body.

“But I don’t want to imagine what’d I’d do if we were alone,” Felix blanked. “Turn around.”

As the water sloshed around you, you turned to wrap your arms around his neck. Like you, Felix had sweat beading from his jaw that glimmered in the red light of the bathroom. He looked intoxicated, entranced but in control of what he could.

“I want to see you ride me like the fucking whore you are.”

You weren’t a whore. But for Felix, you could be anything.

At the nape of his neck, you gripped the back of his hair and drew his head back as your other hand gripped him under the water.

Hard and lengthy, his cock was a welcome intrusion every time. You pumped him in your hand slowly. The sounds of water creating currents was soothing against the sounds of your battered breaths kissing his own. You lifted yourself on your knees, leaning against Felix as he squeezed your ass tightly, watching as you lowered yourself onto him under the water. Slender and veined, your cunt molded to him like art. You both would never tire of the feeling so profound.

It would never be like this with anyone else.

Loose pants left his lips as you sat completely full of him. A fit for a King in his own home, he supposed. Once you had settled with him inside, you moved above him.

The water moved languidly too. Meeting the fiery skin of two intoxicated minds too oblivious to see the peering eyes between the crack of a door.

“Right there, baby, right there,” Felix mumbled as you rose again and again, drawing him in and out as he stretched you with every swell and spur he could muster on his own.

“You’re such a good girl, darling. So good for me.”

You could peer down at him from above. Your breath fanning his face and lips but never seeking to truly kiss him as your hand tangled in his hair.

Bits of water spilled over the tub and splashed onto the floor. It soaked the ash tray and the speckles of ash and bud that littered the floor.

“Don’t stop baby. Don’t fucking stop,” Felix crooned in the room’s empty sounds. Only the pleasured sighs and gasping breaths filled the air.

You bounced on his cock with a measured pace. Each stroke of his manhood against your velvet walls lured him deeper into you, entangled with the missing links of a year gone by.

“Felix,” you broke the rules to whisper in his ear. He was taken away by the insatiable need of his rapture. He listened. He beckoned to your call.

“Tell me that you love me.”

From the shadows, Oliver Quick felt his blood run as hot as the sun. He loved Felix.

“I love you.”

Whom did not love him back.

“Tell me you need me.”

He was enamored by the idea of Felix.

“I need you.”

Who was enamored with the idea of Oliver.

“And what do you want from me?”

He was taken by the sight before him.

“I need you to cum, baby. I need you to fucking cum for me.”

Oliver was taken by the gleam of your skin. The way Felix’s throat bobbed as a strangled groan escaped his lips and the way your own melted onto his forehead in a silent struggle to come down from a high.

You placed both hands on his slender chest, careening like winged victory in a heated satisfaction.

Your fingers shook.

He had never seen a woman shake so elegantly before. The tremble of your lips as you breathed in shaking respite, the jolt of your shoulder blade as Felix ran a hand up your back.

Oliver licked his lips at the sight.

Felix lifted his head from its position against the tub. His eyes fluttered open as you pulled away in the slightest.

And Felix smiled.

You returned the grin with one of your own as his still sat erect inside of you. The bubbles of the tub had long ceased to exist and the water that was left was filled with the combined spent of you both.

“I don’t think I won that one,” you chuckled quietly, pushing hair out of Felix’s face before cupping his cheek in your hand.

“I’ll take pity on you, I guess.”

“The water’s gone cold.”

Felix kissed the inside of the palm of your hand. He cherished the high that lingered.

“The water’s gone cold,” he repeated. “But we could stay here forever.”

“Pruned and sweaty? Not a chance in fucking hell, Felix.” You laughed a bit too loudly. Oliver disappeared at the groan Felix let out as you pulled off of him.

You stood before him as the water dripped from every piece of you. Marbled and finite of the most precious carvings he only wished to hold forever.

As you exited the tub and the throb of him began to settle, you grabbed his linen shirt from the floor, draping it over you as it stuck to the wetness of your skin.

“The bed is just the slightest bit more comfortable.”

And you disappeared behind his doorway with call for more as the walls of Saltburn added another sordid story to add to it woven trims.

But it was never just the walls of Saltburn watching.

A/N: as always, the best gift of reading is likes AND reblogs and why not, we love comments too. Thank you for reading and feel free to check out my other works on my masterlist here. xo

[running-with-kn1ves]

Could you do Orc Tribal Leader X Reader on your wedding night?

A/N: I SWEAR I'm literally just writing the same stuff over again b/c I had a story just like this, but you know what I never get tired of it because its like a top fantasy bro. Hope this one was better than that version at least

Content warnings: Forced Marriage, kidnapping, attempted escapes, nonconsensual touching, infantilization of reader  

Synopsis: Your village, destroyed and burned. Your life picks up somewhere you would never have imagined. Maybe, death is a better option than being an orc’s spouse. 

Word Count: Approx. 2600 

The autumn solstice was a bountiful, beholden time of year. From the greeneries of cabbage and the fowls hatched in summer now fully grown, there was much to be harvested and ripened for the taking. Your town was boisterous, full of life with a variety of competitors and businesses attempting to lurch at any tourist’s or local’s wallet to get them to buy countless crops, meat, and woven goods.  

Your tiny tea shop, suffering from last July’s drought, was finally starting to perk up with re-growth. Black tea, jasmine, bergamot, even hybrid blends like crushed raspberry and chamomile-- you could assemble enough to raise prices, label the small reaping as an imported foreign good luck charm that when drunken, blessed women with marriage prospects and men with wealth.  

That was, before however, you became bound and gagged to a chair, pleasantries being exchanged around you in a language harsh in your ears. The fires... You remember them well, the putrid stench of charred meat from the butcher next door, his body even more ablaze. Your jade boxes of fine silk bags meant for holding gifts of tea, becoming laden with ash and dust. Every scrap of money you saved up under the floorboards disappearing into floating particles and melted coins.  

“Brutes,” Your uncle called them, “deranged beasts with only two things in mind: bloodlust and greed.” 

Orcs were not well-received in a conservative, fearful town of humans. Even the elves, seen as symbols of beauty in mortal standards, were causes of paranoia and irritation whenever they made their rounds nearby.  

It was no wonder that the lines of tusked, olive-fleshed creatures in animal skin were spotted, the guards of your small city went on a rampage. Bows and arrows were no match for iron bones and teeth of steel.  

You, were no match for anything wider than a tree trunk. So when fire caught to your village, your home now rampaged for its finest ‘offerings’ to the orcs, you were left to be eaten by the licking flames. And yet, was it a blessing or a curse that one of the warriors decided to haul you on his back, doting on how “nicely you’ll do” as a wedding gift. You didn’t realize that the gift was to be part of the ceremony yourself.  

With smoke in your lungs and your eyes blurred by dirt and ash, you watched the ceiling cave in on your tiny tea-filled shack, bright orange and red dancing from behind the window panes as you drifted away.  

Daraktan is spoken all around you, harshly and with flicking tongues. You can hear snippets of English, wondering what’s going on behind the black veil covering your head. You don’t dare remove it, recalling what the orc woman, supposedly your now husband’s ‘mother’ telling you in your native tongue.  

“Touch this, and you will surely die. My alfhild will remove it, when it is time.”  

And so, you wait. Digging your fingernails into your palms, crying quietly in heavy furs and leather, the occasional hand coming to pull your shaky one to their mouths, kissing the tip of your index finger.  

“Aka’magosh..” They mumble to you, seemingly more at the body to your right. 

The calloused hand of someone much larger than you, whom you have assumed is your husband from his constant appearance nearby, occasionally comes to grace your back, to rest a hand on the top of your head, to smoothen your veil or the soft fur shawl on your legs.  

His hearty laugh hurts your ears, the jingles of the metal jewelry he adorns constantly making noise as he shifts.  

“Please..” You whisper, praying, to whoever may be listening. Why you? Why, out of all the fair, eligible humans of your town, were you picked out from the rubble to be “saved”? To be married to a faceless orcish man, who would surely break you in half before morning? 

The bitter cold of coming winter brushes against your legs. You can feel that you’re not inside wooden walls, and yet unnatural lighting seems to shine through your veil at times.  

“Omulork, I think I will take my… wedding gift, to be with in solitude.” 

Loud, deep laughs fill the room, the guttural voices of female orcs being swallowed up by uncountable numbers of warriors surrounding you. Your body shivered as a gust of wind blew in, the autumn breeze barely being kept at bay from where you sat.  

“Enjoy the festivities, shedzvagas!”  

His unique husk leaves everyone in the room to cheer in their orcish language, tough and painful pats coming to your back, the festive shakes to your shoulder nearly making you topple. 

That same heated, abrasive hand comes to grab your roped wrists, lurching you firmly, yet gently from your place on the ground. Panic started to fill your stomach as it rose to your chest, the warm aura of an orc next to you radiating to heat you from the chilly weather outside.  

Now. It was now or never. You didn’t want to think anymore what he would do to you when you were alone, when you had no one to cry to for help.  

Your feet moved before the thought finished crossing your mind. Your hands shook as you stumbled in a sprint forward. You passed thick bodies as you ran blindly, making it a mere five steps before a pair of meaty hands grabbed you by the hips. 

“A feisty one, Gar’mak!” The sounds of the orc woman who forced you into your wedding attire spoke up, a drunken laugh leaving her plump lips. “Alfhild, better not leave it out of your sight.” 

You hated how clear the English they used was to your ears, how human they all sounded, how when they spoke in your native tongue-- it was meant for your ears. She wanted you to know, to let the fear soak into your chattering teeth.  

The orc keeping you captive merely laughed, tossing your weightless body to his shoulder just like he had done when pulling you from the cobble of what was left of your tea shop. 

You screamed, biting down on what you could reach from under your veil. But the salty, thick flesh from beneath you was aloof, offering no reaction as a double pat was brought to your buttocks.  

“Now now, Djenifor, don’t fuss.” Gar’mak mused, each step he took forward making your body thump against his. He held a tight grip on you, not caring for the scratches you layered his back with. “I won’t try to hurt you… I will keep you safe, try my best to keep your fragile body in one piece.”  

The coldening night air was a drastic change to the room of heavy body heat and weighty movement where the wedding ritual and festivities were held. Now, it was quiet. You could hear the loud chattering begin to drift, songs and chants rising again as they once had when you were unceremoniously married to your new ‘husband.’  

Gar’mak patted your butt again, moving down to rub at the back of your thigh with a gentle, firm rhythm. He seemed to hum to himself, satisfied with the nights events. Scored himself a spouse and the treasured belongings of a human town.  

He must be pretty proud of himself, you seethed.  

The tears were beginning to sting the corners of your eyes, frantically scratching at the orcs back when you felt the warmth of an enclosed area meet your skin.  

“No, no--” You began to kick, trying to shove off the arm holding you steady on the orcs’ shoulder.  

“Settle down now--” Gar’mak ordered softly, putting you down on the fuzzy ground. You managed to hit his face, the hard scrape of tusks scratching your hand as a firm nose nearly cracked your knuckles.  

The orc went silent. Quiet in rage, he rips your veil away with a grip hard enough to tear hair out if he so desired.  

Your eyes take a moment to adjust to the dimly lit tent, lanterns glowing at the corners as the mass of a creature leers over you. You forgot just how… big, orcs were. From afar they looked small, bigger than a human, but no threat due to distance. But now… he was above you, twice your height, twice your size, twice if not thrice everything. His palm the size of your skull, his eyes gleaming and looking over your body, weak with exhaustion and fright.  

Small, intentional scars were placed under his auburn eyes, some kind of tribe symbol you were sure. Thick eyebrows furrowed at the way tears decorated your cheeks, the exhales from his flat nose blowing hot breath on your chest.  

“Please, I, I can’t, I don’t belong--” You fumble over yourself, trying to slide back on the floor of soft wolf and caribou furs.  

“Shh, shh now,” The orc puts a hand to your ankle, an action that jerks you to a stop. “I won’t hurt you, lebam…” 

You sincerely doubt that, but the sentiment sounds genuine from his broken, baritone voice. 

“What’s your name?” He asks, pulling slowly with immeasurable strength at your leg. You slide towards him with little strain, even with your muscles going rigid for you to stand your place, your fingernails digging into the ground beneath you.  

You shake out your name, reluctant to give it.  

“Ah. What a human name; a scared wee human, aren’t you?” 

You don’t dare to respond, waiting for the sound of your snapping ankle. 

“They call me Gar’mak, though that may be too difficult for simple human brains. Mak is fine, little Djenifor…” 

You don’t want to call him anything, to refer to him at all-- yet, he looks keen to hear you say it. There’s an expectation in his eyes, a flick of his giant tongue against his lips.  

“Mak..” You mumble, trying not to gag.  

“Yes…” The orc’s hand frees your leg, caressing up to your cheek as he wipes away a forgotten wet stream of tears.  

“Please, just let me go--” You beg under your breath, scared of the way he seems to be eyeing your knees, your frail neck, your round ears.  

“You know that’s not going to happen,” He doesn’t seem angry at you for asking, just… Sorry. “We are bound forever now; even the gods couldn’t tear us apart. Wherever you go, I will find you. Whenever I leave, you will feel me gone. By sunrise tomorrow your scars will be given, and you will become one of us.”  

The panic begins to settle once again in your stomach. Maybe, tonight, yes-- tonight, if you could escape. You could-- just maybe you could find a way, past their all-seeing eyes, their all-hearing ears, escape to the mountains they took to get you here. 

 “But can’t you change it back?” Your voice cracks, expression twisting into an ugly cry as you feel thick fingers dig into your hair. “Just, we can go back-- just let me be…”  

You sob for what feels like too long, hours maybe, Gar’mak’s eyes never leaving you as he pulls you to his thigh. He brings a cotton blanket to your legs as he shushes you, the tenderness of his eyes a foreign sight compared to the façade he forced you to endure during the night's festivities.  

When your cries had turned to miserable, quiet sniffles, a muscled knuckle finds its way under your chin. He turns your head to look at him, eyes red and droopy as you try to think of any method of escape.  

“You’ll learn to like it here, human.” Gar’mak thinks for a moment, caressing your leg with a single finger.  

 “We are far more civilized than your kind-- far more… Fair. You’ll be treated well. The spouses of warriors do not go unfed, unbathed. Unloved, most of all. You will be cherished; I will cherish you, as long as you let me.”  

The orc grips your jaw in his hand, firm enough to where his fingers made dimples in your cheeks, but softly to where you felt like a mouse in someone’s closing palm. A kiss was planted to your temple, your body pushed deep against your husband’s as he holds you close enough to suffocate. You wait for him to choke life from you, and yet it never comes. He is harsh with his touches, but not harsh enough to hurt.  

“Please, let's finish tonight how it was meant to go, hm? Let me hold you…” He murmurs, all soft and lamblike into your ear. It sends shivers down to your soles, hot breath layering your neck as he looks at your lips with such intensity.  

You fear saying no, but the word rises up to your throat.  

It doesn’t make it out in time. Lips engulf yours, the stiff coldness of bone-colored tusks brushing against your face as Gar’mak holds you tight. Just one kiss is enough to make his demeanor act up.  

Your unassuming, comfort-driven spot on his lap is altered swiftly. You find yourself straddling the orcs’ waist, a hand pressed against the back of your head as your tied hands remain useless against his chest.  

You don’t know whether to speak, to scream, to bite at his lips-- but you remain flexile, afraid of the rough hand holding your skull so tenderly, the other gripping your thigh to wrap around his flank. You’re like a resistant doll, licked lips becoming tender as the orc pushes against you with such tenacity.  

You see his eyes open, staring into your wide, unblinking ones. They seem to communicate more than just lust-- its desire, desire for your reciprocation.  

Gar’mak waits… he kisses you, eyes narrowed on standby for your submission. They’re hazy and make you wonder if this is enough to make him release his brutish side, the part that showed no mercy for your neighbors or your home. What would happen, if you broke away or dared to claw at him?  

That thought doesn’t stay for long, not when the tough hand on the back of your head moves to your neck, squeezing just enough to bruise.  

You wince, lips pursing in reaction just in time for his next tongued assault.  

That slight opening of your mouth, the press of your lips against his, is all he needed. You find yourself twisted beneath his body as you’re brought to lay on the furry floor, the orc lying above you.  

“That’s right, I’ll be soft Djenifor… just do as I command, keep smelling so sweetly for me.” 

Scars litter his shoulders and collarbone, metal necklaces and piercings dangling on his olive-green, lightly haired chest as you fear how much it would take for him to crush you.  

He’s so quiet, letting go of your mouth as the orc’s curled tongue licks a slow, wet stripe down your jaw. His hands grab your thighs to wrap your legs around him, intent on keeping you steady and so close you practically breathe the same air.  

Before he leans to kiss you feverishly again, the orc brushes your cheek with his knuckles, petting down the amalgamated fabrics you wear to commemorate your wedding.  

 “You’re so lucky I found you first, that I had saved you from that rubble without layering an extra scratch; my brethren would not be so kind.”  

He kisses your cheek, a soft, hungry grin playing on his plumped and tusked lips. “So stay pliant like this for me, wee human, and you won’t feel any pain.” 

You lay rigidly, squeezing your eyes shut as a tender, all-consuming kiss eats you up, preparing you for the night’s affairs.  

[staarboyyy]

People will talk

frenchie x reader | no pronouns

18+ characters / scenarios - minors dni

tags / warnings ; weed smoking, alcohol references, fluff, intoxication, cozy fic, oneshot

summary ; late night meetings between you, frenchie and a joint

word count ; 1.1k

a/n ; a reworked soft frenchie fic thats been collecting dust in my docs

       “Is Butcher always - Like that?”

     “If you mean “like that” as in insufferable, then yes.” 

     Frenchie tossed you a loose smile, eyebrows raising briefly before nodding towards the space on the sofa beside him. Nights like these had grown over the passing months, tension rising within the stuffy walls of Frenchie’s safe house, and sleep ridding itself of those who had needed it most. Frenchie typically found himself lounging on the sofa, a lit joint perched between his lips, eyebrows furrowed as he focused on the television - And somehow you were always the one to find him like this at night. The meetings were quiet, occasionally consisting of small banter and passing the last of the joint between you both, before one decided to head off to bed. It was simpler than dealing with Butcher or trying for small talk with Hughie.

     The clock read 3:42 A.M. Restlessness shackled itself on your bones in the night, seeming to puppet you into pacing back and forth or attempting to sleep to no avail - Surely the sun had risen, and yet every time you peered behind the curtain, night still seemed to stretch on. The soft noise of the television is was roused you to get out of the lumpy mattress, wrapping a jacket over your shoulders before treading quietly to the main area. The smell of weed veiled the air, the television bright and flicking needlessly through channels and a soft humming met you as you walked towards the couch, taking a seat. 

     Frenchie seemed - Exhausted. Bruised streaks of purple pillowed his half-lidded eyes, his gaze vacant and glued to the television, only moving his attention to you when the couch creaked when you sat.

     “It’s far past your bedtime, is it not?” His voice was lower during the night, the rasp of his throat letting a soft purr carry his words, smoke drifting steadily from between his lips. You can’t help but give a small smile, tugging the corners of your lips as he returned the same expression. 

     “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this. People will talk, y’know.”

     Frenchie sucked his teeth, a soft chuckle leaving him as he shook his head slightly. It was comforting to see the man so easily melt from exhaustion into a gentle expression, his eyes softening as they met yours, pulling the joint from his lips. 

     “Oh, Ma Douce, I’m sure they already do.” 

     You smile softly again at his words as he ashed the joint in the ashtray, a small hill of old filters and roaches filling the ceramic dish. Your eyebrows furrow a bit before giving a glace back to Frenchie, who took a slow inhale, shaking his head with a slight grin. 

     "Oh please. Judge me for smoking, and Butcher gets to drink more whiskey than he does water?"

     Frenchie tsked at you as he took a half empty beer bottle from the table in front of you, taking a sip qs he leaned back into the old sofa. For the first time in the agonizingly slow night, you find yourself able to relax your tense shoulders, mindlessly watching the television for a moment. It was easy to fall into a state of empty thought during tense times among the group, all of them seeming to part ways for days at a time. You subconsciously wrung your hands together, folding them in your lap as you watch on. It was one of Frenchie's soap operas, entirely in French, with no subtitles. Of course. With the raise of an eyebrow you look back to Frenchie, whom had already been looking at you. His eyes were dark in the dim lighting, his lids heavy and lips parted slightly, as if taking you in like a work of art hung on the wall. It was mindless for him, as if his eyes seemed to magnetize towards you despite your silence. You tried for another kind smile, and yet he didn't return it, still just watching as your expression shifts and changes - He seemed utterly fascinated.

     "You alright?"

     "Oui,"

His voice was unlike you've heard before - It was rare for him to speak so kindly, so genuinely. Even in moments like this, a silent company between you two; He could never find the words. Perhaps they hadn't existed yet, no word discovered by man could be used to describe you. Not when he sees you as something to be worshiped, something electric with color that the human eye could never capture for more than a moment. Just that moment, eyes locking with each other, your lips still tilted into a smile as he shifted closer to you.

     "May I ask you something?"

     "Mhm,"

You hummed the response as Frenchie leaned forward abit, hands moving to the table to fish a joint filter from a small bag. He began rolling as he spoke, plucking the paper carefully from the small carton and scooting the silver grinder closer. It gave him something to focus on, something for his hazy mind to fixate upon while his heart thrummed against his chest at a growing pace.

      "Do you trust me?"

     "Far too much, all things considered, but yes."

You attempted to keep the mood light as you watched Frenchie carefully begin to fill the paper with grinded weed like muscle memory. He hardly had to keep his eyes on it, his gaze darting from the joint up to the quiet television a few times. He did appreciate the joke at least, a crack of a smile reaching his painfully serious and tired expression as he tossed a glance over his shoulder toward you.

     "You have a quick wit - Perhaps you can assist me with something,"

Frenchie spoke before grunting abit, leaning back once more into the sofa with a freshly rolled joint resting between his middle and forefinger. With an exhale, his head tilted back, eyes still on you as if waiting for a response to the vague comment. You raised your eyebrows slightly, giving a cock of your head, only further entertaining the French man.

     "What do you mean?"

     "We'll talk about it later, hm?"

Your eyebrows furrowed, pushing your confusion only more as he brought the joint to his lips, pulling a small box of matches from his pocket with a wry smile. Playing with your mind must have helped him cheer up; What an asshole. In the kindest way possible, of course.

     "When?"

     "You ask so many questions. I'm giving you free weed, how about a thank you, hm?"

    "Fuck off,"

    You could feel your own smile beginning to pull at the corners of your lips, hand reaching out to push his shoulder playfully. His arm was strong, your gentle shove hardly budging his frame as he quietly chuckled along beside you. Had Butcher been there, he would have already come out with twenty different complaints of you two being too loud - Yet you two sat quietly laughing, Frenchie striking a match and lighting the joint to pass it off to you. The world, Butcher, Supes, everything melted away as you exhaled a plume of grey into the dingy "living room" air.

[ponder-the-orb]

Choose me

Pairing: Fem Tav/Gale, (Named draconic sorcerer tav)

Tags: 18+, smut and angst, post/during Act 2 romance scene, non-astral scene

Word count: 4.5K

Trigger warning: brief mention of cutting (as it's used in the Gauntlet of Shar)

Read on AO3 or below

♥・。.。*♥*。.。·*♥*·。.。*♥*·。.。*♥*。.。·*♥

‘Even if we were to find another way, perhaps this is the right way. The end that fate wishes for me.’

Gale’s words curdle inside Ciri. She tries to forget them, focussing instead on the sea of light drifting above her. She’d thought the Shadow Curse impenetrable, every glint of her fire eaten by the darkness if it strayed too far from her palm, but tonight she stands unharmed within it, the evil veiled behind a painting of colours and stars– a magic just for her. For them.

‘I wanted to spend it under a canopy of beauty and wonder. And with company to match.’

Her lip bleeds as she bites it. They were such soft words, sweet words, drenched in ardour like he could dull the razor’s edge of his decision if his tone was gentle enough. Perhaps what stings that most is that it worked. Her protest had been lost to the kiss that followed, then again when he’d sunk to his knees in front of her and slowly worked his hands under the edge of her robe.

She shivers slightly as he cups her bare calf and pulls it free. His fingers quickly unlace one boot, then the other, trails of warmth flushing under her skin as they map a path back up her legs. Dozens of times she’d found herself studying those hands of late. She’d watch him stand his ground in battle, trying not to wonder if the way he moulded the weave between his fingers was how he’d touch a lover. And sometimes, when the shadows grew long and the evenings cold in her tent, she would wonder again and again atop her bedroll until she was coming fast, her wet gasp caught in the palm pressed over her lips.

A hand slides under the bend of her knee and urges it forward. He pauses there, his thumb tracing a soft pattern over the skin before his lips follow. Her breath wavers like a hummingbird's wing as he shifts higher, pressing a firmer kiss to the plush of her inner thigh.

Her hands find his head.

There’s nothing rueful about the way his eyes catch hers, no hint of the death warrant all but signed by his goddess as he nips the skin, then rubs there with his cheek until it blooms a rosier pink. She wants nothing more than to lose herself in that look, in the blush dusting his nose and the heat smouldering like burnt almonds in his eyes. She tugs his hair, bathes in the answering gasp but can’t loosen her grip on his words. 

He’s choosing to die. He loves her and he’s choosing to die. She can fight until she’s bloody and burned, until the fire within her has all but withered into ash– and he’s still choosing to die.

He squeezes her hips and gently pushes her onto the summoned bed behind them. It’s comfier than anything she can recall sleeping on, the ache that flared in her limbs each morning finally quieting a little. Her immediate question about why they’ve been suffering in the dirt this whole time quickly vanishes as he makes his way on top of her. 

She leans up to meet him, sighing against his lips as one leg slides between hers.

Gone is the tease of his earlier kisses. He’s insistent now, pressing his desire into her lips, then her neck, mouthing and tasting until she can feel the cherry-bruises forming there. She knows that fervour, equal parts desperation and desire, how he’s losing that meticulously manicured composure and trying to commit everything to memory before he makes his choice.

‘This might be my last night alive.’

Her fingers dig into his back. No. She won’t let him, she can’t. 

She grabs his chin and pulls them apart. She’s wild and bright in his eyes, every want, every piece of her need for him reflected back. She cups his cheek, stroking the handsome curve of his face as she tries to find her scattered words. “I want you, I want this, all of it, more than anything.”

He smiles, leaning down to kiss her neck until the second half of her thought almost flies away.

“Of all the verses I’ve had the pleasure of perusing in my time, none have sounded quite so sweet as that.”

Ciri’s eyes flutter as the knee between her legs spreads her wide.

“Gale. Wait.” She guides his head up. “I want you, but you need to do something for me first.”

“Anything.”

Ciri takes a breath. “Choose to live." 

Gale’s smile falters, the embers of his gaze cooling. 

She grips his chin as he starts to look away. “And don’t you dare tell me that it isn’t a choice, because it is. I know it is. Dress it up as fate, as your own terms, whatever it is that you’re going to tell yourself because you think it will bring you peace– it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to resign yourself to this. Not now. Not with me.”

The words ache in her throat. She watches the play of emotions run over his face before he twists to kiss the palm of her hand.

“What I would give for such an adventurer's determination,” he murmurs, closing his eyes. “There is no peace in this, I can assure you. If I were still sequestered in my tower, perhaps it would be easier– being offered a way out that guaranteed my mistake could do something truly good? It’s too much to wish for. But now, I almost want to damn this group for giving me so much to care about. For making me doubt. Making me hope.”

She brushes her hand through his hair. “Then let yourself hope.”

“You truly think I wouldn’t choose another way if I could? If there were any other path that means I would not hurt anyone else?” His lips touch her palm again. “Hurt you?”

“You leave finding another way to me. Just tell me that you’re choosing to live. Not that you want to. Not that you wish you could, that you will. Say that, and I’ll be yours.”

It’s a plea masquerading as a promise, firebolts thrown blindly in the dark like the offer of her body is enough to shake his devotion.

He drops his head to her shoulder, quiet for a while. “Once I would have said that was quite impossible. Months studying this blasted thing in my chest and no answer was kind enough to present itself.” When he lifts his head, the tiniest smile flickers across his mouth. It sears straight through her. “But have I not seen this ragtag party of ours pull off at least half a dozen impossible stunts already?” 

She tugs him closer. “Say it then. Please.”

“Alright. If there is a way, if you do pull some kind of miracle out of your pocket, of course I will take it.”

The words are barely free of his mouth before she’s reclaimed his lips. She swallows his laugh, ecstasy singing through her veins as her answer is swept up into their kisses. 

“Then I’m yours, all of me.”

Choose me. That’s what she doesn’t say. Choose me over your Goddess. Choose me over the entity that made me turn down your illusion because I want to make love to you as far away from her bloody hands as possible. Choose me.

But for now, she can pretend that’s what he’s promised.

There’s something almost reverent about the way he strips her bare. Impatience shines in his eyes but he makes no move to hurry this time. His tongue follows the seams between blush and burns, lingering over her breasts until her back arches into the warmth. She lets herself fall, melting into his caresses until all she can do is wonder if this is what it feels like to be loved as a God.

It’s a new kind of want for Ciri. Something deeper, redder, almost ugly. She wants to break him down, fuck him, love him until she’s unwound every last thought of following Mystra’s command. She bites his neck and digs her fingernails in until she’s sure the meaning behind those crescent marks will linger.

Mine.

She cradles the back of his head, her breathing pitching to a sharper gasp as his lips touch her ear. She feels him smirk.

“I had wondered if there was truth to the rumour about how sensitive elven ears are.”

She shudders as he kisses harder. “I think… you have your answer.” 

He strokes the point with his thumb and she mimics the movement, grinding her swollen clit against his knee until the skin shines with her impatient desire. He presses it forward, sipping her answering moan before sliding his mouth down her body.

“Not quite yet.”

She finds her pleasure twice, once as his tongue circles her clit, then in his lap as he thrusts inside her. She feels his uneven breathing on her cheek, his nose mashed slightly awkwardly there as he chases his own pleasure. She holds him as he does, making a memory of the smell of sweat and dirt and the melody of his cry as he finishes inside her. Messy. Mortal. Perfect.

Choose me. The thought stays as they lay tangled together, his hand slowly mapping the length of her spine. He suddenly pokes the crease between her eyebrows, chuckling at her answering pout

“Whatever thought you’re pondering there is obviously wriggling around more than any parasite. Care to offload it?”

Her mouth hangs open. The words dance on the tip of her tongue, bright as canaries desperate to be free.

Choose me.

She rolls over and presses a soft kiss to the orb in his chest.

“Just that… I love you too.”

***

If misery were a place, Ciri is sure it would be the Gauntlet of Shar. It’s not merely the visage of the dark goddess poised with her blade around every corner, nor the old carrion stench of bones littering its corridors. The air here is wrong, even more so than in the cursed land outside. She feels it black and heavy in her lungs, sees it cling to the shadows appearing under everyone else’s eyes. Even Shadowheart’s fevered devotion has faded to near-silent prayer. 

Ciri had heard her once through the dark, thanking Shar over and over for the opportunity to realise her dream of being a true Dark Justiciar. Watching Shadowheart rub the fresh cuts on her arms after each trial, it’s getting harder to hold her tongue about whether this is truly a dream or some twisted nightmare.

It’s a different kind of darkness that weighs on Gale. Ciri had seen Mystra’s command swimming in his eyes when they’d found Ketheric’s army, then again between frantic kisses when she’d tried to make him forget. She’d dreamt of after. Her trance had slipped into visions of the orb bursting free, his face twisting in pain and then eclipsed in cold netherse magic. She’d jerked awake in a sheen of tears and sweat and buried herself into his side, murmuring over and over again until her voice was hoarse.

“Please don’t do it. Please.” 

The feelings are a gift and a curse, ones she once thought too broken to actually have. Lovers were a tool, something fun on the road or after a few glasses at an inn. She’d take what she needed and then be off: new city, new adventure, that name and face already forgotten. It’s not this, something flushed so deep inside her that it aches with each heartbeat.

She loves him. Loves him in a painful, stupid, storybook kind of way that makes her want to burst into song and to break things. 

Tendays she’s known him. It’s barely a few grains in the hourglass that could be her life. So why can she feel each one burning so brightly? Eclipsing everything else until the fifty years that came before seem so grey in comparison? It’s a question she doesn’t want the answer to. All she knows is that he has her heart cupped in his hands and she is not ready to let it shatter between them.

The night after the final trial she seeks him out by the campfire. The space is quiet, just him staring into the light and periodically waving in extra kindling. She bumps his shoulder as she sits down. 

“You’re quiet tonight. Either something is very wrong or you’ve finally exhausted the list of anecdotes to tell me.”

He offers her a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Neither. I’ve just found that silence seems to hang heavier here, like weight in the air. I’m sure you’ve noticed even the weave seems distant.” He snaps his fingers but the sparks that fly are a dull shower. He shakes his head. “I’ll be more than happy once we’re away from Shar’s influence. One step closer to stopping Ketheric, hopefully stopping everything.”

There’s a thread of resignation woven into his calm. She feels it wrap around her throat.

“Tell me about home,” she says quickly. “About Waterdeep.”

His eyes grow glossier by firelight. “Did my illusion not do it justice?”

“That’s just one room in your tower. Tell me more. Tell me everything.”

He throws the remainder of the wood on the fire, a more genuine smile growing in the brightness. “Well, only if you’re prepared to sit here all night. There is quite a lot to cover.”

She shifts closer, resting her chin in her upturned hands. “I am.”

And so he talks. Talks and talks and talks until she doesn’t understand how his throat isn’t cracked as sandstone. She’d been on the receiving end of at least a dozen of his orations before, but this is altogether different. His words are fireflies in the darkness, flecks of paint rendering Waterdeep in fantastic colour around them. She sees the arcanists’ towers shining in vivid cuts of crystal by the harbour, the puddles of spilled ale as people gather to stare down into the abyss within The Yawning Portal, the gravestones falling over each other like shifting teeth in the City of the Dead– everything.

His face grows more animated as he moves through each area, arms gesticulating wildly like he’s conjuring the city itself over the shadows in front of them. She’s enraptured, clinging to each word, then to his hands as she shifts closer.

“... and then after Auril's Blesstide, there’s the Solstice. It’s not exactly a Waterdhavian exclusive holiday but I’m not sure I’ve seen any other city produce such an exorbitant amount of decorations for the season. Once upon a time I adorned my own tower as well and it always caused quite the stir. I somewhat regret not putting in the effort last year but, as you can imagine, having a city-levelling orb in my chest did not exactly put me in the most festive mood. Tara was ever insistent though, nagging me to visit people given the nature of the holiday. ” He turns and softly brushes her chin “- spending time with those you care about.”

The screech of a whetstone suddenly cuts him off. They turn to see Lae’zel outside her tent and holding her greatsword above the spinning rock. She glowers at them both. 

“If you two insist on continuing this mind-numbing foreplay rather than keeping watch, I suggest you do it somewhere else. Sharpening my blade can only drown out so much. This wretched place echoes.”

Ciri stifles her giggle and quickly pulls Gale into his own tent. She sits down amongst the growing collection of pillows and starts to unlace the back of her shirt. He sits behind and takes over like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Come to think of it, you’ve never really spoken about your home,” he says.

She shrugs. “That’s the life of an adventurer. No home to speak of really, just whatever inn or camp I’ve found for the week.”

He tugs the final fastening and her shirt falls down to her waist. “You’ve never thought about settling down anywhere? None Faerǔn’s great cities ever tempted you?”

She sighs as his fingers trace down her bare spine. “And give up adventuring? Never.”

“You can do both, you know. Head out each morning to slay or burn or pilfer– whatever it is you feel most inclined to do that day, then return to the same bed. You’d probably save some of that hard-earned if not slightly bloody gold if you didn’t have to pay for a new room every tenday.”

She considers his words. In her decades travelling she’d seen almost all of the major cities on the Sword Coast: Fandelin, Neverwinter, Everlund. None of them ever made her want to stop moving forward. Once the coin was in her purse and the job torn from the notice board, all she could think about was heading out and filling in the blank edges of her map. 

“I don’t really know what home is supposed to feel like but… I know it’s none of the places I’ve travelled to before,” she admits.

“Home.” He draws out the word in a slow hum. “It does not have to be a place– not a house or a tower, or a city. It can be a feeling.” His hands spread over her chest. “Or perhaps a person.” His lips touch the back of her neck. “Perhaps a person with an excellently stocked wine cellar.” He kisses up to that spot on her ear he’s grown annoyingly fond of. “Not to mention ocean-views, a crackling hearth and a very carefully selected mattress.”

She leans back as he starts to circle her nipple. “That does sound nice.”

She yelps when he pinches her. “I was aiming for exquisite, but I suppose nice will do for now.”

She spins in his arms and presses him down into the blankets below. His hair falls in a dark mess as she settles over his thighs. “Asking me to visit? You must be feeling better if you’re already thinking about the future.” 

He leans up to trace the corner of her mouth. “Dreaming about the future would be a better description.” 

Their eyes linger on the orb as she unwraps his shirt. She presses her hand over it and feels the gentle thrum of the magic—  the noose around his neck she won’t let him tie. 

She tilts his face up. “Leave it to me, remember?”

He rests his hand over hers. “I do. Though I am still holding out hope that your plan has evolved beyond throw a fireball at the problem.”

“Name one time that hasn’t worked.” 

There’s ice under the joke. She’s a fraud and a fake, no plan beyond the claws of her anger and a hope that grows shakier with each passing day. She knows he can feel it as he kisses her. It’s still desperate, his mouth clinging to hers like she could disappear at any moment.

So she lets him explore, revelling in the growing familiarity of his mouth on her body and his hands in her hair. His breaths become poetry against her skin, whispering that her lips are like the reddest wine and the gold in her eyes a sunrise. She tries not to think if he wove such sweet musings for his goddess too, or what she might have done for him in return. Ciri certainly cannot picture her as a giver. All she’s heard of Mystra is what she demanded. How loving could those lips have ever been if they were capable of commanding death with little more feeling than a debtor collecting their dues.

She flips them over, dragging her own mouth down his body until it’s firmly wrapped around his growing hardness. The curse that drops from his lips burns with pride into her mind. She moves faster, urges him to take what he needs because she can– because she wants to.

Choose me.

She won’t say it out loud, but with her touch, her tongue until he’s red-cheeked and gasping. She thinks it again as she holds him, naked and slick, wiping those messy strands of chestnut and silver away from his forehead. 

He knows. He has to.

Choose me.

***

Ciri rubs her eyes but the sight above her doesn’t change. Hanging in the wet, sinewy air of this cavern is their true enemy, the Heart of the Absolute: an Elderbrain. The vastness of the space barely contains its massive size, easily the width of Moonrise itself, perhaps larger, she can’t be sure. It pulses and twitches above the raised platform, a mess of feelers moving jerkily as the figures below seem to guide it with three curiously glowing stones.

Ciri’s hands slip over her staff as she retreats back into the shadows. Her shock is laced with ire– mostly at herself. It was obvious. What else would be leading the illithids other than the eldritch horror that commanded them? And now the four of them have to fight it. 

She takes a breath and tries to afford herself a better view. It doesn’t help– looking closer at its glistening surface, she’s suddenly not sure if she’ll even be able to burn it.

She seeks out Gale’s hand behind her but meets only air. Turning, she sees his gaze is fixed to the pointy black crown fused to the top of the brain. There’s no terror in his expression. The quick intake of breath and the sparkle in his eyes speak of something altogether different– wonderment. It makes Ciri’s skin crawl.

“Look at that crown. It radiates with power unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs to himself. “To have it, to hold. If only I could.” 

There’s that wizard energy she remembers, like a magpie circling some shiny trinket. She fights the urge to slap him with the end of her staff.

He suddenly shakes his head, eyes refocusing. “No, I can’t. This is it. I must do as Mystra commands.”

His words are a slap to her face. They’re firm as an oath, like his promise to her meant nothing.

She whips around completely. “You can’t.”

“Look at that monstrosity, Ciri. More than just a Goddess counts on my courage, whole worlds hang in the balance. What more can I do? Can any of us do?”

Biting anger roots her to the spot. She hates that he won’t believe in her, hates the sound of her name in his mouth, hates that he’s right. She still has no plan, nothing that could possibly make a dent in that being. Their world does hang in the balance… and she doesn’t care. Not one bit. She’ll let it all turn to ruin with a smile on her face if it means she can keep him safe.

There’s only one thing she has left, a final phrase left unsaid. She puts both hands on his chest until she can feel the wild pulse of netherse magic. 

“Choose me, Gale. The one who loves you, the one who needs you to live. Choose me.”

His reaction is instant. There’s no hesitation in his eyes as he pulls her closer, nor in the smile that breaks over his face as he speaks. “I love you too. Much more than myself, more even than Mystra. Very well, whether I condemn this world or not, I choose you.”

Her heart cartwheels in her chest as his words sink in. All her thoughts vanish under the weight of love in his eyes except for one.

There is no way in all nine hells that she is dying today.

“Ahem.” She follows the cough to meet Shadowheart’s pointed gaze. “While I appreciate that we are not suddenly dying in a fiery explosion, do you think you could share your plan B?”

Ciri turns back. Relief washes through her as the brain floats away, leaving just Ketheric seething on the platform below. She grips her staff again, adrenaline pumping like firewine through her veins. “Same as always. Sweat, swords and sorcery.”

***

It’s almost strange to see the Shadow Curse start to break away. Ciri stands on the very edge of their camp, watching as pieces of the bile-black sky melt into the first sunrise she’s seen in almost a month. The trees shiver and stretch towards the light, soft pink shadows caressing the broken streets and the long, now silent, reaches of Moonrise towers. The land is still ripped open like an old wound, but now it has the chance to finally heal. That’s what Halsin had told her at least.

She couldn’t have fought her answering smile even if she wanted to. For once they were leaving somewhere better than they found it and they finally have a clear path to Baldur’s Gate. 

She feels the lightness in everyone as she strolls back through camp.

Well, almost everyone.

She quietly ducks around a corner and into Gale’s tent. He’s lying on their bedroll and staring at the ceiling with a hard blank expression. It’s the same place she’d left him four hours ago when he said he’d wanted to be alone. This time, he doesn’t protest as she sits next to him, nor when she gently unhooks the staff that’s still clamped between tense, white fingers.

She kisses each one as his eyes finally drift down to hers.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

“I was ready end it all, my life, yours, everyone’s. In that moment… they were nothing. Only her command mattered.” His whisper catches on the final words, like a splinter of glass stuck in his throat.

She rubs the back of his hand. “But you didn’t.”

He exhales but his face doesn’t relax. “I had never felt so certain. And yet...” 

He trails off. She can feel that there's more, like the reality of Mystra’s demand and Ciri’s confession still press with the weight of the Elderbrain on his chest.

She lies down next to Gale and waits for him to look at her again. “You chose life. You chose me.”

His expression finally cracks. Slowly, the hint of another smile quirks there, enough for that final whisper of doubt in her mind to flutter away. “I did.”

“And do you regret it?”

He rolls onto his side and wraps his arms around her waist. Tugging her on top of him she feels the rapid beat of his heart thrumming through his robe– her reminder that he’s here. Alive. Always. 

“Not for one moment,” he murmurs into her cheek. “I choose you. I’ll always choose you.”

It’s the full stop to a sentence Ciri had written weeks ago, something now inked indelibly over her own heart. She doesn’t care how little time they’ve spent together. From now until the long years of her life finally end, she is never letting him go.

♥・。.。*♥*。.。·*♥*·。.。*♥*·。.。*♥*。.。·*♥

Yes I have now written this exact romance scene 3 times. Yes I will probably do it 3 more times because it just DOES things to me.

This is a drabble from my ongoing fic Broken Horizons that you can read here.

[hypothermic-dream]

I

In the void where shadows whisper,

Where light refracts through fractured faith,

A silent dialogue—dissonant, distant—

Emerges between the echo of a god

And the ghost of a penitent heart.

Did I, in my spirals of doubt,

Unravel the threads of our covenant,

Or was it You, who, in the stillness,

Withdrew the breath of divinity,

Leaving me to suffocate

In the vacuum of Your absence?

Is this chasm a construct of my feeble mind,

Or an abyss You carved in cold indifference?

In my fervor, did I cast You aside,

A shadow burned into memory’s ash,

Or did You, with the precision of eternity,

Erase Yourself from my soul?

Was it my hand that trembled,

As I tore the veil of sacred communion,

Or did You shroud Yourself in the mist,

A distant star collapsing inward,

Swallowed by the gravity of Your own silence?

I wander through the labyrinth of my thoughts,

Tracing the contours of abandonment,

Each step a question, each breath a doubt—

Have I become the architect of my forsaking,

Or are You the silence that dwells

In the void of my unanswered cries?

In this dance of solitude and longing,

I am both the seeker and the lost,

Forever bound to the question that remains—

Have I forsaken You, my God,

Or have You, in Your infinite quiet,

Forsaken me?

II

It was I who first turned away—

A seed of doubt sown in the garden,

A whisper that became a storm.

From Adam’s trembling hand, I took

The fruit of knowing, bitter sweet,

And with each bite, I forged the chain,

A link of sin that binds me still,

Pulling me further from Your grace.

With every transgression, I carved the path,

A winding road of shadowed steps,

Leading me deeper into the night,

Where Your voice grows faint,

And my guilt resounds, endless, loud.

It is not You who has forsaken me,

But I who drift, a soul adrift—

The weight of sin heavy in my chest,

A burden I cannot shed,

For it is the mark of my own making.

In my pride, I built the wall,

Brick by brick of willful acts,

Each one a stone cast in defiance,

Until the chasm yawned wide,

And I stood alone, on the edge of despair.

I am the sinner, truly lost,

Wandering far from Your light—

It was I who severed the bond,

Since that first betrayal,

And with each sin, I grow more distant,

From the mercy I once knew.

III

And now, in the cavernous abyss of my own making,

Where the echoes of my sins resound,

I stand naked before the truth—

I am not worthy of Your mercy,

For I have woven my existence

From the threads of indulgence and deceit.

I bartered eternity for the fleeting taste of sin,

Each act a blasphemy, a betrayal carved in flesh.

In my hedonistic descent, I forsook You,

Turned my back on the light, craving the shadows,

Where the pleasures of the flesh

Promised escape from the void within.

Yet the void remains, and I am its architect—

A being who chose the abyss over salvation,

Who sought solace in the very darkness I now curse.

I reveled in the hypocrisy of my desires,

Condemned in word what I worshipped in deed,

A human beast, all too eager to abandon the divine

For the filthy comforts of my own corruption.

I am no penitent pilgrim on a path to redemption,

But a hollow vessel, brimming with deceit,

A mask of piety shrouding the rot beneath—

The truth of my nature, hypocritical, vile,

A mockery of the faith I once claimed to hold.

Hell was not merely created for souls like mine,

It is the inevitable consequence of my existence—

A furnace stoked by the very sins I cherish,

Each flame a reflection of the lust I harbored,

The lies I whispered, the betrayals I enacted.

And in that inferno, I will not merely burn,

But be purified in the agony of my own making.

Let the flames consume this wretched husk,

For I am beyond redemption, beyond grace—

A soul who forfeited its place in the light

For the fleeting ecstasies of the forbidden,

A creature unworthy of the mercy

I so arrogantly spurned.

I deserve to be devoured by the fire,

To feel the searing kiss

IV

Though I am poised at the precipice of the inferno,

And my sins mark me for eternal damnation,

I still reach into the abyss for the hope of Your mercy.

This damned world has sculpted me from innocence

Into a creature marred by darkness and despair,

The test was crueler than I ever imagined,

For it is not the world alone but the very essence of my soul

That was twisted and broken by its trials.

Yet, despite the corruption, my true self remains—

A fragment of Your divine essence,

An innocent child, lost in this earthly purgatory.

The sins that plague me are but the scars of a test too harsh,

A testament to the world’s capacity to distort the pure.

In my weakness, I am crushed under the weight of temptation,

A vessel shattered by the very darkness I sought to escape.

I was a child of light, meant for celestial realms,

Yet this damned existence twisted me into a wretched form,

The world’s relentless trials, more than mere tests,

Unveiled the fragility of my being,

Reducing my spirit to a vessel of sin and hypocrisy.

This essence, born of Your divine spark,

Now wanders lost, marred by the very darkness

That was meant to be a mere shadow of its true self.

In the face of my wretchedness,

I am a mere echo of what I was meant to be,

Crushed beneath the weight of my own failings,

A creature caught between the celestial and the infernal.

Before the enormity of my failings, I am but a speck—

A soul yearning for the light of Your forgiveness,

For Your mercy is my last hope against the encroaching void.

I beseech You to see beyond the facade of sin,

To find within me the remnant of the child You created,

The soul destined for Your heavenly grace,

And grant me redemption in the face of my despair.

For in Your infinite mercy, I seek the light

That can heal even the most fractured spirit.

[nectardaddy]

grim reaper - levi ackerman

levi ackerman x reader

cw: use of death/dying and burning as a metaphor, some graphic descriptions, mention of blood

notes: inspiration from flames by tedy, canon adjacent, not angst despite the warnings, honestly pretty sweet if you read into it

Loving him was a death sentence. A sick, twisted way of giving your life to the other side of the veil - a veil of which he guided others to with a languid heart. A path he didn't willingly chose to partake in, but one assigned to him; unforeseen entities handing him the role of extinguish flames until his own was finally snuffed out.

It wasn't as if he was incapable of love. The feeling often hammered at his soul, knocking and banging, but too often being left out in the cold. It wrecked him, shattered his being until only shards remained of him - if he loved, it would sting. A sting that would turn into burning, singeing his veins and arteries, charring his mind into ash. He was careful, calculated, meticulous as to where he placed his devotion. If he wasn't, it would crumble around him in means to mock him.

But you were able to take the pain and sear of his heart on the chin, pushing past his heavy, morbid soul and cradling it. Caring for it, nurturing it, soothing every uncanny bump or groove before returning it - as it wasn't yours to take. A soft smile in return, although set alight, that struck the match and lit the blaze.

The emotion dizzying and nausea inducing, mind reeling every second he thought too much of it. The rush of the feeling being painful, making him ill to even mention. He would leave you smoldering, extinguish any and all light you gave off in a instant if he were to placate to the feelings. Sucking the life out of you until you were nothing but a shell - a corpse.

Love was a testy and precarious emotion, of which you fervently, stubbornly, offered to him. A stubbornness he usually brushed away, dusting off such feeling away to the wind. Letting it drift away into the horizon; but as soon as he did he hopelessly grabbed for. Grasping such stubborn love in desperation and greed, surprising even himself as he clung to it in feverish need.

Love that made his stomach go to his throat, the dreadful feeling of falling, collapsing under such an intense weight, that he believed, occasionally, was extravagant. Haunting his mind with an image of you holding a gun and him, senselessly, pulling the trigger. Blood spilling right before his eyes in horror - believing himself a monster. A grim reaper of a man who was destined to see all those around him die.

But he selfishly, ardently needed the love - in all its debauchery. Doting on it, fanning the flames of such an endearment recklessly. Willingly allowing himself to slip farther and farther until it all but consumed him, the internal inferno licking and biting, blazing until there was nothing left. Making a mess of himself that he thoroughly enjoyed, relishing in the warmth of every embrace, every fleeting touch, every smile, every kiss.

He wouldn't allow himself to cast you into darkness, an endless battle within his own mind. Until the bitter end, he would always light your match and hold a candle to your existence.

[saintbleeding]

[ID: Digital shoulders-up painting of Agnes Montague from The Magnus Archives styled after the cover art for The Fool In Her Wedding Gown by The Crane Wives. Agnes is a white woman with red hair, freckles, and blue-green eyes. She is wearing a conservatively high-necked white wedding gown and a veil made of spider silk. Instead of a flower, there is a shrunken, petrified hand with two wrist bones sticking out of it securing her veil. There is a noose of rough rope around her neck, and the bouquet in her hands is smouldering, with bits of ash drifting away in the breeze. Her expression is sad, and mascara runs down her cheeks from her tears. End ID.]

im not the only one who sees this right

[darkdemeter]

DARK FEATHERS (REQUEST TEASER) ────────────────

Horsemen x Crowfather's Heir! GN Reader ↳ a request submitted by @screechinginthevoid I'm (currently) working on. Unsure when to say this one will be coming out, it's gonna be quite long I imagine considering that I want to implement a lot of lore and history into this one, even from the book. Hopefully you enjoy this teaser though Jer! and know that I am working on this piece bit by bit!

As your first introduction with the four, it had been accidental at best. Honest. You never meant to intrude on your dear father or his business with the Nephilim soldiers and their commander. 

You entered their lives like a breath of fresh air. One they could finally swallow without fearing it would poison their lungs on the next gulp, that it didn’t taste of bitter ash and desolation. 

True and raw beauty incarnate, a mold of flawed perfection, so fragile and regal with a frightful innocence they cannot help but become allured by. 

Though utterly blindsighted to the improper enthrallment of their attention on you, the Crowfather sternly clears the ragged chimney of his old throat, beckoning the glowing orchestra of eyes to him again. And in turn, it brings you out from your own stupor, cheeks warmed to a degree you didn’t know was possible. 

“I finished inscribing those tomes for you.” Your voice is a euphoric and blended splendor of everything Heaven denied them. 

How could they have been warded off by the Keeper of Secrets from something so undeniably divine? 

“Good. You have done well, my child,” croaks the Crowfather. For the first time since they dared to step foot in his domain and obtain his audience, they saw the Old One’s lips fold into a tender smile. 

With a small bow of your head you then turn your eyes, shyly allowing your gaze to take in the four standing at the bottom of the darkened steps. 

“Dad,” you whisper lowly, sinking down to level yourself to where he sat on his throne. “Who are they?” 

“They are…” He hesitates a moment, eyes shrivelled into a narrowed vision as they flitter back and forth. The last thing he’d wish for is to scare you despite the terrible need of such an emotion. It will grant you a better understanding of the worlds and universe around you when you eventually take your place on the Veiled Throne of Secrets. 

“I shall explain later, child. Now off you go.” His long and jagged nail points forth in a direction that urges you with firm banishment. You knew that tone better than any living creature. His dismissal came in a coldly played act, a ploy meant to deceive any perception of your close relation to the Keeper; to protect you. 

“Y-yes, Crowfather.” 

You make good on his command and hastily walk towards the chamber’s archway, doing your best to hide your face from the Nephilim as you pass by them. You have to ignore the heated trance of their eyes following you as you do, failing when you let your eyes drift aside and make contact; an intimate fusion between which grants you a peeking view into the depths of their souls.

A mere stolen glance turned into a keen and flustered fascination. Forbidden and yet so desirably wanted all within one moment. One observant and not so secret study. So much for being the inheritor of the very one who upholds that principle. 

Your footfall fades into the distance and eventually the darkened trail of your robe reminiscent of the Keeper’s himself disappears out of sight. 

“I wasn’t aware that the Keeper of Secrets harboured a ward under his care.” Death says this with a lowered drawl that strums the deepened cords of his voice like a rustic purr. The Crowfather sneers, hearing the belittling snicker in the commander’s tone. 

Strife adds with a velveted chuckle, his body arched forward with a laced pounce, “And a rather fine looking one at that.”

Your father’s nails ring with a scraping claw against the stone arms of his throne, long and square teeth bared by his ferocious temper to restrain himself. The nerve of these insufferable creatures…

The four began to run errands for your father. Their presence came and went through the Veil and fortress. Attending jobs that required their expertise and skills, their other objectives that you suspect were related to their kin became abandoned, instead favoured by these visits. Whether to actually get into the good graces of your father or to have some excuse to run into you, you didn’t have a clue. 

Because of these visitations, it was expected that you would have your run-ins with the four, almost chased around as you meant to go about your business. Furthermore when affections began to rise it was also very futile for the Crowfather to intervene. Somehow your young heart was set as was the four Nephilim that pursued you.

[gwaedhannen]

Dispossessed

They don’t drift apart so much as never coagulate again.

Celegorm vanishes into the deep woods as hastily as he can manage, before the shock of his Return (“Him first? Of all of them!?”) fully ebbs; if the hounds of Oromë howl in strange voices, they have always been a little wild.

Caranthir builds a house on a quiet hillside, and counts naught but the stitches in his tapestries; he has not ceased to weave since with the first thread he closed his harsh mouth for ever.

Curufin lifts a hammer once—and sees only shattered fingers upon the anvil.

Maedhros lies at the feet of Mercy Undeserved until he remembers how to cry again, then dons a dark veil of his own, padding through the halls of Fui to lend what tears he may, unnumbered as they are.

Ambarussa are never seen again—not directly; a lick of flame, trembling leaves, a fox’s scream; at the edge of perception, copper entwines with fate, glimmering beyond reach.

Maglor returns with pride tempered but unquenched, with a tongue tired of laments, with many deeds of selfless kindness ready for praise, with expectations—and finds ashes, and a land long moved on.

Edit: now on AO3 with some slight changes: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53245837

[oftenwantedafton]

the wraith - dave miller x female reader

rating | explicit

part 2/?

words | 5.8k

cw | none for this chapter

ao3 link

Dave Miller hates cigarettes.

Cannot stand the ash taste; can barely tolerate the smoke that burns his eyes, and yet he continues to indulge in that bad habit, a combination of addiction to the chemicals and a kind of reverence for that sour bitterness. It suits him now, just like the disregard he has for most other things. He does not care about his health, his appearance, beyond ensuring it is nothing like his previous one. He lets the weeds grow in the yard to mask what the outdoors had once been: tidy lawn, full garden, children playing in the backyard. He lets the dust pile up, layer upon layer, blanketing memories. He doesn’t know why he’s come back here, precisely. Perhaps as a measure of defiance. He will not be chased out of his own home. He will not let others take what he has worked for. Earned, paid for in blood and sweat. Never tears, though. Never those. Not even when Evan had…

He watches his restaurant night after night, and even though it is no longer a source of income, a venue for families to attend and enjoy, he likes how it is now: a solemn kind of chapel, with his animatronics inside, each hiding a secret within, silent and serene until he summons them, calls them back from the veil, to do his bidding. A little glimpse of immortality that he’s fascinated by, because if there’s one thing he craves, it’s that possibility that there is something more, something better, waiting for him. This existence, this world, will never be enough for the man he truly is, the one using this alias, disguised, pretending.

And then you had moved in across the street, and there is the slightest bump in that road, on that journey. Not a detour, precisely; nothing as sharp and permanently decisive as that. But a little hitch, a slight spanner in the works, because he has not had anyone look at him the way you do in a long, long time. Maybe not ever.

He recognizes the longing because he knows it’s the same look he has whenever he’s at his workplace, caught in glimpses on random reflective surfaces, utterly intoxicated by those creations that he’s breathed a kind of life into. That same kind of rapt fascination. A car crash you can’t stop staring at. He’d had all sorts of attention he didn’t want when the disappearances started, the public eye on him so invasive and unwelcome, but this…this was something new. A pull of want that he hasn’t experienced before.

He hasn’t allowed anyone in his home since he’d moved back.

Yet he’d invited you inside. Has given you the opportunity to visit twice weekly, no less, under the guise of cleaning the home. He doesn’t truly care about it; doesn’t feel any impetus to restore it to its former glory. Yet a strange, undeniable impulse had pushed the invitation through his lips.

So here he is. Writing you a note at his kitchen table, a wisp of smoke drifting up lazily from the first cigarette of the day. He’s unused to putting pen to paper. It’s been a long time since he’s done more than scrawl a signature or make out a personal check to pay a bill. Lucky he had had the foresight to stow away funds for a rainy day. Pouring now, isn’t it?

He snickers out loud over this joke, because he is living in one of the driest areas of the country. Still, there are times when the rain comes, heavy and vengeful. It had that night. The night that she had…

A bit of ash drops onto the paper and he brushes it aside, leaving a smear. Well, it would have to do. At least he’s gotten the message across.

It’s still early in the morning, just past dawn. Dave throws a dirty look at the lace curtains shrouding the first floor windows of his neighbor’s home. He can only imagine what the old bird would do if she knew he was on her property. Call the authorities, maybe. Or a priest, to douse him in holy water. Another sound of amusement. He’s in an odd mood today. Almost cheerful.

Police. The smile slips from his features. Being guided into the back of the cruiser. That look on his family’s faces. Fingers rolled in ink, prints staining the card. The interrogation. Being in a cell overnight.

But just the one. Because there was no reason to keep him locked up. No evidence. Just that chief with reddened cheeks when he’d barked at the guard to release him. Type A personality, that. Sky high blood pressure. How much it must have rankled, letting him go, knowing he was guilty but unable to prove a damn thing. He wonders if the man is still around. Still stewing over being so close and yet infinitely far from bringing those young souls to justice.

There’s a perfect little crack along the door frame of your apartment for him to wedge the folded paper into. He shoves it there and pauses. Wondering for a moment how you might look in slumber, lashes dusting cheeks, lips slightly parted. Limbs splayed, soft curves making the sheet thrown over you rise and fall in alluring crests and dips.

Surprising, this, because he hasn’t thought about anything resembling intimacy in the longest time. If anything, he found it inconvenient to be a slave to the drive of one’s hormones. A lack of self control was anathema to him. But he’s feeling it now, not for the first time since he’d met you.

He makes short work of the steps back down, returning to his home. Wondering if he’ll tinker with the unfinished projects in his basement today, or leave them for another time. There is still so much work to be done. Discoveries to be made.

Another cigarette and then Miller’s in the bathroom, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. Stubble forming. He can’t stand it, even if it would further help disguise him. He might not care about the state of the mop on his head, but facial hair was unacceptable.

He shaves and brushes his teeth. As always, his tongue instinctively worries against the chipped gap between the molars. He does this dozens of times a day without even being consciously aware of it. Just another mannerism he’s adopted, like raking through the dark locks of hair or absently running fingers over the patterns of the scars covering his body.

Dave drops into bed, deciding a nap is next on the agenda. It’s a Sunday, after all. He won’t be going into work tonight. The mint flavor mingles with persistent ash on his tongue as he contemplates the patterns on the ceiling, the strokes the metal teeth had carved this way and that when the plaster had been fresh, sometimes dripping into peaks, like the crests of ocean waves. How long had it been since he had seen the sea, salt heavy and crashing violently? So landlocked now in this hot, dry place.

His eyes close and he imagines the waters washing over him, dragging him in by the undertow.

***

Working in medical records as a file clerk is one of the best jobs you’ve had thus far.

There are other people in the office to worry about answering phones, retrieving charts for physicians or photocopying records for patients. You thankfully don’t have to deal with any of that. There are just the tall piles of paper waiting to be placed in the correct section of each chart, prioritizing the emergency and urgent care visits first, then physician’s progress notes, and then, if there is time, the therapy notes.

Sometimes you have to affix a sticker on the edge of the folder to indicate the most recent year, making it easier to identify when it comes time for purging older charts. Occasionally there isn’t a medical record number available, and you have to use the computer to look it up, but other than that, it doesn’t get any more complicated. It’s peaceful standing amidst the stacks, steadily working your way through each pile until your shift ends.

Tonight you’ll be doing the evening shift, just a quick four hours from five to nine. But before that, you’re starting your new part time work for that man across the street, Dave Miller.

He’d left a note for you the other morning, written in some cramped, spidery cursive, indicating what time you should arrive and that the back door will be unlocked. There was a charcoal smear on it that looked suspiciously like ash from a cigarette.

You don’t know what he has available for cleaning products, so you’ve decided to bring some of your own. You’ve been giving the project some thought, and you believe the kitchen is where you’re going to start.

You’ve just made it down the stairs outside your apartment, carrying a bucket filled with cleaning supplies, when you’re accosted by your landlord. You haven’t spoken with her since your last conversation with the neighbor across the street, and you mentally brace yourself for the lashing you know you’re about to receive.

“What part of stay away from the neighbor don’t you get, exactly?” She plants herself in front of you, hands on her hips, and you jerk to a halt.

“He’s not that bad. You two should just talk and make peace. I’m going to help clean up the house a couple of times a week, that’s all.” You don’t know why you need to explain yourself. You’re an adult.

“I’m not setting foot anywhere near that vile man. He should be able to clean up after himself. He’s a grown man. Disgraceful. You’re going to wind up missing like the kids, and then what am I supposed to do with an empty apartment and no tennant upstairs? I’ll be stuck running an ad and interviewing all over again.”

“I’m going to be okay. I’ve already been over there a few times and he hasn’t kidnapped or killed me yet,” you remark wryly, thinking the elderly woman is concealing her honest concern for your well being with all this griping about finding a new occupant.

“Not yet,” she mutters. “You wait until he’s gotten what he wants. Then you’ll see.”

“What do you think he wants?”

The white haired woman rolls her eyes. “Honestly. Do I need to spell it out for you? Pretty young girl, you should know better.”

You flush, changing the bucket to the other hand. “I don’t think he’s even remotely interested in that.” If she only knew. You, you were…well, you’re intrigued by him. You still find him insanely attractive. Sure, he’s a bit odd, aloof and all that, but…that was part of the attraction. The mystery behind him. You like the challenge of it. You think, given some time, he’ll open up to you. Maybe. It was still too early to say.

“Hmph.” She’s clearly not convinced about Dave’s true intentions.

You nod in the direction of the house across the street. “I have to go. He’s expecting me.”

“What, is he going to dock your wages if you don’t show up precisely on time?”

“We didn’t discuss payment, actually. I mean, I don’t know how much I’m getting,” you amend. “And he worked all night. I don’t want to mess with his sleep schedule.”

“You agreed to work for him and you didn’t even discuss how much he’s going to pay you?” She shakes her head, moving to one side. “Well, go on then, if you’re in such a hurry to meet your doom. I tried to warn you.”

“Yes, you did,” you say as gently as possible. Damn, she made you feel like you were disappointing her. It was like getting a bad grade in school and having to show the test paper to a parent. You like this crotchety lady, truth be told. She’s kind of like the grandmother you never got to know, because both of yours had passed before you’d been born. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be back in time to water before I go to work, okay? Go inside and have some iced tea, watch your soaps.” The woman was an absolute daytime television addict. No wonder she enjoyed all those elaborate stories about the neighbor.

She waves a hand at you dismissively and you decide you should probably leave before she tries to stop you again.

You cross the street and duck under the pergola. The grass has been trimmed finally; you’d seen the lawn service truck parked on the curb yesterday. Say what you will, but at least Dave was trying to get some maintenance done on the property, even if he wasn’t the one doing it.

You think you detect a faint scent of cigarette smoke—he’s probably been outside recently—and sure enough, he’s there to greet you when you open the back door. The narrow black tie around his neck is unknotted, the white uniform shirt unbuttoned at the collar and the top of his chest. You can see dark hair through the thin material of his undershirt, and some pink scarring that’s peeking from beneath the neckline.

“I thought you’d be sleeping,” you remark, surprised to see him awake. It was noon.

“I haven’t gone to bed yet. I was waiting for you, seeing as how it’s your first day and all.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t know what you had available, so I brought this,” you say, gesturing with the bucket.

“There are some things under the sink. Supply closet is here, I didn’t show you last time,” he gestures to a narrow door. “Use whatever you need to.”

“I’m going to get started in the kitchen.”

“Sounds good. Dishwasher’s broken, by the way.”

“Got it. I’ll try not to make too much noise.”

He nods. “Lock the door on your way out. I’m heading to bed.”

“Okay. Have a good sleep.”

You wait for him to leave the room before you investigate the cabinet beneath the sink and the closet. You’ll probably use a combination of both. It’s just as well you’ve brought your own things, you decide.

Now, where exactly to start?

You notice a few dishes in the sink, so you’ll begin there.

A bowl and spoon, and a ceramic mug that’s a deep robin’s egg blue. Leftovers from breakfast, maybe. Probably cereal. The man looks like he barely eats. Maybe it’s just his metabolism, or maybe he just can’t be bothered, like his attitude towards the care of the house. Aside from work, what is it that he finds so much more important to focus on?

You open one of the cupboards to see what’s inside and it confirms your suspicions: practically empty. Barely any dry or canned goods. Another pair of doors opened. Same thing. An absurd number of dishes stacked in the next pair that you think must have been leftovers from the previous owners, too. Certainly more than one man could ever hope to use.

You run a finger across the bottom of the cupboard. Dusty. Somehow it always manages to work its way into places. You’ll have to remove everything and wipe it all down.

Little by little you manage the task, hoping you’re not disturbing the third shift employee upstairs. There’s a light lemon scent from the dish soap filing the air. That’s what this place really needs. Fresh air. You lean over the sink and struggle with the latch, managing to ease the window sash upward. You breathe deeply. Better.

Now wood polish for the outside of the cabinets once everything’s been replaced inside and you’ve scrubbed down the counters and kitchen table. They were solid oak. Different from the imitation stuff you have in your own kitchen. It was honestly a nice cooking workspace, built to last, it was just sorely neglected.

Oven next. You’re willing to be Dave rarely, if ever, uses this. That microwave on the counter was most likely bearing the brunt of the cooking duties, but you’ll get to that next.

They’re both gross, truth be told. Long overdue for cleaning. You put on latex gloves and get to work scrubbing. You’re starting to work up a sweat. No ceiling fan. No air conditioning. How does Dave stand it, especially wearing long sleeves all the time?

Your eyes fall on the refrigerator. Yeah, that was next. You’ve kind of been dreading this.

You pull open the freezer door first. Just a few frozen dinners. Okay. Bottom now. You tug on the handle and sigh in relief. Phew, mostly just empty. A few drink spatters and crumbs here and there, but nothing terrible. You remove everything and wipe down the interior, reorganizing things as you go, not that there’s much to organize, honestly. The fridge was as sparsely stocked as the pantry.

By now the dishes you’ve washed are dry and you return them to their proper places. The copper molds hanging on the backsplash are very tarnished. You doubt the new owner cares about these, but you think they’re kind of neat and it’s not too difficult to restore them to their previous glory. A little white vinegar and salt. Something about the acid helps. You’re not sure about the chemistry behind it, but the results speak for themselves as they shine again, catching the light.

You sit at the kitchen table for a little break and survey your handiwork thus far. It was a large improvement already. You’ll need to wash the curtains, but you can’t reach without a step stool. That will have to wait for another time when you can ask Dave if he has one. The floor definitely needs mopping. That’s next on your agenda.

Your eyes continue wandering and you notice there is something barely visible in the small gap between the end of the counter and the refrigerator. You frown, pushing the kitchen chair back and walking over to the object, crouching down and reaching. A magnet. One of those alphabet letters children always seem to have. Something else, too. You have to stretch to reclaim it. Artwork. A child’s crayon drawing. Three children, two boys and a girl. The girl taller than one of the boys, the second boy taller than both of his siblings, the sticks meant to be legs noticeably longer. Two adults. A black haired man and a blonde haired woman. A giant yellow rabbit and a yellow bear in the background. Both wearing bowties.

You set the items on the counter. Relics from the people who lived here previously, obviously. Nothing the current resident will want, but it feels weird just tossing them away. Anyway, you can deal with them later. Time to tackle this linoleum.

Some of the dirt has really lodged into the textured flooring. You have to work on hands and knees to clear some of it, and this is where Dave finds you a short while later.

“You’re up again already?” You glance at your watch. It’s only been a few of hours. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“I don’t sleep for long periods of time. Naps here and there.” He pauses, looking around the room. “It looks good. Safe to walk on?”

“Yeah, that part is dry. You can sit at the table.”

You watch him pad barefoot—large and yet slender like his hands, you notice—and drop into one of the chairs. He’s got pajamas on, loose pants and a long sleeve shirt. Maybe the man was always cold and that’s why he was so covered up all the time. Or maybe it was something to do with that scar you had glimpsed earlier. Embarrassed by it, perhaps.

He sets something down on the table—a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter—and you sigh internally. You’d just gotten the place smelling fresh and clean.

“You’ve got barely any food in this house. You can’t live on cigarettes,” you mutter, pushing yourself to your feet.

He shrugs, lighting the end of the cigarette. At least he used an ashtray indoors. You’d cleaned it out already.

You pull off your gloves and toss them in the bucket. Your hands are all sweaty and your nose wrinkles at the strong odor of latex. You wash up at the sink, drying your hands on the back of your jeans. “You need paper towels, too.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

You hesitate midway through pulling out a chair to sit on across from him. There was definitely some snark in that reply.

“So what’s your deal, anyway?”

“My deal?”

“Yeah, you know. Like were you ever married?”

“Once.” He exhales a stream of smoke to one side.

Okay, you hadn’t entirely expected that, but being divorced? Yeah, that fits. “Kids?” There’s no way. There’s just no way in hell this man raised children.

“Several.”

“Several?” You sputter in disbelief.

“Why is that so surprising?”

“I don’t know. You just don’t seem like the type that would enjoy being around kids.”

His lips twitch but he remains silent.

“So where are they? Grown and on their own?”

“Something like that.”

You pause again. Why did every answer feel so filled with amusement, like he was enjoying some private joke? It’s like he’s being deliberately vague, enjoying teasing you.

“Where did you live before this?”

“Next town over.”

“And what did you do for work then?”

Dave taps the cigarette and the ashes collect in the tray. “You ask a lot of questions. Are you gathering reconnaissance for your landlord friend?”

“No. It’s just for me.”

“Hmmm. I don’t think I’m that interesting. I don’t warrant that kind of attention.”

You remain silent. The smudges beneath his eyes are even darker today, making it look like they’ve been purposely underlined with kohl. His hair hangs in oily looking strands that keep stubbornly flopping down over his forehead. There’s a cowlick at the back that’s driving you mad. You want to smooth it down. You want…What do you want?

“Did you hear me?”

“What? No, sorry, I…what did you say?”

“We didn’t discuss payment.”

“Oh. I don’t know. Whatever you think is fair, I guess.”

Another flick of the end of the cigarette into the ashtray. He takes one last drag and then grinds it down. “Well, just keep doing what you’re doing. We can revisit this topic again at the end of the week.”

“Alright. I need to get the curtains down to wash them. I can’t reach. Do you have a step stool?”

”No need. I can get them down.” Dave stands, walking over to the sink, his eyes falling on the magnet and drawing you’d retrieved earlier, still sitting on the counter. He freezes mid-reach, staring.

“Oh, I found that next to the fridge. From the previous owners’ kids, I guess.”

He returns his attention back to lifting the curtain rods, handing the dusty fabric to you. The drawing and magnet are tossed into the wastebin under the sink.

“From now on, anything you find that’s like this…get rid of it.”

“Yeah, okay, sure. I was going to anyway. Just got distracted cleaning the floor. Where’s your washing machine?”

“In the basement. Just leave them. I’ll take care of it.”

That’s right. He had mentioned the basement was forbidden territory. You wonder why it’s off limits.

“You have to hang them up when they’re still damp, otherwise the wrinkles—”

“—I can manage.”

“Okay.”

“You did a good job,” he praises again, sensing you’re a little miffed. “Thank you. I apologize for not being a more gracious host. I’m not accustomed to having people inside my home.”

“Yeah, whatever, no problem.”

Dave leans against the counter, folding his arms. “You’re off tonight?”

“No, I’m working. Just four hours. Then eight to two tomorrow.” You don’t know why you’re telling him your schedule.

“Right. Well, I think that’s enough for today.”

You’re clearly being dismissed. You gather your things together and put the last of your cleaning supplies away, aware you’re being watched the entire time.

There’s a strange look on Dave’s face, difficult to interpret.

But then again, Dave was a strange guy in general.

***

The next night the air in the apartment is stale, stagnant. You head outdoors with the six pack of lite beer you’d picked up on the way home from work, intending to sit at the foot of the stairs, but Dave is outside in his usual spot, doing his usual activity, and you find yourself walking over, one hand tucked under the cardboard handle, as if drawn magnetically beneath that flower laden arch. What is it about him that’s so alluring, so irresistible?

“I know you have to go to work, but, want one?” You lift the carton and he nods, turning wordlessly and leading you back to the patio set.

“Wait a second. I’ll grab something to wipe it down.” The security guard disappears into the house and reemerges with a damp hand towel, swiping at the dirt and pollen. It’s not perfect, but it’s still an improvement. You nod gratefully and sit down, setting the six pack on the table and reaching for one of the bottles. Dave takes one and thumbs off the cap, cigarette still pinched between his fingers, and takes a swallow.

You sit quietly for a few moments, both seemingly staring at your surroundings. No. You’re glancing around the yard, and the older man is definitely focused on you. You’re suddenly self conscious about the denim shorts and tank top you’re wearing. Exposing a lot of skin. Your landlord certainly wouldn’t approve. But it’s so damn hot out. You don’t know how Dave can stand his uniform.

“What’s it like? Guarding that restaurant?” Your eyes meet his as you take a sip of beer.

“It’s quiet, for the most part. You get the occasional break in, someone looking to pilfer something, a homeless person looking for shelter, teenagers trying to be brave and show off to their friends. But usually it’s…tranquil,” he murmurs.

“What do you do when someone breaks in? Call the cops?”

“The police aren’t much interested in Freddy’s nowadays. And I think that suits it just fine. No, I handle it myself.”

There’s still that touch of reverence in his voice when he says the name of the establishment. Like he…favors it somehow. Harbors some kind of nostalgia for it.

You wonder how he convinces the trespassers to leave. “Do you have a gun?”

“No.”

“Do you ever get scared?”

His lips twitch. “I don’t fear anything in that place.” He finishes his cigarette, slotting the butt through the top of the now empty bottle.

He looks a question at you and you nod. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks. I’ll add a little extra in to pay you back at the end of the week.”

“Sure.” You take another swallow.

“You could visit, if you wanted to.”

“What?” You stare at him blankly.

“Freddy’s.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with the owner or anything.”

“It would be alright. Not just anyone would be allowed in, but…I think you’d be respectful.”

You remain silent. Prowling around an abandoned pizzeria where kids went missing is definitely not on your bucket list.

“Just a thought.” He takes another swig and sighs contentedly, stretching his legs straight out in front of him. Twin bean poles. He was so slim. And long. Both of those.

Dave reaches inside his pocket and makes a little humming sound, withdrawing a coin. He slides it across the glass topped table and you lift it, peering at the embossed currency in the fading light. It looks like an arcade token. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. There’s a rabbit’s face on it. A little creepy looking, honestly. Dead eyes. Rictus grin. If that’s what was waiting in that restaurant, you’re just as glad not to be visiting it.

You slide it back to him and the coin disappears in one hand. Back and forth he shuffles it between them, so deftly you can barely follow along.

“Find Bonnie. Choose one.”

You set your empty bottle down, cracking open the next one and studying the closed hands in front of you. “Bonnie, huh? Right side.”

He opens his hand. His palm is empty. Left hand. Also devoid of the token. He leans forward, fingers brushing your ear, and he produces the bit of brassy metal with a flourish.

“Very clever,” you smile, taking a long pull of your drink.

He returns your smile, easing backward. He’s really handsome when he smiles. It softens all those harsh lines and sharp angles. You’re even starting to like that chipped tooth. It’s endearing, in some odd way.

Yeah, you’re crushing hard.

“How’d you get this?” You point to your cheek.

“Bar fight.”

“Oh.”

Dave shakes his head and chuckles softly, waving a hand in the air. “No, not really. That was a joke. I was up on a ladder, fell, cracked it on the pavement.

“Ouch.” You wince sympathetically.

“Could have been worse. Could have split my skull open.”

“Yeah. Geez. You’re lucky.” You finish the second bottle and reach for another. Dave’s already onto his third. You’re wishing you’d gotten a larger pack now. But the man has work shortly, and you have work in the morning, so maybe it’s better you hadn’t. “What about…what about the scar? What happened there?” You point to your neck.

You regret the words as soon as they’re out of your mouth. You shouldn’t be asking him something that personal.

But if Dave’s upset, he doesn’t show it. He regards you intently, blinking those sooty lashes of his. Too long to be men’s lashes. Too pretty. Most women would envy their length and fullness. You certainly do. “Accident at work, a long time ago. Left a lot of scars.” He taps one arm, points to his legs. “Neck to ankle, nearly. Both sides, front to back.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s alright. It’s normal to be curious.”

“Is that…is that why you always wear long sleeves?”

“Yes. It can be…tedious. The stares.

The comments. The speculation. So.”

You peel at the paper label glued on the beer bottle in front of you. “It doesn’t bother me. You don’t…you don’t have to worry about covering up for my benefit. In the house, or…”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s fully dark now. The only light source is the porch light by the back door. Dave glances at his watch, pressing a switch at the side to illuminate the face.

“You need to leave for work.”

“Soon, yes.”

“This is later than you usually leave.” He shrugs. “You won’t get in trouble?”

“No, I won’t get in trouble.”

You feel a sharp prick against your calf and realize the mosquitos have found you. You curse and slap at the annoying insect, hearing it humming beside your ear. Another has punctured your upper arm, and there’s an infuriating itch between your shoulder blades. You stand up, waving your arms to keep the bugs away.

“That’s why I don’t sit out here.” Dave stands, slotting the empty beer bottles back in the case. You walk with him to the back door, watching him heave the carton into the rubbish bin, the glass clinking loudly as it crashes to the bottom.

You reach to scratch your back, stretching and barely able to feel the welt that’s already starting to form.

“You want to come inside for a second? Put some alcohol on the bites?”

“Yeah, okay.” You follow the older man indoors. He guides you to the first floor half bathroom, opening the mirrored medicine cabinet and withdrawing a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab. “Okay, where did they get you?”

“Um, back of my left leg, I can reach that. Right upper arm. The one between my shoulders is what’s driving me crazy.”

“Turn around.”

You oblige, and you feel the neckline of your top shifted. Something blessedly cool touches your skin.

“Yeah, he got you good. Twice, even. Started and then came back for more.”

“Little bastards,” you curse. A few more swipes follow. “Must have tasty blood.”

“It’s actually carbon dioxide that they’re drawn to. What you exhale when you breathe.”

You turn back around to face him. “So I should hold my breath?”

“Well, I don’t think that’s too practical.” Another smile. He’s been so generous with them tonight. “Might as well hit this since I’m here.” He saturates the end of the swab again and brushes it over the bite on your upper arm. His fingertips graze your skin as he goes.

“Tonight was fun. Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you. You brought the beer.”

“So thank me.” Oh, that sounded like a challenge. Had you intended it to?

Dave sets the bottle on the counter after dousing the swab a final time, now kneeling down before you can protest, dragging the saturated cotton over the curve beneath the hollow of your knee. He looks up at you. “And how should I do that, do you think?”

Wait. Was he actually flirting with you?

Your fingers reach out hesitantly, teasing through his hair. His hand is curled around your calf now, resting there. Something about him being at your feet, looking up at you, makes your breath hitch and your heart beat faster. Those eyes. God, those eyes.

He rises slowly, all that folded length being stretched out again. Towering over you. Looking down, now. Positions reversed.

“I have to go to work.” His voice is rough. He has to clear his throat to make it through the sentence.

“I know.” You look at his lips. Wondering. If you stood on tiptoe and kissed him, would he recoil? Or would he welcome that gesture? Call out sick, Dave. Call out and let’s continue this. Whatever this is. I knew I could break through that exterior. I knew it.

You hadn’t, but you’re feeling confident now.

“Call out sick.” You finally give voice to the thoughts in your head.

“I can’t. Someone has to watch over Freddy’s.”

“It’s fine on the weekends when you’re not there,” you protest, finally brave enough to reach for the man’s tie, winding it around your fist.

“I have to go,” he repeats, and you can hear the reluctance there.

You release your hold of the black fabric. “Okay.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he promises.

Dave locks the back door and walks you to the front. For one moment, as you hesitate on his lawn, you almost think he’ll make the first move, taking a sudden step closer. But then he retreats, now beside his car. Not quite ready, yet. But soon. That’s what he’d promised, and you intend to hold him to that vow.

[ghostwith]

A short ficlet about Kalinn's "Dad" having feelings about her and Emmrich. Only undercut to save dash space!

Paring: Emmrich x Kalinn

Rating: K

-

A soft melodious giggle echoed and bounced through the halls of the Grand Necropolis. It wasn't a strange sound given the myriad of spirits and undead rest there. However this wasn't a phantom voice, Rodomonte would recognize the sound of her laughter anywhere, even after months of its absence. He had no doubt in his mind it was his Kalinn, he shook his head slightly, his. Once there had been a time he wished to keep her at a distance, but the Maker made that difficult from the start and now as he aged, he felt no difficulty loving the child he raised, just surprised at his own depth of love.

 He did, however, find difficulty rising from his chair; he stretched and stiffly walked from his office. As he did he heard another voice rolling in the ashes along Kalinn's, one deeper and more distinct. Rodomonte felt he recognized it as well, but he couldn't quite place it. Until that is, the man spoke.

“I was always truly enraptured that the spirits seemed to be harmonizing to the same tune. I thought perhaps it was hinting at some deeper connection in the veil. But it was you.”

Emmrich.

Rodomonte hummed, he had never heard the two in any proximity while they resided on the Necropolis grounds. But, he reasoned, it made sense for them to visit together since joining the Veilguard. 

“It seems silly I know,” Kalinn chuckled, voice tinted with embarrassment. “But a lullaby seemed fitting since their bodies were laying to rest for the last time.”

Rodomonte smiled, even after everything she was still so tender at heart. 

As he rounded the corner, however, his smile was wiped clean as he watched Emmrich's hand travel down the small of Kalinn's back as he leaned in.

“Perish that, the spirits clearly thought it was a lovely thread tying them together. Just as I do.” 

Rodomonte swallowed, rage quickly thumping in his chest at the site. He wanted to break Emmrich in that moment, to make sure his bones would never reside in the Necropolis. He would desecrate his body and scatter his parts so he could never be whole again. Something in the back of his mind attempted to plead Emmrich's case and yes Emmrich was a good man, a friend even; he knew this, but that was his daughter.  

Rodomonte’s eyes snapped to Kalinn, searching, and what he found made his rage begin to fizzle out.

There wasn't an ounce of hesitation in her movements. She visibly relaxed, leaning herself into his touch, and half turning to brush her fingers against his cheek. When he caught a glimpse of her face as she spoke, it was practically glowing with adoration.

“Have you always been so reverent?”

“We do drift on the echoes of the vast eternal dream, it would be hard not to be reverent in the face of something so grand.” He watched a tenderness take over Emmrich’s expression, as he gently pulled her hand from his cheek and placed a kiss to the pulse of her wrist. “My reverence for you is new, but it sparks the eternal flame that lights the corridors of my spirit all the same.” 

If there was anything left of Rodomonte’s rage it was crushed under the weight of the two of them leaning in, resting their foreheads together and just holding themselves there in the moment.

He backed quietly around the corner and rubbed his face, trying to ease the tension there. He wanted to be angry, but now he couldn’t bring himself to be. 

Kalinn was happy and he supposed, despite his own reservations, that would be enough.

[meownotgood]

the end, the end, the end. / hayakawa aki x gn!reader, spoilers, angst, hurt no comfort, mild sexual content, minors dni. word count: 3.1k

Aki spent his entire trip to Hokkaido thinking about you. When his thoughts begin to wander like this, he isn't given much of a choice; you occupy every space in his mind. Each stream of consciousness always seems to lead right back where he left it — You. 

Hokkaido is cold, empty, and manages to suck the life out of everything it touches. The sky is a certain shade of melancholy blue and twilight. It's the kind of atmosphere that causes him to slip into his usual routine of drowning in old, tired memories and his own reflections. His heart and his brain don't spare him much pity these days. 

Frost creeps at the edges of the windows. A veil of snow falls incessantly and swirls with the wind, obscuring any semblance of a view, leaving him only able to see what lingers in the back of his mind: graves made of polished stone, loaded guns, failed attempts to quit smoking, forgetting how to say a prayer because it's been too long. Getting cold feet, and trying to live an honest life, even though you know it's far too late for that. 

The expedition to kill the Gun Devil is coming soon, creeping closer, and Aki's got one arm, half a heart, and way, way too many regrets. This is the moment he worked so hard to get to, this is the big crescendo his entire life has been building towards, and now look at what's become of him. All he can do is reach up, brush his fingers over the stub where his arm used to be and wonder how the hell things got this far, this bad. Did the world do this to him, or did he do this to himself? 

So weak, so soft-hearted — He can't fight like this. He'll end up making more contracts with devils just to stand a chance. Sacrificing more of himself, even though there isn't much left of him to give. 

He's not prepared; honestly, when was he ever prepared? From the moment he became a devil hunter, putting himself on this path, he always imagined he was settling for an unreachable goal. But now, he's come face to face with the end, with everything he thought he wanted and… God, he just can't do this. 

Life is so damn fragile. Aki has been walking this thin line between life and death, living on the borrowed time he takes for granted. With all of his shitty decisions and past mistakes, he should be lucky he got this far. But if he goes through with this, when he goes on this mission, he's really going to die, isn't he? 

There's a letter sitting on his coffee table back home. One he meant to send before he left, but never did. A letter he mulled over again and again and again, read hundreds of times, rewritten even more so. 

Handwritten in pen with shaky letters, sentences constantly interrupted by scribbles over mistakes. The paper is see-through where tears have fallen and bloomed out over the page, stained with the dark ashes flicked from one too many cigarettes. It's sealed with a stamp, tucked neatly into an envelope. Addressed to you. 

Hey.  I'm leaving. I won't be coming back. Don't try to look for me.  I'm sorry for everything. You don't have to forgive me.  Take care of yourself.  I love you. Goodbye. 

I love you. Those words are particularly messy. Nearly unreadable, but still tangibly there. Aki isn't sure if they simply aren't true or if he just wants them to not be true. 

Did Aki ever love you? No, he wrote those words out of mere obligation, that's all. Because I love you is what you say to someone when you're speaking to them for the last time, when you're never going to see them again, and you want to leave them with something good. 

Because I love you is what you tell someone after you've spent nights lip-locked, kissing each other 'til sunrise (No, he was drunk, you were drunk, it doesn't count). I love you is what you whisper to someone when you're about to drift off, holding them in your arms close to yourself, like they'll disappear once you let go (He was exhausted, he didn't mean to say it, the words just slipped out — It doesn't matter, you were asleep, anyway).

Aki felt his heart twist into unknown shapes when he wrote those words. Crushed, chewed up, spat out, his teeth stained red with blood. I love you consumes him from the inside out, all the way down to the core. The thought of it alone is enough to hurt, to make his chest ache. 

Aki didn't love you, but he could have. Aki didn't truly love you, because he has only one arm to hold you, half a heart to love you, and dwindling time to spend beside you. Aki didn't love you because he thought it'd be easier not to, but now he thinks he might have only made things harder. 

How do you stop loving someone when you never said you did? Everything was supposed to be fake, you were supposed to be momentary. Now, you're forever imprinted into his timeline. Your soul is felt in his veins, in his lungs as he breathes, deep in between the structure of his ribs. 

Aki finds himself wishing that one day, you'd wake up and realize you hate him. You'll despise his existence and look at him like you want to destroy him. It's alright, who can blame you? This is how things are supposed to be. Go on and say it. 

You'd do what he's been terrified to: you'd tell him to leave, beg him to go far away from here and forget about you. In the end, it will be what's best, so you never have to see him again. So you don't have to live with the weight that he's going to die and it won't be peaceful. Instead, it will be worthless, hollow. 

Maybe then, maybe if you hated him, all of this would be so much easier. If you stopped staring at him like he's irreplaceable, like he is everything to you. If you didn't cry on his shoulder and hold him tightly when he comes home from a mission half-dead. 

If you never lived and blossomed in what remains of him, flowers to fill his throat, soft petals in his dying heart — Perhaps then, he'd find it easier to run from you. 

How do you manage to swallow down the things you never said, when you know that if you do, they'll go unspoken forever? Those words — I love you — will die pitifully alongside you, buried beneath the soil with your body. It doesn't matter; he never had the right to say them in the first place. The memories of lingering touches and quiet moments will be the only traces. 

Aki could have loved you, and that's the problem. That's the worst part of it all. Aki could have loved you, and you could have been his, but he could have never been yours. 

Aki is a hopeless tragedy. He is crimson blood that never stops spilling, deep purple bruises that never fully heal. And he belongs to no-one but this horrible system, to hunting devils until his body is spent and they've taken every last thing from him. The one thing he refuses to let them have is you. 

He promised to himself this: to keep you as far away from devil hunting as possible, by any means necessary. Even if he has to lose you in the process. You can't experience the same horrors as him, you won't. At least then, if he loses you this way, he will have finally lost someone of his own accord. At least he finally has a choice. 

You can't save him. No-one can, not even himself. Not even whatever God he decides to send his prayers to, in hopes there's someone out there to take pity on him. It's far too late to try and pick up the pieces. Aki belongs to this life for as long as it'll allow, until it decides to swallow him whole. Until hell decides it's ready to take him. 

You can't keep him forever, but you can have him on fleeting nights, during brief moments of solace. He comes home from work exhausted and weary, but willing to give you what's left of him. You chain smoke cigarettes on the balcony together, late into the night. Standing shoulder to shoulder, although it never feels close enough. Aki smokes each one down to ash, the nicotine soothing the ache, finally shutting up his brain. 

When you met, you were just two people looking for a vice, trying to find something, someone who's anything like those cigarettes. You wanted someone who would make you forget about the emptiness, Aki wanted someone who would make him feel whole. 

He kisses your lips 'til he can't breathe, so that his tongue no longer aches with the weight of all those words left unsaid. He makes love to you until sunlight is creeping through the blinds, everything hazy, tender, impossibly close, so he can feel something besides nothing at all. 

He savors these moments, drowns in every press of your warm hands on his cold skin. Your fingertips trail down his back, along his spine. Between his shoulder blades, then over his chest, tracing every scar he's ever tried to hide, and his body shivers at the touch. His hands tremble when he holds you; they weren't made for this. His breath comes in ragged gasps. Aki shouldn't do this — His touch is utter decay, enough to stain you with his existence — and he knows it, but he can't stop. 

The addiction courses through his veins, settling in the cavity of his chest every time he looks at you. His head is fuzzy, with fluffy cotton clouding his thoughts. He feels it bleed over whenever he gazes down at you under him, skin soft like silk, limbs sprawled out like a fallen angel. A sin worth sacrificing everything for. 

It's selfish. It isn't like him to do this, to act in this way. How could this happen, what has he done? His story was never supposed to go like this. It's hopeless, and he has left you doomed to suffer. But even so, he adores you, as much as a man who's going to die in a few years, months, weeks, possibly can. 

Over and over again, he falls for you, stumbling into the same temptation. A moth drawn to a flame, and when he catches alight, it burns, but it's beautiful. As he turns to ash, with his last breath, he will whisper to the world, It was worth it. 

He can't help himself, because the way his name falls from your lips sounds more divine than the way anyone else has ever said it. Aki seems to have the most meaning when you're the one to utter the syllables. Hayakawa doesn't sound like just another horrible, heavy weight he has to bear when it's spoken from your mouth. His very existence is more precious to you than it is to the world. 

Aki didn't love you, and you weren't together, but you were something, weren't you? Your circumstance wasn't just a hookup or a mere distraction anymore. You meant something. You meant more to him than his own stupid life ever did. Something, whatever that might mean to this fucked up situation, but something. 

When he loops back to the beginning, Aki knows there's a thousand excuses as to why he never sent that damn letter. He was scared, he thought it sounded stupid, he couldn't figure out what he'd say when he handed it to you. And most of all, he wasn't ready to say goodbye. He'll be ready eventually, he told himself. There will come a day when he's strong enough to let you go. Turns out, Aki is a whole lot weaker than he thought he was. 

So he delayed it, delayed it, delayed it. Pushed it back further and further. Once again, selfish. Just one more night with you, then he'll send it. Give him one more day, one more rising sun. One more kiss, one more chance to hold you close. Then, then, he'll be ready. 

Every postponement is just another letter he has to crumple and re-write. Aki has to find a sense of closure somewhere. If he slips the letter in your mailbox, runs as far as his legs will take him, will he be able to stop himself from turning back? If he knocks on your door, places the tear-stained envelope in your open hands, and presses his lips to yours one last time, will he even be able to pull away? 

When he gets back from this trip, he'll see you again, and he knows it's going to hurt. In another universe, things didn't unfold like this. He was going to leave you, he was going to disappear. Now, it's nothing but knowledge he has to live with. You'll cup his face in your hands and wipe the tears from his eyelashes. You will never know. 

There's only a matter of time before Aki is called for his last mission. Then, he's going to be forced to say goodbye, and it doesn't matter if he's ready or not. He doesn't want to die. Of course he doesn't want to die, he's utterly terrified. What will it be like, what's going to happen to him? Will his life be snuffed out, like his cigarette pressed into the ashtray, or will it linger like a curse, his ghost to haunt you? 

Hopefully not. Aki always longed for a death that was quick and painless, one that he wouldn't know was coming. The kind of ending everyone longs for, he supposes. For a brief moment, he wonders: would a death beside you feel better, or worse? Wishful thinking. As if he'd ever have a choice in the matter. As if, in this pathetic life he's led, he'd ever be lucky enough to die that way. 

Aki can't choose how he departs. He'll never be able to, but whether or not he leaves you of his own choice, like he intended, is up to him. 

So, he'll write the letter. He's going to let himself have one more night with you, and then, that will be enough. You'll wake up to an empty bed, to him gone, and an envelope on your nightstand. He'll have his last chance to say everything he wants to say. 

I'm leaving on the expedition to defeat the Gun Devil. I am certain I won't be coming back. This is goodbye, for me and you.  I'm grateful I got to meet you. I don't deserve you, I don't think I ever deserved you. I wish there's some reality out there where I did.  Remember to throw out all of my belongings. Move away from this place, if you have to. The money from my will should be enough to live on. I want there to be nothing left to remind you of me.  Smoke one last cig, for my sake. Then quit. Wash the sheets until they no longer smell like me. Don't read the newspaper the morning after. I don't want you to see my name in the obituaries. Forget about me, in every way you can, in every sense of the word. For your own good.  I love you. I've always loved you.  Hey, I know it's going to hurt. I'm sorry. But take care of yourself, for me. Please.  In the life after this one, I'll come and find you, okay? 

Hokkaido is cold, so cold. Aki has come to deeply know the way the cold numbs everything, from the knuckles of your bony fingers down to the end of your toes. The way winter envelops you, the way it takes you. But it doesn't numb what you feel inside: the aching love-sickness, nor the burning home-sickness. His body is freezing, a chill twists up his spine, but his heart won't settle, his brain won't quit. 

Thankfully, he is nearly done here. He'll head home tomorrow morning. You'll be waiting for him at the station, when he gets off his train. You'll hug him, your hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, his arm around your back, and he'll wish you'd never let go. There's both pain and comfort to be found in that. 

Aki will forget about everything for a moment all too short. Then, he'll leave behind the letter. He'll fight the Gun Devil, he'll get blown to bits. And when his flesh and blood is smeared across the sand, he knows the last thing he'll be thinking about is if you're okay. 

Are you watching the news right now? I hope you aren't. Are you safe? Don't worry, by the time you return to the beach, the waves will have washed away the last of me. 

Aki can imagine, if you were watching, you'd end up running to him. Always running after him, while he's trying to run away from you. You'd hold his body, lace his weak fingers with your own. His grip is cold and loose. Through his eyes slowly growing dim, you'll see your own reflection, and even though it hurts, Aki will smile at you. Your arms are a bed of roses, perfect to die in. Blood welling at his tongue, he'll kiss you, for one last time. You'll taste it on his lips. 

He should get some sleep. Without you, it won't be a proper sense of rest. But his thoughts will stay silent, at least, for a little while. 

I will love you, even in ruin. You'll live, you'll heal, you'll do the things we always wanted to do but never could, and then, for once, I'll be happy.  The memories of me, the way my voice sounds, the way my touch feels — They'll all fade, slowly, eventually.  If I had more time, I would have spent it all beside you. Your hand in mine, until I'm nothing but bone. 

Aki shuts the curtains and crawls into his make-shift bed. The sheets feel chilly. Shadows dance on the wall, his eyes burn, his breath is sharp. Sleep comes in restless intervals, accompanied by scattered dreams. Some are more like nightmares, but some are dreams of something better, something warmer. A reverie made of dripping honey and soft snow, of a clear sky filled with stars and a heart cleansed from all its regrets. Dreams of where this loop always leads back to — Dreams of you. 

[ponder-the-orb]

WIP Wednesday: Choose Me

Dragon age hasn't cut into all my editing time so here's a sneak peak at the next interlude of Broken Horizons: ***

‘Even if we were to find another way, perhaps this is the right way. The end that fate wishes for me.’

Gale’s words curdle inside Ciri. She tries to forget them, focussing instead on the sea of light drifting above her. She’d thought the Shadow Curse impenetrable, every glint of her fire eaten by the darkness if it strayed too far from her palm, but tonight she stands unharmed within it, the evil veiled behind a painting of colours and stars– a magic just for her. For them.

‘This might be my last night alive. I wanted to spend it under a canopy of beauty and wonder. And with company to match.’

Her lip bleeds as she bites it. They were such soft words, sweet words, drenched in ardour like he could dull the razor’s edge of his decision if his tone was gentle enough. Perhaps what stings that most is that it worked. Her protest had been lost to the kiss that followed, then again when he’d sunk to his knees in front of her and slowly worked his hands under the edge of her robe.

She shivers slightly as he cups her bare calf and pulls it free. His fingers work quickly to unlace one boot, then the other, trails of warmth flushing under her skin as they map a path back up her legs. Dozens of times she’d found herself studying those hands of late. She’d made a memory of the way he moulded the weave between his fingers, summoning miracles on the battlefield and in her heart with such deadly precision. Sometimes she’d find herself wondering if it was the same way he would touch a lover. And sometimes, when the shadows grew long and the evenings cold in her tent, she would wonder again and again atop her bedroll until she was coming fast, her wet gasp caught in the palm pressed over her lips.

A hand slides under the bend of her knee and gently urges it forward. He pauses there, his thumb tracing a soft pattern over the skin before his lips follow. Her breath wavers like a hummingbird's wing as he shifts higher, pressing a firmer kiss to the plush of her inner thigh.

Her hands find his head.

There’s nothing rueful about the way his eyes catch hers, no hint of the death warrant all but signed by his goddess as he nips the skin, then rubs there with his cheek until it blooms a rosier pink. She wants nothing more than to lose herself in that look, in the blush dusting his nose and the heat smouldering like burnt almonds in his eyes. She tugs his hair, bathes in the answering gasp but can’t loosen her grip on his words. 

He’s choosing to die. He loves her and he’s choosing to die. She can fight until she’s bloody and burned, until the fire within her has all but withered into ash– and he’s still choosing to die.

***

Yes I have now written that exact romance scene three times. No I don't think it will be the last.

Read the rest of the story here.

Tagging (no obligation but feel free!) @mellybaggins @senualothbrok @alpydk @weaveandwood

[itwaskozki]

Hark, Lord Impaler - Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own any of characters or events from Elden Ring.

Author’s Notes: A little 800 words as a start. Just a little setup for the story that our main character will reminisce on quite often. Also, thanks @asianbutnotjapanese for being one of the few people interested!

Summary: Messmer saves a human child during an attack on a hornsent settlement.

Warnings: Violence, depictions of blood/wounds, depictions of war

Smoke swirled in the air like an evil veil, heavy and black, shrouding the town once bustling with everyday activity in a menacing darkness. The light illuminating the streets was not that of the setting sun, but the red glow of wild flames. The air was thick with the smell of burning; burning buildings, burning flesh. Charred bodies littered the ground, others were still dying. The wailing of women and children pierced through the clashing of steel and shouting of soldiers like the swords and spears ripping through bellies.

Messmer the Impaler watched this chaos ensue with no expression. The hornsent at his feet spasmed, attempting to curse his killer with its final breath, but all that came out was gurgling nonsense as blood bubbled from its mouth. The leader of the crusade pulled his wicked spear from the hornsent– its blood pooling at his feet– death throes now finished. 

Be it one man, be it a whole city; even the most horrific killing could become nothing more than a chore, given time.

The red serpents craned their heads around, observing the genocide– for this was no battle– on behalf of Messmer. Messmer saw through their eyes, as they were one with his body since birth, and he had no eyes of his own. Not anymore. Not since his mother gouged his only working eye and replaced it with her own seal. His fist gripped his spear tighter as his mind drifted to that memory. 

No, he should not feel anger, or dare he say hurt. That had been for the best. He was a danger to his mother and her Golden Order otherwise. He was a monster, and she had been right to seal that dark serpent away inside of him. Mother understood though, and would let him into her golden lands soon enough. Just as soon as he avenged her people.

A serpent hissed and Messmer blinked his way back to reality to see a child, wrists bound in rope, raise a dagger and plunge it into the back of her captor. The demigod raised his hand to kill her with his cursed fire when he realized she slew a hornsent, not one of his men. Not just a child, but a human child, and therefore someone he was obligated not to kill, perhaps even save.

The girl was rather scrawny, covered in grime and blood, and could be no older than four and ten. Perhaps the hornsent had taken her to be stuffed in a jar and melded as the savages did with so many.  Her eyes were wide with fear that was only amplified tenfold when she saw Sir Messmer. She trembled from terror and exhaustion but otherwise didn’t move, torn between awe and horror at the sight of the demigod until something finally pulled her attention away from him and had her try to run. She didn't make it far before she tripped over an object concealed with soot. The ash plastered to her skin as she wildly turned around to see a towering horned warrior of the hornsent slowly approach her, raising its great iron sword to cleave her in half, paying Messmer no mind, if it had seen him at all.

Messmer threw his spear at the warrior, killing it in a single shot. The spear skewered the hornsent with a splatter of blood and lodged itself firmly into the ground until the Impaler summoned it back to his hand. The body fell to the ground with a thud. He ambled to where the girl had fallen and let a serpent extend to allow him a better look. Her body lay limp and unconscious, her breathing rasped softly, the only indication of life in her yet. Blood– whether it was her own or another’s– had seeped into her clothes, dying the shawl around her shoulders a dark red, as if a gruesome mockery of Messmer’s own garment. Perhaps it was a sign from Marika. If so, it was a cruel one, but– he thought with a grimace– it was not outside of his mother’s nature to be cruel…far from it.

Her eyes fluttered open briefly and she groaned in pain. Messmer took a moment to locate one of his men, simultaneously noticing the battle was beginning to dwindle like the flames devouring the buildings. 

“Soldier,” he addressed the first of his men to come close, “Dost deliver this child unto one who may tend to her health.”

The soldier nodded in acknowledgment and came to carefully lift the girl in his arms and carry her off. Messmer watched as they faded out of view into the mist of cinders and ash. Once he had gotten to regrouping his troops and having it made sure that no hornsent remained alive, the girl was quickly forgotten. She did not cross his mind again until they were far from the smoldering ruins.

The Impaler looked at his most trusted knights, their armor gleaming, scarlet capes flowing behind them, untouched by most of the filth of battle. He thought again of the girl’s blood-soaked cloth and decided to thank his mother for the supposed sign.

Perhaps there was use to be made of that child yet.

[wrathofanempireif]

Aftermath

Bruno moved stealthily through the fiery remains of the Capitol building, its windows alight like countless spectral eyes, each fading into nothingness as the embers gradually exhausted themselves. The scene would have been spectacular, were it not marred by the lingering stench of death, the countless bodies strewn across the streets, and the haunting gazes of the survivors. They observed Bruno with a feral intensity, their expressions alternating between fear and a hunger for violence.

He didn't resent their hostility. Their clothing was shredded, their injuries oozing crimson, while he passed among them in a striking red coat, a stark contrast against the background of ash and snow.

Following him were two Imperial Marines, their faces concealed behind black visors, a gift from his new associates.

Allies. The word almost gagged him. Indispensable allies. He corrected himself, understanding that the loyalist faction had no chance without the seemingly infinite resources of the Imperials.

They needed him. He reassured himself, subconsciously adjusting his red uniform now emblazoned with the Imperial insignia. Looking up, he observed the loyalist forces marching in unison with the Imperial Marines. They were once the underdogs, the only ones courageous enough to confront a corrupt society.

Why, then, did he feel such an overwhelming emptiness? His gaze swept over the survivors being forcefully herded, or rather, dragged into emergency tents, with medical personnel moving briskly from one patient to another.

The cacophony of voices, cries, and shouts sounded eerily hollow.

He halted at the Imperial security boundary, where silent tanks stood their ground. Their gray armor bore scars from small arms fire. The gunners acknowledged his presence with a brief wave, directing him through the gated checkpoints.

As he walked on, he spotted increasing numbers of loyalist soldiers, each standing at attention as he passed. He offered a faint smile in gratitude, a gesture far more than the Imperial Marines afforded him. They looked upon him with nearly as much disdain as the Commonwealth prisoners of war shuffling by. Spotting the command tent, Bruno approached, lifting the tent flap to enter. His escorts positioned themselves outside, joining several other Marines on guard.

Inside, the only sources of light were the glow from the command consoles and the holographic maps. Overseeing the map was General Laertra, a burly man with sun-bleached hair and a prominent scar tracing his jawline. He looked up, arching an eyebrow at Bruno's arrival.

"Commander," Laertra intoned in his characteristic monotone, "I believe I explicitly instructed you to remain at your post."

“You assured me my family would be safe, and now you tell me to stay put when you don’t even know if they’re alive?”

“I suggest you get a grip, Commander. You have responsibilities beyond your family," the General shot back, returning his gaze to the map, observing various strategic points. "Or perhaps I have been misguided in my faith in your leadership of the Loyalists?”

"Listen here, you-" Bruno's retort was cut short as he felt the chill of steel pressed against his neck.

"Have faith," a voice as soothing as a warm breeze came from behind him as a hand gently grabbed his chin. "This is not a time for doubt."

"May I present Imperial Operative 008?" the General announced, a note of amusement in his voice. "Release him."

The cold metal retreated from his neck, but the hand on his chin did not. Bruno turned slowly, his eyes widening as he caught sight of his assailant. She was nearly a foot taller than him, slim despite the ethereal armor that adorned her figure. Her face was hidden by a veil that drifted with her smooth movements.

She circled in front of him, long black fingernails adorned with stars painted onto them carefully tracing around his face.

A flicker of pain surfaced; Bruno winced, reaching up to his face as she withdrew her hand. He could feel the small cut made by her nails. She lifted her hand, a droplet of blood placed on the pad. She gently lifted a medical reader and transferred the blood onto it.

"A highly effective asset, sadly we missed out on a field test," the General said, drawing Bruno’s attention and clasping Bruno on the shoulder. “Now, about your family, I’ve received news that they were evacuated by what remains of the Commonwealth forces.”

Evacuated. Bruno released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Relief flooded him. At least they were safe. Yet, they should have been here; he could show them the truth then. They would understand. He nodded to himself for reassurance.

"What now?" He asked, looking around and realizing the mysterious figure was nowhere to be found.

"Your suggestion to focus our reconstruction efforts on the mountains and the subterranean mining cities has been approved. Our support there is stronger anyway.”

"And what about me?" Bruno asked, scanning the tent, half expecting the unseen assailant to materialize again.

"You are destined to guide your people towards the future, a future alongside the Empire. Where you all rightfully belong," the General replied, giving Bruno a friendly squeeze of the shoulder. His eyes seemed hollow. "Cheer up, soon the people here will be singing your praises and rebuilding these ruins into a vision you can live with.”

“Sir,” Bruno began, hesitating, “before I begin, I would like to visit the residential district south of here.”

The General regarded him for a long moment. Bruno began to think he had said something wrong when the man gestured, “It's your city, of course.”

Bruno walked out. The marines, instead of following him, remained where they were. Bruno swallowed, looking out towards the loyalist militia. Should he order an escort? Or would that be seen as a sign of weakness? They had won, hadn't they?

Patting his sidearm, Bruno turned towards the southern residential districts, weaving around soldiers and the prisoners they were escorting. Waving his Imperial badge, he passed through three checkpoints before stopping. The Academy stood out, a large open area leading up to the massive building. It looked like an old shell, long ago hollowed out and broken.

He stepped through a crumbling doorway, his boots shifting on the broken concrete and metal. Desks were strewn about. He thought about how reckless this was - looking through a crumbling building is a quick way to get oneself crushed. He rounded a corner, looking out towards the courtyard, and paused.

There lay the burned-out remains of what looked to be a transport, its turrets blown open and curling like long nails bent by the heat.

His boots sank into the transition to snow, or maybe it was still ash. There was a form. Bruno froze, looking around before approaching it; it was small, a child. He thought, a chill running through him, no doubt the same age as... He fought back a well of emotion as he thought of the family he traded away.

For a future. He reminded himself hollowly.

There was a breeze. A feeling of danger suddenly crawled down his back like a spider. His skin began to crawl.

Bruno turned, his gasp dying in his throat. The operative. She was standing beside him, staring down at the body in front of them.

“We can’t just leave them there,” Bruno found himself saying, despite his inner voice screaming danger at him. “We should, bury them.”

She turned, staring at him for a long moment from behind the veil before gliding forward. There was no sound as she moved. As she knelt next to the body and gently ran a hand along the ground beside it.

“Frozen by winds,” she said smoothly, her voice sounding remarkably regal yet young. “The army has excavated several sites for-”

“Not the mass graves,” Bruno whispered, not realizing she could hear him. “What if their family needs to find them?”

“You seem very kind,” she said, gently cradling the frozen form as she lifted it off the ground, “I wonder if a man like that will survive in a place like this, or if your conscience will wither like the rest of us.”

Bruno watched as she passed him, taking the child off towards the city where her ethereal form vanished in the approaching snow.

Maybe. Bruno thought bitterly. But he owed it to everyone, especially his people, to be the leader they needed to survive this.

And to survive the trials to come.