#god when will people stop inviting themselves to posts that have nothing to do with meta

[hiimawarish]

I've been bombarded by posts about characters being shitty DPS or "the worst DPS" in basically every social media platform and I am SO tired of them. Why are meta players SO repetitive? Yeah, sure, maybe JY needs a bit more time and resources to do more damage but I don't care? Like some of us play and pull for characters we like, not because they are meta or because our sole purpose is to do tons of damage. Sure, damage is nice, but as long as I can defeat the enemies, I don't give a damn about my characters doing 1M.

And I've seen a lot of the same discourse with Navia and Itto now??? With people arguing about who's the better DPS and whatnot about geo and monogeo teams. I pulled for Navia because she's gorgeous and I am emotionally attached to her, not because she does big numbers. I literally didn't know she'd make big numbers when I decided to pull for her. Kinda like when I pulled for Neuvi.

I'm just so tired of meta players coming on to every single post saying these things. We get it. You love builds and investing in the best characters and teams. Good for you.

Just let me fucking enjoy my game with my characters in peace.

[jgracie]

ONCE UPON A DREAM — PERCY + CHILD OF HYPNOS

masterlist | rules

❝ Hi! Can you do hcs of Percy Jackson dating a child of Hypnos!reader please? I love all your other headcanons ❞ — anon

in which percy dates a child of hypnos

pairing percy jackson x hypnos!reader

warnings none

on the radio . . . once upon a dream (lana del rey)

Cabin inspections weren’t Percy’s favourite things in the world, but there were worse jobs to do at camp

Still, he couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a hypocrite whenever he gave a cabin a low cleanliness grade, considering he wasn’t the tidiest person. If it weren’t for Tyson, he’d have dish duty for dirtiest cabin every week

What Percy did like about cabin inspections was getting to know the other cabin counsellors. Now that minor gods had their own cabins, the pool of people for Chiron to choose from almost doubled, making inspections a lot more interesting

Last time Percy was on cabin inspection duty, he was paired with Lou Ellen Blackstone from the Hecate cabin, who taught him the basics of tarot while they inspected. He forgot half of the stuff she said, but it was still really cool

Today, Percy looked at the duty sheet posted on the notice board and found his name next to someone called Y/N from cabin 15

There’s nothing Percy hated more than when people referred to cabins by their numbers instead of Godly parent. He barely managed to learn the first 12, now he had another 8 to memorise

Oh well, it’s not like it mattered. Percy didn’t have to go collect you from cabin 15, since everyone knew people on cabin inspection duty are supposed to meet at the big house then check the cabins in numerical order

Or so he thought. Percy waited ages and watched as people came and went, yet there was no sight of you. Had you forgotten you were supposed to be on inspection duty? Were you a new camper and got lost? Percy scratched that last thought, since you wouldn’t be cabin counsellor if you were new

After about 10 minutes, Percy got tired of waiting. The next time someone passed by, he asked them which God cabin 15 was for: Hypnos

Clipboard in hand, he made his way over to your cabin

“Hello? Is there anyone in here?” Percy asked, rapping his knuckles on the front door. This was his third time knocking, and he was getting quite tired of it all. Being met with more silence, the boy decided to invite himself in

Walking into your cabin, Percy nearly tripped over one of your half-siblings, who was sleeping on the doormat. Looking around, Percy realised almost everyone in this cabin was at least daydreaming. He felt like he’d entered a new world where time stopped and responsibilities were non-existent

“So…” he began, unsure if he should wake one of them up or hope they wake up by themselves, “which one of you’s Y/N?”

There was no response. Just as Percy was about to tap one of your siblings on the shoulder, another pointed in your direction whilst asleep, which freaked Percy out, “uh… thanks,” he said before turning in the direction of their pointed finger

What he saw next had him debating between bursting out laughing or facepalming. Somehow, you managed to fall asleep in the middle of tying your shoelaces, and so you stood with one foot in the air, the laces slipping from your fingers

“Hey, uh, do you need some help with that?” He asked, gently shaking you awake. From the outside, you seemed to be in deep sleep, but all it took to wake you up was one small shake

Blinking the sleep away from your eyes, you were met with a pair of aquamarine ones, “what time is it?” You mumbled, tying your shoelaces as if nothing had happened, clearly unfazed by the position you woke up in

“9AM,” as soon as Percy uttered those words, you suddenly seemed much more alert

Scrambling for your own clipboard and pen, you exclaimed, “what?! Oh Gods, I’m so late. I was supposed to meet this guy at the big house an hour ago!” Then, to Percy, “do you know how many alarms I set? I was so close, too! Fell asleep right as I was about to leave,” you said, eyebrows furrowed in disappointment

An endearing smile tugged at the corners of Percy’s lips. He wasn’t annoyed anymore. He couldn’t be, not at your cute pouty expression

“It’s okay, I don’t like cabin inspections that much anyway,” he said, causing a wave of relief to wash over you

While you inspected the cleanliness of cabins together, you got to know each other and Percy learnt more about your cabin. You heard the stuff the kids from other cabins called you - lazy being the most commonly used adjective - and were quick to dismantle all the stereotypes surrounding you and your siblings whenever you got the chance. It wasn’t all of them, of course, but it was enough of them to rub you the wrong way

It’s not that you cared what they were saying about you, but you couldn’t stand the way they’d speak about your father and his domain. There was a very good reason why mortal doctors preached about sleep so often, after all

Also, you and your siblings didn’t sleep just for the sake of it - you often trained in your dreams, seeing as you were closer to your full potential the deeper your slumber was, so you weren’t lazy at all

As all of these thoughts spilled out of your lips while walking around camp with Percy, you were confused. Sure, these things bothered you, but you were usually in good control of your emotions - always serene, always calm. Even when you did complain, you didn’t do it like this

You stopped for a second and took a good look at Percy, then it hit you

“You are the most tense person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Excuse me?” Percy replied, caught off-guard and a little offended. He’d been so forgiving with you, and this is how you thanked him?

Noticing his discomfort, you recollected yourself, “no offence, Percy, but you haven’t been relaxed a day in your life. Your tenseness is rubbing off on me, that’s why I’ve been so heated. Would you wanna book a meditation session with me? I think it’d really help.”

Percy blinked, his brows furrowed in confusion. Before, he was offended, but now he didn’t know how to feel. You’d basically just called him an emitter of bad emotions. At the same time, though, something was telling him he should trust you. He felt the relaxed aura of your cabin even before walking in

And meditation with you sounded quite nice. He didn’t think he wanted to rely on the slim chance that Chiron would pair the two of you up a second time just to see you again

“Okay.”

Turns out, the Hypnos cabin had a whole meditation business set up. Very few people knew about it, since very few people cared to see past your sleepiness, but your cabin was a safe haven for those who did

You had a slot open the next day right after breakfast, so you quickly put Percy in, promising him you’d actually be awake when he shows up

He was a little apprehensive and considered not showing up at all, but he’d committed and so he was at your cabin door as soon as breakfast was over

Soon enough, Percy would learn that his showing up to your meditation session that day was the best decision he’d ever made

You were so sweet as you guided him through his emotions and helped him practise breathing techniques to relax, as well as giving him tips on how to get a better night’s rest

The two of you eventually started spending time outside of his meditation sessions, too. Percy felt really bad when he heard you speaking about the treatment you’d get from other campers on the day you first met, so he introduced you to all his friends and soon enough, you became a part of the friend group

Secretly, you still preferred spending time with Percy alone. He was so funny and nice, unlike anyone else you’d ever met - both in the mortal world and at camp

You would often meet at this giant oak tree Percy had found you dozing off next to in the early days of your friendship. It was one of your favourite nap spots, but you were more than happy to share it with him

This was one of those instances. Percy had a comic book in hand, some series Leo insisted he should read, but he wasn’t super into it. Meanwhile, you sat next to him, occasionally commenting on the silly drawings in it or telling him little bits of your day

The moment was so peaceful, it was only natural for your eyelids to begin getting heavier. As you dozed off, Percy finally got to a part in the book that could get him to justify why Leo enjoyed these so much, not noticing you were asleep until your head landed on his shoulder

“Oh, goodnight, Y/N,” Percy said, smiling fondly at your serene expression. You always looked cute - Percy knew this better than anyone, considering the massive crush on you he’d been harbouring, but you looked extra adorable in your sleep, your eyelashes tickling your cheeks as light snores left your mouth

He sat very still, not wanting to move a muscle in case that’d cause you to shift positions. He liked where you were sleeping right now. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend you were a couple

Percy began playing around with your hair as he said, “this is nice. I really wish you liked me. I mean, I know you like me, but I want you to like like me, y’know?” He sighed, taking this opportunity as he knew you wouldn’t be able to hear him

Just as he was about to continue reading, he heard a voice - your voice - pipe up, “I like you too, Percy. Really like you.”

And so, you began dating <3

Honestly such a cute relationship. You’re the only one able to calm Percy down whenever he’s upset. The whole Aphrodite cabin could be using their charmspeak on him and he wouldn’t fully relax until you place a gentle hand on his shoulder

You guys also have a lot of sleepovers. Mostly at his cabin, since yours is too full for a proper sleepover

During said sleepovers, you guys always try to visit each other in your dreams. You’re aware that children of Hypnos could enter other people’s dreams and desperately wanted to figure it out, and who better to test it on than Percy?

For one of your attempts he makes those aluminium foil hat things that cartoon characters would use to dream together or whatever it was, and you laugh at first, taking it as a silly joke, until you actually try with the hats on (because Percy insisted) and it ends up being your closest attempt

Now, you wear those aluminium foil hats religiously

Speaking of dreams, yours are more vivid than the average demigod’s, but you had no one to talk to about them until Percy came along. He loves hearing about all your silly slumber adventures <3 especially when he’s in them

Whenever you mention a dream he happened to be in it’s literally like the “oh and there was crazy drama that happened in bloxburg–” “HUH?! I NEED TO HEAR ABOUT THIS!!!!!” audio

“Percy, oh my Gods, I have to tell you about this dream I just had!” You said, not bothering to knock as you made your way inside his cabin. Percy, who was currently trying to fix the fountain in the middle of the room (idk where it is sorry), greeted you with a, “hey sweetie,” clearly very invested in his task

You sat on his bed and proceeded to give him a rundown of your dream: it started off at camp, but you were in a cabin you didn’t recognise. You decided to explore for a little bit and came across this seashell, which you picked up.

Instantly, it transported you to what you assumed was Poseidon’s underwater kingdom, since the God himself came over to greet you, Amphitrite and Triton trailing behind. He showed you around his castle, then left you at the door of your room, where he said was a special surprise for you

“Okay, so I go inside and you’re there–” immediately, Percy turned, losing his focus on the fountain and drenching you in water as a result

Grabbing you by the shoulders, he said, “You need to tell me about this! Did we get married?!”

“I thought you were busy with that fountain. You didn’t seem to care about my dream before,” you said, teasing him

Pouting, Percy replied, “no, baby, I’m sorry. I was listening, honestly! It’s just that the fountain has been making the most annoying noise ever and how are we supposed to continue our dream visiting endeavours with it distracting us?”

You continue your meditation, but more informally. He doesn’t have to book slots to see you anymore, you’d gladly guide him through whatever he needs at any time

The two of you reminisce on your first meeting a lot, too. Percy likes to claim it was his divine intuition that made him choose to look for you that day instead of inspecting cabins alone, while you just play along and try not to laugh at the way he over-exaggerates all your interactions pre-dating

To Percy, though, he isn’t over-exaggerating. Every interaction with you is a big deal. Whenever Percy wakes up in the morning and finds you next to him, clinging onto his arm with a leg draped over his body, he can’t help but fall in love all over again <3

[vivwritesfics]

Landoscar HC's

I started this when we got a McLaren Double Podium. That was a week ago. Here we are.

Lando x reader x Oscar

Masterlist

At first, nobody was sure what to do

Y/N was dating Lando, but then this Oscar guy came along

Both of them were in awe

The Australian was just so cute

They couldn't get enough

But, from there, it was just awkward

Lando and Y/N stumbling over themselves

Oscar laughing at them

Lando and Y/N stumbling over themselves some more because oh my god that laugh

How did they get together, I hear you asking?

It was a drunken night

None of them could remember what happened

Even when they woke up in the same bed, they still couldn't remember

But they weren't complaining

But cue more awkwardness

They couldn't talk about it, not for a good while

When they did, it was Y/N having to break the ice

She invited Oscar over, made dinner and served drinks

"We have to get this sorted," she said after they'd all sat down for dinner

Sort it out they did

They sorted it out with light touches and uncomfortable kisses

Doing this sober was a lot different to doing it drunk

It came with time

They had to keep things quiet for that time

Secret touches in dark corners

Slow kisses in hotel rooms with the doors locked

It was a weird situation they found themselves in

Y/N and Lando were able to walk around, holding hands and being photographed together

In some photographs they even had Oscar walking behind them

A lot of fans called Y/N and Lando Oscars parents

That was a haunting day

The world found out about them after five months of dating

Five months of hiding their relationship

Y/N and Lando had Oscar over to stay in their apartment in Monaco several times since the beginning of their relationship

They didn't feel they could go out to dinner, so they had a lot of takeout on the sofa, with candles lit and the television on

The day the world found out was after Lando, Oscar and Y/N had been at the club with some of the other drivers and their girlfriends

The drinks had been flowing

Maybe all of them had too much

The next day the pictures were on all of the F1 gossip sites and instagram pages

Y/N between Oscar and Lando, Lando's hips pressed against her backside as she made out with Oscar

And then all three of them were pressed together, with Lando and Oscar kissing with Y/N in between them

There were millions of these pictures, all of them following the same theme

Y/N, Oscar and Lando doing things they usually kept behind closed doors

But now their relationship was out in the public

All three of them were posting statements the next day

And then they were free, they could show their relationship to the public

It didn't come without prejudice; they were stopped on the street and berated like it was nothing

But they were in love, and that's all that mattered, right?

Sometimes it was too much and they put things back behind closed doors

Y/N kissed both boys when they got on the podium, but the PDA didn't spread beyond that

They kept things quiet

Kept it to their hotel rooms

Kisses, any kind of touches had to be hidden away

For their year anniversary, Lando and Oscar booked out an entire restaurant

It was the first time they were able to go out to dinner together in months

The boys were in suits (which Y/N loved because neeecks) and she was in a dress

McLaren media days were suddenly awkward

The boys were able to keep it together, but the McLaren staff didn't know how to act

"We're not about to start snogging," Lando had to say to them at one point

It took the people at McLaren a while to get used to their relationship, but once they did, things were perfect

The team was working at their best once everything was out in the air

They were together for three years, had three anniversaries like this before Lando finally popped the question to the both of them

[prismatic-starstuff]

wait idk if anyone ever asked you but since you don't seem to have any issues with miquella, what are your general headcanons for him?? 👉🏾👈🏾 i'm kinda curious (including the reader/tarnished or not, i don't mind!!!)

Oooooo, I posted some general Miquella headcanons but I do have headcanons specifically about how he'd be with the Tarnished! :3

Post-Heart Stolen Headcanons:

After the battle - after having their body held tight by Radahn and Miquella's gentle voice murmuring such lovely words in their ear - the Tarnished no longer thinks of fighting them... or the people at Enir-ilim... or anyone.

Miquella is attentive. Surprisingly so. He'll often seek the Tarnished out seemingly just to be near them; to walk with them, to tell them stories of the old world and all the horrors he doesn't want repeated, to speak of the future he longs for.

The Tarnished is invited, even encouraged, to stay close to Miquella. They learn a lot about him in these times; how almost unnervingly serene he is no matter what he's discussing, how he brightens when talking about his family or his intended future, how he idly braids Radahn's hair when he has nothing else to do with his three hands.

Once enough time has passed, the time comes to depart Enir-ilim and return to the Lands Between, to the Haligtree. ...And it's then that the Tarnished sees that Miquella never gave up all his ability to care; because the sight of his rotted tree brings tears streaming down his face.

Despite his initial eagerness to return, he doesn't talk to the Tarnished, Radahn, or any of his people for approximately two days after; the first day is spent alone in tears, the second day is spent making a needle infused with his godly power in hopes of healing the Haligtree's rot.

The Tarnished assists, bringing gold items to be melted for this purpose, reassuring the god that the tree will be able to flourish again. And for their assistance, Miquella is genuinely grateful; offering them a needle of their own, should they ever need protection against other forces.

One time, after sitting together with the god, the Tarnished realises that there's a braid in their hair that hadn't been there before. This begins to become a routine thing; Miquella takes to braiding their hair just as he does with Radahn's.

Miquella often brings things to the Tarnished; flowers to place in their hair, and things that they enjoy. ...Whether this kindness is borne of gratitude or it's just his personality, or whether it's all just a way to keep them on his side, is debated by many.

As they watch how Miquella listens to the concerns of the denizens of the Haligtree, how he cares even if he cannot love, how they show no signs of bewitchment yet seem to adore him all the same... the Tarnished begins to wonder if perhaps they'd thought too harshly of Miquella at first. (...But, they realise, even that thought could be due to their own bewitchment.)

The Tarnished realises that, even as they're allowed more and more freedoms, they are under a charm. They know this. But... they also know how gentle Miquella's hands in their hair feel, and how warm his smile is when he looks at his flourishing and happy people, and how for all the world he seems to truly care. And so, as time passes, they simply... stop thinking of the fact they're charmed, and they surround themselves with the gifts given by the god, and they let their thoughts be only of love.

[lokisprettygirl]

Under his influence (Post Avengers! Loki x female reader)

Read chapter 4 here // Series Masterlist

Chapter 5

Summary : The cuddle streak is broken by the end of your 30th birthday.

Warning: mention of drinking, sweet loki is sweet, short chapter (3k words)

In the morning you again woke up before him. Thank the gods. This has been going on for a week now, you had decided to put a stop to it like three nights ago but that obviously didn't work. You sneaked out of his embrace slowly and tiptoed towards the bathroom as if you were doing the walk of shame. Why did you always feel like such a sinner in the morning?

"It's just cuddles..be a mature adult about this" you mumbled to yourself. Well mature adults don't cuddle their mature friends. Also you shouldn't be cuddling men who existed even before the 19th century.

It was your birthday tomorrow, the day you have been dreading since your last birthday, the awful 30th, you were officially going to step out of your 20s with nothing to boot about. Nothing you ever did in life had made you proud of yourself.

For once you managed to leave the apartment without bumping into him, though why did he have to look so good when he was in deep sleep?

"So your place tomorrow? We are excited" Lyla squealed and you gave her a smile. Her and a bunch of other colleagues at the gym invited themselves to your birthday party that you didn't want to have in the first place.

"Yeah okay I'll see you tomorrow" as if you had any other options.

As you went home, he was folding your laundry, he was such a good roommate that you'd often forget that he wasn't your roommate. However as soon as he grabbed your grandma panties you snatched it out of his hand with the speed of the lightening.

"It's just a piece of fabric" he let out a hearty laugh so you glared at him.

"It's …intimate" So are the spooning sessions at night but he didn't see you complaining about them. None of you mentioned anything about them cuddles in the light of the day and it was starting to rub him in a certain way. A part of him was relieved because he wasn't sure if he was up for that conversation just yet, he didn't even know how you perceived him, was he just a friend? Only a friend?

"So big day tomorrow, are we having a celebration?" you sighed as he said that. You felt anxious telling him that he'd have to stay invisible tomorrow when your co-workers would come, it was one thing to introduce him to the family but you didn't want to put him at more risk. What if you get drunk and mess up or he does the whole magicky thing out of nowhere. You didn't want him to get caught, what would they do to him if he was to get caught? Would they hurt him? The thought made you want to cuddle him again.

"Uhhh actually my coworkers will be coming. I guess people really do like free drinks huh?" He chuckled as you said that

"So I'm assuming you won't be requiring my presence here?"

God he made everything easy, he just always knew what to say

"Loki, I want you here, you're my friend. It's just I don't want to put your life at risk, there would be several people, pictures will be taken and shared on Facebook or something, I'm sure Tony Stark must have the high technology where they can trace you with your face print or something right?" He continued to smile as you blabbed incoherently.

"I suppose so"

"I'm sorry" your eyes teared up so he walked towards you. He was wearing that cute blue shirt you had gotten for him. The color really popped his eyes, it also contrasted with his light pale skin so well.

"You don't have to apologize my darling, we will celebrate afterwards if you'd be open to that"

"Of Course.. ofcourse"

"This is your home, I don't ever want you to feel burdened by my presence "

"You never burden me Loki, I love living with you" his brows wiggled as you said that "I meant I like it..just a healthy amount" you chuckled as you walked away to put the stack of clothes in the closet. You wanted to die at the moment, actually dying while still in your 20s didn't sound so bad "It's not like I'm obsessed with you or anything " you mumbled but he only gave you his signature smile in response.

"How are you feeling?" He asked you, making you sigh deeply

"Well I'm bummed for sure. I mean I'll never get to be in my twenties again you know? The ship has sailed, the boats have..uhh boated. I don't know." The boat has bailed would have rhymed better but nope "Did you feel this way when you turned uhhh I don't know.. seven hundred" Your voice got lower and then higher by the end of the sentence, sometimes it was hard to grasp that he indeed was more than a thousand years old.

"Well in Asgard the numbers barely hold any value. It is the intelligence that's of significance when determining whether or not a man has matured completely, we grow up in phases, numbers are just that..numbers"

"Huhh. So are you a fully matured grown up?" You asked him and he chuckled

"Merely a few years back I thought that the mass extinction of my own kind would finally gain me the approval of Odin so I believe the answer would be no"

He smiled but you could tell that part of his life really affected him. Of Course it did, you couldn't imagine this soft sweet baby hurting someone, let alone hurting his own kind so cruelly, but then you also didn't know what he was going through, maybe he snapped and had enough, you always felt you'd snap someday too and become a villain that's hungry for revenge. But then you always allowed the karma to do its thing, and also because you were too lazy to become an actual villain. It was too much thinking. You walked towards him and hugged him to comfort him

"Well I'm sure you have outgrown that phase of yours now because the man that i know here.. my sweet friend–" Again with the friend he thought "He's pretty amazing" Well pretty and amazing you thought.

"So are you princess" your face got warm at the pet name so you took a step away from him.

Did he just call you a princess? You would barely qualify as a peasant on Asgard.

"I'll go shower and we can eat"

You did the routine- Shower, eat, brush teeth, sleep in separate beds and then one of the two would crawl in the other's bed depending on the mood.

It was his turn today, as the clock hit 12 he crawled into your bed and snuggled into you. Before you could say anything he greeted you,

"Happy Birthday Princess" a birthday wish has never sounded so sweet

"Thank you Loki" you smiled as you hooked your arm around him "This is not as bad as I thought it would be, you being here is helping though" he chuckled as you said that "I'm not joking, i really would have been a crying mess right now if you weren't here"

"Even if I wasn't here at this moment, I think I would have find you sooner or later"

"No you wouldn't have, it was pure luck"

"I do not think something so frivolous such as luck brought me to you, that tesseract has a mind of its own, the cube wanted me here"

"Isn't it called mind stone? "

"No it's the space one..what I'm trying to convey is that perhaps our paths were destined to collide"

"You're very cute" he smiled as you said that he has never been called cute before, that word was only used for small little creatures on Asgard and not gods like him "Can I ask you a question?" You mumbled so he hummed in response.

"Are you always this cold because you're a frost god?" A frost god? He was just a giant monster.

"Yes. I can manipulate my temperature though, would you like me to go warm?"

"Would it be uncomfortable for you?"

"Just a little, nothing I can not bear"

"Mmmm then i don't want it Loki, besides i am enjoying this, perfect for summers " you chuckled as you finished your sentence, you didn't want to get so completely obvious with your crush on him. You had no idea how much your sweet words and your care for him has affected him though, someone cared about his comfort and that wasn't something he was used to having.

Next day once you got all dolled up for the party he couldn't stop staring at you, the dress you had on made you look different, he thoroughly enjoyed you being in your pajamas but this wasn't too bad either.

He wanted to give you a little something before your friends would arrive so he sat down with you on the sofa.

"I was so rattled all night because I couldn't choose what I wanted to give you as a present –"

"Loki you don't have to do that" you placed your hand on his so he looked down and it immediately made you pull back.

"I know I don't necessarily have to, I just really wanted to" you smiled as he said that "There were plenty of things I could have given you that probably would have been more suitable for a lady like you, however–" his eyes teared up and so did yours, the softness in his voice remained undefeated, you didn't even need a gift anymore, this was enough. He waved his fingers and there was a small gift box in his hand, wrapped in a pretty paper and bunch of golden flowers, he passed it to you so you started to unwrap it

"I believed you'd rather want something sentimental and personal, something that would make you think of me" When he's not there he thought. As you opened the box, you found a knife in there, it was a knife polished in pure gold, the handle made from the finest oak, it had your name on it and there was a small birthday wish engraved on the blade,

"If you ever find yourself trapped by the twisted paths of uncertainties, remember that you can always cut through and make a new one, Loki"

"Loki–" you could hardly whisper his name and then it suddenly hit you, it wasn't any ordinary knife, it was the knife you had thrown at him on the first day, you recognised the blade, he had just molded it to make it look extraordinary "Ohhh god–" you looked at him, your eyes filled with several little emotions and then you hugged him as tightly as you could,

"Loki..This--" your breath hitched in your chest, making it almost impossible to talk to him "This is the most thoughtful gift i have ever received..thank you" he grabbed your hand and placed a small kiss, the look on your face made him feel content.

"Thank you lo ..thank you so much" you hugged him for a good minute before you pulled away, at night it didn't matter because the sleep always got you but rest of the times holding him for such a long time only made your thoughts spiral.

Unfortunately you didn't have much time because your colleagues would be here soon.

"Sooo ..just curious, what were the other things you could have gifted me" you questioned him and it made him chuckle.

"Jewels Perhaps"

"Yeahh I'm not into jewels sooo" you smiled and it made him smile too. He knew you'd appreciate something that held a sentimental value "Ummm okay I was wondering if people can still touch you if you're invisible?"

"Yes, I am indeed tangible but do not worry I'll just hide in my vault "

"What?"

"Its spacious "

"Nooo noo no Loki, I can't..i would like it if you're here..with me" you smiled and he returned it.

"Alright "

He disappeared as soon as he heard the door buzzing, it felt weird to not see him and you really really wanted to see him. But knowing that he was there made you feel slightly better. As you opened the door, Lyla hugged you and Loki glared at her, this woman kept calling you chubby, he didn't like her already. There were two other ladies and three men, he kept his eyes on this particular guy, his name that he learned was Chase, he couldn't stop flirting with you even though you didn't seem interested or maybe that was his wishful thinking.

You went into the kitchen as you made them all sit down in the living room which was basically just a few feet away. Loki has graciously offered you a bunch of chairs and a table for the party. He was like a genie, he was exactly like a Genie.

One of the guys turned the tv on , giving you the headache already.

"Guys look ..look.. queen of Asgard is on tv" you ran into the living room as he said that. Queen of Asgard as in Frigga? What was she doing here?

"Loki, my son, wherever you are please return to me, I can not lose you again, enough of the jesting, your father has given me his word that there will be no consequences, please return, your family awaits your presence"

Loki had told you about her, from what he had shared you knew she was that one person he really loved and cared for. What did she mean by losing him again? Loki never shared what had really happened after his fight with Thor all those years back in Asgard.

"Come on it's a party..shut it off" Lyla whined as she sipped on her drink. You looked around in worry as you couldn't spot Loki but you knew he was watching.

"Man i wonder where that murderer bastard is" Steven, one of the guys said

"Mind your language you hear me?" You defended loki immediately,

"He's right though..a criminal like him rolling around freely isn't good for us" Stacy said and you rolled your eyes. What did they even know about him? You did, and he wasn't as evil as he should have been after everything he has been through, you knew he didn't attack NYC on his own, he was compelled and forced to do it.

You looked behind and you could see the bathroom door opening and closing so you went in there and locked the door.

"Loki are you–" before you could finish your word he had you pressed against the door with his palm right over your mouth, you looked right up into his eyes as he appeared, he was in his Asgardian clothing, a long black tunic with matching trouser, the color looked the best on him, it complimented his raven hair.

"They can hear you" he whispered quietly so you nodded, as he took a step back you breathed in deeply, the proximity always messed up your brain. All you could think about was kissing him and then him picking you up to place you down on the sink while you two would make out

"Your mother–"

"It's just so typical of Thor to involve our mother in between our quarrels" he mumbled in frustration.

"Well it's more than just a quarrel" you chuckled so he gave you a smile "She said that..there will be no consequences –"

"She's lying ofcourse "

"But she won't lie to you would she?" He chuckled again but his eyes had gotten teary this time, you squeezed your eyes shut as you remembered that she had lied to him about his heritage all his life.

"Are you okay?" You whispered so he nodded.

"Go enjoy the celebration darling, I'm absolutely alright I promise " you nodded as he said that. Maybe he just wanted to be alone.

You went back to the living room but you couldn't stop thinking about him, he seemed troubled and you wanted to hug him as tightly as you could.

Once everyone left and you couldn't have been more grateful that they did, you called out for him, he clicked his fingers and there he was, on your bed, reading his book.

"Are you okay?" You asked him so he hummed

"Are you?"

"I'm fine..a bit drunk but fine"

You gulped so he nodded.

"So that's your mom huh"

"Adoptive mother, I never even met my birth mother " he answered as he flipped the page of the book.

"Ohhh .. ummm.. soo.. do you want to celebrate my birthday..ummm there's a cake, I think you'll like it" you walked towards the kitchen and he sighed. He put the book down and followed you, his mood had turned sour but he really didn't want to upset you. He also really wanted to kiss you right now.

"Ummm so Chase asked me out on a date" he crossed his arms as you told him. That boar wanted to romance you? He didn't deserve a woman like you. Nobody did. He didn't think midgardian men possessed the heart to value a lady such as you.

"So you'd court this man?"

"I uhhh–" what were you supposed to say? You just wanted to see his reaction, you weren't sure this is the reaction you wanted. You wanted him to get jealous

"What should I do?" You questioned him like a moron and he snickered. Did he just snicker? Was he upset?

"I'm no one to make that sort of decisions for you darling"

"Well..Perhaps one date won't kill me" you mumbled. You really were picking up his lingos.

"Yeah, perhaps " Did he just use the word yeah?

"Okay ummm here's the cake " you passed him the plate so he took it. He couldn't stop you from courting other people if you wanted to, he wasn't your significant other afterall, he was just a friend, probably not even that. He was just the burden.

That night he didn't approach you for cuddling because he figured you'd rather cuddle this new man, you didn't either because you thought he didn't want to do it anymore.

Did you just ruin the cuddling arrangement by opening your big mouth? You weren't even into this Chase guy. You'd tell Chase tomorrow that you weren't into him, you weren't going to do what other people had done to you. It was deceiving.

Well that was the plan you had made before sleeping but an argument happened and for some reason you ended up on this date anyways. And Loki was definitely bitter about it. Extremely bitter.

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳

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[krizariel]

Follow up to this post

It’s been a few weeks since then and Tim is almost fully recovered. Soon he will be able to go back home. While Tim wanted to go back to the nest, Alfred had different plans.

“Preposterous Master Drake. You are going back to the mansion where you can be given proper care whilst you continue your recovery. There’s much you’ve lost and you need all the support you can get to get fully back on your feet. No objections.”

“Knowing you, you will want to get back to work right away. I brought you your laptop as a compromise.”

“Thank you Alfie.”

The nurses knocked on the door as it was time for his regular check up. Alfred left the room to let them do their job saying he’d be outside.

“Is your boyfriend not here today?” She asked as she was taking his blood pressure.

“ My who?!”

“Wow careful sweetie. Your heart rate”

Well I’m not the one who asked about my non-existent boyfriend what the hell lady!?

“Dark, tall and handsome? skunk hair? He has been here almost every day for over a year.” She continued.

“At first we thought he was a ghost haha” another nurse chimed in. “Almost every morning, when we'd come clean you up there was a flower, always had enough water. Sometimes we'd see a new flower.”

“You did get multiple visitors at the beginning but later the visits were more spread out and they didn't stay long so we knew when someone had visited. So it was SO strange that you'd always have fresh flowers and sometimes even books by your bed!”

"There was no one here near the end of the day and some nurses were too scared to enter the room in the middle of the night.”

"One time they peeked and one swore they saw a shadow by the corner so they called security. When we came in with a group of guards, no one was in the room. Everything was in place except for a new flower."

Another nurse peeked in. “Y’all talking about the lover ghost?” “The what now?!” Tim said "Yeah, yeah, come in!" Why are they just inviting themselves?! “Listen. Sometimes some nurses were scared to come in during the night but you were always peaceful, nothing out of place. Usually, with patients like you, rooms become silent and more empty as time goes by. It's…common. For visitors to slowly lose hope and being unable to continue visiting often. Each person deals with grief differently.” "But in your case, as months went by, your room was more…lived?" "Later Mr. Wayne let us know if we saw a certain Mr. Peters come in to visit that he was to be included in the list of people allowed to visit you." “We suspect he was our ghost!” A new nurse excitedly added, from behind Tim. WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM!? "What makes you think Mr. Peters is the one that had been visiting me during the time I was in a coma?" "Well, if it's not him, then you had two suitors and one of them was a ghost. I'd go with the first option if I was you." “We haven't seen someone so dedicated so have to admit we were really rooting for you both. We haven't seen him lately though.” an older nurse continued. “Did something happen?” Another one asked. “No just… we are not- “ Tim felt a bit at loss as he was still processing all this information. Alfred, god bless him, made his presence be known at that moment. The head nurse was trailing behind him. “Excuse me ladies. Master Drake requires some rest.” Alfie said as he put his hand on Tim's shoulder, reassuringly. "Everyone please, stop bothering Mr. Drake and chop-chop, there's plenty to do." The head nurse said and then turned to Tim. "As for you Mr. Drake, it looks like everything is looks good. The doctor will see you in a minute to give you some final instructions and to tell you when will be your next check up but looks like you are ready to be discharged." And with that, she left. ----

Once he was finally back at the mansion and settled in his room, he finally gave himself time to think about what the nurses said. He just… it wouldn't leave him alone.

He will have to face Jason again, isn't he?

It didn't take long. And Tim suspects Alfred had a hand in it… "Hey." "Hi." By the way Jason's mouth moved, it looked like he had something to say but kept aborting saying anything. Tim could relate. "Sorry, Alfred wanted me to come to have tea with him this afternoon and was really insistent. I couldn't say no. Good to see you are doing well." "Yeah. Thank you." "Anyway, I'm on my way out so-" "WAIT" Tim grabbed Jason's arm before he could bolt out. He had to ask. "The nurses told me a story… about a ghost." "Uh?" "Yeah. Apparently a rumor started… of a ghost who kept leaving flowers and making noise in my hospital room. Who kept visiting me and keeping me company. They were apparently very charmed." "Oh." "Was it really you?" "I…yeah. Listen I never said anything because I didn't want to look lke a creep. I know it sounds nuts but I might have developed a bit of a crush on you…" "While I was unconscious??" "Let it be known I never said this made any sense." Jason continued "I just wanted to keep you company, to not be forgotten… because I know how it felt to come back and feeling that way. As time went by, I started learning every bit I could. I knew you as red robin but not the real you. I never bothered, and I started to want it really badly." Tim was at loss of words because a part of him wanted to stay upset but he couldn't find it it himself to stay mad in light of all this new information. "It was stupid of me to think that you'd wake up and maybe there could be a chance. But believe me I honestly didn't think it would be that simple. I know I can't take the hurt back but if you'll have me I want nothing more than to make it up to you and give this a try" Tim felt the smile grow in his face. He couldn't help it. It felt like getting closure in the best possible way. Maybe right now he really didn't want to focus on romance but he felt warmth at the thought of having his family around and Jason as well. The fact that Jason thought about him that far… is proof that his affections were never misplaced. "How about we take it slow and just see where it goes. I'd like it if you stick around." Suddenly he felt strong arms around him. Jason was hugging him tightly and just like that Tim couldn't help but feeling genuinely happy. Despite the situation, whatever the future hold didn't seem so bad. "Thank you babybird. I swear I'll make it worth your while." Jason said as he pulled slightly away and held Tim's face tenderly with both hands. "Alright… I could use a spar partner, wanna help a guy?"

"You got it." ----

It's been a few months since then and here they are. Jason usually wakes up first. He almost can't believe he gets to watch him sleep and wake up every day. He will hold on to this for as long as possible. For as long as Tim will have him. "Hey, sleeping beauty." "Hey, handsome." Part 1 Part 2

[moonlayl]

This...got super long and to be clear nothing I have experienced nor will ever experience will come close to the horrors that Palestinians are facing right now. I just need to say that and make that clear, but these are just things I've been wanting to say for a while now.

Just a thought that came to my head, but I remember arguing with lots of liberals before about how I don't really support the idea that people shouldn't be able to say anything they want (except obviously spreading misinformation especially if you're in certain professions), even hate speech not because I ever want to hear hate speech, but because I can't trust any government to decide what hate speech is, and I was told to give an example

I remember at the time saying "what if one day, me speaking about Palestine starts to become classified as antisemitism or terrorism?"

I was told that was silly and would "obviously never happen" (I didn't believe them and called them naive at the time)

well....looking at certain countries right now, trying to ban Palestinian flags, ban common Palestinian/muslim sayings, ban any peaceful protest in favour of Palestine, even looking at imprisoning/fining people etc.... is kind of just proving my point.

Like most of us don't feel included or part of any western communities even if we're lived here our whole lives for so many reasons and it almost always boils down to us being Arabs/muslim.

can't speak for non Arabs and non muslims, but a lot of us feel this way.

seeing how fighting for the people who need it the most (2000+ Palestinians have been killed. 800 of them being children. 45 families completely wiped out, entire bloodlines, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, etc....like this is actual genocide. their entire family tree has been completely wiped form existence) is being banned or branded as "terrorism", or we're losing our jobs, or we're being silenced, like it says a lot about theses countries and the governments that run them.

They tried to suspend humanitarian aid to innocent people of Gaza for the love of God!! Thank God there were 5 decent countries who voted no!

Israel gets away with every goddamn crime and ANY "condemnation" of any warcrime it commits is just talk, while they continue to aid and support it.

How am I supposed to trust these governments, and MY government to decide what's acceptable and what's not when I know that during the most critical moments that matter the most, they won't be on our side, and they'll side with oppressors because they themselves are just that? That the little I can actually do for Palestine and any other country could be completely taken away?

These are "democratic" countries by the way, or they're supposed to be, and sure we can challenge all these things but there are things even we can't do. the onslaught of propaganda shared everywhere by the same news stations that refuse to invite Palestinians (and refuse to air the few times they do) and refuse to fact check their content, or report on what's actually happening in Gaza, can't really be stopped. We can do our best to spread what's actually happening, and to correct false information, but the damages have been done.

And its getting harder and harder to hear form the people of Gaza because of the bombs, cut of electricity, cut off internet access, and also, you know, the fact that the people sharing news are being killed one by one.

There's also many social media platforms completely erasing anything about Palestine. suspending our accounts and hiding our posts. I can't believe I'm saying this but maybe it's a good thing Elon Musk took over twitter because at least I've been able to talk about Palestine as much as possible without nay censoring and I'm still able to. Palestinians are still able to share their stories and the reality yon there. And sin't that crazy? Elon musk is kind of doing something right???

And you know something else? Israel killed one of their own journalists, and those people weren't able to properly report on it. They couldn't directly say it was Israel that killed one of their own workers. Like....its crazy (and they're cowards). Israel also killed 12 UN workers.

That crime is not making as many headlines as the fake stuff did. Those "journalists" and "reporters" who repeated false information (that resulted in far too many people believing them and suddenly being okay with genocide) are still working. they still have a job and they're still out there spreading more propaganda.

this post isn't well written because I'm just putting out my thoughts and what I've witnessed but to make one thing clear, I won't ever silence my voice or allow anyone to silence my voice when it comes to something like this, and i'm not afraid of what they'll do, but isn't so fucked that I could actually lose my job and have trouble finding another one for supporting the oppressed? Like isn't that just..disgusting?

Like what's that supposed to tell me other than majority of western countries are against us? It's not exactly surprising because I've known this, but everyone being VERY open about it is kind of tough to witness ngl.

Like this is not a complicated issue. if you have any morals and you're not biased against Palestinians/arabs/muslims already, then this is a very clearcut case. Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is and has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing for literal decades and its been doing it long before Hamas came into the picture. Israel's war crimes and treatment of Palestinians is the reason Hamas even exists in the first place. you can condemn Hamas while also recognising that Israelis have no right to that land and that nothing justifies their never ending crimes. Palestinians are demanding for their rights ot live, be citizens, have rights and freedoms, and have their land that was brutally taken from them. None of those things are unreasonable.

You know what is unreasonable? the world deciding Israel is suddenly gonna be a thing and expecting Palestinians to just be okay with it. You know what is unreasonable? Palestinians being painted as the bad guys for "not wanting to share" when they literally shouldn't have to (especially because of the obvious scams of all those "treaties" and "agreements" that all gave every benefit to Israel)

Like the whole world literally let this happen and supported it and cheered for it. Some stayed silent but are showing their real colours (which those of us who haven't been blind have already seen) now.

We've got girls crying about how "they want to kill us T-T" at a university campus because people were protesting in support of Palestine, while a six year old boy was killed in his own home for being Palestinian. In the same country.

We've got celebs talk about how scared THEY are while 800 Palestinian children have been murdered.

We've got celebs posting "pray for Israel" while using pictures of Gaza in ruins or Palestinian children looking at rockets in the sky.

It's insane.

We had a protest for Palestine the other day. People were telling us to go back to our country. They were telling Palestinians to go back to their country.

....that's....that's what they want? Like we're very much aware of how much we're not wanted here just to be clear, and Palestinians across the damn globe would do ANYTHING to be able to go live in their homeland. except they can't. Israel won't let them. That's part of what we're fighting for. Any jewish person can go get a citizenship easily in Israel (even if they've never stepped foot in the country and none of their ancestors had either) but people who were born in Palestine or who's family owns property there can't get it in at all. It's absolute insanity.

I'm not sure how to end this but on every level this has been horrific. But despite that, the propaganda, the genocide, the threats, the whole world being against us, that's not gonna stop us from fighting for the oppressed and standing up for them. It's not gonna stop us from going out into the streets and no words can explain the bravery of everyone who continues to stand with Palestine but especially to the Palestinians who continue fighting and resisting (despite everything they've been through). Continuing to use our voices, donating, protesting etc... is the absolute least we can do and its our responsibility. and I truly, from the bottom of my heart wish the absolute worst for everyone who disagree with this. Like you guys are gonna pay for it. Maybe not today maybe not for many years maybe only in the afterlife (because I do believe in it) but it's gonna happen and every Israeli supporter or zionist is gonna deserve every second of it.

If you're silent, if you try to throw the "two sides" bs, and if you try to act like Palestine and Israel are in any way equal, you're included in this.

You're part of the problem.

Silence is compliance.

And screw every government that supports Israel in any way. Screw the double standards, the hypocrisy and the absolute cruelty towards innocent Palestinians.

I can't speak for everyone else but no matter what happens moving forwards, I'm never gonna forget this and I'm never gonna forgive.

I'm gonna keep trying to do everything possible which unfortunately is not much and thats frustrating on every level but I'm gonna keep doing it. feel free to unfollow/block me, but I'm not gonna stay silent about this ever. and I'm not gonna entertain any bigot or zionists either. it's gonna be a straight up block.

my asks are open, and my page is currently full of information, this site is as well, but I'm not gonna entertain those who clearly care very little bout genocide, because if you haven't opened your eyes by now, I doubt anything I say will change that. you're welcome to go through my blog or send me a polite ask (can't promise I'll get to it right away but I'll try) but I'm not tolerating pointless arguments that are basically me just repeating that Palestinian people deserve to live in their own country with all their rights and freedoms while the other person disagrees. I prefer not to argue with those who are depraved.

[ro-botany]

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far: What Heroes Tells us About Validar

I blame @the-priestess-of-dawn for this one. <3

One of Awakening’s worst dads has finally weaseled his way into the mobile game, and so, here we are. If I can make a serious analysis post about Groom!Robin of all units, then I suppose Validar deserves a post as well.

For the most part, Validar’s dialogue in Heroes is unsurprising. There’s a lot of gloating about his plans, a lot of mocking everyone else for being feeble. But there’s one very key place where that pattern falters, and when you really dig into that crack... what at first looks like a shallow villain turns instead into a hollow one.

---

I’ve talked before about how the sprites in Heroes can affect your read of a character’s tone and ultimately change the meaning of their words. Such is the case for Validar’s 5* level 40 conversation. It’s easy to read it in a snarkier tone with his sprite sneering at you, but I invite you to read it without the visuals and really take it for what it is:

Askr's future is none of my concern. I aid you only to gain power for myself. I care not for the people of Askr. The evils of this world are nothing to me. I am an agent of fate. Whatever pitiful bonds you share cannot stop the inevitable! But do go on... I will enjoy your struggling.

Notice anything?

What I immediately notice is that for 4/5 text boxes, a solid 80% of the conversation, all the condescension and insufferable confidence is gone. There’s not one linguistic flourish, not one jab at Kiran or anyone else, not even any punctuation beyond the humble period. The sentences are short and to the point. And you know what it sounds like to me?

Like he’s reassuring himself.

He’s calmly repeating things that he thinks ought to be fact, like mantras. Oh sure, he’s trying to convince Kiran that he’s an uncaring shithead who’s only here to further his nefarious plans, but it sure sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of it, too. He only switches back to his usual sneering and mockery with the very last text box, as though he suddenly remembered himself.

What’s also striking about that conversation is how similar it feels to dialogue from other Grima-adjacent characters, and hell, even Grima themselves.

If you told me those first four text boxes were dialogue from one of the fallen Morgans (Future Past edition OR Heroes edition), I would believe you. They’re in a very similar state of mind, with a lot of lines dedicated to calmly repeating they’re only tools of Grima’s will. That they help you only to further Grima’s plans.

And while the phrasing of it is different, the underlying feeling of those lines is eerily close to some of Risen King Chrom’s dialogue, too. “I am the king of corpses” vs “I am an agent of fate”; both of them characterizing themselves as little more than weapons for a god to wield or discard.

We only ever see Validar in a vacuum in Awakening, but we can’t forget that the cycles of abuse that are the story's core apply to him too. I’ve written a lot about how Grima’s agency is constantly stripped from him. I think that if we can acknowledge how much that fucked Grima up in his first life and again as Robin, and how much it fucks up Morgan and Chrom in the bad timelines... We would be hypocrites to deny that that fucked up Validar, too. It must have.

The Grimleal have been trying to resurrect Grima for a long, long time, and Validar is one of the last born of that fucked up lineage. Only unlike Robin, Validar didn’t have the luxury of being swept away from the cult at a young age. No, he grew up steeped in the knowledge that he was born for one singular purpose. The brand he bears is just barely too faint for him to be an empty shell to hold their god, and so like his parents before him, he becomes living weapon and breeding stock. Expected to lead the Grimleal, as the one with the purest fell blood. Expected to produce a warm body suitable for pouring their mad god into.

The course of his life was decided for him long before he was even conceived.

He doesn’t have a choice.

Everyone he cares about and everything he knows is relying on him.

He doesn’t have a choice.

The Exalt of Ylisse hacks and slashes and burns through their home in the name of his god, and the whole damned world must answer for this suffering.

He doesn’t have a choice.

He is an agent of fate.

Validar never got to be a person, not really. He has only ever been a tool of someone else’s will and I think that’s left him empty. He gloats and mocks and insults and laughs about how much he wants it all to burn, but the fact that it’s all he ever does doesn’t paint a very healthy picture. He has no sense of self outside of how he can be useful to the cult. By all accounts he doesn’t even really think of himself as a person.

Many of the parallels between Validar and Robin/Grima start to make a lot of sense this way. The way they both bluster and monologue at least half as a cover, the way they cling to the concept of unalterable destiny to soothe the injustice of having so many choices ripped from them, the way they view every relationship as a means of controlling or being controlled. “Agent of fate” vs “wings of despair”. And I would bet money that Validar’s father was similar, because he too would've been brought up similarly. Risen Kings, the lot of them.

[russilton]

i am genuinely so curious about your opinion as to why you think merc likes george as much as williams. not to cause discourse but i would actually love to change my mind if george is going to be there for god knows how long.

my impression has always been that merc likes george, but williams loves george. that he is merc's guy but williams' BABY.

(like ngl they didn't make any effort to stop the cyber bullying during the season on his own team's page, which might be minor but it rubs a lot of people the wrong way)

I think it comes down to less weighing up social post vs social post, which is what people often do, and more remembering that both Williams and Mercs socials function fundamentally differently.

Also you can still like whatever teams you want- this post is not me arguing to not support Williams, I still support Williams, I’m just gonna talk about some ways Merc HAVE supported George, and Williams have been the less idealised version people sometimes remember.

We have for a while seen more jokey silly, vloggy content from Williams socials (at least from 2019 on), while we are still, STILL, teaching Merc to pull the stick out of their ass and stop holding themselves to such an aloof standard from 2020 on- compared to other teams. Merc were winning for a long time, they didn’t need to appeal to people they way they now have to as a team winning less and advertising a new driver.

Meanwhile Williams had NOTHING going on for a long time, they were fighting for 19th/20th, all they could do to sell their team to sponsors was provide content people talked about. Mercedes had the name power of Lewis Hamilton, Williams only had George and Nicky for two years- two junior drivers people didn’t know.

I also just… I personally don’t gauge love based on social content alone, since it’s usually run by 2-3 people who have to put out positive content, it’s designed to make you think they love them as much as they can.

Arguably Williams never HAD to defend George the way people want Merc to, vitriolic fan tweets scaled up massively in the 2021 season and Williams was a back of the field team, plenty of people barely knew George existed. George entered Merc at the most controversial time he could, when Max fans were filling their replies with slurs and Lewis fans demanded to know why the fuck we weren’t fighting for a reclassification at the championship- something we now know why they couldn’t but still hurt. When you watch an entire sport break the rules to fuck you, you start making unreasonable demands to do anything to get back at them and make it hurt less. Merc will never satisfy them, and if anything when Merc DID step up to defend George in Singapore and Qatar- people just got madder at George.

When you look down at the team behaviour as a whole… I would really counter your point about George being Williams baby- because he’s been Merc’s baby for double that time.

George was beloved by engineers, drivers, mechanics and upper staff alike, including Nicki Lauda who notoriously used to go to George’s junior series podiums when they supported F1, took him to a black eye peas concert, and called him the future of Merc. He was coached by Val and particularly Lewis on how to drive, George still mentions Lewis’ coaching as what secured his f2 championship and had him coming back from the summer break reborn. The likes of shov, Bono, James v and Mike Sansoni used to tease George lovingly when he did rookie tests for Merc, invited him to run club and team dinners, George even went to the Merc team bowling nights Lewis organised.

My point is, all of the ways Williams yes, does show public past support for George… Merc were doing that behind the scenes. It may seem like they don’t share stuff from George’s Williams past- they don’t have the licenses to show some of those photos, and given that socials are a brand promotion exercise that just serves to promote a team that’s not your own. But in a practical sense they were inviting George into their family and making sure he always felt at home.

You just have to listen to George himself- he said so often last year how he didn’t feel much like he had to settle into Merc because he’d always been with them, long before he was an F1 driver. They are his family, and this is always what HE wanted.

I also have to look at how they treated George trust wise. In 2020 Mercedes trusted George to drive the fastest car in the sports history, Lewis’ car, when he was sick. They skipped over their TWO reserve drivers, Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck De Vries, to give George a shot, and had to bargain with Williams to borrow him for Sakhir, when arguably Stoff and Nyck would have done more sim work than him.

At the same time, Jost Capito and Williams were trying to find a way to get out of their contract with George for 2021, because they were annoyed George was planning to leave them for Mercedes, and wanted to start working with someone “committed” to them, to the point they approached Kmag about the seat (in his book, Kmag says he called them idiots for it).

It’s theorised George only kept his seat by virtue of the incredibly strict contract Claire Williams tied him into, and Toto/James Vowles threatening Williams within an inch of it’s life. It wasn’t lost on me in the 20/21 season how Jost tended to not always blame their dog shit car for the poor performances, but George and Nicky for not doing more. Hell the way he portioned money in the team was so poor JV is appealing to the FIA for a special grant to upgrade their factory. In 2021 George DNF’d SIX times, mostly mechanical, you can see him disparing in dts about their borderline undrivable performance, but very little changed- but when a fuck up happened they looked right at the drivers.

Meanwhile, Mercedes saw exactly the kind of driver George was trying to be even through the worst car on the grid, and hired him anyway. I’ve seen teams outright throw drivers to the curb for performances they had very little fault in. You can feel how you want about Nicholas Latifi’s confidence in his driving in 22, Williams gave him a car even George struggled to place in for two fucking years, one year with a car Alex just about got by in, and then replaced him with Sargent, who placed lower in F2 than Nicky did.

Nicky has moved on, Williams ARE doing right by Logan now, but a lot of people are only seeing the Williams James Vowles has run. James Vowles who was at Mercedes… longer than Toto. If you want to base Williams current love of George on him, you’re basing it in a reflection of the James who worked with Gwen lagrue to support George for Merc.

You can still love how Williams love George! I do! I like current Williams and I miss James Vowles at Merc so much, but he’s flourishing leading Williams and it’s incredible. I like how silly Williams are sometimes, how they put themselves out on a limb more- but ultimately they have had to make less hard and controversial choices than Merc has, and the one time they did (Hungary 21) George took the choice from them and asked them to prioritise Nicky. Merc has had make choices nobody wants to make- and often panicked and straddled the line in a way nobody was happy with. But to call back to a post @ininininininstayoutstayout made once- when both sides come out of a choice complaining they got fucked over, ultimately you have to reevaluate what the team really could have done because nothing would have pleased everyone.

You can be upset with some of the choices Merc made with George on track over the last couple years, I have been mad at them myself. You can be angry at the mistakes they made with the sakhir pit stop and countless other strategic fuck ups- but none of those were intended results. Nobody at Merc has deliberately targeted George (OR Lewis) for poor treatment, nor did they WANT to make the boys a shitty car.

At the end of the day Merc as a brand poured hundred of thousands or maybe millions into supporting George as a Junior, Toto lead him the the Williams seat, the engineers and mechanics continued to develop him and train him and invite him into the factories and their travel team. He went out to dinner with them, tested their cars. They chose him over Valtteri, who was arguably the safe choice, trusted him, and now George is on their team they support him. Sometimes at a booming volume when George was adjusting, or then punishing himself for things like Singapore or possible controversies like Qatar.

Arguing Merc don’t adore George is like arguing that they don’t love Lewis- if you only look at specific circumstances you can build that idea- but if you look at the longer history it’s abundantly clear that Merc’s employees do fucking love them, they’re just an organisation not a monolith, and really stupid choices happen. And as much as I hate Jost capito, Toto is just as prone to bullshit, just with less “funny”stories about sexually assaulting his employees.

People who want George to go back to Williams are covering over just wanting him to face less backlash, and have less eyes on him, gatekeeping him almost for comfort. I get the impulse, but it’s not what George wants, what he’s fought for, for almost a decade.

Merc are giving him a chance at what he wants, and as bumpy as it’s been it’ll only pave his story as an underdog fight rather than a gifted ride, and they’re doing all that they can to put he and Lewis back up there.

[incarnateirony]

I really have such mixed feelings about the last few months. I hate Working on that level, I hate the idea of doing what I've done to anything that even resembles a human even if she surrendered her humanity, I just really don't sit well with that part.

But on the other hand, until her delusions were utterly shattered, she was never going to stop, and she's STILL not stopping, as evidenced by her little cretin friends up in the DMs of anyone they see me message STILL, even during THIS, when they were TOLD those behaviors were WHY this line was drawn, but they psychologically and physically both cannot stop themselves, they lack any self awareness or self control, the whole lot, the whole group never realized they were spending 3 years on this toxic obsession while being ignored.

They IMAGINED themselves being observed. They showed paranoid schizoid tendancies in, I realized years later, posting on and on that they or she were being watched, and like, they fucking weren't, they were scum beneath my time. It took almost 2 years to go, huh, wonder how my ex is doing, laughing at it, and then her setting off this entire shitshow in her fucking pissfit that she wasn't invited to the game, while pretending she wasn't mad about not being invited to the game, only to spend six months trying to invest herself to break into the game server and fuck with me and the game.

Like. If you want an example of how slavishly dedicated their delusion bubble has kept them, we really need to turn everyone's noses to stare at that right there.

As long as she had her body pillow of me that she groomed everyone else into, by them not understanding what shadows are or where divinity comes from, and her misteaching them, and them projecting everyone's bullshit from their own minds onto what deities they feel excuse their behavior. Like, no. That was never hermes, never will be, always was him leading myself home. No, no gods told you to act like a lunatic. You, the insane schizoids and delusional obsessed fanatics, told yourself to do it, and then felt righteous because your own headspace gods of schizoprenia are telling you that it's the right thing.

So yeah, I absolutely had to shatter her, or reduce her to nothing, to ever get my freedom from this abuse. She''s made it very clear they leave me no choice. She will pursue me until she kills herself once unable to avoid reality, she has made this very, very clear. Just like the manipulators that pretend to be her friends or family won't stop her until it gets to this point, and when she is forced with the weight of her choices, her actions, her self denial, her delusions and her behavior, her false gods and all else, like. When she does the near inevitable after years of letting her go down this spiral, they'll blame me, for making her face reality, after they used her up for their own grudges and silly bullshit.

Oh well.

She made her bed, she can lay down and die in it for all I care. Alone, godless, and given to the same emptiness that made her start ripping her hair out.

The psychotic users around her, just like her, can't even grok how fucking ridiculous it is for them to henpeck and chase around a man for THREE YEARS begging for his attention, to whole other social circuits they're not in, to people they have no interest in, literally just there to make One Specific Man's life difficult while he like, literally just tries to avoid them, for years, doesn't even look at them, isn't anywhere near them, but they are so in lovehate with me they're compelled to chase me no matter what.

They don't see it. They literally do not fucking comprehend. They WANTED me to be watching them, and imagined it when I wasn't. The closest to my attention they got for years were people going "Why are Dani and Kelios orbiting around your ex wife?" "Because she has no actual morals or beliefs, nor does anyone in their group, and their pure intention is to find ways to annoy me, because they're soulless goblins. MOVING ON."

And then to SHIT THEIR PANTS like they have when they realize what HAVING MY ATTENTION **ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE**. Like no not like that!!! Yes, like that, suck my dick, or I guess keep sucking cuz y'all been deepthroating it to years, in front of a shrine. No seriously, name a universe this behavior qualifies anything other than compulsive stalkers. Girlllllllllls Kelios is trash and was more important than you, salt group wouldn't have even noticed your bullshit if you didn't have the other fandom psychos orbiting you lmao. It wasn't even ABOUT you, but you fucking attention whores imagined it was ABOUT you or about watching YOU. LMAO.

You. Are. Insane. Crazy. Lady. Stalkers. You are walking stereotypes, only you're real, and you actually fucking act like this and somehow aren't fucking embarrassed.

Girlllsssssssssssssssssssssssss if you want my dick that bad, just PM me. My ex loved that cyber romance shit, I'll digitally knock your cunt off if you need me up it that bad. Or it's time to realize you need therapy and to collectively fucking move on. Cuz even if you harassed me out, which you won't, the truth remains the same: you were groomed by an abusive stalking liar, and are stalkers yourselves, and are all prone to obsessive behaviors, and have been guzzling my dick in a cult of playtoys you justify yourself through with imaginary friends, and if I died tomorrow, that would still be true, you'd just be guzzling my DEAD dick, rigor mortis and all.

The anger you are taking out on me is actually towards yourselves for letting this happen to yourselves, even if you won't acknowledge what you do to other people.

Try that hat on.

You did this to yourselves and to each other. Nobody forced you to stalk me for 3 years, nobody forced her to try to bust into my business and game, nobody forced you to ignore the discrepancies, nobody forced you to play into someone else's developing disassociative identity disorder, nobody forced you to enable it and the other unwell behaviors like stalking for years, nobody forced you to start bothering rando schizos on twitter I was trying to stabilize only for them to disappear after you got involved and they might be fucking dead, good work kids.

But hey, anything for that sweet, sweet attention, right? You. This is legit all you. You're mad at me because you refuse to look at yourselves, because you know where the hatred both comes from and where it truly belongs, and it's you guys. If you don't hate religiously on me even after all of this, all you have to hate is yourselves. And you know, that's why you guys have obsessive behaviors, you distract yourselves. With people, television, with roleplays (sometimes labeled "channeling" with LARP mode), with parasocial relationships, and then you take it out on people in fandom, and you never break down why you're so fucking obsessed lmao. And now that the show's been gone for years you have almost nothing to distract yourself from your own self-hate with, so your redirected hate now lands on me. I'm your new fandom, lmao. And her? Let's be real guys. You've used her as a personal toy the same way she used me and my identity as one.

Honestly, I think that realization, more than anything, is going to be the one that kills her. I think deep down she always knew she was faking along on the other nonsense, or she wouldn't have stolen and lied. But the idea that you're all like that? Every single one? A batch of abusive obsessed self-hating liars falling into deluluville? That her whole life is a lie, she lied one way, everybody lied back, nothing is true, nothing is real, even the origin of her relationship is based on lies, it's all lies, and the one thing she wanted is gone, because she disassociated that too, and now she's just sitting like... bald and crazy and godless in a cocaine bear fursuit crying into my old 2010 playlist and staring at redrawn art of my persona, several failed flights to the same dude in other languages, a remixed altar tribute of my old anime villain, my shit in GAELIC again, the rebirth flower i used for a attraction and magnetism spell meant for something else that's kept you lunatics glued to me enshrined with it, and hermanubis fursuit friday for the kibble bowl.

Christ on a cracker yall. How did you let it get to this. How is literally every single bitch in her life so selfish and senseless that they let it get here.

No seriously her entire altar and belief structure is literal delusional LARP shit. Leviathan is applied backwards cuz it's a knockoff. Anubis shows up on fursuit friday for arbitrary bullshit. Michael doesn't even really exist, the theatrical planned conjuring she tried failed even in showman presentation much less actual summoning but she never really thought it would be summoned, she thought that would be the day something would happen to LOOK like she did magic. And it didn't. Her version of Hermes is literally my personal persona. Her actual original deities she's left in the back seat and only references when over the coals AND I'm power charging that one in her internally. Supposedly a main logic brain, but nope!!! All these other things mentioned first that she supplanted that goddess with, because she refuses to acknowledge she actually supplanted herself with shadows of me.

Her entire belief system needs deconstructed and rebuilt, because even the few parts that are real or hers are integrated so thoroughly with the lies, she's lied over and projected over things that were real at times too, or inserted them the same as she inserts the others to speak for them, but not as them, she won't onboard that responsibility, it needs to stay third person and disassociated so it's a god's fault and directive and not hers. And now the threads are all tangled up together on how to unweave it.

And she literally can't bring herself to do this, because she realizes, she doesn't have the foggiest idea on where to even fucking start, and neither do the blind folks she's kept around her. She CAN'T rebuild a functional faith. The step of honesty destroys everything and after that, she doesn't know how to reconstruct it. A sad statement for someone that used to work in construction. But I guess it was construction and not psych or philosophy for a reason.

Like the man I followed up with today. It's ego that brought them here. And that ego is why she can't, and won't, Do The Thing. She negotiates that she's done this part or that part, but she won't do the central Thing. She can't. She keeps trying to haggle with the universe on what reality is. Dead ASS I will *KNOW* when she crucifies her ego and actually does it because she will come CRAWLING sobbing to apologize in absolution. It is literally part of the process, and she deleted the means to just do it on main without yet again bothering me in DM. As She Do, often by proxy.

And now? Now we're not accepting anything less than that. The conscious apology. Because until she reaches that state, she and hers will continue this bullshit.

You guys realize you probably killed Steve, right.

I haven't messaged him to check yet, because I don't know him that well, but if he's quiet another 2 days, I will. Because so help me self-god I will make sure he haunts the fuck out of all of you if it's what it looks like. Cuz it will have been from "posts every 2-5 minutes all day every day except when he sleeps, but slowly stabilizing in DM while walking him through it as far as he's capable and ready, becoming clearer and more lucid when anchored properly", to "gone for five days, then a week" right when you guys started fucking around.

[galahartbroken]

Alright. Fine. I'll throw my hat into the ring because I'm bystanding seeing suicide bait again as usual. I don't want to talk to people right now because nothing has EVER been simple.

I know what happened. I'm willing to blow up any last bridge I had. And I know my name isn't on this blog. This used to be a secret blog.

You know what I did? I was a teenager a long time ago and I became obsessed with a musician who used fake bisexuality to sell records, pushed a white supremacist idiocy (complete with neonazi stage character!) in the 1970s, claimed he was an aryan prince, and worse. I had a gf at the time who convinced me rape jokes were hilarious and groped me during school. She claimed to have multiple personalities and that some wanted to harm me and some wanted to rape me. She might even still be on mweor. I don't know because fuck everyone who doesn't already know that I don't hate them. But there you go. I'm a bad person and should have killed myself, you're right.

You're never going to have a full purge. Because the community full on went "I can excuse pedophilia but I draw the line at art theft" about Quaint.

Jessi got attacked by antisemitic bastards on the general boards before going on some sort of breakdown, getting attacked on tumblr, and then deciding to become a rad/fem. Sometimes there is no right side in a situation, but a LOT of you fuckers were defending the antisemitic attacks on the general board, so stop fucking pretending you're all holy.

A certain someone went on a suicide bait rampage once and cited trauma for justification as to why they should be allowed to send such bait. Said person also tried to yank me into a witchhunt over a salt blog and I am so very sorry to say that I fell for it, and it has ruined a friendship I had had for a long time with someone who helped me past an incident with a creep on mweor who very well could have been grooming me (I realized this after the creep was banned), as I was a minor at the time.

It was never ever ever a matter of trying to have a good community. It never was. From the beginning it was "we don't like everyone new coming in, make it invite only again Kah please" BEFORE THERE WERE 10K USERS. It never was a welcoming community. So if you're going to honestly try sending anons suggesting people kill themselves you ask yourself where you stood when a pedophile said they wanted to go into high school counseling or when there were nazi sympathizers ACTUALLY POSTING PRO-EUGENICS ON THE FUCKING GENERAL TALK BOARD. Oh wait. I'm sure a lot of you were the ones going "oh it's just an opinion, we have freedom of speech". Because it only ever was a popularity contest on mweor. Fuck all of you. Stop suicide baiting, I swear to gods everywhere that you do NOT want me knowing who is doing that. Because damn straight you WILL regret it.

But if you want to try directing it at me, go ahead. It's not like I have much to live for, with all the manipulation and garbage and serious health issues that are probably going to kill me soon anyway because I can't improve my offline situation.

[cheer-deforest-kelley]

This is the amazing day I met DeForest Kelley on the set of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

My boss was friends with a woman who worked on a few of the Star Trek movies. He introduced us and told her of my love for DeForest and she invited me to the set when De was filming.

I could not take photos as it was a closed set, but it didn’t matter as everything I saw was burned into my soul.

In late December 1988, I drove through the gates of Paramount Studios and parked right by the Star Trek Production trailer (Trailer 12). My head spun as I walked inside and was surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the making of a Star Trek movie. While sitting in my friend’s office, a voice on the walkie-talkie said that Bill and De were in their dressing rooms. My head exploded.

My friend walked me to the stage that was the Enterprise bridge and I got to sit in Captain Kirk’s chair (my feet didn’t touch the ground—literally and figuratively). I saw Director’s chairs with the names William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley embroidered on the backs. I would have loved to sit in De’s chair, but all I could do was touch the arm as we walked by.

The Stage Manager told us that Bill was on the New York street set, so we left the stage and walked to an outside set with a high stage. When we arrived, Bill was being strapped into a harness (which fit around his torso, waist and crotch and which would allow him to be lifted into the air). His legs were bare and very white (he was wearing gym shorts). He was making jokes and talking in a very high pitched voice as they tightened the straps around his nether region.

I forgot all about Bill when I heard a voice on a walkie-talkie say that De was stepping out of his trailer and would arrive in a moment. My heart started pounding and I started feeling very warm (it was 49 degrees outside— which by the way, is considered freezing for Southern California). I turned around and saw DeForest Kelley ambling towards me. He was wearing dark blue jeans, a dark green sweatshirt, a light blue jean jacket with a fleece collar, black cowboy boots and a multicolored scarf around his neck.

Tears welled up in my eyes. De said hello to a few people, hugged my friend and she then walked him over to me. She told him my name and said where I worked. De shook my hand for a very long time (eventually just holding my hand rather than shaking it) and called me a spy because I worked at different studio than Paramount. He commented on how cold it was and lifted his sweatshirt up to his chin to show us a fleece-lined shirt that a fan from Seattle made him. He was very charming and chatty; I said a few sentences but was mostly mute (just call me Gem).

After a few minutes, he said it was great to meet me, shook my hand again and went to talk to Bill (who was now wearing sweatpants with yellow stripes and a blue uniform tunic that was unlike their usual uniforms). They talked for a while, laughed a lot and then hugged goodbye. Bill (being the Director) had to leave to watch a previously filmed scene— he was driven away. Suddenly all the commotion on the set just stopped and much of the crew left, however De stayed.

He came over to talk to us again (OMG!!) and said “It’s always hurry up and wait.” I responded “That’s showbiz.” He laughed (thank God) and said “That’s right, you know it!” I found my voice this time when he asked about my job. We talked for at least 10 minutes— discussing the cold weather again, his being a little sad that production on the film was almost done (You’re sad De? Let me hug and console you.) and what we were respectively doing for New Year’s Eve. For De, it was was “Absolutely nothing except kiss my wife before midnight since we don’t stay up that late.”

A man holding a humungous binder came over and said he needed De. De said “Bye now” and left (sob!!). Of course I kept my eyes glued on him. After he conversed with the binder guy, he talked to some crew members, but when they left, he stood alone for about 5 minutes, during which he smoked two cigarettes (he had a very nice lighter). He looked around and found a random Director’s chair and plunked down in it (he first pounded the chair with his fist, to make sure it was sturdy-- it was an old looking chair).

Bill was gone for over an hour (lucky me). I was free to wander around the set, but I mostly stayed close and kept an eye on De; he talked to the crew, left once (potty break?), read a magazine and smoked-- sad to say he constantly smoked. He once looked over at me and gave me a big smile.

When Bill returned, they were ready to film the scene when Kirk falls from Yosemite’s El Capitan and McCoy berates him. There was a publicity photographer taking pictures of everything, including this scene (which happened to be printed in a magazine and is my first picture posted here).

The Assistant Director called for De, who stood up and unbuttoned his jacket. A woman appeared and De closed his eyes as she touched up his make-up and combed his hair (I wanted to comb his soft hair). Two big burly men then lifted De (by his outstretched arms and butt) onto the elevated stage; they lifted him so high and hard, he literally flew into the air before landing on the stage on one foot-- he caught his balance and then turned back to them laughing with his eyes wide. They both laughed nervously and said “Sorry De.”  He told them they were very strong.

On the stage was the bottom part of El Capitan made out of fiberglass. At the time, not knowing anything about the story, it just looked like a huge rock surrounded by dirt, boulders and trees. There were screens surrounding the stage that looked like blue sky with clouds.

They connected wires to Bill’s body harness. He was lifted just off the ground and then quickly hung upside down where he swung around loosely. De came over and bent down with his face very close to the upside down Bill and they spoke quietly between themselves; De then stepped back and Bill called “Action!” Kirk said “Hi Bones, mind if we drop in for dinner?” and laughed like he was a little drunk. De took a step forward, bent down and McCoy started yelling at the slightly twirling Kirk. Kirk patted McCoy’s ears and squeezed his cheeks, laughing and making little noises. They quickly filmed the scene twice. The first time went fine, but the second time, they both began laughing and De said to the upside down Bill, “Kiss me.” They quickly kissed on the lips (I know, I know!!) and the entire crew cracked up. Bill called “Cut!” and someone else yelled “Lunch—45 minutes.” De said goodbye to the crew, got into a car, lit a cigarette and was driven away.

I had to get back to work. I walked (floated actually) to my car and drove out of the studio gate, ecstatic that one of my wildest dreams had come true.

A month later, my friend gave me my very own Final Frontier cast & crew jacket (similar to the one McCoy wore in the campfire scene), a photo of the cast & crew (Leonard’s and De’s smiles are absolutely adorable), some Star Trek notecards and a cast publicity photo.

Sorry this is so long. It’s taken from a note I typed up when I got back the the office that day. I didn’t want to forget a thing.

[happyselves]

Pacify Him { Daniel Ricciardo x reader } /// WARNING EXPLICIT ///

Chapter : One shot Rating : Mature / Explicit / NSFW Words : 3,622 words

“Pacify her, she is getting on my nerves, hold your bitch before I push her away. You’re free to bring anyone here as long as they are behaving, but her … I don’t judge the person you are seeing, obviously I could give two shits about it but please tell her to calm herself down … This isn’t professional.”

You were fuming as you entered Daniel’s driver room,as his PR assistante you never interfere in his frequentation, but when it was impacting the reputation of the team and bugging people visiting the motorhome you had to step him. You calm yourself after a few breaths, stepping aside from Daniel a bit before looking at him again.

“ I didn’t mean to come that hard on you Daniel, but please you know how this is important right. You always ask for my honest opinion and there it is, I didn’t mean it for it to step out this hard on you but I can’t apologize for my words when I was thinking about them. She is toxic for you, she brings the bad in you when you are someone adorable usually. What is happening to you that you don’t trust me enough anymore to tell me when something is going wrong ? And before you are shushing me off, you know I am right, you and I are a package deal. “

He was defeated, not even looking at you, his whole body was shutting down and his legs were giving up on him. He takes the closest seat near him, almost falling and barely able to sit gracefully like he used to do.

“ I don’t know … I am so lost, I keep doing stuff wrong, I can’t find my soul anymore, I’m not very myself recently, I can’t even find my smile being genuine in the morning when I wake up in the morning. I’m putting a mask for people to see, but I’m like an empty shell. This bitch as you call her is only here to distract me and try to make me feel alive. She is nothing and it was a mistake to bring her… “

You were very concerned about Daniel’s attitude, it was the first time since you have known him that he worries about you right now. You were kneeling in front of him, trying your best not to invade his personal space. It’s something new for you, not invading it, you never ever thought he needed one but he looked so fragile, then you were under the impression that if you were touching him he would vanish into dust.

“ You are scaring me, what’s happening, is it the team ? Something personal ? You know you can tell me everything … “ A long silence got installed, your eyes were starting to water by all the pain you were seeing in him. You thought he wouldn’t open up, he was shutting you out by the way his body was curling up and turning to avoid your gaze on him. He was protecting himself like a kid that was terrified of a big stormy night.

You wanted to be the one to reassure one, but you were practically sure you were part of the problem. You stand quietly, ready to leave him alone in his driver room because there was nothing you could do if he wasn’t letting you.

His reaction was imminent, the driver inside of him was popping up and his muscles memories acting for him as it was his turn to get up and close the space between you, shutting the opened door. You yelped out of surprise before feeling his pressing body against you. You were stuck between the wooden door and his warm torso. Feeling his heretic heartbeat pounding in his chest. You couldn’t speak, you were too shocked for that. You and him were friends, close friends but not that physically close. You never cross that boundaries, but today was different, you felt it was.

The seconds looked like hours waiting for the confirmation of your assumption. Daniel seems to be as surprised as you to have acted the way he did, it was too late to back away now.

“ Don’t leave … don’t walk out that door “ His forehead was now resting on the back of your head, slightly not to hurt you and put weight on it. You wanted to ignore all the fuzzy feelings flooding in your whole body, but you couldn’t. Having him so close to you awakens a deep feeling hidden in you. “ The bitch will go away I promise, I am sorry “

Why was he apologizing to you, he didn’t disappoint anyone, yet. You weren’t even mad, you learn better to not judge someone's fucked up attitude when you could recognize the coping mechanics of someone keeping a secret and trying to turn the attention away from himself for nobody to catch the true meaning behind these actions. Does that make it acceptable ? It was each individual to have their own opinion. It was annoying you, that Daniel was suffering but preferred to distract himself and run away from his problem instead of talking to you or anyone else.

You close your eyes, your own forehead finds the cold surface of the door, his own head following yours not breaking the contact. HIs hands find the side of your hip.

“ The bitch isn’t the problem isn’t it ? “ You asked without any certainty he will give you a proper answer to that. His thumbs were caressing the skin of your hips through the tissues of your teamwear shirt, drawing a circle. You were sure he didn’t even notice he was doing it, his body was only responding to one mood and it was the auto-pilot one.

You were searching for breath and the driver’s room was starting to get tighter by the meanings, you were about to suffocate if the situation in which you both were wasn’t going to change fast enough.

“ You are the only one that can take away my pain … “ It could pass for a simple sentence if it wasn’t so Daniel, you had learned the code of conduct of Daniel Ricciardo and that … that was a declaration. “ It was you and I before, remember ? “

You were missing a piece of puzzle here, what was he talking about, is he drunk ? You never act differently around him, nothing changes, it never does. Yes it was him and you, always have been.

“ What are you talking about Daniel, you are confusing me “

“ Why did it change, the two of us … “ He was responding to your question by another one, like he was having his own conversation in his head, you were tempted to let him speak his mind to discover the bottom of the problem.

“ It didn’t change Daniel … “ You were trying as much as you could to put everything together, in vain.

“ It did change, I can’t look at you the same way as before … “ There it was, a little clue. If only he knew that it has been a long time since you have been able to look at him the way he used to when you meet him the first time. It was more than annoying you that he had brought someone with him for the weekend, more than it should. You were fuming when you saw the unknown name on the list of guests and asked someone to lighten it for you.

“ I know you are lying, why would you react the way you just did before if you weren’t “ You wanted to look at him, but his body was still pressing you against the cold wood. You had so much to say and him as well, all this unspoken tension you both tried to make yourself believe was a liar. You were both frauds, your friendship switched into something more months ago after a drunk night. Nothing happened that night, only looks were exchanged. The battle you both had as a joke at first turned into something way more deeper than you both were expecting and when you both tried to pull out of it, the damage had been done. That night was an epiphany moment for you, awaking the true desire between you. Your bodies couldn’t lie, the need for them to touch, the flaming sensation of his skin against yours like it was happening right now. Everything happened before and since that night, it never was the same thing for Daniel and everything went downhill.

You move your hand, posting on the door and Daniel understands the message and detaches himself from you. You slowly turn, god he was a mess and you bet you weren’t better.

“ You bewitched me that night, seduced me with your eyes. It was a game at first and now look at us, where is the game now ? “ He wasn’t accusing you of anything, it was a simple statement, an understanding between you. Two people were playing the game and two people ended up losing.

“ That wasn’t my intention, I tried to pull away, it was too late “ Who sounds defeated now, the tables have turned and he brings you down with him to the bottom of his misery. A couple bruises on your heart that he created was all you needed to have the proof that at least you two had shared a moment. It had to stay professional, but as his face was closing up the gap, all your convictions were being erased one by one.

You didn’t wait for him, you joined him in the middle, your lips connected quicker than he had anticipated, your eyes shut down in synchronisation. You didn’t who reacted first and kissed the other one back. That lip was perfect, far from it, it was messy just like him, but it was passionate. His teeth were teasing your bottom lips, asking permission to tear the flesh of it apart. You moaned when his tongue was inviting you to open your mouth. The taste of your two saliva was so intoxicated that you almost fell and he had to catch you with both of his arms, supporting you from your lower back. His smile came back to life against your mouth, letting out a childish giggle and you hit his arm to make him stop making fun of your lack of stability.

HIs reaction was quick, if you couldn’t stand up anymore he would use that door to help you. He pushes you toward it and your back gets lean on it, his arms unlocking themselves to explore your body, finding where they were before except this style the hem of your shirt came loose, letting the palm of his hand directly enter in contact with your skin, sending you shivers.

You had forgotten your environnement, too busy burying your own hands in his dark curls, bringing him closer as much as possible. Your teeth were still clenching and air was starting to lack in your lounge. You didn’t want to let go, scared for the reality to be brought back. You have been dreaming for months about this. Having the fantasy in your head when the night was setting and the moon shining.

DSaniel didn’t let you think for another second as he used this little moment of rest when you stop kissing him for a second, to lift you up, grabbing your ass, his palm firmly around it. He moves you and remembered to lock the door before turning back his focus on you as he finally break the kiss to look at you. Lust could be seen all over your two faces. His face was not showing any sadness anymore, only mischievousness and happiness. If you knew that all you needed to do to bring back the Daniel you knew was to let your own desire take over you, you would have done it sooner.

He took the direction of the massage table beside him, putting you on the edge before finding your neck and kissing the soft skin. You let a snort escape when his scruff tickles a sensitive spot behind your ear. He laughs against the skin and the vibration changes the snort into a whining complaint. He traveled all the way down to your clavicle but the fabric of your shirt was stopping him. He didn’t wait for your approval to remove it, the force of the removal making you lift your arm automatically. They fall back on his neck when he throws the piece of tissue somewhere you will have a hard time finding back.

That was extremely hot from him and by your legs starting to spread a little bit and the heat you were starting to feel between them, he noticed acknowledge the effect he had on you and smirk, visibly proud of himself. It was not the time to hide yourself even if you could feel embarrassed, this man in front of you was everything you had dreamt of and it had the talent to make you feel confident of your body, just by the way he looks at every detail of your body.

You were eager to let him take the situation under his control and only his, not doing anything and just being the prize he was working on to have for so long. All the torment, the torture and the conviction he will never have you, he deserved it. You will get your prize another time … it was only the beginning for you.

He was taking his time with you,no matter how much his desire was waking up, he had one mission and one mission only; your pleasure. You could see the forming bulge in his pants and felt for him, imagining how inconfortable it must be for him.

It all went to dust when his hands found their way under your bra cupping your breast and his lips traveled your chest as he was kissing his way down. He was leaving wet kisses and blowing air on it, goosebumps started to appear quickly, head being jolted back.

You wish you knew what to do with your hands but they were gripping the leather of the massage table so hard your knuckles were getting white by the second. He didn’t seem to care as his hands found your pants, he pushed you a bit behind, making unspeakable demands for you to lift your ass so he could slide the piece of clothes down for it to join your shirt somewhere in the room.

You could barely keep your eyes open as you witnessed the extremely hot scene in front of you. Daniel between your legs, keeping the same pace with you, kissing his way up toward the inner of your thighs. You sensed his teeth nibbling your skin, licking every spot afterward, like he was trying to heal the pain he just caused you. Little did he know that pain you were feeling was arousing you even more, your panty was starting to visibly licked your excitement. It was feeling like torture, you thougth that Daniel would be like the others partner you had, your skin would get used to the touch after a moment and the horniness would stop at a certain level, thinking you had reach the maximal of his possibility. How wrong were you when you were on the verge to cum without him actually pleasuring you in this area. You knew it was coming, Daniel kisses were more hungry, teasing the flesh of your thigh turning red by the bite and the kisses.

His lips were swallowing, getting bigger by the unusual exercise they were carrying on, his tongue would feel numb if it was for the desire he had to taste you, letting it survive for a couple minutes still. You watch him, leaving a kiss on the wet fabric of your underwear, your eyes were blurrying by the anticipation of him finally finding your clit. His teeth end up moving the piece of dentelle that was the last barrier between you and him.

It was like he was home and belonged there, here with you, right in this instance, it was you and him against the world. Forgetting your environnement you let a cry escape a little bit too loud as soon his thick tongue was licking arousal. You thought that seeing the start was a legend, a fantasy, but Daniel had made you become reality as your head was banged back, finding the cold wall, your neck was stretching so hard that the blood was lacking in your brain making you see some sparkling spot. He needed you to stay quiet and as he tried to put one of his hands on your mouth he ended up finding the neck instead, squeezing it enough for you to moan his name as he was continuing his exploration of your pussy.

Your hands finally leave the grip of the massage table to find their new place around Daniel's arm. You were stretched out in front of him, so vulnerable, just for him and you were unable to give a proper reaction to being buried in the pleasure he was giving you. His tongue was teasing your entrance, making it hardening, pushing himself in you as you will. The thumb of his free hand was moving in a slow circle around your clit. He didn’t know the dilemma you were encountering, keeping your eyes shut and your head back or fighting his firm hand on your neck for you to see him eating you alive. You sure had to make a decision quickly because you were soon to arrive at the edge before you will let the orgasm consume your whole body.

By the sound you were making, Daniel had the confirmation he was doing everything in the right way for you. He never experienced such joy to make someone lose their composure due to his actions. He was feeling proud that he was finding it out with you. Every woman he had been with didn’t sound or look as beautiful and real as you spread in front of him right now. He could spend hours tasting you, how good you were for him, how reactive and sensitive your skin was becoming after being torn apart by him. How the thought of fucking you with his tongue had haunt his dream for the past couples of month now, but the reality of this was surpassing all his expectations. He wanted to be rough with you, all the dirty thoughts came back rushing into his brain, overwhelming him and sending twitch to his dick. Rather than being dominant, it was all about showing you how much he had wanted you and how willing he was to give you anything you wanted, because you deserved it. You deserved for him to make you forget every man you had sex with. Replacing all the bad and good memories with his own. Changing all the faces in your dream, planting his own in the own DNA of your imagination.

He could feel that you were holding it together for it to last longer, even if that meant losing the self-control you had in you. Your wall was tightening around his fat tongue. You were completely losing your mind at the foreword of sensation throwing at you at the same time. You were sure it was too much for one person and you could care less about the verbal explosion you might have in a couple of seconds. Daniel however, foreseeing your release, put two fingers in your mouth holding your jaw from your mouth, your lips closed themself around them and your tongue was soon relaxing on them. You bite his knuckles when his tongue replaces his thumb in one flick of the tongue, finally letting cum. Your legs were shaking and Daniel had to hold you for you not to hurt yourself, your eyes were rolling back as your orgasm hit you in small waves, sending you jolts of electricity around your body. Your brain was shutting down, the stifled moan never reaching the exterior of your mouth, dying down on Daniel’s fingers in sensual vibration that made his bulge react, begging to be taken care of.

It tooks you minutes to come back to the open world, Daniel’s eyes not leaving you for a second, admiring his work. You slowly come back to reality and automatically search for him, missing his touch already. Your eyes were still not open when you found the collar of his shirt and pulled him rather violently, crashing your lips together, taking a taste of your own juice still lingering on his lips. You sigh in the kiss, reassured that what just happened wasn’t just a dream and that you were far needing to wake up from it.You rest your forehead on his, the wave of pleasure was still leaving some after effects on you including dizziness.

You had to clear your throat as you realised no sound was coming it out the first time you tried to speak.

“ That bitch needs to go, tell her you replace her with a more living version. “

You couldn’t help but laugh at your own words and Daniel was smiling at the way you just described yourself.

“ She’s already gone, she was already gone before you burst into my room.

You didn’t know how to respond to that, but one thing for sure is that you will have a hard time making people outside of this room say that nothing happened between the two of you. At least you would not pissed them off and you were able to pacify him at any time.

MASTERLIST

[wildlyglittering]

The Next Life

I haven’t posted anything in a while but I decided to write a Nesta/ Cassian reincarnation AU fic because I kinda love those and felt like these two slot nicely into that idea. 

It’s a bit long so I don’t know if this means it will be too long on Tumblr but I’ve posted it in its entirety here as well as included a link to Ao3 in case people find that easier.

The Next Life - Ao3

Hope you enjoy!

***

The Time of Blight and Dark Waters

They came for her in the night.

This moment was inevitable as soon as the crops had failed some months prior, their leaves mottled with black mould. The goats died a few weeks afterwards, lying on their sides in the fields with their stomachs bloated.

In those following weeks, when she trudged down the dirt track from her hut towards the village well, the villagers huddled in groups, whispering together and glancing her way. Demon, they hissed, witch.

She wanted to tell them their misfortune was nothing to do with her. She didn’t cause the rain to stop falling or for the blight to spread and their stupidity at not stopping their herds from eating infected crop was not her doing.

Still, she said nothing and the whispers continued. Soon they began to block her path to the well, even though, like them, her pail pulled up more sludge than water.

That morning five men stood before her with crossed arms and black eyes glaring.  Witch, they spat and she spat back, her temper burning a hole in her belly. She swore at them in a language they didn’t understand and made signs with her fingers.

Your mothers, she had said, fucked your pigs and birthed you.

They recoiled from her, muttering words about curses and she hated them even more.

He hadn’t been amongst the men. A piece of her heart would shatter if he had.

Her lover was one of their warriors and the first time he’d walked through the mud and wet leaves of the woods to her hut was to ask her to use magic on his sword so it would strike true in battle.

She’d laughed until tears leaked from her eyes.

“Oh, you think I’m a witch,” she said, wiping them away. “This explains so much about your people and how they shudder when they see me. What’s the word they use – daemonicus - that means witch, does it?”

“Demon.”

“Sadly, I am neither. If I had that sort of power, I wouldn’t be living in a leaky one roomed hut having escaped a plague. Please stay though, you entertain me.”

He was rough-hewn, as though his gods had carved him from rock and poured flame into his veins and the fear the other warriors of his village quivered with when she was present was non-existent in him.

From that day onwards, when she walked the dirt track to the well and back, she felt his eyes on her. One stifling summer day he drew her pail for her and carried it through the thick of the woods so she invited him in and asked what purpose he served his village.

“I fight,” he told her, “I protect us from attack and if we need to attack first, I give the command.”

“Who is there to attack? All that exists are poor villagers in mud ridden villages. Drink your tea and don’t talk to me about the nonsense men involve themselves in.”

From that day onwards he became her regular visitor and sat on her rickety chair to sip her teas and trade eggs from her one hen for thin slices of dried goat meat. The villagers didn’t like her but at that time they tolerated her. She was useful at least, with her foraged berries and herbs.

They sent him to trade because he was their protector and he agreed because he liked to look at her. That was no guesswork on her part, it was what he’d told her.

“You are beautiful,” he had said, “but they think you’re like a nettle. You look like you heal but you could do great harm.”

“Nettles also heal,” she replied, “but you need to take it right.”

Then, one random evening, he arrived at dusk before the night poured in.

Rain pounded the slabs of stone and bounced into the air as she stood outside, letting the water soak her skin and her hair. Her palms were up and her mouth was open as she collected the raindrops on her tongue.

When she brought her head down, he was standing by her gate – eerily silent for a man of his height and build and his long black hair clung to his jaw the way her golden-brown strands clung to hers.

His eyes were darker than usual as they followed a raindrop which slid from the corner of her mouth down her throat and onto her collarbone where it dripped between her breasts.

She went back inside her hut but left the door wide open.

He came into her, over and over, not only that night but many others. His skin, darker than hers, painted a picture against the flickering fire as sweat gleamed on his body and pooled into the hollow of his throat. His musk coated her like perfume.

When they lay together, they moved their bodies in ways she thought would make his god’s blush.

Sometimes he lay upon her and at other times she straddled him; pale legs over dark, broad thighs while he gripped her by the waist. They’d also coupled the way animals in the field did, her on hands and knees on the fur beside the fire, their shadows dancing on the wall with him behind her.

One evening, as she curled into his side, his fingers trailing patterns on her skin he told her he loved her. After that the thought of him sleeping alone in his bed in the village while she slept alone in the woods hurt her chest.

But that was what they did.

At night she dreamt of a world where he was surrounded by stocky shouldered boys with black hair and dark eyes playing with wooden swords while she stepped into his open arms, her belly round.  

Of course, it was while she dreamt that they came for her.

She opened the door and went to them freely but she had hoped he would be present, fighting his way through the gathering men. There was no sight of him. Wherever he was, he was not hers.

The well was the only source of drinking water but not the only water. A deep and murky river ran outside of the village boundary where the children played a game called ‘screaming pike’ named after the tong teethed creatures which lurked in the dark.

The moon was hidden behind dark clouds, as though it was ashamed to bear witness, and instead her last moments were lit by the burning flames of the villager’s torches. Those present stared in silence as she was gripped by the arms of two men and dragged into the water.

She looked around the crowd; he still hadn’t come.

One of the men hissed into her ear. “If you’re looking for someone, you’ll be disappointed. We told him to stay away. Don’t worry, one of our women will console him and he’ll soon forget you. In fact, he probably already has.”

The other man laughed and they hauled her into the river depths where something slimy wound around her legs. She shivered in her nightdress as the cold water seeped through the fabric and the further away from the bank they waded, the less she could see.

She would die in the dark with the nails of these men digging into her arms. Beads of blood bloomed and tricked down her skin, dripping into the water.

When she said she was no witch she had been telling the truth but when the pale moon crept out and illuminated the dark waters around her, she imagined it whispering to her, granting her a wish.

I want to see him one last time.

The waters shifted and images shattered and reformed for her eyes only. She expected to see him drinking his mead and lounging before a fire, waiting until his people returned and declared her dead.

But what she saw made her cry out and twist in the arms of her captors.

He was naked and pinned face down on a table with his wrists and ankles bound. His blood was so thick and dark as it pooled on the floor beneath him it looked black.

The beautiful skin she had admired in the firelight was sliced and flayed and his back was ripped open and pulled apart with meticulous care. His ribs were splayed and his lungs were hanging in the exposed air behind him in a grotesque mockery of wings.

The men moved behind her now; one grabbed a fistful of her hair digging his fingernails into her scalp while the other gripped her hands and twisted them behind her.

The moon called to her again, promising another wish.  

“I bind you to me,” she whispered to a man who was no longer alive. She had seconds before her face was shoved into the water.  “We will find each other again, in another time and another life.”

 The Time of Battle Camps and Silver Flames

The spilled blood of her enemies sang the song of war.

She sliced her blade across their throats and listened as her dagger hummed the sweetest melodies. But ending their lives wasn’t enough; she wanted to occupy the nightmares of those remaining so they woke, fretful and exhausted, with thoughts of her in their heads. Her rage burnt so violently inside her that she could live all her days without a fire.

They had passed a village to discover it had its very own magic wielder - a male. He was tall and strong and which meant her men first mistook him for a warrior, their guards down for anything else.

He was an unfortunate combination of physical strength and magical power and successfully killed five of her people within minutes. He’d snapped one neck with his bare hands before raising his fists, silver flames wreathing around them as her people burned until all that was left was the dust that had once been their bones.

What she did next had been a dirty trick.

He’d raised his hands towards her and she’d let her hood fall back before dropping to her knees. Please, she’d begged, please don’t hurt me. She’d widened her eyes and let tears slide down her face.

He hadn’t expected a woman, that much was obvious, and he faltered, the pause undoing him. Her men approached from behind hitting him across the head and he slumped to the ground, blood oozing from the gash as his hands were chained with the dampeners.

The people of his village were long gone, he’d bought them enough time to get away but not enough time for himself. Her boot nudged his ribs.

“Commander?” It was a question for her. “What do we do with him?”

“Keep him comfortable.”

When he woke, he’d been tied securely to a wagon and spent his first days forced to walk across tough terrain while the rest rode their horses. She’d ignored him, leaving him in the care of her second-in-command until she was ready.

When she was, a week after they’d taken his village, she entered the tent he was held in and immediately gagged at the overpowering stench.

“What the-”

The magic wielder had been stripped to the waist and forced to stand with ropes stringing him upright from each wrist to the poles on either side of the tent; a crucifixion without the nails.

His legs sagged and his head slumped forward, long black hair cascading over his face. His back was hunched and she saw what had been a solid lump of muscle was now torn into a pulpy mess with blood and sweat mingling onto the floor.

Bile flooded her mouth.

This had not been her intention.  

She stared at his pale face, the scabbed blood in his hair. He slumped so far forward it was hard to imagine the same tall, broad male who had stood a foot taller than her. She exhaled and his eyelids fluttered.

No magic existed in him in this state, not with his hands still bound by the dampener cuffs and with his back so bloody. Still, she stepped back when his eyes opened and stared at her.

All his people had hazel eyes but none had looked as hard as his. He straightened, driven by some will inside him and drew himself to full height.

He ground his teeth as the shredded skin on his back split open further and his fingers flexed. She knew he wanted to break her neck with his bare hands.

“This isn’t what I wanted for you,” she said, “I told my second to make you comfortable. We don’t treat-”

The wet warmth of his spit mixing with the slime of his blood landed on her face and dribbled down her cheek.

“I deserve that.”

She’d had him untied, drugged and dragged to her own tent before laying him face down so she could work on his back.

Strips of herbs and gauze were lain across his flesh. His wounds would heal but he would scar, his back permanently imprinted with his torture. She sewed up the wound on his head, stripped him and bathed him, watching as cloth after cloth came away coated with blood and grime.

She draped him with linens and left him to dry by the fire behind her until his groan told her he was awake.

“Why have you helped me?” His voice was hoarse.

She stiffened. “I never intended for you to get hurt. I’m not a monster.”

His responding laugh was mirthless. “You heal me to keep me in slavery. I would rather be dead.”

“You’re a not a slave.”

“So, I’d be free to go then? As soon as I’m healed, I can walk out of your camp, undisturbed by your men?”

She faced him, the flames flickering long shadows across the ground to the pallet where she’d left him. To her shock he was sitting up. The drugs forcibly dripped into his mouth should have rendered him prone.

He is strong, she thought, I shall need to remember that.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said, “We can work together. If you agree to-”

He laughed again, a hacking sound, “Agree to be your slave?”

“No. Not a slave, I’ve already told you-”

She walked towards him, palms up in an attempt to show she was harmless, but it was stupid to have thought appearing mild would convince him she was.

He leapt from the pallet when she was in striking distance and her feet were pulled from the ground, her stomach swooping as she fell through the air and landed on her back with a crack. The breadth of him loomed above her until all she could see was his eyes which were so dark they were almost black.

His strong hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed, her lungs burning as she tried to take a breath. Some quiet voice in her mind reminded her of what it was to drown.

Another voice scolded her. He can’t use his magic and drugs are still flowing in his blood. Prove you’re a commander. Consider this your only warming.

Her flailing legs reared and with one sharp swift lurch, her knee connected with his groin.

He grunted and doubled over but it was enough to cause his hands to relax and enough for her to grab soft ash from the fire and fling it into his eyes. He let go, grabbing his face and falling onto his back, wincing in agony from the two places on his body where she caused it.  

He writhed on the ground while she coughed for air and when she could stand it was on quivering legs. This time, when she nudged his ribs with her boot, she did so hard.  

“You stay in here with me,” she said, her voice cracking. “You come to battlegrounds with me. Everything you do, you do with my eyes on you. You will sleep, eat, and perform your magic except now you do so under my heel.”

He tried to grab her ankle but she was quick, now prepared.

During the weeks that passed since that day she reflected on her lucky escape, thankful he had been woozy from drugs and injury but she knowing she couldn’t afford her guard to be down again.

He’d split his wounds back open so she’d bandaged him again, with less tenderness than before, not caring if she left bruises.

She wasn’t completely without mercy and managed to cut his hair, obtain him fresh clothes and even allowed him a blanket for the pallet he was tied to at night. She could feel his eyes on her in the dark, the hate pulsing from them as she slept over an arm’s length away.

His back healed and as more times passed the wounds turned from raised red welts into silver scars, stretching across the expanse of his muscle. When he arched his back dressing one morning, she imagined them as the beginning of newly formed wings trying to burst from his skin.

A thought often niggled in the back of her mind, something painful which she wanted to claw from her memory with her nails but it was too far to reach.

Thankfully, he didn’t try and kill her again but every night they glared at each other across the tent. One night, while she wiped the fresh blood from her blade, she couldn’t bear his stare any longer.

“What?” she snapped.

“Why can’t you let innocent people live their lives in peace? You don’t live in our homes or merge with our families. You destroy and move on, you and your nomads.”

“Nomads?” The noise from her mouth was a mockery of laughter. “You think that’s what we are?”

She walked to where he sat next to the fire and pointed the end of her blade at his throat, against his voice box. “We’re homeless. We have nothing, and that’s because of you and your previous people. You think these villages are yours?”

She spat into the flames. “They were ours until you came with your magic and turned my people; my father, my mother, my sisters, into slaves. Those of us left are too stained for the villages now but we certainly won’t let you keep them.”

His eyes bore into her face, his mouth a tight line. Silence.

“Eat your fucking dinner,” and she turned, blade in hand and walked away.

That night while she failed to sleep, the moon shone through a gap in the fabric of the tent. Let me show you something, it seemed to say, let me remind you.

But she’d had enough of memories.

She’d had two baby sisters once. She remembered their small hands in hers as they ran into the darkness of the forest, their father whispering to run. She’d tried to shove them into the same gap between two trees but they wouldn’t fit and she’d pulled at her youngest sister’s chubby toddler arms, desperate to hide her somewhere else.

Her sister cried out and refused to move.

Branches snapped as the invaders moved closer, the silver flames dancing around their hands illuminating their way. The choice was one a child shouldn’t have had to make. One sister, screaming and refusing to move and another, trying to stay quiet, squeezed into a gap in the roots.

If she didn’t act fast all of them would have been discovered.

She dragged her hiding sister away, fleeing into the trees as the baby shrieked into the darkness, her trusting arms outstretched towards the adults coming her way.

The sacrifice counted for nothing. They’d climbed a rock face but her other sister slipped and fell, the sharp crack of a child’s body against the rocks echoing through the trees.

The silver lights had followed the noise but she’d squeezed her small, thin body into a slither of space and shook against the cold stone as the others found a little girl’s broken body.

When morning came, she crept from underneath the rock to find her family gone and strangers living in her village. Charred ground stretched outwards, silver and shimmering like damage from no fire she’d seen before.

No, she told the moon. I don’t want to be reminded.

In the space of the tent, he shifted, just as awake as she was.

“Your sisters,” he said, his voice soft and she wondered if mind reading was another of his tricks. “Were they turned into slaves or was that a lie?”

“They never became slaves,” she replied, listening to his short-lived sigh of relief. “Your people murdered them.”

After that he no longer glared at her across the tent and she hated that now he was riddled with pity. In her heart she understood they played a game that neither had started.

Still, when they came upon larger villages, ones which needed more power than her men had, she used him. When the dampers binding his wrists were removed and when a blade was pressed against his heart it meant he had no choice but to weave the silver flames.

One night, he stared blankly into the fire in the middle of the tent, and she realised she didn’t like this broken version of him. She would rather his hands found their way to her throat again then have him like this.

She was at a loss to comfort him, didn’t know if the person forcing your hand could then take it into their own and hold it tight. Her words were meaningless but her desperation was overwhelming.

Without stopping to think about her actions she stood before him, loosening her hair to let the golden-brown strands fall upon her shoulders. When she held his gaze, she slipped out of her tunic until she was bare.  

Something flittered across his face, a hint of remembrance before his expression drifted to vitriol.

Good, she would happily stoke his hatred if it meant he felt something.

“I would rather kiss death then be your lover.”

She walked around the fire to kneel beside him, the firelight flickering across her body. “Who says I’m not both to you?”

He kissed her. His lips were soft and warm and surprisingly tender that she wanted to sob.

There was nothing tender about what followed, with him fucking her like he wanted to break her. There were no whispered promises against her heart, no clinging embrace by the fire. Not that night not any that followed.

One of those nights after they’d coupled, he sat in front of the flames, his back shining with sweat and finally spoke to her. “I hate you.”

“I know.”

“You’re the only female I’ve seen in these camps.”

“Well, you’re the only male magic wielder I’ve met.”

He turned to her with dark eyes. “I was born this way; I’ve always known magic. Why are you here?”

As a child she’d ended up running from her stolen village until her feet bled. When she found remnants of her people it was within a battle camp. She was small and useful for shimmying into cracks and when she grew older, she became adept at wrapping bandages and sewing up flesh.

When she grew even older, they had other uses for her.

“This is all I’ve known too.”

The camp marched onwards as did time, with him and her in their tent fucking in the night and hating in the day.

When she began to spend her mornings vomiting, he knelt beside her gathering her hair. When her stomach was empty long after she should have been full, he gave her his meat and bread. She grew slow and sluggish and if he wanted to kill her then now was his chance when even her blade felt too heavy to lift.

Instead, he observed her with guarded eyes.

“How old were they?” he asked one evening while braiding her hair. “When your sisters died?”

She tensed. “Three and five. I was six. I don’t know why I survived but perhaps it was to do this, to have my justice.”

“Maybe there was another reason,” he said and his hand drifted down her back and around to her stomach where he rested his palm.

“No,” she said, standing quickly. “There is no other reason.”

Her dreams grew fitful until one night she dreamt she moon screamed at her to run. She was awoken by hands dragging her from her tent by her feet and the screams which followed were her own.  

Her camp was bathed in flames, not of hot reds and oranges but the ice-cold fury of silver. Her men screamed and burnt in the distance while she was pulled forward and forced to a post, tied by two men from his people who clawed at her arms.

A dark-haired magic wielder stood before her; silver flames flickering from her fingertips.

“Please,” she pleaded, “you can kill me but wait a while. He can have it and then you can take my life.” She had started to cry, her breath coming out in pants, barely able to choke the words out. “Please wait, I haven’t even felt it yet, it hasn’t quickened, it hasn’t-”

The woman either didn’t understand or didn’t care and her silver flames grew higher.

A yell rose over the roar of fire and he was running toward her, his own flames dancing.

His could have killed the woman, the magic wielder whose powers matched his own, but of course he wouldn’t. Instead, he reached her to wrap his arms around her just in time for the flames to kiss their bodies.

They would be better, she thought, but not in this life. In another time, another life.

 The Time of Bog Water and Dragon Riders

Her words echoed through the wind and across the water until they rattled around her visitor, until they were good and sharp and stabbed into his brain. She never once moved her mouth.

I like the dead things, dragon rider. Like calls to like and there is nothing I like more than my children.

The foul water sloshed against his legs as he lifted his feet from the muddy bed to stop from sinking and she could see the whites of his eyes, the way they scanned those who surrounded him.

She’d first had pity; poor thing, so low in rank to be the one selected to come here - but then she saw from the insignia on his armour she was wrong. High General. Maybe he wanted to see her for himself.

The figures surrounding him held out their weapons and he raised his empty palms in a gesture of peace.

“Ancient bog witch,” he said, “I only wish to speak with you. You have dominion over the dead and my men have need of your power.”

She cocked her head the way a curious pup would and all her children tilted theirs. Her visitor’s eyes widened but he continued. “I come to negotiate your terms.” His shifting legs churned the mire and a head bobbed to the surface along with one long white bone.

If he was repulsed, he hid it well.

“I ask for a moment of your time and an undisturbed exit. I have heard you named as the bog witch, the hag of the murk and I-”

Her children, in all their states of decay, guarded her and with one twitch of her finger, they would be upon him. He was doing so well until that last part of his speech but she chose to be gracious and with a nod of her head, the mist which left her a silhouette to his view, parted.

As did his mouth.

His words fell away, drifting somewhere between the dead space of the ground and the air.

She smiled with teeth which was less a smile and more a display of aggression.

She was beautiful, that had been told to her endlessly in court. The women huddled in groups and ignored her when she tried to speak to them and the men considered her a game, like they were hunters and she a deer. I am no deer, she told them, I am the wolf but they laughed and said she was too beautiful to be a witch.

When the Queen was sick and she was brought to the King she saw how his eyes darkened, how he wet his lips with his tongue and rubbed his lower stomach with his palm. Her duty was to attend the royal bedchamber and cure the Queen but instead the King had pressed her against the wall while his wife lay sweating.

It is your duty to please your King.

He would have taken her as he pleased had she not used her magic, had she not run to the wastelands between borders where the waters were dank and the air was thick. The place where the dead loved her.

“Continue,” she said and this time she spoke out loud. “You were in the middle of calling me a hag?”

He puffed out noise which she took for a laugh of disbelief. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“Not ancient enough for you?”

“Nor nearly ugly enough.”

“Your attempt at flattery is poor.”

He smiled but not in the way she smiled. His was a smile filled with humour. He was disgustingly handsome; tall, broad with dark eyes and skin in the way all dragon riders had, with black hair long enough to be tied up.

Like all riders he wore black, and a red jewel carved into the shape of one of the sky creatures was embedded onto his breastplate.

Red signified the highest rank.

“Why have they sent a General to come to me?”

He shook his head. “No one sent me, I came of my own accord.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“We are fighting the land to the east, the place I believe you once came from, and we are losing.” He looked around at her children. “I’d heard stories of your ability to control the dead, and we would benefit from the use of your army. And to raise our own if they fall.”

She walked towards him and he straightened. While he stood up to his calves in the rancid water, she trod upon the bones that rose to meet her; the sturdy pelvises and strong skulls of men and creatures who had come to the bog and died. They created a bridge for their mother so her feet remained dry.

They were in touching distance now and she could see the raised skin welts on his neck which disappeared onto his collar bone to dip underneath his armour.

Burns. All dragon riders had them. No one was an expert when they started out. She’d learnt that lesson herself.

He met her gaze, observing her as she watched him. She could sense his appreciation of her in the air but he was wary, as he was right to be.

They were still surrounded by her children, her vanguard. Some were once human and some had been animals. Some were the whitest bone, long dead, and others still retained the jelly of their eyes and strips of tattered flesh dripping with juice.

No dragons though. She would have liked a dragon.

“Where is your creature?” she asked.

His lips twisted. “She is resting on the solid ground we landed on. I walked the rest of the way.”

“You won’t bring her here?”

“The bog air is no good for dragons.”

“Pity,” she sighed. “Can she be included in the terms?”

Oh, that upset him. His already dark eyes turned black and his fists clenched and unclenched, his jaw twitching. “No. She’s only young, she deserves to have a full life.”

“Isn’t she your weapon? And your transport?”

His jaw flexed again. “No. She is...more.”

She smiled, but this time a true one. No teeth. This rider had honour; the life of his dragon was precious to him.

“Why do you think I would help you?”

He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “There are rumours that a witch tried to murder the King. I consulted the old dragon bones and they told me to come here – to come to you. If you’re their enemy then perhaps you will be my ally.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t try to kill him; I was defending myself. And while I may hate the Mandray King, I don’t hate his people. I have no allegiance to anyone and I want to live my life in peace here. No wars.”

He looked around him at her children and at her home; taking in the dead tree stumps, the lingering mist, the stagnant waters. “This isn’t a life, it’s a half-life, all rot and decay.”

“I supposed you’d rather watch the world burn and die in glory then live peacefully in what the world has neglected,” she said, her cheeks growing warm. “Leave me, dragon rider and don’t come again. My answer is no.”

Her children escorted him to the edge of the bog as the mists curled over her. He glanced back but she chose to keep her head down, to pretend she didn’t see.

She didn’t return to her hut though, not until he and his dragon had gone. She gazed upwards until the dark shape passed overhead with its black wings spread wide, blocking out what little sun she had.

No less than three days later he came back.

She’d been picking mushrooms growing up the bank and was speaking to the half-rotten skull of a rat when she caught movement from the corner of her eye.

Seconds was all it took before her children surrounded him again, leaping from the bog, dripping with filth and pointing spears at his heart. Once again, he held his palms open in peace.

“I said to not come back, dragon rider.”

“I’m not very good at listening to instructions.”

He threw a small cloth bag her way, one she caught in reflex.

“A gift,” he said, “a few dragons’ bones – from the small toe mostly. I thought you should consult them yourself.”

The cloth twitched underneath her palm, the bones shuddering and shifting inside, clattering together. He’d gone before she looked up.

That night, while she ate her mushroom soup in front of the fire, she turned the bones onto her palm. They seemed to sigh at her touch, to whisper things to her in the darkness. She scattered them on the ground and a pattern emerged.

They were telling her things she didn’t understand. There was fire which changed colour from red to silver and the water was both thick bog and shimmering turquoise. There were wings and death, so much death, and a fat moon weeping.

She shoved them back into their bag and kept them far away from her bed, glaring at them in the dark.

He came back the next day and she threw his ‘gift’ back to him.

“They tell me nothing, dragon-rider and they certainly aren’t telling me to join with you.”

“Join with me?” he laughed. “I was only proposing you join me, not with. I’m not adverse though, if you are offering?”

Blood rushed upwards to her cheeks as she realised her misstep of words, words which meant something entirely different from his region.

The dragon rider had thrown his head back, the expanse of his throat on display as his merriment rippled through the air.

She imagined running forwards and sinking her teeth into his jugular as crimson sprayed across the dark brown ground. Her fists curled and uncurled and tears pricked her eyes. He stopped laughing when he saw, his eyes softening at the rigid stance of her spine.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mock you.”

“You laugh because I’m a bog witch.”

“I laugh because I don’t think I’ll ever get a better offer.”

“I was not offering.”

“Then I laugh because I don’t think I’ll ever get a better non-offer,” and his smile, the one that crinkled his eyes, returned to his face. “Believe me, if you did, I would accept. Bog water and dead bodies wouldn’t put me off.”

She glared at him, “I won’t join you. Go away, dragon-rider and don’t come back.”

But of course, he came back. Her words weren’t as harsh as she could have made them, weren’t nearly as sharp as they should have been.

For no reason she could fathom, the next time he returned she invited him into her hut away from the prying sockets of her children. He had to stoop to enter and sat cross legged in his black armour but he drank the tea she made him and looked around her home.

His eyes flickered from the fire, to the herbs drying above it and to the collection of mushrooms she’d gathered. His eyes kept flickering to her bed in the corner and whatever thoughts he had, he clearly thought them often.

She smiled around the rim of her own cup as he stammered his surprise that her home was warm and dry.

“I thought you were old because that’s what the bones told me,” he said. “Ancient. That was the word used to describe you. So, I assumed...”

She frowned. “I don’t know why they told you that. I’ve only had twenty-five name days and was only a court witch for five of those before I left.”

“You should never have had to leave. You could reclaim your home if you wanted. Please, we’ve been at war now for too long and if you join us, if-”

“Enough,” she said and slammed the cup onto the wood floor. “I told you, I have no allegiance. I know how this would end for me. You say I’m joining you but you would use me until all that was left was a husk. Besides, death is not a weapon to be wielded.”

“You wield it here,” he said, “every time you raise those bones.”

“It’s different. I use them for protection, not for war.”

He tugged his hands through his hair. “Consider what you could do for us as protection. When the fighting stops you come straight back here and continue your life.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No. That’s not what would happen and you know it, as soon as anyone knows about power, they use it and abuse it. No.”

“Please, Nesta I-”

Her head snapped up. “What did you call me?”

He frowned, eyes staring off into the distance. “I don’t- I don’t know. What did I say?”

“Try not to confuse the multitudes of women you’re begging at.”

“I’m not-” He grabbed his hair in his hands again, his face pinching with pain as though something was piercing its way through his brain to the surface. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

When he’d gone, she found herself bereft, like a hole had been cut from the space he’d occupied. She sat on the corner of her bed holding the cup he’d used and pressed her lips to the side he drank from, as though she could meet his own in a kiss.

Days passed since his visit and she found herself looking around the mists and twisting her hair a certain way or standing in certain positions to make herself appear more elegant for when he returned.

She was a bog witch though, so when he came back that’s what he came back to. Her skirts were bunched around her waist as she squatted in the water slicing through roots as mud slopped onto her pale thighs.

“You’re lovely.”

His voice rang out across the mire and she jolted upwards, her dress falling into the water. Where were her children? What were they doing? Listlessly lounging and letting him pass was what.

There was no mockery in his tone as he stood on the bank watching her, his fingers flexing.

“I’d like you to meet someone,” he said, “will you come with me?”

She walked beside him, away from the bog and onto the solid fields, her bare feet unused to the ground. When the shape emerged through the mists she drew in a breath and held back until he slid his hand through hers, entwining their fingers.

“She won’t hurt you,” he said. “She’d like to meet you too; I’ve told her all about you.”

He wasn’t the first dragon-rider she’d met, although he was first living one - bodies had a way of finding themselves into her bog after all - but this was the first dragon she’d met. The dark shadow in the skies was nothing in comparison to the creature before her.

The dragon was vast and she uncurled her wings shimmering all over with black scales. Her face was long and pointed with sharp teeth behind a lipless mouth and her large golden eyes were staring.

“She can see my soul.”

“Probably. It’s been suggested they have that gift. Her name is Ataraxia - it means peace.”

She snorted. “You named your dragon for peace.”

“No, she named herself.”

She reached out with her free hand, almost retracting it back, but the dragon bent its head in encouragement so she lay her palm upon the space between its eyes.

The dragon-rider watched her; their hands still clasped.

“I still won’t join you,” she told him again. “Death magic isn’t the gift you think it is. If you have any capacity to understand please recognise it is a good thing for me to say no to your request but I promise you - I won’t join your enemies either.”

He nodded and brought their connected hands to his mouth and kissed her fingertips, bog water and all. “I understand and I won’t ask again. I wanted to introduce you to Ataraxia, not to convince you but because I wanted you to meet her.”

“No one else knows I’m here?”

“No one.”

But he’d forgotten that he wasn’t the only dragon-rider to have access to the bones and the bones didn’t speak only to him.

The shrieking the night that followed wasn’t her children’s, who had long since lost their voices, but of the two dragons as they fought in the sky. Dark shapes flew above her as she ran from her hut and into the water.

She called up her children and those with arrows aimed upwards but with the mists so thick it was hard to see which one was her dragon-rider and which was the one come to take her by force.

Something warm and wet landed on her face, salt and copper splattering on her tongue. Blood was spraying down like rain as one dragon clawed the other.

The fog parted and she saw that the moon was screaming, a gaping mouth imprinted on its pale, fat face.

The bog churned. Her children were upset, bones clamouring over bones, driven by the despair in their mother. Her face was wet with tears and blood, and as the two shapes battled, she couldn’t tell them apart.

Something fell, a dark shape whirling and twisting and it landed with a crack onto a tree stump. Neck and back broken. A flightless bird. A dragon-rider with no dragon.

A cry of grief tore through the air above as wings blocked out the moon. The other rider leapt from his mount with ease, a net and knife gripped in his hands.

With her mind so fractured it meant her children wouldn’t be able to protect her. Now they were only responding to the chaos.

She could raise him; it was within her power but she wasn’t lying when she told him death magic was no gift. She loved her children, treated them with the care they deserved but they were brittle bones and rotting flesh. He would also become that way. All his life and laughter dissipating into the mist.

The dragon-ride that wasn’t hers but who would make her his was approaching. He had a similar look; the two men could easily have been brothers if not for the difference in eyes. Her dragon-rider had eyes the same colour as the hazel tree, this one’s burned violet.

The clarity came upon her like tranquil waters.

I like the dead things in the water, she’d told him. Like calls to like.

Her children stopped their mad panic, the churned water stilling as those with spears in their hands approached her at her own command. She looked at the dark dragon above, twisting in her impotent rage, and then at the approaching dragon-rider before glancing one final time at the dead one floating before her.

One of her children came closer and pressed its spear against her chest. Another life, she thought and she nodded.

Her heart beat its last and all bones fell limp into dark waters.

 The Time of Queens and Prophecies

Sweat rolled down her naked back from the nape of her neck. Her hair had loosened, strands clinging to her jaw and the length of her spine, the jewels adorning it now littering her white sheets.

Her legs trembled with effort as they splayed over muscular, darker thighs while her palms lay flat on the chest in front of her, fingers digging into flesh leaving the indent of crescents.

He grunted as she fucked him and she dug her nails in harder. She wished he hated that small act of spite, that tingle of pain but he didn’t and that made her hate him more.

So, she told him such.

His answering smirk made her want to lift a hand and smack it from his handsome, sweat stained face but instead she leant forward to grab a fistful of his shoulder length black hair and pulled. She smiled at his hiss.

This angle meant her body pressed against his in delicious ways and her hips picked up speed, rocking onto his, feeling his hardness slide through her wetness and she let out a wail against his mouth.

He smirked again, this time against her lips and his hands slid across her back and down to her thighs, gripping them to drive her on. Her body began its familiar tightening, the tingle in her stomach spreading lower as she gripped his hair harder wishing she could rip strands straight out of his head.

When one of his hands travelled to press fingertips against the slippery front of her, she couldn’t hold back any longer and gasped against his jaw, her teeth crashing onto his skin and biting into bone as her muscles stiffened and relaxed, trembling above him.

With a swift move, he flipped them until her back was against the silk and he drove into her, his long black hair framing his face. She grabbed at his buttocks, scraping her nails across his dark skin and with a groan and a shudder he came, his hips moving slower as he gasped for air.

She let him have a moment before pulling her leg higher until her foot was positioned against his sweaty chest.

“Your job is done,” she said, “now fuck off.”

She shoved him until he slipped from her and fell backwards onto her vast bed, panting.

He chuckled. “Yes, my Queen. If you’d let me gather my breath for a moment, I will take leave from your exalted presence.” Sarcasm dripped from his lips in private as easily as his faux compliments did in public.

His finger trailed up her calf and she snapped her legs shut, twisting away from him, ignoring the musk drifting between them.

She grabbed her robe and draped herself, ensuring no inch of skin was visible to his eyes before leaping up.

“Isn’t that counter-intuitive?” he said, still lounging on her bed as she walked to her balcony. “Aren’t you supposed to lie back with your legs up? I’m sure that’s what all good princesses are taught as bedroom matters but I suppose you’re hardly considered a good princess.”

“Shut up.”

A pounding had begun behind her eyes. The pressure always appeared after she fucked him, almost as though her mind were trying to purge the experience from her thoughts.

The curtains draping her balcony were open and she stared out at the dark, endless water surrounding one side of her palace. The moon reflecting upon it was the only light, her chambers positioned on the private side, the one which faced the crashing surf against rocks below instead of courtyards and houses.

When she looked out, an occasional thought drifted in like a whisper begging her to throw herself from the balcony and to succumb to the water. It is fated, she’d been told by her court witch when she raised her concern. I have seen.

A languid sigh interrupted her thoughts.

“If you give me a couple of minutes, I’d be ready to go for another round. Make sure something happens this time.”

She spun around, her robe flailing behind her. She hadn’t tied it tight enough and now it gaped at the front, displaying her breasts and flat stomach. His dark eyes drifted over her body. “Maybe less than a couple of minutes if you stand there looking like that.”

He bare feet slapped against the marble as she marched back to him. “Get out.”

She grabbed one of her velvet cushions and threw it towards his face but he caught it effortlessly with one hand and laughed.

“Fine, fine, my beautiful, humourless Queen.”

“I am your Queen,” she said, her lips curled in a snarl, “don’t forget your place.”

“Right,” he said and stretched out, still naked.

She looked away, grinding her teeth. The rustle of silks meant he was standing and when she looked back, he was facing away from her, glancing around the floor for his clothes.

He was tall and broad. Powerful calves, powerful thighs, powerful everything. His arm muscles made the women in court swoon, even more so when he winked at them, and his back was corded with definition, dips and grooves outlining his physique.

Holding a pillow over his face was impossible to achieve with his level of strength. She knew. She’d tried.

At least this time he was dressing before he left her room. There had been occasions where he hadn’t bothered and chose to saunter naked through the marble and gold hallways until he reached his own chambers, unashamed about his body or the actions he’d been performing with it.

He turned to her, “Tunic?”

She pointed with a slender finger to the chair where she’d thrown it. It was almost a shame for him to cover up but she refused to play his game. Once a month was what she’d agreed upon, when her cycle was between tides and when she was most fertile. Nothing more.

He faced away again as he tugged the linen over his head, his tattoo standing out starker than usual, black ink etched into wings across the expanse of his back.

His people were fire and air and hers were water and earth. There was always going to be a time when they married the kingdoms together but time, or at least timings, were out of the royal advisor’s control.

Sons had been born into both families for decades until one day, the bell rang out across her kingdom. The previous Queen, her mother, had delivered a daughter and of course there was a son of fire and air to match her with.

They’d been married as soon as they were of age and told they would deliver a child of all elements - the expected messiah.

“Can I not be valued for myself?” she’d asked. “Can it not be me that achieves greatness and unites our people and brings prosperity? Do I have to be the vessel for it, can I not be it?”

Her questions to her advisors had fallen on deaf ears and they patted her hand like she was simple and told her to dress in fine silks and wear precious stones on her fingers, like good princesses ought to.

The Prince and Princess weren’t allowed to refuse each other and if she resented him down to her bones, she loathed to think what his thoughts were on her. She was the vessel for the messiah but at least she would still be required once she’d conceived, he would be surplus long before she was.

That morning she’d heard him argue with his own advisors, “Can’t I father it?”

“You will father it Your Majesty. That is your purpose.”

“No, I mean be its father. I can teach it archery and combat and read to it. Take it out on the horses, show it how to look after puppies.”

“Your Majesty, it is most unorthodox. The advisors will teach it everything it needs to know. Politics, history, governance. It will have much work to do.”

“And what is the Queen’s involvement?”

“Once the infant is done with her breast than she will relinquish it to us. What could the Queen teach it that would be of any value? Embroidery?”

She’d heard the advisor’s laughter ringing down the hallway as she stood behind the thick velvet drapes.

The sting wormed her way into her chest.

I would be its mother; I would tuck them into bed at night and tell them stories of the ocean. I would bring them soup if they were unwell and scoop them into my side if they had nightmares. I would count all their fingers and toes a million times over simply because I could and mark their height in notches on the dresser.

Once a month, she’d decided. She was still performing her duties; they couldn’t say she wasn’t.

He was making his way to the door now and she called out after him. “I can do more than embroider. I speak eight languages and play five musical instruments and have learnt the full recorded history of both our lands. I can name every rebellion. With dates.”

If he was surprised that she had overheard anything that morning he didn’t show it beyond the pause of his hand on the golden handle. He looked over his shoulder at her. “I know,” he said, “goodnight, my Queen.”

She rolled her eyes, “Goodnight, my King.”

Only afterwards when she lay against cold sheets did she realise he hadn’t been sarcastic.

Two weeks passed and, as expected, her blood had flowed.

She found him in the orangery, lounging across a chaise longue and staring up at the blue sky beyond the glass ceiling. At least she had the good fortune to remain in her home, she wondered if he ever missed his.

“Not successful,” she said and tapped his legs with her hand to make him move. He obliged and shifted into a seating position.

“Orange?” He held his hand to her, the fruit nestled within.

She frowned. “No, I- didn’t you hear what I said?”

“I heard.” He rubbed his forehead, his face twisting before he cleared his throat and glanced from one side of the orangery to the next. He looked over at her, his eyes travelling over her face before letting out a sigh. “Listen,” and he dropped his voice down low, “There are whispers.”

“Oh, and what have these whispers been saying?”

“That we’re not exactly living up to expectations.”

She plucked at an invisible thread on her dress and shrugged, “Well they’ll have to learn patience. I’m the Queen.”

He leant closer, his dark eyes boring into her face and she avoided meeting his gaze. She didn’t want him staring at her intently within the bedroom let alone outside of it. His tone was sombre. “You being Queen doesn’t matter. If you’re knowledgeable with your history, and I know you are, you know being of royal blood doesn’t get in the way of people being upset if they don’t get what they want.”

She shifted, the overstuffed chaise longue now feeling hard against her back.

“Rumours are now forming,” he continued, “that you or I can’t produce the heir and my sweetheart, they are inclining to believe the issue is on your side.”

Her stomach swooped to her feet, an unusual chill prickling across her skin.

“I see,” she said, her voice travelling from what felt like miles away. “Of course, they believe the issue is my side. It couldn’t possibly be the fault of a man.” She wanted to ask him what he thought, but refrained. “Where will they drudge up another Queen from my side for their beloved prophecy?”

“If they are desperate they will depose you, find some other young beauty and claim she’s a distant cousin with enough royal blood to count.”

“I won’t let them.”

He let out a sad laugh. “Our lives are filled with events we insist we won’t let happen but here we are.”

Sunlight moved against the stark white walls and the brightness of the orangery was now blinding, the pleasant warmth cloying into an unbearable heat.

A knuckle brushed against her jaw so softly she thought she imagined it but when she turned her head, his hand was lightly tracing her skin. His hazel eyes were despondent. “We’ll have to try harder, sweetheart.” His tone contained no mockery, only caution.

“You’ve never called me that before and now that’s twice.”

“What?”

“Sweetheart.”

He raised his eyebrows, “Can’t say I know why. Though you do have one, from time to time.”

“Please don’t say it.”

His lips quirked upwards, “What? Don’t say you have a sweet heart?”

She grabbed the orange from his hand to throw at him but it was half-hearted on her part and she deliberately aimed for the wall before sashaying her hips as she exited, delighting in his laugh.

Back in her chambers she pulled out the bottle hidden under her pillow. The contraceptive liquid sloshed between green and brown like dirty bog water and as that thought passed through her mind, the pounding behind her eyes began again.

She threw the bottle from her balcony, hoping it sunk into the waters below.

Days later, when her blood flow had ceased, she found him in the grand ballroom drinking with courtiers and winking at serving girls. She pressed herself against his arm, letting the fullness of her breasts linger and his eyes grew dark.

“Come this evening,” she murmured into his ear, putting emphasis on the first word.

He did.

But their newfound efforts were too late.

The advisors were surprised at how prepared she was when they came to collect her. She’d been waiting on the balcony with the full moon behind her telling her desperate things. There was an opportunity to launch herself from the balcony into the darkness below but she didn’t take it.

Whenever her witch had seen the Queen succumbing to the water, it was not in this life.

They led her out to the private side of the castle where the ocean crashed on the rocky shore. The flames of torches showed her more advisors, his and hers, waiting in a circle. One reached out to her.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “I’m still your Queen, however brief that will last.”

He dropped his hands and nodded, leaving her to walk into the middle. Another advisor opened his palm to show her a bottle, miraculously unbroken and still with its stopper in place. The liquid swilled within.

“Do you deny this is yours, Your Majesty?”

The treacherous water must have washed it up.

“No.”

“Do you deny that drinking this goes against the will of your people?”

“It goes against your will.”

“Do you deny that you are still drinking this?”

“Obviously I’m not as I threw it over my balcony.”

The advisor’s jaw twitched as he ground his teeth. “As our Queen, we will allow you a choice. You can choose execution by water or by fire.”

She laughed and it filled the hollow space in her chest. The only choice they ever gave her and it was to decide the manner of her death. Her laugh unnerved them and they shifted on the rocks, their robes tangling with seaweed.

“Drown me,” she said. Perhaps the witch was right after all.

The advisor with the vial nodded at something behind her and two of the larger advisors with sad, sombre faces, dragged a heavy bulk across the ground before her.

No. Her heart missed a beat. No.

Her voice rose over the crack of salty spray against stone, shrill and panicked. “He didn’t know anything about this. He didn’t know!”

There was no answer. They were done speaking to her.

His eyes briefly opened and locked with hers. They were hazy and confused. The advisors had drugged him or hit him and she hoped he felt nothing, willing his pain to be taken away and absorbed into her own skin.

They dragged her backwards towards a higher, drier part of the shore towards a post in the ground which was stacked with wood and kindling. She laughed but it was hysteria not humour lifting upwards into the night sky.

A drop of water fell on her face and she wondered if it was the start of rain or the ocean spray. It was too late, she remembered everything when it was always too late.

She screamed his name as they hauled him into the water. She kept screaming his name as they held his thrashing body under and she didn’t stop until the black smoke swirled deep into her lungs.

 The Time of Ships and Fortunes

She licked sweetness from her lips and laughed at the look on the man’s face.

“What?” she asked with a husk to her voice. “How else did you think I would tell your fortune?”

“I expected you to read my palm.”

“That’s the expertise of my sister.” She winked at him, twining a lock of golden-brown hair around her finger, “But I can confidently predict you will be in for a pleasant evening.”

“Oh yeah?” The man’s blonde eyebrows shot up. “How pleasant?”

“Extremely.”

A jingle of bells from the shop beyond told her another customer had arrived. Damn, she hadn’t managed to close this one down. She caught herself, schooling her face into one of casual nonchalance and not her default irritation. After all, she didn’t want to ruin the illusion.

“You should do one last reading,” she said, leaning forward and tapping one of his pearl buttons with a nail. Real pearl, very good. “My sister is in the next room and she can tell your fortune from tea leaves once you’ve drained the cup.”

“I thought you said she read palms?”

“That’s my other sister. Go on, I’ll see you soon.” She pressed her lips to his cheek and kept a brilliant smile on her face while he scurried away.

The moment the door handle clunked into place, she let the smile fade. “Grief,” she said, massaging some life into her cheeks, pinching them between her fingers.

She didn’t feel sorry for the man she’d sent her sisters way. His buttons would feed them for well over a week and she was certain his belt buckle was solid gold and the waistcoat silk. Both would fetch a good price at the market.

All kinds of ships docked in the harbour town; merchants, naval and even those involved in piracy and so the customers in their shop, The Three Sisters, was plentiful. They’d even had repeat custom which made her laugh. Men who would leave with significantly less than what they’d arrived with but still claimed the experience was worth it.

She’d hoped to take this one upstairs but the chiming from the entrance meant she needed to move him into the next room instead. Pity, he was handsome enough.

Plastering a smile on her face she drew back the red velvet curtain which separated her room from the shop front and stepped through, the gold stars on her dark blue dress shimmering with her steps.

The main room was thick with jasmine and vetiver and something extra from the mountains which they burnt to get the muscles of their clients relaxing. The small fragrant sweets in a glass bowl on the counter also did the trick as they fizzed and melted on tongues and this was what she tasted when she pressed her lips against theirs.

Men or women, it didn’t matter. They all received the same introduction.

But something about the man now lingering in the shopfront caused her to stop short, her hand pausing as she reached for the bowl. She didn’t recognise him as a regular but his stance was familiar to her, even with his back toward her.

“It’s you,” she said and wondered why she spoke those words to a stranger.

He turned, his face blank and his hazel eyes expressionless. “Do I know you?”

Her eyes scanned him; tall, broad, and handsome in a rough-hewn way. He wore scuffed leather boots, torn trousers crusted with sea salt, and a tunic smeared with dirt and something which looked like blood. His black hair was clean though and tied back into a bun with loose strands framing his jaw.

Nothing about him said ‘wealth’ so this encounter was likely to be a waste of time. Still, she was compelled to engage with him, keep him in the shop a while.

She shook her head in answer to his question, sliding her face into a practiced pleased expression. “Not yet you don’t, but I feel like I’ve been waiting for you my entire life.”

The wink she gave was especially provocative.

His face must have been made from granite as not even an eyelid flickered and it took all her efforts for her not to slip into a frown.

“Are you the owner of this establishment?”

His use of words indicated he wasn’t likely to a be a pirate or merchant but an officer of some military faction. Naval but not any navy she recognised.

“Co-owner.”

“Who do you co-own with?”

His stare on her was hard and she fidgeted, threading her fingers on her dress. She wondered if he was searching for someone. “My sisters.”

“Biological?”

“What business of that is yours?” she snapped but he had a look to him, with his dark hair, eyes and skin that resembled one of her sisters very closely. None of the women knew their own histories and perhaps her sister was who he was looking for. She sighed, “Adopted.”

He nodded but turned away again, seemingly disinterested in her response. He scanned the shelves like she had scanned him, his eyes lingering over the faked mermaid embryos, the range of crystals and jars of coloured salts.

As he walked around the shop, his bulk seemed to engulf the space. The shopfront had never been large but it felt so much smaller now and her eyes narrowed as she studied him, his pace slow and steady, too casual for her liking.

“Can I actually help you?” Her fake sweetness had long rotted and she let her irritation show. His lips twitched into a small smile at her dissatisfaction.

“Do you tell fortunes?”

Perhaps he wasn’t looking for someone. More like something.

“Yes.”

“Real fortunes? Not just telling men they’re going to have a fantastic evening, before fucking them and stealing from them while they sleep?”

Her eyes widened and heat flooded her face.

He shrugged at her silence and wiped a fingertip across a shelf. “Of course, there’s the second option - the one where you pass them from one room to the next, drug their tea and then steal from them. Not quite as fun for them, I’m sure.”

Most customers didn’t openly talk about what happened in The Three Sisters, either because some of them genuinely did have a good time and others because they wanted to hide their embarrassment that they didn’t.

At her continued silence he turned to her, rubbing imaginary dust between forefinger and thumb. “Isn’t that what’s happening to your previous customer as we speak?”

She closed her eyes, fingers digging into her thighs wondering how he knew these things. Fear fluttered its way into her chest. When she opened her eyes, he was leaning across a display and smirking.

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“No, I’m not involved in keeping law. Besides, he makes his fortune in slave trading and men like him can choke. So, do you tell fortunes or not?”

A heavy pulsing started behind her eyes; the incense had never bothered her before but one of her sisters must have laid it too thick. She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand, surprised at how clammy it had gone.

Did she want to tell his fortune? No. But she would at least get a gold coin or two for her trouble. Still, it was with great reluctance that she invited him into the back.

A long time had passed since she truthfully told a fortune. She once told them all the time back when she was an under-fed thing in the village orphanage before some of the elders panicked and called her a witch.

When she was of a certain age, she realised she was both exceptionally beautiful and a superb actress so she decided to combine both gifts and swapped the muddy village for the sea to make her fortune. On route she found two other women who would become her sisters in name if not blood.

The thought to fake a fortune for this man came to mind as she led him through to her room but she knew to him her fakery would be as transparent as glass.

He seated himself into the chair she gestured towards while she sat opposite. She didn’t enjoy his presence in her room, not because she felt he would do anything but because an undercurrent of something ripped under her skin and a throbbing took hold in her mind.

He was unknown and known all at once and she believed if she traced her lips down his neck, she would already know his flavour.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked. “Palm or tea? Or will you slide your tongue into my mouth?”

His eyes glinted with mirth. It was as though their roles were reversed as soon as they stepped behind the curtain and both their façades had fallen away. He glided into humour, relaxing on the chair while she glared.

“Skin contact is fine.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Your hand,” she said, “fucker.”

His smile broadened, rows of pearly white teeth all in a row. All real she noted before grabbing his hand and slamming it on the table. For the briefest second when she touched him, electricity moved from his skin to hers, the hairs on her arms lifting.

His hands were broad with thick fingers and prominent veins and she could envision his hands cupping her face as though she was the most precious thing to him before trailing down her arms and across her bare back.

The imagery was behind her eyes like it was a memory and not imagination. She blinked and shook her head and he stared at her; eyes wide.

“What?” she asked.

“Did you hear what you said?”

She shook her head again, trying to shift the noise, her insides twisting. She hadn’t remembered speaking, hadn’t intended to speak. She’d only touched his hand for a moment. “No, what did I say?”

“The path soon comes to an end.”

“I don’t...,” she trailed off. There had been no paths in her mind, just his hands. Her stomach flopped and she placed a hand on her abdomen. “Excuse me,” she whispered before leaping from her chair to a decorative urn, her throat heaving until all bile was spilled.

With a groan she hunched over it, clutching it in shaking arms as sweat beaded her face. The curtain rustled behind her and she heard his steps march outwards as she leant her head against the cool ceramic.

She shuddered on the floor, not expecting him to come back and half hoping he wouldn’t. But he did, pressing a wet cloth against her nape.

“I drown,” she said, with no idea where the words came from, “I drown in the dark.”

His voice was gentle, his fingertips soft. “Maybe you won’t. You know this harbour; you know where to tread.”

It’s not the harbour, she wanted to say. I can’t explain but it’s always water or fire, one way or another.

She didn’t ask him why he sought his fortune, or whether he was disappointed in the abstract statement she gave but he helped her up and held the cloth to her forehead, his eyes flitting over her face.

Standing so close to him she could make out every cut and scar; could make a study of the slope of his nose, the shape of his mouth, the colour of his eyes. In the end he left a coin for her troubles on her table and his scent of earth and ocean lingered long after the incense burnt out.

That night she took a bath of ice water while her sisters went to the nearest tavern with their new pearl buttons and gold buckle. I know him, she thought, but it must have been from a ship previously docked. She knew she was telling herself a lie to soothe herself into sleep.

But in her narrow bed under the wood beams, sleep didn’t come. Her window was open and the breeze called her name.

He waits.

The path for her now was splitting. She could stay here, live a long life in the harbour, kissing and fucking strange men until she had enough gold to retire with. Maybe she would buy a bookstore on the dock front or maybe she would escape to the mountains where there wasn’t a single splash of sea in sight.

Somehow, she knew that he would slip through her fingers, never to be seen again. Then, she would have to wait until she was old and grey before death met her and all the while the empty space inside her would grow.

So, she did a foolhardy thing, a ridiculous thing and left her bed in the darkness to creep to her sister’s bedrooms where she kissed their sleeping cheeks goodbye. Another life, she whispered, I will see you in another life.

As she walked the harbour, water between the wooden slacks glinted under the lamplights. She avoided the brothels and taverns, sidestepping the golden glow which spilled out from doorways and kept to the darkness where the full moon reached out its silver light.

Her boots clacked against the wood as the sea mist rolled in, the ships bobbing in the dock ahead. The one she was after was at the end, she didn’t know how she knew – she just did. He was already waiting for her underneath the full shining moon, leaning against a post as the water lapped over wood.

He wasn’t surprised at her arrival, somehow knowing she would come even only after one meeting in one afternoon. He took her hand and led her onto the ship, unseen by his crew and into his Captain’s quarters.

An expansive window overlooked the deck at the front with two more on port and starboard sides. Inky blackness from the night sky dripped in, the moonlight illuminating a mahogany table covered in parchment and ink wells. A globe sat in the corner; the continents unrecognisable to her.

The ship swayed on the water, the wood creaking and groaning and she walked the cabin with his eyes on her, their roles now reversed from earlier. The scent of earth and ash perfumed the air.

Flame flickered behind glass lamps as she trailed her fingers over the spines of books on a table, her eyes flickering to the bed carved into a sizable nook and separated from the main room with thick drapes and laden with cushions.

Although he was nowhere near her, she could feel his fingertips on her own spine, trailing down from her nape to the flesh of her buttocks. Her breath hitched and his eyes glinted in the dark from where he still stood.

“Beautiful ship,” she said. “What’s her name?”

“The Nesta.”

The pulsing returned behind her eyes. “Pretty name. Did you choose it?”

“Yes.”

“Who for?”

“No one, I liked it.”

She nodded, walking past a large gilded mirror carved with flames which licked up the sides. Her reflection was alien to her, her own face unrecognisable. All the while he stood beside the closed door, watching.

“Why did you wait?” she asked his mirror image.

“I don’t know. Why did you come?”

“I don’t know.”

“We depart upon the witching hour,” he said, “we won’t be returning.”

“I know.” Wasn’t that why she was here? To never return? Not only to the harbour town but to this life?

She walked to his bed and sat on the cover, the material scratching her palms. He stepped into the room and stood before her, his granite stare softening.

Her fingers reached to his belt buckle. No gold, but sturdy black leather, and she pulled it loose, unlacing the ties at the front of his trousers. Her palm dipped beneath the fabric, his flesh hot and solid underneath her hand.

His own hand grabbed her wrist and she looked up at him; his face furrowed and eyes closed as though in great pain. “No,” he said. “Not tonight. Just... just let me hold you.”

Her pulse thundered under his fingertips. There won’t be another night, she wanted to say. The moon has already told me. But she agreed, all she wanted was to pretend for a while.

When the ship left the harbour, she was enveloped into his arms, her length against his so they lined up heart to heart. He slept deeply, his breaths fanning out across her hair while she pressed her face into his throat, a tear slipping from her eye.

Just because she knew death was imminent didn’t mean she was any less scared.

The now closed bed-curtains hid the moonlit room from her view and the wood moaned louder in her ears.

She didn’t know this version of him but whoever he was, wherever he was from, he had angered someone on his travels. She’d been awake for hours and when they were on open sea under the light of a sad moon, the canons blasted from a too-near distance and his ship cracked apart.

His breath immediately stopped, dying on first impact. Her fleeting thought was how she was glad that he always died first so that she could spare him her death.

They sank into the water, the deep swallowing them as debris and bodies floated about them. She clung to his body and the now blackened bed sheets fanned out behind him like glorious wings.

Shards of moonlight pierced the dark.

Something with teeth comes.

Yes, here it was – grey with a white underbelly. She’d hoped she’d be drowned by this point. The next life, she told herself, is where I will bite.

 The Time of Thorns and Roses

Luck and timing had never been on Nesta’s side.

The mortal woman was dragged from her bed and thrown into a Cauldron to drown while the broken and bleeding body of Cassian crawled towards the sound of her screams.

But by some miracle of the Mother they’d lived. Cassian survived and Nesta had been re-born into a form eternal. The celestial beings watching over them finally had hope.

That hope would shatter soon enough like glass under a stampeding herd of horses and the gods despaired at how effortlessly the thread of mortal lives unravelled. All it took was one strand being too loose, too tight or not present at all.

Sometimes all it took was one small thread weaving itself into the tapestry at the right moment.

In one world, Elain winnowed. The act was a spontaneous one which she would never end up repeating but when the King of Hybern stood over the prone, bleeding forms of her sister and the male with wings, death circling his hands - she was present.

She held truth-teller, a knife which she would push into the throat of the King who was too focused on his task to hear a new-born fae on the grass behind him.

In another world, where the eyes of the gods wept their tears, she did not winnow.

The pair lay on ground sodden with blood with rain.

“Get up,” her cries echoed into the night, “get up!”

A moment had occurred when she could have run. She would have remained a shell of herself until the day she died but she would have survived. Instead, as the male was dying, she covered his body with hers, a bloodied kiss on her lips and a promise from him to her. He’d find her in the next world, he said, the next life but in this one they’d go together.

They would always go together.

[mypoisonedvine]

Seeing Red | bodyguard!Bucky Barnes x reader (part 7)

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) (part 6)

series summary: bucky used to brag that he didn’t have a celebrity crush, or really care about famous people at all, which is what made him the perfect person to start working for a celebrity like yourself.  except, of course, it’s just his luck that he’d fall for you.  

word count: 2.5k

warnings: um just implied smut and fluff and a reference to bdsm I guess?? but it's pretty chill overall

Liked by starkcosmetics and others

y/n.y/l/n okay first of all, it takes an act of god to get a picture of this guy smiling, but it’s always worth it.  he really changed everything for me and I can’t thank him enough for that.  so happy ❤️ 

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caroldanvers 😍😍😍

flowercrowny/n oh my god this is so sweet i’m gonna cry

1 HOUR AGO

He smiled as he stared down at the post you’d made, remembering how much effort you’d put into finding the perfect picture (in your opinion; he thought he looked kinda dopey in it) as well as writing and re-writing your caption.

The speed at which your post gained likes and comments was inconceivable to him; even more impressive was the speed at which gossip rags were picking up the story.  Sure enough, his phone’s alerts to new headlines about you were not only going off like crazy, but had started to include news about himself as well.  

Y/N Y/L/N Shocks With Romantic Instagram Post, Confirms Dating Rumors

You’ll Never Guess Which Hollywood Starlet Is Dating Her Driver

Who is James Barnes?  Everything We Know About Y/N Y/L/N’s New Beau

Skimming one of the articles, he was impressed at how much information they’d managed to get without actually getting anything from you or him.  Born in Brooklyn, disabled Army veteran, worked a list of odd jobs before becoming your driver and bodyguard.  ‘No social media presence, prefers to keep a low profile’ one of them said; you can say that again, Bucky chuckled to himself when he read it.

He found another from People and didn’t particularly appreciate that it spent half the time going through all your past exes and rumored partners (turned out ‘rumored’ is a fancy word for ‘a bunch of fans deluded themselves so hard that it somehow turned into news without any proof necessary’).  But he still smiled when he got to the part that was actually about you and him.

‘The relationship is pretty new but they’re so happy together,’  a source close to the couple reported.  

Close indeed; that statement came from your publicist, who he’d never even meet.  

‘He’s a very private guy and she’s got this huge following, so they’re sort of an odd couple in that way, but she knows her fans are respectful and will let them have their own life outside of the spotlight.’ 

Bucky wasn’t sure that the respectfulness of fans was such a given here, but he hoped you were right.  To be fair, they’d been very sweet on your original post insofar. 

However, when he scrolled to the bottom of the celebrity magazine articles and realized they had their own comments section, he discovered that they were a little less forgiving than the ones on your Instagram.  

Is this the best she thinks she can do?  So sad tbh :(

a military guy…. yikes, she could get any guy she wants and she goes for a murderer. 

He looks like a hobo that found a coupon for a free haircut lol

I don’t buy it, I know she’ll always love Pietro!

Pietro being your former co-star that so many of your fans were convinced was actually your soulmate.  From what he’d heard from you, those speculations had made things so uncomfortable between the two of you that it killed your friendship.  Those were nothing, though, compared to the comments about someone you actually had dated.

she’s obviously not over sam… they were so good together

He’d better watch out for her ex, he still likes tweets about her and they have so much chemistry

Wait, she’s not still with Sam Wilson??  I could’ve sworn they’d been dating for, like, five years.

You were scrolling through your phone with a smile as you walked past where he was sitting on the couch, and he just couldn’t help himself from asking even though he knew it wasn’t the best idea.  “Do I need to worry about this Sam thing?” he blurted out, trying to play it cool and not sound too anxious.  “People are really obsessed with you two…”

“Sam and I…” you sighed, staring off into space for a second.  He made himself anxious imagining what you were thinking about in that moment.  “I haven’t talked to him in… years?  I think it’s just because our relationship was so public that people are still talking about it.  And it had a lot of gossip material— we did a movie together, people thought it was sweet that we got together during production, it was great promotion for the picture… and from the outside, we made a lot of sense for each other.  But he has his own problems.  I loved him, but… he wasn’t ever going to be a one-girl kinda guy.”

“But you’re not just any one girl.  You’re… you know, you,” he emphasized.

“You’ve been reading too many headlines,” you shook your head as you sat down beside him.  “Please don’t turn into one of those guys who thinks of me as a celebrity first.  Before that—” you pointed to your own name where it was bolded on his screen in the trending topics page of Twitter— “was popping up on movie posters and in gossip magazines, it was just my name.  And I’m not perfect.  Not even close.”

Bucky sighed and wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into him and holding you tightly.  “And before I knew you were famous, or rich, or incredibly talented, I was totally obsessed with you just for who you are.”

“You’re too fucking amazing,” you sighed as you held his face and gave him a gentle kiss— the kind of kiss that instantly melted his heart and banished his worries.  When you pulled back and looked up at him with a smile, it was like everything else just… faded away.  “Don’t read the comments, okay?  None of them matter.”

He smiled and brushed his thumb over your cheek, overwhelmed by not only the softness of your skin but of your spirit as well.  In all his life he’d never been handled so… gently, with so much care.  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he mumbled, not even really realizing he’d said it aloud until you gave him a beaming smile.

“I can’t believe you’re my boyfriend,” you giggled pridefully.

“Seriously?  I can… very easily believe it,” he scoffed.

“I just mean… you’re so…” you searched for the words.  “You’re actually good to me, that’s the thing.  I’m not used to that.”

“You deserve the world,” he assured.  “I’m just gonna keep trying to give you as much of it as I can find.”

He watched his hand trail over your face, down your neck and to your chest where he played with the hem of your t-shirt.

"It's odd to know there are millions of people who are jealous of me,” he admitted quietly, remembering some aggressive comments from some very angry dudes who had apparently also watched your nude scene a few too many times.

"Do you like it?  Do you like how it feels to know you're making them angry every time you touch me?"

"Couldn't care less," he refuted.  "Nobody else matters when I'm touchin' you."

“Do you maybe wanna… touch me a little more about it?” you smirked, opening your legs slightly in invitation.

“Always.”

//

Bucky had, thankfully, not let the newfound fame get to his head.  In fact, he had demanded that the two of you hunker down in the house, since he feared that going out would lead to being recognized.  What he apparently hadn’t anticipated was that that might not be enough.

“Will you get that?” you requested when the gate buzzed, too wrapped up in the book you were reading to answer the intercom.

He hopped up and held down the button to communicate with the gate speaker.  “Who is it?” he asked.

“I’ve got a delivery from Anjappar Chettinad on 23rd?”

Bucky didn’t even reply before hitting the green button and granting access to the driveway.  BEEP BEEP BEEP! you heard the gate signal its opening, and the car pulling around up to the door.  Bucky didn’t open it until there was a knock, greeting the delivery guy with a smile and the necessary cash.

“I’ve got a lamb korma, hyderabadi mutton dum biryani and an order of— woah,” the man suddenly stopped, staring at Bucky’s face.  “Are you—?’

“Hungry?  Yes,” he frowned.

“You’re the guy dating— holy shit, congrats man,” he beamed, smacking Bucky on the shoulder pridefully before leaning in with a mischievous smirk.  “Say, is she a freak or what?”

“She is,” you piped up from the couch, making both men turn their heads; but one was chuckling while the other looked mortified.  “You better not have forgotten my paneer pakora or I’m gonna chain you up and whip you.”

“Uh, I— no, I got it right here,” he promised weakly, handing the bag over to Bucky and starting to dash away before Bucky grabbed his arm, making the smaller man whimper fearfully.

“You forgot the money,” Bucky reminded him gruffly, stuffing the bills into the driver’s front pocket.

Finally, he let go, and the delivery man instantly pulled away, rubbing his arm and looking a bit like a kicked puppy as he went back to his car and drove away.

“You didn’t need to scare him that bad,” Bucky chuckled.

“I could say the same to you!  Grabbing somebody with the metal arm like that will put the fear of God into them pretty fast.”

“I didn’t mean to grab him that hard,” he admitted, examining the prosthetic hand as he came back to the couch with the bag of food, handing it to you while he focused on watching his motorized fingers curl and uncurl.  “I think I need to get this thing recalibrated… it’s been bugging out lately.”

“I dunno, it was working just fine last night,” you smiled, remembering how delightfully cool those fingers felt inside you.

Bucky seemed to miss it entirely, though, as he stared off into space.  “I can’t believe I got… recognized.”

“You’re a star,” you winked.  “And not just with random delivery drivers.  I’ve had a lot of press requests, everybody wants to be the first one to get nice pictures of us together— we’ve had a dozen event invites as a couple.”

“Seriously?!” he scoffed, snapping back to reality slightly enough 

“Yeah, and look what came in same-day mail this morning!”  You leaned over to shuffle through the mail on the side table before finding and handing him a letter in a gold-embossed envelope, watching him read what you knew was inside.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association extends an invitation to Y/N Y/L/N and James Barnes to the annual Grant Banquet in support of the Young Artists Fund.

“It seems like a good first event for us,” you explained.  “Relatively small and low stakes, it’s for a good cause…”

“Are you sure I’m ready to be, you know… seen?  By people?” 

You scoffed, hardly believing how insecure he could be sometimes.  “You look great, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Will I have to talk to anybody other than you?” he asked, grimacing as if that were a form of brutal torture.

“Probably,” you admitted.

His frown deepened.  “What if I say the wrong thing?”

“I’m not that worried about you,” you smirked.  “You’re a lot better at this stuff than you think you are.”

“I don’t have anything to wear…”

You smirked, a little too proud of yourself, when you remembered the email your publicist had forwarded to you just this morning.  “Hugo Boss will pay you $1500 to wear one of their suits on the carpet.”

“They’ll pay me to wear free clothes?” he repeated with wide eyes.

“Yeah, that’s one of the cooler things about fame,” you laughed.  “I make a grand every time I wear this watch outside!”

“I guess I should send them my measurements then…” he trailed off.  “Any chance I can get in on that watch deal?”

“No, but you can make $50 by getting papped at Jamba Juice.”

He paused for a moment, scratching the back of his neck as he thought.  “Is the smoothie comped?”

“I don’t know.  Do you want me to ask?”

“...kinda…” he admitted with a shy smile.  

“Well, I will, and I’ll RSVP to this invite saying we’ll be there next week,” you decided as you started to open up the food, but Bucky stopped you by reaching for your hands.

“Are we really doing this?” he asked.

“If you want to,” you mitigated.

“Of course I do.  I guess I have to accept that you’re actually willing to be seen with me,” he chuckled.  “It’s just sort of hard to believe.”

You leaned in and kissed him; it was meant to be a casual, reassuring peck but he held you closer and you melted into him, moaning softly at his touch as you started to climb into his lap.

“The food’s gonna get cold,” he reminded you with a mumble against your lips.

Unfortunately, your literal hunger was a bit too strong to ignore, even with the growing intensity of a metaphorical hunger for Bucky.  “Alright,” you relented, getting off of him and returning your attention to the meal on the table.  “Just know that I really, really want to be seen together, in public, just in case anybody missed the news about us already.  I’m not embarrassed by you or afraid you’re going to do something dumb.  I…”

One of those words that can’t be unsaid started to bubble up in your throat and you coughed, banishing the thought.

“I really like you.  I think we have something special.”

He smiled gently, giving you one more kiss on the cheek.  “I think so, too.”

//

Since this was slightly less of a big deal than a premiere or press tour, you had managed to convince your styling team to let you dress yourself, which was why he was laying on the bed and talking to you through the bathroom door while you put on your gown.

“Do you want me to hire a new driver?” you prompted him, voice muffled slightly as he imagined your head covered in the fabric, trying to navigate through the dress.  “I don’t want you to feel… I don’t know, like a servant?”

“A servant?  You’re still paying me,” he reminded you.  “You are still paying me, right?”

“Yes,” you laughed, “but still, I would hate it if you felt like staff.  You’re my boyfriend!”

(His heart still fluttered every time you said it.)

“No new driver,” he decided.  “I can drive just fine, and considering how things went between us… let’s not open the door for anybody else,” he smirked, making you laugh in that way you did when he made a stupid joke but you still liked it somehow.

“Okay, sure, but what about being my bodyguard?  Is that too weird?” you continued.

“God no,” he scoffed, “if anything I’m gonna be better at my job than ever.  As your boyfriend, keeping you safe is my job, but since keeping you safe was already my job… it’s, like, doubled-up now.”

He lost his train of thought when you opened the door.

“How do I look?” you asked as you stepped in and gave him a spin in your new dress.  Your whole body was draped in red silk, with the exception of your back which was almost entirely exposed, as if it were begging him to run his fingers down your spine.

“Like everything I ever wanted,” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

And it was so odd that you questioned his desire to drive you, because those moments where he could steer with one hand and rest the other on your thigh, when he could catch a glimpse of you looking out the window at the city rolling by, when he got to listen to you ramble about something to kill the time during a drive; those were his favorite moments, and he wouldn’t trade them for anything.

After a relatively brief trip, you arrived at the venue, and all of a sudden he was doing what he’d fantasized about more than he’d like to admit: escorting you down a red carpet.  It was almost overwhelming— yelling, chattering, reporters speaking into camera, flashes going off in every direction—

“Hey,” you whispered, bringing your hand up to his cheek and instantly taking all his attention.

“Hey,” he returned.

“Just follow my lead,” you instructed.

“That was the plan.”

[bibbawrites]

Counting 1, 2, 3 - Luke Patterson x Carrie Wilson x Reader (18+) (Modern!AU)

Request: nothing in particular but its been a long time coming 

Word Count: 848 words

Summary: When Carrie convinced you to go see her brother’s band play you never knew you would end up sleeping with your best friend and the lead singer, but boy are you glad it happened

Warnings: swearing, semi public blow job, implied sex, threesome 

A/N: this is probably the worst thing ive ever written, i just could not get myself to write it, so i apologise for how shit it is, but i just havent posted anything for so long i felt guilty so heres this :)

Tag List: @happinessinthedarkesttimes @herbrutals @youngbloodblog @courageous-she @littlemissaddict @gloomybrieyxb @itsyagorlemmalyn @jatpxmultifan @moneybagmgk @emeliii1 @mybradforddream @lovesanimals (the strike through means it wont let me tag you)

It had all started when Carrie had invited you to see her twin brother Bobby and his band play a gig at a local bar. You had been hesitant to go but went along to support your best friend’s brother. 

If you had known that the night would end with you hooking up with your best friend and the lead singer of Bobby’s band, then you probably would have worn nicer underwear. 

- 

You weren’t even sure how it had happened. One minute you were at the bar, flirting with the lead singer, Luke he had said his name was, and the next you were locking yourselves in a toilet cubical, thankful for the fact that the bar had unisex toilets with floor to ceiling walls and doors on the stalls. 

Luke’s lips were everywhere, his hips grinding against yours as you ran your hands through his hair, not even caring about someone catching you. All you could care about was the singer. 

You pushed Luke away, pulling your dress down to reveal your naked breasts, thankful that your dress had included a built in bra. Luke’s eyes lit up, his lips instantly attaching themselves to one of your nipples, causing you to moan loudly. 

Your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer, while your hands roamed his body underneath his sleeveless shirt. His hands rested on your hips, pushing your dress up to reveal your panties. 

“Can you take this off?” He questioned, fingers brushing against your panties. You smirked. 

“Only if you take yours off too.” You teased, and he grinned, pulling his pants down to reveal his hard dick. You wrapped a hand around him, jerking a couple of times, enjoying the gasp he let out. He pulled you back in, connecting your lips again, and you were so distracted you didn’t even hear the door opening. 

“Y/N, are you in here?” Carrie’s voice called, and you froze, eyes widening. 

“What do we do?” Luke whispered. You signaled for him to be quiet. 

“Y/N?” Carrie called again. “I know you came in here.” 

You bit your lip, remembering the code you and Carrie had come up with for when you wanted to subtly let the other know you were hooking up with someone. 

“Watermelon.” You said, just loud enough that you knew she would be able to hear. 

“Watermel- oh...” She trailed off, clearly understanding. Then after a pause, she spoke again. “Can I join?” 

Before you could even react Luke was unlocking the door and pulling Carrie in, locking the door again behind her. Her eyes widened as she took in the other occupant of the cubical. 

“Oh no.” She said quickly. “My brother would kill me if I hooked up with his bandmate.” 

“What Bobby doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Luke’s voice was low, pulling Carrie close to him, and with a small nod of consent from Carrie, the guitarist was connecting their lips in a passionate kiss. 

“It’s kinda cramped now.” You observed. Carrie and Luke broke their kiss, both focusing on you. 

“We’ll improvise.” Luke decided, his gaze flicking between you and Carrie. “Do you hook up with people together often?” 

“More often than you’d think.” You giggled. “And sometimes just the two of us.” 

“Fuck.” Luke whispered. You glanced towards Carrie, eyes scanning her body. 

“I think you’re a bit too dressed baby.” You said softly, and she gave you a cheeky grin before stripping off her bralette and hiking up her skirt so that she had the same amount of skin on show as you did. Not wanting to be left out, Luke pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it onto the closed toilet lid. Carrie reached across, placing her bralette on top of his shirt, and a comfortable silence fell over the three of you as you tried to decide who would make the next move. 

In the end it was you, dropping to your knees and taking Luke’s dick into your mouth, tongue lapping at the tip. He moaned loudly before Carrie pulled him into a rough kiss, swallowing his moans as you continued to suck him off. 

You took a deep breath before shifting to allow him to slide further into your mouth and down your throat, breathing through your nose to stop from gagging as he thrusted into your throat. 

“God Y/N.” He gasped. 

You hummed, feeling his dick twitch in your mouth at the vibration, and Luke swore loudly. 

“I’m gonna cum.” He gasped out. You deep throated him again, a hand coming up to cup his balls, and swallowed when he came down your throat a few moments later. 

You pulled off his dick, letting him drag you up into a rough kiss, and watching as Carrie kissed you, licking into your mouth to taste his cum. 

“We should take this back to my place.” You mumbled after you and Carrie separated. “My parent’s aren’t home.” 

Luke and Carrie were quick to agree and in only a few minutes you were sneaking out of the bar, knowing that the night was far from over.