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slightlycrunchy · 1 year

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Written for the @startrekwintergiftexchange for my recipient, @lokilenchen. I adore your art, Lena, and I hope you enjoy mine.

read on ao3

Leonard pounds on the door again.

He stands in the hallway of Deck 5, outside of a very particular room and taps his foot impatiently, blending into the chaos around him hinting of a shift change. Beings of all shapes and sizes rush from their cabins to their assigned posts which—he looks at his holowatch—are set to begin in three Standard minutes.

“Jim, do not make me medical override this, dammit. I’m leaving in ten seconds whether you’re out here or not!” Leonard hears what sounds to be a muffled shout and something heavy hitting the floor. He would have thought the bulkheads were more soundproof than that.

Just as the countdown in his head reaches one, a shock of blue greets Leonard from down around his waist, Jim’s crystal stare colored with mirth as he fumbles with the boot he is failing to zip up.

Jim’s smile is blinding. “Sorry, Bones.”

Hazel eyes roll. “Yeah, I would believe you other than the fact that you do this a few times a week,” he grumbles, turning away to begin walking down the hall and towards the turbolift that hopefully isn’t full of ensigns. Chapel has first watch and Leonard has seemed to make it a habit of late to hang around the bridge for the first portion of Alpha for no other reason than to keep an eye on the accident-prone captain currently trailing behind him. He hears Jim stumble into the wall with a low curse, the final zip of his boot sounding out clearly.

Leonard doesn’t stop to wait. “Three years into this and you’d think the captain would have his shit together.”

Jim catches up to him, breathless. “The captain may have stayed up too late last night and drank too much bourbon on doctor’s orders.”

“Pretty sure I told you to slow down at one point, kid. You should have learned by now not to try to keep up with me,” Leonard smirks.

The turbolift opens to a—thankfully—empty compartment and Jim stands close, shoulder touching Leonard’s own as he huffs a laugh. Leonard feels warm down to his toes, his exasperation little more than a front he wears like a practiced actor would play the role he has chosen. Thing is that Jim’s in on the farce, and that’s half the fun.

“Kid, huh? Haven’t called me that in a while.”

Leonard simply shrugs.

They do this almost every day, trailing through the ship together, a strange ritual Leonard can’t remember the start of since the whole thing makes no sense given sickbay rests on the exact deck they’re vacating. Yet, the thought of not accompanying Jim to the bridge and checking that everything seems fine before he slinks back below decks to slave away in the bowels of the ship (alright, maybe he’s being a bit dramatic) seems counterintuitive. Like he’s fighting instinct and not doing this will end in some sort of disaster. Doesn’t make much sense when Leonard has never been known to be a superstitious man. He has no plans to stop, regardless.

Jim pushes the button that’ll take them to the bridge and then sidles close once more, a comfortable silence blanketing over the compartment. Only the low hum of the lift detracts from it, that and Jim’s breathing. Leonard goes to place his hands firmly behind his back in parade rest but doesn’t hesitate to brush at the skin just over Jim's knuckles as he does so, eliciting a small smile; the ones Leonard is so familiar with, yet guards jealously.

With Jim so close, the smell of him is apparent, notes of warm skin and the cologne he prefers, the synthesized smell of fresh laundry that is—as Spock would say—‘illogical’, but is appreciated all the same coming off of his clothes. And mixed in with it all is…something new.

Leonard sniffs audibly, brows furrowed in thought…recognition. Jim being only slightly shorter puts his hair just at the line of Leonard’s nose and it isn’t long before he’s narrowed in on just where the smell is coming from.

“What is that?” He sniffs again. He turns and takes Jim by the shoulders. “What the hell is that—I know that smell.”

Jim is squirming now, snickering as he tries to twist away from Leonard’s grip, playing up the innocent act with a look on his face that has removed him from many a sketchy situation.

“I don’t know what you mean, Bonesy,” he teases.

“The hell you don't!”

Leonard releases him with a small shove, Jim’s shoulders coming up and shaking with barely suppressed laughter.

Leonard narrows his eyes in suspicion. “How’d you get it?”

“Get what?”

“Those blue eyes won’t fool me, where’d ya get it, Kirk?”

“Ooh, he’s mad.” Jim raises one eyebrow.

Leonard steps back, hands on his hips. He’s not mad, not truly anyway. Mostly it’s confusion that has him acting this way—an act quite unbecoming of a senior medical officer, he can admit. He takes a deep breath. “I’m not and you know it. Where’d you get it, Jim? I’ve been out for months, we haven’t been back to Earth since we left almost two years ago. I’m just confused, is all.”

Jim straightens, using one of the handles to pull himself upright completely, his expression turning serious. “I wondered if you would even recognize it.”

“Funny you think I wouldn’t.”

Jim fingers at his own hair, fixing what has come loose in their tussle only to come away with a small amount of product between his fingers, rubbing forefinger and thumb in circles as a smile grows on his face. “What if I told you I’ve had it for a while?”

Leonard can feel the warmth radiating off of Jim’s body as his captain steps forward, his chest coming to touch Leonard’s own as Jim looks up at him through long lashes. Hands circle around Leonard’s waist, fingers splayed against his spine. He can’t help the way he sinks into it, nor does he want to stop it, no matter they’re about thirty seconds away from the doors opening to a very public bridge. Jim’s arms have been home for a long while now, after all. They’ve both grown up since their academy days but the years have been short, and with their careers—and the uncertainties guaranteed them—Leonard doesn’t like to waste time. His eyes darken.

“Didn’t know you liked my pomade, darlin’.”

With Jim so close, Leonard’s voice is little more than a purr, and he knows that he doesn’t imagine the shiver that runs through Jim at the intimate gesture.

“You know I’ve liked it since day one.”

And yes, he supposes that’s true.

Leonard is lost for a moment in time, then. Like a holovid playing before his very eyes he can see that day, crystal clear in sense memory.

The smell of recycled dormitory air circulates, midmorning sunlight draping across the mess of sheets tangled around Leonard’s legs, the feeling of stretched muscles familiar as he awakes from a most restful night. Well, not all of it had been restful.

He can hear Jim puttering around in the bathroom, the mattress under his palm still warm from where he had been not minutes before. The smell of sex still permeates the air, and Leonard smirks. He’s overcome with a sudden feeling of content, fuzzy and molten all the way to his bones as the thought of hours spent in darkness and pleasure come rushing back.

This is the first time he has ever had Jim. Now that he knows the taste of the confounding man, first his closest friend and now something more, he doesn’t think he can give it up.

That fateful day aboard the shuttle bound for San Francisco had Leonard meeting a twenty-two-year-old delinquent and yet against his better judgment they’d been inseparable ever since. He didn’t even try all that hard to push him away once he realized Jim was determined to stick around. They spent two years getting to know one another amidst Academy regulations shoved down their throats, long nights spent in study turning into longer nights filled with honesty. Jim asks about Georgia and Leonard about Iowa, about parents and mothers and family that feels as far away as the stars they’re so destined to explore. They've been leading up to this moment for a while, gentle touches and Leonard’s incessant worrying over Jim’s health the brackets containing something more that they both have been dancing around.

And then Jim kissed him last night. And Leonard knew they were done playing will-they-won’t-they.

The sink water turns off with a hush and Leonard sits up, dragging his body to the edge of the bed, the sheet barely covering his cock from hanging out as he splays his legs and rests back on his palms. Jim is naked as the day he was born as he exits the bathroom and Leonard has no issue looking his fill.

“Well, good mornin’, sunshine,” Leonard says.

Jim squints, clicking his tongue. “Don’t use that southern charm on me this early, I just got out of that bed, I don’t have time to get back in it.” But by the way he walks across the room to sit beside Leonard shamelessly, drawing close, Leonard knows that’s a lie.

He takes a moment to look at the visage that is James Kirk. Jim folds up his legs and leans forward, that confident grin on his face apparent as Leonard takes in golden skin, scant freckles on slightly summer-burnt shoulders, curving lips that are just this side of dry. As if he can feel Leonard’s gaze like a physical thing, Jim licks at them, blue eyes shuttering into something sensual and tempting, and by the way his mouth quirks up he knows just what he’s doing to one Leonard McCoy.

When they kiss, Leonard thinks he knows what to expect but, as it always seems to be when it comes to Jim, he’s mistaken. Last night had been a well of passion, suppressed desires flowing out of the both of them like a dam set free but in the here and now, Leonard feels his breath catch for an entirely different reason. He feels comfort. Instead of insistent need he only feels a sense of rightness, of finality. As if the meeting of their mouths and bodies had been written a long, long time ago and now that they have given in to the plot, things are going to go right.

Leonard has never felt so right.

It’s the work of a moment for him to lean the rest of the way forward and grasp Jim’s arms, the healthy muscle of his biceps soft and giving beneath doctor’s hands, his supple skin like suede to his touch. Jim hums into his mouth and his tongue darts out to coalesce with Leonard’s own, their breaths coming quicker as Leonard presses Jim into the mattress, hands sliding down to paw at a well-formed chest. Leonard’s tongue is soon to join, dipping down to mouth at a pebbled nipple, Jim arching up beautifully to meet him, his legs parting wider to welcome Leonard closer, their cocks touching in passing. Jim gasps and Leonard smiles against spit-slick skin as sensation, bright and electric, rolls up his spine. Leonard drags his teeth, nipping at flushed skin as Jim wriggles underneath him, the sensation bordering on being too soft. When Leonard makes his way up to a sharp jawline, tonguing at day-old stubble, he’s brought up short.

He buries his nose in the soft hair just behind Jim’s ear, following his hairline upwards into the gentle coif Jim must have created within his short time in the bathroom. Leonard’s eyes narrow and he brings a hand up to muss up the little that Jim had accomplished.

“Hey!” Jim squirms, trying to get out from beneath Leonard’s body even as the doctor doubles down, placing all his weight onto the younger man, the air leaving Jim’s lungs in a huff.

Leonard sniffs again. “And just what is this, sweetheart? Dipping into my stash?”

Jim goes abruptly still. His cock twitches between their stomachs and Leonard smirks. “My hair was a mess, I saw it on the counter—thought, why not? Where’d you get it anyway, the container makes it look homemade.”

“It is.”

The container of pomade is one of a handful Leonard has, picked up from the last time he visited Georgia, a local friend of the family making the mixture from scratch. He’s one of her most loyal customers, or so she says and he chooses to believe her. He’s got credits out the ass, the least he can do is give them to someone who can actually use them when his daily needs are taken care of by Starfleet and they tend to just hang around in his bank account. He buys half a dozen or so and they last him the year. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do about this particular arrangement when they finally leave on a spaceship to the stars—Jim would say he’s going to be ‘grumpy’ about the whole thing. The kid’s probably right.

Bright blue eyes soften incrementally, Jim looking up and down the length of Leonard’s face with blatant tenderness, a soft smile turning up his mouth.

“I wanted to wear some. Smells like you. Always wondered what it was that gave you that special something, I just figured it was some cologne I’d never heard of.”

Leonard runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, fixing what he’d just finished ruining. Jim’s hair will be longer in a few years, but right now it’s barely grown enough to welcome the product with any useful efficiency. Once Leonard has finished, he looks on his work with pride.

Leonard kisses the tip of Jim’s nose, a perhaps uncharacteristic show of affection coming from him but hell, it’s a special occasion. “Suits you. What’s mine is yours now, I’d say. I can buy a few extra next time I’m off home if you think this is gonna be a repeat offense.”

The gentle smile on Jim’s face quickly turns wicked, the gleam in his eye turning predatory. “I can think of something else that’s gonna be a repeat offense right about now–”

And with a burst of power Leonard didn’t know he had, Jim flips them both, two sets of hands and mouths creating heated paths of lust and want, Jim’s loose and welcoming body allowing Leonard entry with little preamble from last night’s activities. Leonard’s cock buries into Jim and still that scent surrounds them both, an omen of something like comfort—like home.

When Jim comes with a shout and Leonard is quick to follow, the warmth in his chest matches that of his core, bursting with more than just fleshly satiation and blinding heat. His heart sings along with his skin, and all he can think of is JimJimJim. Leonard wraps two firm hands around his lover’s heaving back and draws him close when he collapses, spent entirely atop Leonard’s torso. The doctor squeezes firmly. Jim laughs, breathless.

“I’ll take a container of it…if you’re buying.”

Leonard thinks of the simple domesticity two side-by-side pomade bottles can symbolize and he buries a helpless smile into Jim’s shoulder.

“Whatever you want, Jim.”

The memory is vivid, rushing in and gone before a few seconds have passed in real time. Jim still stands against him in the turbolift, the soft hum making its way into his awareness again.

Jim looks at him with a knowing eye. “You thinking of our first time?”

Leonard raises a single eyebrow—sometimes he really hates that Spock has rubbed off on him in certain ways. “The first time, what? That you committed your thieving ways?”

Jim snorts. “Yeah, that first time.” He sighs, drawing away slowly, his hand grasping Leonard’s as they come to stand shoulder to shoulder. “I stashed a couple extra containers away. Would you believe I forgot about them? They were just there, in my duffle at the back of the closet.”

“With the way you pack? Yeah, I can believe it.”

The display screen on the control panel shows they’re coming up on the bridge and Jim drops his hand with a soft lingering of fingertips. It isn’t that the crew doesn’t know of their relationship, neither of them have specifically tried to keep it a secret, but their deep understanding of one another and tendency to yell at each other across the open space of the ship has placed them firmly within an untouchable sphere of ‘we don’t talk about it’—self-imposed by the crew, of course. Leonard assumes this is partly due to Jim’s status as Captain and his own high ranking position, but suspects the rest may be due to the possibility of bodily harm should their relationship become ‘fleet gossip. Leonard will neither confirm nor deny these suppositions. Regardless, as they do every day, both men allow the veil of responsibility to come down between them with a parting glance and as Jim squares his shoulders and lifts his chin minutely, Leonard is at once struck with the changes only a few years have made.

Jim is no longer that impulsive, reckless young man Leonard first fell for and though the memory of him is forever encased in the brightness of nostalgia, Leonard is happy to accept this version of the man he loves, here and now. Though, Jim hasn’t left all of his impetuous spark behind him.

Right before the doors open, the lift slowing, Jim places himself between Leonard and the door with a knowing look in his eye as he bites his lip suggestively.

“I’ll bring them by later. In the meantime, I’ll think of a few highly inappropriate things I want you to do to me as payment for a very special delivery.”

The doors begin to open and as Jim turns, straightening his shirt slightly as he takes a step out, Leonard’s fingers dart forward and give Jim’s ass a little pinch. Jim hardly flinches (professional as always) and with a surreptitious look around the consoles directly by the lift, Leonard knows he got away with it.

Again.

Leonard keeps his face carefully impassive as he whispers just loud enough for Jim to hear, “Wouldn’t expect any less of you, Captain.”

And if every time he passes by Jim and gets a whiff of his own pomade which drags a few ‘inappropriate’ thoughts of his own into his mind, well…no one has to know but himself.

#my writing #slightlytreks #star trek aos #mckirk #star trek #kelvin timeline #star trek fanfiction

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didisficrecs · 2 years

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DRAMIONE FICS

Top tier | Rereads | Faves | d

Breath mints / battle scars — 8th year au, hogwarts vibes, heavy angst,(redeemable & the right amount of)toxicity, damaged and toxic hermione & draco, sarcastic angry Draco. The standard, thee book, ultimate favorite book of 2022. This is the good shit. Canon in my eyes, actual enemies to lovers | thoughts | edits 1 2 3

The Fallout — war au, dramione surviving together, angst, sarcastic draco, one of the classics, redemption, enemies to fwb to lovers | so so so so good, so raw and beautiful, love the way they love

Ghosts in a Wishing Well — ministry au one shot, exes to lovers, angst, smut | this was so so so good wow

Let the dark in — Triwizard tournament au, where Draco is from another school, rivals, dark, angst

To Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth — ministry three shot, fluff, patronus casting

Manacled —

Voldemort wins au, high reeve Draco, memory loss - biggest plot twist - so well written & captivating. It’s so heartbreaking, dark, tragic, horrifying and traumatizing. - but it’s so good - the way they chose each other - the extent of their love - also you’ll hate the golden trio in this.

However, i couldn’t read it fully I mostly “skimmed” cuz I couldn’t stomach it, couldn’t get past all the triggers warnings - I still have mixed feelings - I can’t fully forgive Draco. PS. It’ll leave you depressed (and don’t read the last line) note to self: don’t reread

Forever Is Composed Of Nows — Aurore/James one shot, angst and fluff

Consumed, obsessed and attached — one shot, secret relationship, smut

I bet you think about me — exes to lovers goodness in a one shot, angst, hea

Essential Vices — 8th year one shot, exes to lovers, rough smut, angst, toxic, jealousy

Height — 8th year one shot, fluff, soft vibes

Accidentally in love — muggle fwb series, so well written fgjhg, fluff and smut

Party lines — muggle academic rivals au, fluff and smut

Common spaces, Empty spaces — 8th year one shot, angsty angst, smut

Isolation — (lol again), forced proximity, angry Draco, thee og dramione fic - nostalgic fave

Stupid games — one shot, good smut

Read recently

Sweetly Broken - depressed draco, drug addiction, hit every angsty spot

Wedding Bell Blues – angst

Sweet Bones by somandalicious – exes

Not NoLonger Lovers by somandalicious – exes, angst

Cake by somandalicious – exes

ivy – secret relationship, astoria, kinda infidelity

Read

The rights and wrongs series — coworkers au, pining Draco and Hermione, not enemies to lovers, so so so fluffy, I acc love the golden trio here, just good vibes but I didn’t really like Hermione’s characterization or Draco’s for that matter — they’re very fluffy and simpy

The Auction — Voldemort wins au to the series, captured, auction, death eater draco au, unrequited love, not enemies to lovers, “skim-” read it cuz it was heavy angst and plot buht this was actually good/okay ( “actually” bcuz I’m used to enemies to lovers dramione ).

A rake’s revenge — regency era one shot, fuckboy draco

Lust and Loathing — muggle fwb au, LOVE THIS DRACO, he’s toxic and hates her but is secretly obsessed with her, angst and smut

The art of keeping casual — muggle fwb au, smut and tini dash of angst

A Season for setting Fires — soulmate bond au, angst, war, Voldemort wins, they’re both vulnerable, very realistic

Various Storms and Saints — 8th year au, soft draco, dnf | thoughts

Happy pills — Post Hogwarts rehab au, angst, drug addiction, found family ish, soft vibes dnf

From Wiltshire, With Love — war au, spy draco, morally grey Hermione & Draco, angst, enemies to friends to lovers, dnf

Self-preservation — 8th year one shot, head girl, hate sex, angsty smut with psychoanalysis (my favorite genre), not hea? wish this was a series or had a second chapter, bcuz it’s too good

Tension — post hogwarts one shot, break ups, make ups, rough smut, jealousy, miscommunication

On the Nature of Daylight — 6th year au, heavy angst, dark, possessiveness and crazy obsession kinda toxic, controlling, codependency, unhinged Death eater!Draco, Hermione has no backbone bye, hated this draco Most of it is well written and good, but Draco’s pov and dialogue has you like : | :o

sequel The Bitter Earth (unfinished) | even more toxicity, really didn’t want to like duo-logy cuz that shih toxic even for my standards and don’t really like the ‘good girl’ trope.

Where You Belong — post war one shot, secret relationship, smut, angst, burrow

Fine Line — hogwarts au one shot, smut, pwp, established relationship, toxicity

Momentary Oblivion — post hogwarts one shot, angst, not hea, cheating

Every Day, a Little Death — 8th year short fic, smut basically, fwb

Nothing Good Happens After 2AM — 8th year two shot, potions, smut

If we were made of water — ministry one shot, secret relationship, angst

Lessons in darkened rooms — 8th year one shot, angst, smut

To be read/reading

Coming down — 8th year one shot, angst, idiots to lovers

Love a Lie and other fics by ambpersand on ao3 (log in to read)

— Considering

LIATOTZA — zombie apocalypse, toxic draco? Manacled Draco was inspired by him, pregnancy, marriage

Beyond the Castle Walls — 6th year au, past, present, angst, pregnancy later on

Ride or die — muggle au, gang au

Measure of a man — dad!draco, healer!hermione, adorable scorp, slow burn, soft vibes, healing sort of fic, cozy read, post-Hogwarts

False Pretenses — Post Hogwarts au, fake dating, angst

Dramione wips to read once they are completed

Note to self: For more see the collections under breath mints / battle scars or TikTok collection

#dramione #draco malfoy #hermione granger #draco x hermione #dramione fanfic #dramione fanfiction #my lists

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starjunco · 1 year

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Day 31: Slow Healing (Ao3)

This was heavily inspired by Annaoi’s Cyber AU which has been stuck in my head since I saw it. Cyberpunk naturally didn’t help. Please go check out her art @annaoi It's amazing!

There’s some unicode witchery going on here -- please let me know if it doesn’t show up right.

-------

Nyx felt like hell. Not like ‘hit by a truck’ kind of bad, but took a dip in Ravatogh kind of bad. He felt himself drifting for the longest time, rejecting the burning pain for the safety of unconsciousness. It went on for so long, that when he found himself standing back in his village, the rain pouring down on him, he believed he must have died.

He didn’t think he’d feel this relieved to be dead, but that painful limbo left him drained and ready to join his--

His senses sharpened as he turned away from those thoughts and focused on the cool feeling of the rain on his skin, the green and wild scent of the jungle, and the pleasant white hiss of the drops on the ground around him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕫𝕚𝕟𝕘...𝔾𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕟 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕥𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕤 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕. 𝔻𝕖𝕗𝕒𝕦𝕝𝕥 𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕦𝕒𝕘𝕖 𝕦𝕡𝕕𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕.

The red text stood out in stark contrast to the dark of his eyelids. Nyx’s eyes flew open, but it was still there, running along the upper left of his view -- no matter where he looked.

𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕥 ℕ𝕪𝕩_𝕌𝕝𝕣𝕚𝕔 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕕𝕧𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕒𝕚𝕟 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕞.

“Like hell!” Nyx returned, though who -- or what -- exactly he was talking to, he wasn’t sure. Pain flared suddenly, turning his vision white. The red text was still there, each letter flashing into view before the line faded away and newer text moved up to replace it.

𝔽𝟚 𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕡𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕. 𝔸𝕕𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕖��𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕖��𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕤.

𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕥 ℕ𝕪𝕩_𝕌𝕝𝕣𝕚𝕔 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕕𝕧𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕠 𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕒𝕚𝕟 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕞.

When the pain subsided, he found himself on his knees. The vision out of his left eye was still white and starry, but he tried opening his eyes anyway. A light caught his attention immediately and he shifted his gaze down and to the left.

Something was very wrong.

The left side of his body glowed white with vein-like red streaks superposed on his skin. Below the odd light, his body wasn’t right either -- it was black, only a silhouette of what should be there, and the outline of it had an odd, pixelated appearance. Ash-gray pixel-flecks radiated outward at a lazy pace, mixing surreally with the red and white light.

He felt panic rise again and with it the pain, but it is washed away by a cool feeling.

ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕤 𝕣𝕖𝕡𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕.

𝕌𝕟𝕚𝕥 ℕ𝕪𝕩_𝕌𝕝𝕣𝕚𝕔 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕕𝕧𝕚𝕤𝕖𝕕

“I am calm!”

…

𝕄𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟 𝕟𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕝 𝕝𝕚𝕞𝕚𝕥𝕤.

"𝔻𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕞 𝔸𝕕𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕠𝕕" 𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕥𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕝 𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕.

As Nyx stared at the lines, the odd light and pixelization resolved themselves. His body was whole his own again -- unlit, clothed, undamaged.

“What is going on?”

Good morning, Nyx Ulric.

This time, it was a voice, not text. A woman’s voice.

“Who are you?” Nyx demanded as he pushed himself back to his feet. He looked around, but the village was empty of people -- disturbingly so. “What is this?”

You are dreaming, Nyx. Your body was damaged beyond what it could naturally heal, but we have helped you. You are in recovery; your body is healing from the trauma and the augmentations required to keep you alive. Until you wake up, I am here to guide you.

Consider this a tutorial for your new life as a Kingsglaive.

#ffxv #kingsglaive #nyx ulric #cyberpunk #day 31 #slow healing #whumpcember2022 #the month is done!#this has been an awesome time!#not always as whumpy as I'd like #but I'll take whatever my brain decides to give me XD #thank you all for your support!

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thecherrygod · 1 year

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Do you ever wake up from a dream and you know you're gonna have a day™

i feel like ive had a similar dream to this one a few times ago but also i feel like i have deja vus in dreams sometimes so im unsure. either deja vus or a moment of lucid dreaming that doesnt last enough, but i also tend to have recurring dreams so who knows, also if i think i know why something is happening in the dream i will put my opinion lmao anyways.

so. i was waiting for a bus, apparently the 125 (which is a mix of the two buses i usually took from my house, before we moved, to go to a few places) with the first friend i made in elementary school, who happens to be in three dreams ive had this month, also there were my first crush and some other guy. in theory we were going each to our houses, but instead i got on an appartment

in theory from what i think is another dream, i could just go to this woman for therapy whenever i felt it necessary, like just walk in and thats it. also if i couldnt pay her in money i could pay her in yogurt for some reason. so im just there, going as if i own the place, walking stairs in a white beige sterile looking building, and then entering the office, with a voice in the back of my head going 'you should have knocked' but i was already halfway through the door (ive been going through it kinda and thinking i should get therapy so i believe thatswhy i dream of going to therapy dhsdghdsgd)

at that moment im not me anymore, im some blonde woman with long hair, theres noise in there, the therapist talking to someone, and sounds like a baby. apparently she had a child not that long ago and it was there but in another room in the office thing. and so the blonde kind of. sits on the floor. lays there, talking to the therapist and apparently she therapist was gonna 'check their fortune' or future or something, in my brain what made sense is that the blonde was pregnant and the therapist was gonna tell her about her future child. also there was a tv in the room and it had a movie or something that was starring the blonde. apparently the movie was called something similar to 'degberaux' or something. im sure it ended in beraux but it started with a b and had a g in there too but... its unclear.

after that im me again and im in some sort of classroom thats empty except for someone who we used to be friends and it ended up badly and while its bc both of us i do feel very guilty about it. i sorta try to both ignore and aknoweledge her, first i sit on the complete opposite side of her, we have a hesitant small talk, in which i sit closer to her but from an angle i cant really see her face, and we talk a bit more but nothing else. more people start filling the room, a girl that went to school with me that i promised i was gonna invite her to my house to play videogames but i never did good on that promise (more guilt it seems lmao) and i talk more with her. i notice shes drawing some sort of comic with neat line art and i ask her about it, if its her own story and stuff. she says yes, shows me the pages which are mostly trees and plants and a single panel with a guy, and while im looking she says that shes been doing them like this bc her computer broke down and couldnt work on it digitally and was worried she forgot completely how that worked (something that literally happened to me last year so i know where that comes from)

then i am just. back at the therapists office, this time im me again, but now completely distraught, very stressed and at the verge of tears partially just bc paying therapy in yogurt is making me feel that even if that was the therapists idea. theres a kitchen table in the office, it has like.. holes in it but under the wholes its like theres sand under the table so you can still let things on the table with no risk of them actually falling to the floor. so i am attempting to pay my therapy session. with yogurt. its a 6 pack of creamy vanilla yogurt specifically from a brand from here which is common but relatively good quality, and i look at it from the outside, the. bowl or whatever now kinda transparent. and i begin panicking more, its barely there inside, and it looks brownish, kinda rotten, as if it was consuming itself, and i begin opening them and my therapist doesnt complain about that shes just kinda confused but like 'ah its fine ill eat them all together' and im like 'no. you wont. look at them. its. bad' so she looks over my shoulder and goes '... oh. the yogurt died' (i think this is because ive been spiralling the last few days bc of mayo for a few reasons tbh)

so yeah. the yogurt died. i was paying therapy in yogurt and the yogurt. died. so i just broke down. i started properly crying. at first she didnt know if she should aproach me but i guess she felt bad and did give me a hug which also sorta helped me calm down but i was also calming down bc irl i dont cry more than like 5 tears except i reach a specific point of breakdown also about the hug. i believe it to be unproffesional afaik but in the dream it was sort of comforting and also i think that whenever i get hugged in dreams i just do cry a lot which. man i think thats its own situation lmao) after that my phone was a bit stuck on one of the holes in the table and shes laughing a bit like 'im not so sure how youre gonna take it off there haha.. good luck' and i just put my hand in there and take it out almost like a puzzle piece with just a bit of force but nothing too difficult.

after that im now in a dining table surrounded by guys that have been classmates at different points in my life. just sorta talking. at this point is where i know that i have therapy whenever i want it/need it bc one of the guys that went to highschool with me (and got himself into an alcohol indused coma during out graduation party) had killed multiple people and im not sure if dream me had actually seen it happening with my own eyes or not but i got the image of blood splatters there as a memory so maybe)

after that we are leaving. its night, everything is dark, also the atmosphere is tense and a bit.. scary? maybe just bc its night. i am leaving with a girl. idk who, its almost like she could have been any of the three friends that i had seen before, or maybe all of them in one, im not really sure. and i think 'fuck i didnt say goodbye to my therapist properly' and i get a bit anxious but also full of guilt so i ask the girl to wait for me, ill go do that real quick.

i find my therapist, shes just there in a room that feels like a greenhouse mixed with an attic, kinda dark but since its made of glass you can see bc of outside lights. i get close like 'ma'am i am so sorry i didnt properly say goodbye to you and i also wanted to thank you' but she seems distant, cold, and maybe a bit angry. i still go back in for a hug and i am in fact tearing up again. she pats me in the back like when someone just gives you the quickest hug so it doesnt last a lot but you still know its sorta okay even tho maybe not fully okay. after that she breaks the hug and says 'if you are acting like this it means i am doing a good job' and she just. leaves. i try to follow her bc well im unwell i dont think i should be alone and it felt like she was abandoning me

so i get close to her, she looks at me how youd look at an animal, a pet, thats just following you everywhere, but also a bit.. disappointed at my behavior? and then when im about to fully reach her i woke up

#my posts #my dreams #put under a read more bc it didnt fit the tags #this is a for me thing honestly i just keep them all together #but maybe its a bit too. much. maybe dont read this #also i AM having a fucking day i was right #im gonna. idk. i have no goddamn clue #if you are talking and sharing recipes and when someone finishes theirs you share one right?#so i said 'oh it reminded me of this one with this ingredient' just for this fucking bastard to be like 'mine doesnt' all. dismisive #so i was like 'ok cool for you anyways' bc i wasnt just talking to him it was a conversation with a few people #and he complained how as soon as he finished his i started talking about mine like what #you wanted to fucking discuss a goddamn dessert recipe for an hour??????????????#and appanrently I WAS THE ONE INTERRUPTING HIM?????????????????????????#im gonna.#he should. i.#and ihave to live with this goddamn bastard AGAIN #'you genuinely think thats being interrupted????' 'yes' 'oh there is something wrong with you. do you think i interrupted him?'#'.... no. thats called having a conversation' 'and do you?' 'no i agree thats called having a conversation'#BUT ALL I CAN DO IS FEEL LIKE THIS BC HE ALREADY WAS A BASTARD #HE INTERRUPTED ME BEING DISMISIVE AND THEN HE ACTS THE FUCKING VICTIM IM #........................... idk #its all so. fucking stupid but he always makes me so goddamn mad #this post was in my drafts but i didnt post it bc i started writing the dream in the tags but. i ran out of them so now that i can #write this properly its after this happened and honest to god i am feeling like absolute shit #.... formatting this better and actually getting to write as much as i remember with the proper details helped me feel a bit better tho #im still like. not fully okay and also i am mad at this bastard but i am feeling better so idk lmao anyways ill go continue #having my day tm

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regenderate-fic · 1 year

Text

When I Run Away (You're Who I Run To): Chapter 3

main post read on ao3

Word Count (Chapter): 2,976

The sun was just beginning to set when Yaz and Rose made their way up to Penny’s place, exchanging nervous glances. Penny’s flat was a lot like theirs: a door leading to a narrow stairwell leading to another door, on which Rose knocked three times.

The door swung open, revealing a very excitable Penny. She ushered Yaz and Rose inside, already talking a mile a minute: “Hello! Brilliant to see you. We haven't had people around here in ages. Missed it, honestly.”

She kept talking, introducing the space, pointing at plants and bits of art, while Yaz looked around. It was a small space, and cozy: they'd emerged into a living area, with an overstuffed purple sofa in front of a coffee table covered in potted plants. The walls were lined with bookshelves, most of which were stuffed with books, but some of which featured pictures of Penny, Donna, and a few unfamiliar faces, and others of which were piled high with board games, art supplies, and what looked like random bits of circuitry and machinery. It was all lit in a warm amber, the sort you’d get from cuddling up to a campfire in the middle of winter, and Yaz couldn’t help but feel at home.

Penny trailed off, and Yaz took the opportunity to hold up a jar she’d been carrying under her arm.

“My mum always drilled it into my head never to show up anywhere empty handed,” she explained. “Except we weren't sure what to bring, so I just packaged up some of the chai my nan sends me. Thought you might like it.”

Penny's mouth dropped open. “Yaz, I can't take something you got from your nan.”

Yaz shifted her weight. “She sort of sends me more than we can use,” she said. “There’s loads more where that came from.”

“She sounds brilliant,” Penny said, dead serious. She took the jar from Yaz. “Thank you.” She stared through the glass at the mix of spices and tea. “I suppose this is the sort of thing you have with lots of milk?”

“I'll show you how we make it later,” Yaz promised. “If you want, anyway.”

“Yasmin Khan,” Penny said, still dead serious. “That would be brilliant.”

Yaz smiled.

Penny had stilled, just for a moment, but now she leapt into action. “C’mon,” she said. “I’ll show you the kitchen.”

The kitchen itself was a mess. There was a cluttered table shoved into the space, leaving barely any room to stand at the counter— and the counters themselves were full of pans stacked on top of each other, baking sheets piled in the drying rack, flour sitting out. Donna was at the stove, poking at what looked like pasta in a thick red sauce; it smelled amazing.

“Donna, we’ve got company!” Penny exclaimed. She set down the jar Yaz had given her on the counter.

Donna turned, still holding the wooden spoon she’d been using to stir. “Oh, we do, do we?” She grinned at Yaz and Rose. “Welcome. Food’s almost done.”

“Smells good,” Rose said.

“Thanks.” Donna leaned forward. “Be glad I’m the one cooking. Who knows what Penny would’ve subjected you to?”

“Oi, which of us went to culinary school?” Penny protested.

“All the culinary school in the world can’t provide taste,” Donna replied. She raised her eyebrows. “Remember when you tried to mix tofu with peanut butter? And not a proper sauce, either.”

“That was all about the texture,” Penny insisted.

Donna guffawed. “Who on Earth would think that’s a good texture?”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Table’s through here,” she said to Yaz and Rose, carefully ignoring Donna’s continued laughter. She led Yaz and Rose into a space just big enough for a table that seated four, currently set with a blue tablecloth, silverware and plates and bowls, and two tall candles in the center. There was a big window on one side, framed with red curtains and looking out on the street, and a framed art print of an abstract design in shades of blue and orange. Penny sat in one of the chairs, and Yaz and Rose followed her lead.

“How long have you and Donna known each other?” Rose asked, fiddling with her napkin.

“Oh, since we were about sixteen,” Penny said. She waved a hand. “It’s a long story. Her family helped me out. Honestly, we’re basically siblings at this point. Or cousins. I usually tell people she’s my cousin.”

“You get along better than me and my sister,” Yaz noted. She and Sonya cared about each other, but Yaz couldn’t imagine actually sharing a flat with her. “Or any of my cousins.”

Penny shrugged. “We work together well enough. Always have. One time when we were in school together we got assigned a science project, and we wound up making this huge diorama of the solar system in Donna’s grandad’s kitchen. Was brilliant. And then it broke in half on the bus to school, and we had to patch it up in the hallway.” She waved a hand. “Still, we managed the A. These days I think Donna just stays in my life to make sure I get decent coffee for the shop.”

“Donna picks the coffee?” Rose asked.

Penny nodded. “You heard her, didn’t you? I’ve got no taste, apparently. Just ‘cause I like some milk and sugar—”

“You barely put any coffee in there!” Donna had entered, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and four glasses in the other. “Honestly. Leave the coffee selection to the people who actually drink it.”

“I drink it!” Penny protested.

Donna shook her head. She set down the wine and glasses on the table.

“You think you drink it,” she said. “But I’ve seen how much actual coffee goes into your cups.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll right back,” she said. She pushed herself to her feet and ran into the kitchen, returning seconds later with a loaf of challah much like the one Rose had bought that morning, sitting on a cutting board. She set it down on the table, a little out of breath.

“Think we’re close enough to sunset?” she asked Donna.

Donna peered out the window. “Sure.”

“You know you can look up when the sun sets online,” Rose said.

Penny shook her head. “Where’s the fun in that?” She pulled out a box of matches. “Right. You two done this before?”

Yaz shook her head, but Rose nodded.

“You have?” Yaz asked.

Rose nodded again. “Back when I was with Mickey,” she explained. “He used to let his bandmates stay with him sometimes, ‘cause they didn’t have great relationships with their families, some of them. There was one friend— Sally, do you remember her? —he had her living with him for months who would have us all come round on Friday nights. We used to pitch in to help her get the bread and stuff. It’s a good memory.”

“Oh, right.” Yaz had just barely known Rose when she and Mickey had broken up— Rose had kept the friend group for a little while, but they’d sort of dissolved before Yaz and Rose got really close. Yaz had known Sally, in a friend-of-a-friend sort of way, but not in an invited-to-Shabbat sort of way. She’d seemed nice, though.

“It’s not too complicated,” Donna said to Yaz. “We light the candles, there’s a bit of prayer, there’s wine, there’s bread.”

Yaz exchanged a glance with Rose.

“Yaz doesn’t really do alcohol,” Rose said. “Is that all right?”

“Oh!” Penny dropped the matches on the table. “Sorry, Yaz, I should’ve asked this morning. Donna, do we still have the grape juice from when your cousins were over?” Without waiting for an answer, she darted back into the kitchen. Yaz could hear the doors of cabinets and fridges opening, and then the sound of things being moved around, and then Penny came back in, holding a bottle of grape soda. “I think this’ll have to do.” She opened it, poured a little bit into one of the wine glasses, and then said, “You don’t have to drink it, honest. Just don’t want you to feel left out.”

“I feel like I’m learning a lot about your taste tonight,” Yaz joked.

She did drink it, in the end: she listened as Penny and Donna sang blessings and Rose fumbled along, getting about half the words right, and she sipped from the grape soda ( not her favorite flavor, but all right under the circumstances), and she took a piece of the challah, which was in fact delicious: Penny’s skill as a baker was inarguable.

“I see why you’re the best around,” Rose said.

Penny beamed. She moved the candles to the window ledge, and Donna went back into the kitchen and brought out a big serving bowl. “Oi, move the other stuff over,” she said.

Penny shifted the challah and wine bottle so that there was room for the bowl.

“Right.” Donna set down the bowl. “Help yourselves.”

Rose reached for the bowl, dishing out a helping of the pasta Donna had made. Once she was done, she passed the bowl to Yaz, who did the same. There wasn’t much talking as they started eating— until Donna jabbed her fork in Yaz’s and Rose’s direction and said, “Right, then. I’ve got to learn more about you two.” She gave Penny a look. “Considering how much this one seems to talk about you.”

“I don’t talk about you that much,” Penny protested.

Donna rolled her eyes. “You haven’t shut up since they agreed to come to dinner.”

Penny looked down at her plate, her mouth pressed into a line.

“Not sure we’re all that interesting,” Rose said. She glanced at Yaz. “I dunno. What do you want to know?”

Donna paused for a moment, thinking. “How’d you meet?” she asked.

“Working at the same shop,” Rose said. “Back when we were both really new.”

“I was just off my apprenticeship,” Yaz added.

“Right, and they brought me on ‘cause their old piercer retired or something.” Rose took a bite of her food. “First day, I walk into the break room, Yaz is in there arguing with a coworker about whether or not blood is blue until it hits the air.”

“It’s obviously not, by the way,” Yaz added. “Don’t know how Dan managed to spend twenty years as a tattoo artist without figuring out that blood is pretty much always red.”

“And then they tried to get me to weigh in,” Rose said. “Except I was all, ‘Don’t ask me, I haven’t even got my A-levels,’ and then I got on the shop’s computer and Googled it, and, I dunno, I guess we were friends from there.”

“Good story,” Penny said. She was fiddling with her fork, poking at the pasta.

“Why’d you come to London, then?” Donna asked Yaz. “I mean, not to assume or anything, but you sound like you’re from a bit further north.”

“I am,” Yaz said. “Technically I came for the apprenticeship. Really I was just trying to get away from my family, I suppose.” She hesitated. “I mean, not that there’s really anything wrong with them. Just— needed space. Anyway, it’s a good thing I did come here, ‘cause otherwise I never would’ve met Rose, and we never would’ve opened our shop together.”

“Where are you from, then?” Penny asked, eyeing Yaz. “Sheffield?”

“Right in one,” Yaz said. “Impressive.” She nodded to Penny. “How about you?”

“Huddersfield, round about,” Penny said. “Except I might as well be from London, if it weren’t for the accent. Lived here since I was sixteen, haven’t I?” She scrunched up her face. “Wish I could just tell people I was from here.”

“Who’s stopping you?” Donna asked. “You say you’re from London, and if they ask about the accent, you just pretend it’s a perfectly normal London accent. Makes them look rude. Eventually, people stop asking. Easy.”

Penny tilted her head to the side. “Could work. Not sure it’d be worth it.”

“I’ll back you up, if it comes to that,” Yaz offered. “Tell people we’re from the secret north bit of London.”

Rose laughed. “‘Course, the illusion will be shattered once they get on Google Maps and realize it doesn’t exist.”

“That’s the secret bit, isn’t it?” Penny grinned. “Anyway, it won’t matter. Once they’ve left our shops, who cares what they think? We can definitely get away with this.”

“Would be more fun than explaining the real story,” Yaz said. She looked at Penny. “I think we’ve got a plan.”

“Brilliant. Can’t wait.” Penny raised her eyebrows at Yaz. “You’d better follow through. Don’t leave me hanging.”

Yaz grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Brilliant,” Penny said again, and she shoved a truly astonishing amount of pasta into her mouth.

After dinner, they lingered. Yaz was comfortable and full, and she was very much enjoying the conversation: Penny turned out to have no shortage of entertaining anecdotes from her time in culinary school and running the bakery, with sidebars and elaboration and further (often embarrassing) anecdotes of the both of them from Donna, and she showed a complete and earnest interest in anything Yaz and Rose had to say. It was a little disarming, the way she looked at Yaz when she talked. Yaz could’ve stayed all night, really, but then she checked her watch and realized what time it was. She tugged at Rose’s arm. “We’ve got to go if we want to be ready for tomorrow.”

“Oh, do you?” Penny looked genuinely disappointed at the prospect.

“Hey, we’re just across the street,” Rose said. “Come by tomorrow, even. We’ll be busy, but you might have fun.”

“At the very least it makes us look like we’ve got clients,” Yaz added.

“Oh, brilliant.” Penny nudged Donna. “D’you want to come to their thing with me tomorrow?”

Donna shook her head. “I’ve got plans,” she said. “Me, face mask, magazines. Sorry.”

“We make Graham run the shop on Saturdays,” Penny explained. “Day of rest, and all that.”

“Not if you’re Graham,” Yaz joked.

Penny shrugged. “He gets Sunday and Monday off. It all evens out in the end. And it’s theologically sound, considering.”

“We’d be happy to see either of you,” Rose said. “But you don’t have to come, of course.” She stood, holding out a hand to help Yaz up. “Thanks for inviting us tonight.”

“Yeah, I had fun,” Yaz said. “We’ll see you later?”

“Won’t be able to get rid of us,” Penny said. She got to her feet and walked them to the door. “Tomorrow,” she promised as Yaz and Rose stepped out into the hall.

“See you then,” Rose said.

They took their time walking back across the street, still languishing in the contentment of the evening— at least, until Rose nudged Yaz and said, “You know, Penny was flirting with you.”

Yaz could feel the heat rushing to her face. “She was not .”

Rose danced in front of Yaz, walking backward so she could stare Yaz down and, lowering her voice in an imitation of Penny’s fervent tone, said, “ Yasmin Khan. That would be brilliant. ”

“That wasn’t—” Yaz flustered. “I’m pretty sure she’s just like that.”

Rose stepped back to walk at Yaz’s side again. “I don't know. It looked like flirting to me.”

“I thought you were into her,” Yaz said.

“Sure I am,” Rose replied. “Doesn’t do much if she’s not into me .”

Yaz glanced at her. “Considering you’re the one actually into women, I think you’ve got a shot.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Rose said, and now Yaz could hear the smile in her voice. “If you’re not into her, why did you get all flustered when I said she was flirting?”

“I didn’t—” By now they were almost to the top of the steps to their flat. As soon as they reached the landing, Yaz bumped against Rose in a gentle shove. “Stop trying to convince me I’m into women.”

“Stop trying to convince me you’re not,” Rose said with a grin.

Yaz rolled her eyes. “Still pretty sure I’d know better than you.”

“That’s what you think.” It was an old argument by now, worn comfortably in like a threadbare armchair— Rose was openly and unabashedly bisexual, and for years now she’d been insisting Yaz had to have feelings for other women. “But as your best friend, I know things about you you don’t even know about yourself. Like how you haven’t had a boyfriend in years . And how I saw you staring at that butch I brought home last year—”

“I was just trying to figure out where I knew her from,” Yaz protested. They’d stopped in the middle of the living room, and now Yaz was leaning against the back of the couch while Rose stood in front of her.

Rose shook her head. “I know what it looks like when you’re trying to figure out where you know someone from.” She raised her eyebrows. “Best friend, remember?”

Yaz rolled her eyes.

“ And —” Rose got closer, her eyes huge in Yaz’s frame of vision— “if you were really straight, why would you get flustered when I said Penny was flirting?”

Yaz pushed her away, shaking her head affectionately. “You just don’t want to admit you’ve spent the last four years living with a straight girl.”

“It’s called having a roommate,” Rose scoffed. “ You just don’t want to admit you’ve been wrong this whole time.”

“Whatever.” Yaz pushed off the back of the couch, flicking at Rose’s shoulder as she went. “I’ve got to get to bed. My nonexistent attraction to women can wait ‘til morning.”

“It’s been waiting long enough,” Rose called after her.

Yaz pulled the door to her room closed and flopped back on her bed, still smiling.

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shkspr · 3 years

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hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

#sorry if this is repetitive or makes no sense or if i got some details of the show wrong #i simply couldnt be bothered to put too much effort into this post #lest it become a research paper and take me several weeks to answer #anyway thats all my opinions #dw #ok to rb

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divine-mistake · 3 years

Text

'till death blooms us art

Summary: You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

Characters: Sam Wilson/Plus-sized Reader

Warnings: 18+ (no smut), strong language, Hanahaki AU, angst with a happy ending, weight insecurity, allusions to eating disorders, talk about death, blood, past domestic abuse and trauma, gun violence, original male character, book quotes, anxiety

Word Count: 12796

A/N: Thank you for reading! This fic won the vote during my 500 follower celebration and it's finally out now! This story has a lot of meaning for me, due to it being a bit of a metaphor for disorderly eating. I know that will make some people uncomfortable, but as someone who has struggled for a long time, I want to talk more openly about this kind of thing. Anyway, thanks so much for sticking with me and I hope you enjoy!

main masterlist | AO3 | playlist by @tripleyeeet

—STUBBORN WEEDS—

They are everywhere—covering the space of the sitting room like an overgrown garden made of glass and paint, canvas and pages torn from old waterlogged books, stained mugs filled with decaying brushes. Wanda walks through your room like it’s a maze, her fingers trailing over the air but never touching the art. She’s pretending she’s in a museum, or a gallery, or something fancier than what you could ever appear in, but a twinge of something akin to warmth stabs through your heart at the thought.

“These are incredible,” she says, not looking at you. “How do you do it?”

With a shrug, you bend down and pick up one of the canvasses from the floor, holding it out to look at it.

“I don’t know,” you lie.

White space in the shape of flowers, uneven and missing petals here and there, is outlined in streaks of paint that go every direction, in every different shade, hard edges and soft, blurred lines and covering the entirety of the canvas except for those spaces where flowers once sat, pinned to the medium.

“They are beautiful,” Wanda says.

Your nail sneaks under one of the dried chunks of acrylic and you chip it—a fleck of ultramarine blue falls from the painting.

When you turn, Wanda studies a different piece in careful hands. It’s a glass case, trimmed with shitty, shaky lines of gold you painted on a whim. But inside, between the thick panes, dried flowers painted over are encased in eternity, arranged to match their exact placements on the canvas where your brushes stroked life onto them, around them, through them. Two perfect pieces that once belonged together, separated like an act of Adam against his God.

Maybe they were meant to be together, but no one will ever know their story.

“They’re amateur,” you tell her, laughing. “I’m not much of an artist. It’s just for fun.”

She smiles at you, placing the glass piece down. “You have a talent.”

Wanda takes another turn about the room, another circuit, another spin. She looks at every piece in such focus, taking in every single detail, fingers stretching and curling as if she wants to caress the dried flowers, the dried paint, and feel their meaning. You wonder what she would say if she could read their minds—the art you’ve made. Would your pieces tell her the true meaning behind their existence? Or maybe they would laugh, or cry, or howl in pain.

But Wanda only stares, at the paintings and at you, a small smile on her face like she knows something you don’t. Like she’s keeping a secret. Is she keeping the secrets that the flowers have whispered to her when you weren’t looking?

“What inspired them?” she asks, the very tip of her nail tracing a different glass box filled with dyed petals reconstructed into a larger artificial flower, protected by its own display.

You wring your hands together. “I like flowers.”

She laughs. “That’s obvious. But what makes them special enough to paint? To—To make such lovely art out of?”

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you place the small canvas you’d been holding back on the side table, crossing the room to your bookshelf. Your fingertip finds the spine of a hardcover book you’re too familiar with, pulling it out and into your awaiting hands. Sheets of paper, a little bent and crooked, stick out of the pages.

You crack it open, the dulling white petals of a daisy pressed flat between the crackling spine fluttering from between the black inked words, then fall to the floor at your feet.

“The Devil’s hand directs our every move,” you read. “The things we loathed become the things we love.”

Wanda stares at you as you fiddle with the book, tracing the words of the cover.

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” you say. “The Flowers of Evil.”

Gently and without word, she bows at your feet and picks up the drying daisy, cradling it in her pale hands, but you don’t have the strength to take it from her.

(“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I had to run some errands this morning, y’know how it is, so I’m out of the Tower right now. I was just wondering if you needed anything while I was out. Anything—really, anything at all. Even breakfast, or maybe a latte? Just a little pick-me-up. Well, give me a call back if you need anything. If not, I’ll be back soon. See ya.”)

—BETTER TOGETHER—

“Steven Grant,” you say his name like a curse, shaking your head. “This is why you spend three hours a day in the gym.”

Too busy shoving the first bite of his first hoagie into his mouth, Steve doesn’t reply. You roll your eyes, but the smile on your lips gives you away. When he’s finally swallowed, wiping crumbs from his mouth, he looks a little indignant.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Well, you would be if you didn’t have that serum running through you.”

He frowns, brows furrowed, a little confusion on his face. “I thought it was because I work out three hours a day. And I’ll have you know—”

“—you work out six hours a day between your morning runs and training, I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before Steve.” You groan at the thought. “It’s like it’s your job.”

“It is my job. Saving the world and all that.”

“Okay, you really need to let America know that it’s giving you a complex, ‘cause if I hear one more thing about you saving the world, I think I’m going to scream.”

He shrugs, taking another gigantic bite out of his sandwich. Scraps of shredded lettuce fall out from between the buns and litter his plate. You pick at your own, pulling uneven pieces of sliced onion and stray pickles from the hoagie, content to sit and stare at it instead of eating.

Food is good. You brush the grainy crumbs of bread from your fingers. Food is good, but you just aren’t hungry. And you don’t work out three hours a day. Maybe you should start. Your body feels like a balloon with all your insides threatening to come up in a retch and choke you. Food is good. Food is good. You just have to pick up the sandwich and eat it.

Fingers shaking, you take the sub in your hand and stare at the corner where you mean to take the first bite.

“You good?”

Steve, still chewing, looks at you with concern clear in his crystal blues and it makes you put your food back down on the plate. Instead, you busy yourself with another sip of your water, nodding at him.

“Yeah. We can’t all be Steve Rogers, demolishing two hoagies in less than two seconds, y’know.” You throw in a snort, trying to sound nonchalant. “Wipe your mouth, Captain. You’ve got mayo on your cheek.”

He doesn’t, but him grabbing a napkin to embarrassedly wipe a nonexistent condiment from his face gives you enough time to pick your sandwich back up and contemplate taking the first bite. You’ve just gotta start with the first bite and the rest will go down.

But you aren’t hungry. How can you be hungry when you’re already so full? Stuffed, even. There isn’t room in your insides. All your organs are bursting. It’s so painful sometimes, the expanding of your skin to accommodate. Waves of sickness roll through you, spreading. Your stomach is stretched, bloated, filled with all the swallowed—

“What are you doin’ to my girl, huh Steve?”

The sound of his voice alone makes the ache inside of you dissipate, the nausea escapes from your throat, the anxiety twitching through your hands steadies. Your head perks up, shoulders rolling back as your entire body relaxes, and you look behind you.

And there, dressed in a tight blue polo and a pair of pants clinging to his legs like they were made for him, the very angel who blessed you, the devil who cursed you, the god of the fucking sun and everything it could ever touch, stands before you with a smile saved just for you.

Sam Wilson.

His dark eyes are piercing, like he’s trying to peel back the layers of your skin to see underneath, as he shoves his hands in his pockets and grins with all his teeth.

“Hey honey,” he says—simply and easily and not serious. Never serious.

Your lungs burn. Your mouth feels too dry to answer him.

“Oh, your girl?” Steve asks him, brows a little too furrowed to be joking. “When did she become your girl?”

Sam shrugs, walking toward the empty seat next to you, placing his hand on the back of your chair so dangerously close to your body that it makes you pull in a deep breath. His thumb could brush against the fabric of your shirt, run along the seam of your spine. And, goddamn, it should be illegal for him to look so casual and so unbothered while still looking that handsome.

Like this, you can smell the spice in his cologne, a powerful mix of something you’re sure is designed to drive you crazy.

He looks down at you, still hovering over where you sit, and throws a wink your way that brings heat to the surface of your cheeks.

“Aw, she’s always been my girl, ain’t that right? Tell him, darlin’.”

You stare at Sam for one second too long, breaking away to gaze down at your uneaten sandwich again. With every flutter that Sam sends down your stomach, the heaviness inside it seems to fade away. Your fullness is replaced by a familiar hunger—the rawness of your throat waning as a burning itch takes over. A cough is threatening to bubble up. You choke it back, smiling instead.

“He’s right, Stevie,” you say all bright and cheery again.

Steve meets your eyes with a stony gaze, unreadable, his blue eyes looking gray in the light. Beside you, Sam throws himself down in one of the chairs and pulls up to the table, hand still sitting on the back of your seat. His knees are spread a little wide, thigh resting against yours.

It’s so innocent but your brain thinks it’s so intimate. A lie. A lie.

In the end, Steve relaxes back, his eyebrows lifting as he watches the scene unfold in front of him. He tosses one of the sticky plastic menus toward Sam, nodding at it.

“Order up, man,” Steve says, his tone more neutral than you think you’ve ever heard it in regards to Sam. “But I’m not paying for yours. You’re on your own.”

At that, Sam laughs, full and robust with his face up to the ceiling. He rocks back in his chair, shaking his head, and he looks so beautiful even in the shitty sub shop that Steve drags you to for lunch every other week that it makes you ache and your lungs contract in an attempt to cough.

You swallow it back again, trying to even out your breathing. The itch in your throat is so bad that you almost pick up your sandwich to eat again, but your hand passes it up to take another few sips of your water. It’s cool, clear, refreshing—but it can’t make the tickle of the cough go away.

“So,” Sam starts once he’s finished ordering his own hoagie, “how’s that apartment hunting going? Found anything good yet?”

A frown forms, heavy, on your lips. You pick off a flaking piece of bread from your sandwich, watching it turn to crumbs underneath your fingers.

“It’s going,” you say, but anyone who ever responds to a question of how’s it going with it’s going is absolutely lying and it is absolutely not going—and maybe Sam knows that, or maybe Steve does, or hell, maybe they both do but it makes you look weak to admit that things aren’t going so well out loud.

And you—you can’t admit the truth, so it’s just better to lie about it.

You don’t want to leave the Tower.

“It’s going, huh?” Sam asks, his tone proving that he can see right through you. “You need help looking at some places or something?”

“Well—”

“You know,” he barrels through your words as if they are nothing, “I think I actually know a realtor around here. Maybe he can get you some leads on rentals or something. I could make some calls for you, honey.”

It’s not supposed to—Sam only means well, he always does, always trying to do so much for people—but it hurts to hear. Because you don’t hear him saying that he’s trying to help you out. You hear him saying he doesn’t want you around the Tower anymore.

Because, well, why would he want you there?

To him, you’re just an outsider. A girl who doesn’t belong. Someone who daydreams and doodles flowers on every surface as soon as she thinks of him. And you always think of him.

Before you can think about it, your hand flies to your mouth reflexively to hold back a cough. Instantly, Sam’s leaning closer and that damned hand of his falls soft against your back.

“You okay?”

There’s barely a moment for you to nod, signaling that you’re fine, before Steve’s got on his game face, all hard lines and furrowed brows and thin lips pressed tightly together.

“Hey,” he says, grabbing Sam’s attention. “She’s allowed to stay as long as she wants, alright? The Tower is her home now, too. So there isn’t a rush for her to find a place unless she wants to leave.”

The passion and care in Steve’s voice is strong, almost so overpowering it’s oppressive, and something rises up from within you and threatens to send salty tears careening down your cheeks if you don’t blink them away.

Sam raises his hands in front of him dramatically. “Okay, okay, I get it. I wasn’t trying to run her off or anything, just wanted to lend a hand if I could. Damn, Steve.”

Something changes at the table, then. It’s like a fog, thick and cloying, falls over the three of you and keeps you lethargic—so much so that the only words spoken in the next few awkward minutes are Sam’s thanks when the waiter brings his sandwich by.

You still haven’t even touched yours, and you hope it seems like you’re just waiting for Sam to get his, because Steve’s tearing into his second and by the looks of the mustard dripping down his fingers messily, he’ll be done any minute now.

But as you prop your head up on the table, leaning on your elbow boredly, Sam nudges his leg into yours to grab your attention. When you turn to look at him, he’s got that grin again, all pearly and white with the little crooked gap you think you could stare at forever as long as it meant he was smiling and laughing and happy.

“You gonna eat, girl?” Sam picks his sub up in his hand and gestures at you to do the same. God, he makes you dizzy just by talking. The butterflies in your belly are fighting tooth and nail against your organs, trying to take up all the space, but they aren’t really butterflies. The soft monsters in your stomach leave a taste on your tongue you can’t explain.

“Oh.” You mimic his movement and then Sam toasts his hoagie against yours with a chuckle.

“First bite,” he says, and there’s no thought in your head or balloon in your stomach and no bloated skin to make you second guess yourself.

You follow Sam, sinking your teeth into the bread of your sandwich, and its flavor explodes over your tongue just enough to take away all the bitter, floral, fragrant taste of the daisies that are building up in your stomach, their petals choking you out, downy fluttering things inside you.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I was coming to see if you wanted to grab a bite with me for lunch, maybe at that little Italian place you like to go to around the corner? Or maybe sushi or something? Been a while since I got to go out for lunch, so I thought I’d ask, but I guess you’re busy right now. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Enjoy your lunch.”)

—NEW BEGINNINGS—

You’ve got to call him. You have to. You have no choice anymore.

Danny is on the other side of the locked door, his fist pounding on the wood and threatening to cave it in from the repeated force. The sound is louder than it should be, really, echoing off the tile of the bathroom you’ve barricaded yourself inside. He’s shouting above the sound.

“You fucking bitch. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna fucking kill you. You lied to me? What else are you lying about, huh? You fucking whore. I took you in, I gave you a home, I gave you everything. Fucking fat slut—how many other guys are you sleeping with, huh?”

None, you had answered earlier when he was questioning you in your shared bedroom, his fist tight around your soft arm and squeezing so hard it made you want to scream. None.

But that wasn’t the answer Danny was looking for. And, well, once he threw you onto the ground and stomped to the dresser, clothes strewn around the room as he furiously ripped through it until he found the shiny black firearm you didn’t know he had, you were gone.

But there was only one place to go and that was the bathroom.

Now, trapped inside, you know you have no choice. You have to call him—the man from the coffee shop you’ve been going to regularly for a few months. The man who noticed the bruises Danny always left on you after a rough night. The man who pressed and pried and tried to do anything to get you to open up to him even as you refused over and over again. The man who put his number in your phone because he wanted you to call him if you ever needed him, not because he was a hero, but because he was worried about you.

You press the number two on speed dial. The phone rings.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Steve?” Your voice is nothing but a sob. “Steve, you were right.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, but you hear the rustle of clothes and a jingle of keys on the other side beyond the static, a sound that makes you almost cry with relief or hope or maybe just stress.

“Hold on,” he tells you. “FRIDAY is pulling up your address. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Are you safe?”

“Bathroom,” you’re able to mumble out from behind the waterfall of tears rushing down your face. “He’s locked out but—but I’m scared.”

“I’m on my way. He’s not going to hurt you. I promise you.”

And then Steve hangs up, and you wish he hadn’t because now you’re left all alone with just a flimsy wooden door, painted fucking white so the blood will show up real pretty when Danny kills you, between you and your boyfriend.

Well, ex-boyfriend if you get out of here alive.

“Four fucking years!” he shouts from outside. “I gave you four fucking years of my life, you stupid bitch. I put up with your dumb fat ass for four years and this is what you do? Is this love? Do you think this is love?”

You figure anything is love as long as it doesn’t look like this. The ring of bruises around your upper arm from Danny’s grasp is already turning black and blue, a sight that makes you flinch.

Honestly, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. All the cash you were stashing should’ve been hidden better. You knew better. A shoebox up on the top shelf of the closet? Amateur. You should’ve cut a section out of one of your prized books or something. Danny never fucking reads. He probably doesn’t know how. He would’ve never found all the money if you’d stashed it there.

“Six thousand dollars!” he roars, punching the center of the door. The wood bends slightly. “How long’ve you been fucking stealing from me, huh? Fucking bitch. Stupid fucking bitch.”

And then it happens.

Danny’s fist breaks through the first layer of the door with a curse of pain falling from his lips. Then, a laugh. He’s laughing.

“I’m gonna kill you.”

He punches the door again and then his hand is through, wood splinters shattering and flying toward you, and with a scream you shield your face with your arms and duck down. You’re sitting beside the bathtub, squished against the toilet, and you scoot back as far as you can trying to wedge yourself to safety.

But there is no safety here. Danny’s bloodied fingers find the doorknob and unlock it with a click, and it’s over. It’s over. It’s fucking over.

With a kick, the door comes flying open and you’re screaming again at the top of your lungs, throat tearing itself raw. Danny’s broad frame possesses the entire room as he shoulders his way inside, his lips pulled back to show all of his teeth in a feral grin, the overhead lights catching the shine of the sleek gun he’s carrying.

You can’t even look at him. All you can do is stare at his back in the bathroom mirror hanging over the counter, your mind completely devoid of thought.

“Fuckin’ dead,” Danny says, and you don’t see him aim the gun at you. You stare in the mirror, right in the mirror and memorize the pattern of the plaid jacket he’s wearing, how the colored stripes form new colors, how the fabric all blends. It’s a pretty shirt. You bought it for him two Christmasses ago. He looks good in it.

You are going to die.

Then, suddenly, you can’t see the plaid anymore. Instead it’s a gray shirt on a much bigger body blocking out the mirror, and when you turn your head to look, Steve’s there.

Steve’s here.

He’s got Danny in a chokehold, grappling for the pistol in your boyfriend’s hand. Ex-boyfriend. Despite Steve being completely unarmed—he’s Captain America for christ’s sake, a goddamn super soldier, he doesn’t need a fucking weapon—he easily brings Danny down to his knees and onto the floor, kicking the gun away from their bodies and out of the bathroom completely.

“Fucking whore,” Danny manages to spit out, the sound strangled as Steve’s arm buckles over his neck. “You’re fucking him too, huh? I’m gonna kill you.”

“Shut up,” Steve grits through his clenched teeth, pulling Danny toward the destroyed door. “You’re done.”

They disappear from the bathroom in a tangle and thrashing of limbs. Danny curses the whole way down the stairs, struggling to break out of Steve’s grasp you presume. He’s a fighter—that’s what he always said. Dog meets dog eats dog world, he would tell you. You can’t ever trust anyone.

And, well, he certainly proved his beliefs. You had the bruises to show for it. The scars as evidence.

Sitting alone in your wrecked bathroom, still sprawled out on the tile, you stare down at your hands. The lines run deep in your palms, fingers stubby and chubby and not at all feminine. Too small to grab Danny the way he always grabbed you. Too soft with fat to deliver a good punch.

You don’t know how much time passes before a much larger hand enters your vision, slowly, like approaching a kicked mutt on the street, and when you don’t flinch, Steve lays his fingers across your palms. Apprehensively, you grab onto his hand, and he squeezes back.

Looking up, he’s crouched in front of you, the beginnings of a bruise forming on his left temple. With your free hand, you reach out and let your fingers brush over it, but Steve just smiles at you.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here,” he says, gently tugging on your hand. You hold onto him a little tighter and let him help you up off the ground, his arm immediately sliding around your waist to steady your shaky legs.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” you say. “The money I saved…”

You don’t even know what happened to it. For all you know, Danny burned the cash. Or stashed it somewhere else.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” Steve says in a soft voice. “I’m taking you back to the Tower. The police are dealing with Danny right now. Can you help me pack some clothes for you?”

And so you sat on the bed among your wrecked bedroom as Steve picked through the messy drawers that had been pulled from their dresser, some articles of clothing crumpled on the floor where Danny flung them in his mad search for your secret money stash. And the gun. You almost forgot about the gun.

Steve helps you pack, his face only a little pinker than normal when you’re shoving your intimates into the black duffle bag he fished out of his car, and then he’s helping you slip on your sneakers and guiding you out of your house.

You don’t say goodbye to it, though. That house. Even after four years, you don’t call it home. In a lot of ways, you’re happy to watch it disappear from Steve’s rearview mirror, hoping you’ll never be back.

“They’re going to love you there,” he says quietly in the silence of the car, both hands tight around the steering wheel. He glances over at you, then back at the road. “You’ll fit right in. You’ll be safe. Right at home.”

But you think Steve is a bit of an optimist. Homes, you think, are for people who are loved.

(“Hey honey, just me here. Look, I remembered you saying something about how you wanted those, what were they called, the fairy lights for your room? The ones that look like Christmas lights? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You’re too short to do it yourself, girl, you know that. Anyway, give me a call if you want to, or just come down to my room and get me, anytime. I’ll be waiting. Talk soon, honey.”)

—KEEPING SECRETS—

Wanda hums a tune under her breath. “I just can’t wait to get out of this place! It’s been too long. Mission after mission after bloody mission.” She sighs and starts to apply a thick coat of mascara, eyes wide as she stares in the mirror.

“Agreed,” Natasha says from somewhere behind you. The sound of her bare feet on the bathroom tile is the only warning you have before she sidles up beside you, gracefully lifting herself up onto the counter and sweeping various cosmetics aside to make room.

You’re still undressed, standing in your panties and an old t-shirt with a stretched out neck, just finishing up your eyeshadow when Nat taps a black bottle on the marble top near your fingers.

“Want me to do your eyeliner?” she asks.

A few months ago, you would have seen it as an insult—a beautiful, dangerous woman telling you in less words that your makeup looked like shit. Now you know it’s an expression of Natasha’s unending love for you. A willing act of service. A small thing she can do for you.

“Yes please.”

Natasha motions you forward, between her legs, and when she takes your face in her hand you close your eyes.

“Pretty colors,” she says, probably about your eyeshadow.

“Thanks,” you reply, and then you feel the cool wetness of liquid liner right on your lash line as she begins to paint a wing on your lid. “You always look pretty.”

“So do you.” She blows softly on your left eye. “It’s like you never need makeup, I swear. Are you even wearing foundation?”

A smile works its way onto your face. “Nope.”

From beside you, Wanda giggles.

“Slut. You’re so perfect it makes me want to scream sometimes,” Natasha says, tongue clicking her teeth as she finishes off your right eye.

All the breath seems to leave you in that moment. Like someone punched you straight in your gut, your bones like the gel shock-absorbing layer protecting your organs. Your eyes want nothing more than to shoot open, but Nat is blowing cool air over the newly formed wing and you force yourself to relax so you don’t mess everything up.

“I’m not perfect,” you tell her. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“Don’t deflect.” You hear her cap the eye liner and set it down on the counter, then her palms engulf your cheeks. Slowly, you let your eyes open, blinking gently.

She’s staring at you, eyes narrowed.

“Just because I’m beautiful doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful,” she says, simply, as if it’s just easy for her to not compare herself to anyone else. “If you’re perfect, you’re perfect. Doesn’t matter if I’m perfect, too. And that Wanda is perfect. Or that anyone is perfect.”

Natasha takes your chin in her fingers and grabs a tube of lipstick—the one she and Wanda always tell you to wear because it looks so damn good on you.

“Your beauty and your worth doesn’t come from other people.” She runs the silken rouge over your lips. “It comes from who you are, not comparisons to other people.”

And, god, you want to scream at her. You want to shout and tell her that she isn’t allowed to say that to you when she looks the way she does—slim and picturesque and every human being’s wet dream. She doesn’t get to say that you shouldn’t compare yourself, with your heavy chest and your wide hips and all your soft pockets of skin, to someone like her. To someone like Wanda. To anyone else that doesn’t need liposuction with a side of diet pills, please.

You can’t be perfect, because if you were perfect, if you were enough, you wouldn’t be dying in agony every night over someone that doesn’t look twice at your too-large stomach and your too-large thighs.

They’re just trying to make you feel better, but all it does is make you feel worse.

“Look,” you say when she’s done with your lipstick, “I get what—”

In a split second, your chest is wracked with hard coughs, lungs struggling for air. It’s choking you, your own insides, and you’re hacking and wheezing and grasping at the bathroom counter and Natasha’s hands are on your shoulders and Wanda is slapping your back in hope that it will help and someone, somewhere, is saying the word heimlich and you can taste it on your tongue like old wallpaper from the 70s, floral and disgusting and toxic and ugly.

You throw your arm over your mouth, smearing your lipstick. It doesn’t help. Natasha is looking at you, eyes wild. You’re coughing and coughing and you think you taste blood underneath the overwhelming velvet on your tongue.

They’re saying your name. Shredded petals are between your teeth.

And then you break, pushing past them to the toilet, skidding on your knees until you’re doubled over and retching. It’s all burning acid and fresh flowers. Rot and fester and earth and greenery. A pair of cool hands—Wanda’s, you think—rest upon your forehead and move your hair away from your face.

Vomit and daisies leak from your mouth until your stomach is done contracting and your insides are empty. All that’s left is your sputtering coughs that taste caustic and beautiful.

It’s getting bad.

When you finally pull away from the toilet, slumped back and wiping your mouth, the toilet is full of an explosion of crisp white and bright yellow, tinged with the faint pink of blood. Wanda is glancing back and forth between you and the unflushed toilet, horror stitched on her face.

Before Natasha approaches, a glass of tap water in hand, you lean over and flush the petals down the drain. The look you shoot Wanda is pleading, but you don’t even know what you’re asking for.

Everything on the inside hurts, burning like a pit of snakes in your belly, hissing and spitting venom and biting into you like they mean to kill you. Perhaps the daisies have grown fangs. Your lungs feel chewed.

Nat places the glass in your shaking hands, her fingers holding your own as if she knows you can’t do it yourself. She helps raise the glass to your soiled lips and you gulp the water down like it’ll flood the valley unfolding in you.

“Who is it?” she asks, her voice calm but her eyes uneasy. You nearly choke, a hand pressing against the middle of your chest as if you need to feel your lungs as they work to assure yourself of your own survival.

“What?” you barely eke out, throat thick and scratchy. One of Wanda’s hands strokes down your back and she doesn’t speak, only shakes her head.

“Who is it?” Natasha repeats.

You look away.

“God.” Wanda sniffles behind you. “How could we not have realized?”

“Because it doesn’t happen,” Nat says, shifting from crouching in front of you to sitting on her knees on the floor, a hand resting on your thigh. “I’ve never known a single person—until now, I guess—who had it. I thought it wasn’t real.”

“They tell it like a fairytale in Sokovia,” Wanda says, her words just as watery as her eyes. “A story you lull children to sleep with! But I should have seen it. We should have seen it.”

A new abundance of petals tickle the back of your throat.

“All that art,” Natasha hisses, but she isn’t looking at you. She’s glaring down at her lap.

“All the daisies,” Wanda cries. Her head drops against your shoulder. You feel the wetness of her tears.

“It’s okay,” you tell them, but your voice is too small. “It’s okay,” you say, louder this time, tasting the flowers like they are the blood of your bitten tongue.

“Who is it?” Natasha asks again, a begging in her voice you don’t think you’ve ever heard before.

“It’s okay,” you say again.

And with this, Nat’s face changes from one of concern to something of realization—like she’s been struck with a thought she never considered, like she’s seen the future.

“It’s him.” Her jaw is slack, staring at you even as Wanda looks at her with confusion etched on her visage. “You have to tell him.”

“No,” you say simply.

“This is bad,” Nat snaps, as if you don’t know it already. “This is getting bad. You need to tell him or you’re—you’re going to die.”

A laugh breaks through the bathroom, echoing. “How can I tell him? How could I ever tell him that I love him when the simple fucking fact that these flowers are growing—rooting—in my goddamn lungs is proof that he doesn’t love me the way that I love him?”

You lean back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

“Sam Wilson doesn’t love me the way I love him,” you whisper.

The tips of Natasha’s fingers catch the tears you don’t feel streaking down your cheeks like the screaming of shooting stars, hot and bright and dying.

“It’s sort of beautiful, don’t you think?” Your nails dig into the fat flesh of your thighs, trying to puncture skin. “To make art of your own death. To make something lovely out of something so tragic.”

You can’t swallow it back this time. A cough wracks through you, jostling your bones, and you fold yourself in half as soft white petals emerge from your esophagus and choke you. You grind them against the backs of your teeth with your tongue, trying to mash them into nonexistence, but it’s not enough. You retch another wave of daisies into your awaiting hands.

Wanda calls your name and it sounds broken.

“Death like this,” you rasp, catching your breath, “is the most beautiful way to go.”

Your finger drags over one of the downy petals, a bead of blood catching on your skin and smearing across it like a brushstroke of paint, ruining it.

“Death like this is the only way I want to go.”

(“Hey beautiful, it’s me again. I heard you were going out with the girls tonight—I hope you have fun. I just wanted you to know that if you need a ride back home, or you get into trouble and need a hero, or anything, really, I’m just a phone call away. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I’ll be up if you need anything, at least ‘till you get home. Have fun, girl.”)

—INNOCENCE—

You’re beginning to ask yourself if the mirror lies.

It doesn’t. You know that. You’ve been trying to find the lies in it for years at this point, pinching and pulling at all the places you find are thicker than the women you see on TV, the women you see floating around the Tower, the women you’ve seen on the arms of Sam Wilson. Chubby hands caress down your soft belly, poking and prodding the skin you wish you could make disappear. The mirror never lies.

But you wish it did when you stare at yourself and all you see are the bruises beneath your eyes, the hollows in your cheeks, the drained look in your gaze. The longer you stand there, the less you recognize yourself.

You aren’t hungry anymore. You never get hungry—the flowers filling up all the space in your stomach, coughed up from your lungs and swallowed back in pieces. Perfume is what your mouth tastes like now. Perfume and iron. The vomiting hasn’t stopped since the night your secret was revealed to Natasha and Wanda.

And you’ve never looked better.

That’s the part you hate. The part where when you look in the mirror and you can see the places where those daisies have shaved you thinner. It almost makes you laugh. People say you pack on the pounds when you find love. Maybe they should try having toxic flowers take root inside of them and slowly steal their lifeforce while they watch the person they love never love them back.

It’s a slow process, this death. You wonder which will kill you first—the starvation or the suffocation.

The walk down to the gala is as equally exciting as it is dreadful. You’ve never been to a Tony Stark gala before and you’re eager to dance the night away with your friends. But you’re also exhausted.

Oh well. The makeup helps you look less like a corpse and more like a dancing queen. The dress, which you’re sure someone paid far too much money for, is part of the solution. It’s all flowy and gorgeous as if you are a Greek goddess meant to be worshipped and highlights your figure while hiding all the imperfections the mirror seemed to find.

And when you finally enter the room, classical music playing from the live band and people laughing loudly and champagne twirling about the floor for people to take, the first thing you see is him.

Grin taking up his entire face, lighting up the entire ballroom, dressed beautifully in a navy suit that makes him look utterly dashing, is Sam Wilson.

He’s surrounded by people—women who are better dressed than you are—so with a shaky breath and a pain in your lungs, you quickly turn on your heel and head toward the next familiar face.

“Woah there, doll, where you hurryin’ off to?” Bucky, hair neatly pulled back and wearing a black suit, grabs you by your waist.

“Nowhere,” you blurt. “The bar. I just got here.”

He raises a thick brow at you, a silent question, but when you choose not to answer he shrugs.

“Well I can’t refuse to escort a pretty lady, can I?” With a charming smile, he holds his elbow out to you and gestures for you to grab on. You slip your hand around his arm and grasp him tightly, shooting him a grateful smile.

“Thanks, Bucky.”

But as the two of you start dodging through the crowd of excited party-goers, on your way to the bar in the back, Bucky stops short and gets a look on his face that you’re not quite sure you can describe as mischievous, but it’s close enough to make you frown.

“Y’know what,” he says, glancing over at you with that boyish grin, “I think we should take a spin on the dance floor instead.”

“Oh no,” you tell him, eyes wide. “I can’t dance—”

He snorts. “I’ve seen you dance around the kitchen, doll.”

“I can’t dance in front of all these people.”

“Can’t is a word for losers.” Bucky closes his hand over yours, locking you to his elbow. “Don’t wanna be a loser like Stevie, do ya? Oh Buck, I can’t stop fighting, gotta teach ‘em a lesson. Oh Buck, I can’t rinse out my cereal bowl, I gotta go for a run.”

It makes you laugh, maybe a little too loud, but it eases you just enough for Bucky to pull you into the menagerie of dancing couples, and then he’s moving your hand from his arm and onto his shoulder and clasping your other in his fingers.

“There we go.” His eyes shine like the ocean sparkles under the Tower lights.

Bucky has something magic in him, you decide, after two songs of him swinging you along the floor. He has something magic that makes everything so easy, which is something so admirable after all he’s been through. He has you laughing and smiling and spinning across the room with so little effort you forget all your worries in an instant.

“See?” Bucky dips you in his arms, making you squeal with glee, collecting the stares of the people peppered around the room. “Knew you could dance, doll.”

Panting, you rest a hand on his chest, still giggling. “Only ‘cause you’re so good.”

“Song’s over, Buck,” a new, familiar voice cuts in. When you look up, Steve is standing there, eyes crinkling with his own smile. “I can’t wait for another.”

At that, Bucky rolls his eyes with such drama it has you laughing yet again.

“See? I told you. It’s all can’t this, can’t thatwith Stevie. But fine.” Bucky guides you by the waist over to Steve, passing your hand over, and then gives you one last grin with all his teeth. “I had fun, doll. Thanks for dancin’ with me.”

“Anytime,” you tell him, and then Steve’s adjusting your grip on him. The song changes from the upbeat tune Bucky was twirling you to down to a slower classical piece.

“You doing okay, sweetheart?” Steve asks, his eyes roaming over your face.

“Yeah,” you hum. “Bucky and I had a lot of fun.”

Steve’s grip at your waist tightens a little. “No, I mean in general. Are you doing alright?”

There’s worry there—in the wrinkles on his brow, the blue skies of his eyes, the curve of his lips. You know he’s staring at you and seeing everything the mirror told you. All the gaunt places. The hollow, haunted look you’re parading around. The weight you’ve been steadily losing. You know he sees it.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, and you wonder yet again if the mirror ever lies. You know you do.

Steve sways you gently, more carefully than Bucky had. Steve dances with you like you’re made of something fragile. You still don’t understand why. You don’t know why he ever looked at you and saw something important, someone to protect. Maybe it’s just how he was born to be.

“You can tell me anything,” he says, so seriously that your heart breaks a little.

You move your hand from his shoulder and up to cradle his cheek, smiling.

“I know, Steve. I know.”

And if he pulls you into him, crushes you against his chest, and holds you like that for the rest of the song, no one mentions it. Steve lets you rest your head on his shoulder and, not for the first time, you think this must be how it feels to have a family.

But then the lights in the ballroom brighten a little and a spark finds its way into the music, changing into something jazzy and fun, and someone slaps Steve on the shoulder.

“Alright Rogers, she’s ours now.”

There, dressed like she could kill a man with her heels alone, Natasha has her arms crossed over her black satin gown. Beside her, in a red, flowy dress, Wanda has her hands on Nat’s shoulders, giggling from all the bubbly you’re sure she’s consumed.

Steve pulls away from you with a chuckle, holding his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright—she’s all yours, ladies.”

With that, Natasha pounces on you, and the three of you start to shimmy the night away together.

You lose count of the songs you spend dancing with them, sweaty and out of breath and having the time of your life, before you wave them off and step out onto the outside patio where hardly anyone is loitering. You pass up a couple sitting on a bench, cuddled up in the cool air of New York, and leave a man smoking a cigarette to himself.

Instead, you find a lonely bench far away enough from the gala that you can hardly hear anything but the bass strings resounding through the building. There, you sit, and turn your head up to the stars you can’t really see anymore.

“You okay, girl?”

Startled, you whirl around to face the object of your affections, standing behind you with his hands shoved casually in his pockets. He isn’t wearing his usual smile. Just staring.

And then you taste dirt. Freshly upturned soil coated in congealing blood. You cough into your hands and hear him approach, laying a warm palm on your back as you choke the daisies down and down and down, swallowing as many as you can, the pungent taste still ripe in your mouth.

“Honey,” he calls out all smooth and sharp like whiskey. “Honey, are you okay?”

You lick the blood from your lips. Sam crouches before you, gathering your cold hands in his, looking up at you with such a fucking expression that you want to kiss him so solidly he can taste the vines growing up your throat. You want his tongue to taste the soil of your suffering—the flowers of your own doom.

“I’m worried about you,” Sam says, his dark eyes searching your face for something.

“I’m okay,” you tell him, just as you’ve been telling everyone.

“You’re not looking so good these days,” he murmurs, and you recoil.

“Wow.” The hurt in your voice is so palpable it makes you cringe. “Thanks, Samuel.”

You move to get up from the bench, heart twisting, but Sam grabs your arms and cages you there.

“I didn’t mean it like that, darlin’, you know better than that.” He gives your arms—too soft too wide too fleshy too—a squeeze of reassurance. “You’re not painting much anymore either. You think I wouldn’t notice?”

Sam holds your gaze until it’s too much and you have to break away.

“C’mon, girl. Are you even sleeping?” Sam shakes you a little. “Eating?”

The flowers of evil root in your chest. See, you know how this book ends. You don’t need to read the last page to find out. It’s just as Baudelaire wrote, you know: “My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.”

Your organs have been replaced by daisies. Sam Wilson won’t love you—not tonight, not tomorrow, and not in time.

So you shrug, forcing your lips to curl into what you think might be a smile.

“I can’t paint. I’ve got too many flowers to press,” you tell him. Sam’s visage morphs into confusion, and he shakes his head slightly. He doesn’t understand. He won’t understand.

You take his arms from your body, holding his hands for a split second, long enough to steal their warmth and imagine what it would be like to hold them every single day, and then you pick yourself up off the bench and give him a wave.

“See you inside, Sam.”

And you leave him there, confusion still frozen on his face, the gritty blood ripping shreds in your damaged throat as you swallow it again and again and again in an attempt not to taste it anymore.

(“Hey, uh, it’s Sam. I was just calling to, uh, y’know, remind you about the gala. You have a date yet? I didn't ask anyone. I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. Try not to kill me with your good looks tonight, you hear? Save a dance for me, baby.”)

—THE SUN AND ALL ITS STARS—

Dishware rattles into your room, signaling Nat’s arrival. By the time you gather the energy to sit up in bed, she’s already entering, a tray of food in her hands and an icy look on her face.

“Breakfast in bed,” she says monotonously.

You shift and pull your duvet up as she fits the tray over your lap. There’s not much—a sweating glass of cold water beside an amber glass of apple juice, two slices of buttered toast, and some melon she cut up.

“Thanks,” you say, voice strained and weak.

Natasha doesn’t leave, but you wish she would. She seats herself on the edge of your bed, staring you down as you sip on your water. You purse your lips in frustration, but pick up the fork and begin to poke at the fruit.

“Eat,” she says.

“I’m trying,” you grumble back. “Stop staring at me.”

Natasha throws her hands up on the air. “Well if I don’t watch you, you’ll just sit here and waste away,” she snaps. “You’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, hell, you aren’t even coming out of your room anymore. You go to work, you come home, you don’t talk to any of us. Steve says—”

“Steve doesn’t know anything!” you shout, interrupting her. As soon as you do, her eyes narrow into slits and you shut your mouth, gulping. That wasn’t what you wanted to do.

Natasha takes a deep breath. “Steve says you’re still looking for a place.” It’s eerie how calm she keeps her tone. “Leaving isn’t going to stop them, you know.”

Even now, not doing anything but staring at the food in your lap, you can taste them like a funeral home, saccharinely floral, covering the smell of death.

“I can’t stay here,” you say.

“You’re dying,” Natasha stresses. “Please. Please, I am begging, krasavitsa. I’ve not begged for much in this life. But I am begging you to please, please tell him. Tell him or consider the other option.”

Two options in the scale, tipping weights. To die or to have the roots of true love carved out of your lungs, peeled away from where they wrap around your heart.

You stab your fork into the tender flesh of the melon. It gives way so easily, letting the tines puncture it. Natasha stares at you, her gaze heavy. Your fingers fumble with the fork and it falls, clattering, to the tray of dishes.

The blood is too hard to swallow anymore—it builds up in your mouth and stains your teeth red, the petals colored pink when they fall from your lips.

“Okay,” you whisper. Maybe you don’t even say it aloud.

“Okay?” Natasha asks. You nod your head, not looking at her.

“I’ll tell him.”

It takes you hours, it feels like, to gather the courage. With all the energy you have left in your bones, muscles only satiated a little by Natasha’s breakfast, you drag yourself out of bed and to your bookshelf. It’s memorized, the place where your book sits, and you pull it out with a gentle tug of your finger.

The Flowers of Evil, its pages nearly chock-full of pressed daisies that have ejected themselves from your body, eager to find the man you love and spill all your desires to him. You thumb through it, gaze flitting over all the damn flowers that have dried in this damn book, and you close your eyes in order not to cry this time.

You press the book tight to your chest, feeling the desperate beating of your heart echo through it, and you head to Sam’s room.

The walk is long and lonely—the Tower feels empty. Devoid of people. You’re a little glad because you’re sure that anyone could see the sickness painted on your body, the illness from inside you that’s staining your outsides. It’s not anyone’s fault but your own, really. The flowers are too beautiful to supplant.

And now, you’re in front of his door, a fist raised to knock, a loud buzzing in your head that keeps saying no, no, no. But your heart, traitorous thing still hammering away in your chest, it just keeps saying yes, yes, yes, finally.

Sam Wilson doesn’t love you.

But do you have any other choice except to take a garden spade to your lungs and dig them out of your chest cavity, to destroy your ribcage and break through the mulch that makes up your nervous system? Is the only option left to die at the hands of Sam or to wither away until your decomposition will feed the very things that killed you off?

You shudder a breath and knock on the door. And you wait. And wait. And wait.

He doesn’t come. He isn’t there. He doesn’t love you.

The tears come suddenly—unexpectedly. They are hot and stricken and fast. They drip off your chin and careen down your neck and dampen the collar of your shirt and your hands are trembling, grasping your book too tightly, to even begin to wipe them away.

You don’t know why you’re crying. You already know this. Sam Wilson could never love you the way that you love him. Sam Wilson is perfection, you know. He possesses the strength of gods, he radiates love, he’s passionate about every fucking thing he does. He’s beautiful. He’s everything and you are nothing when standing next to him, but you love him. You love him.

Sam Wilson doesn’t fucking love you.

“Well,” you laugh to yourself, “I can either die a fool or live a life without you.”

I can either die in love or live my life not knowing what it feels like to be in love with you.

Something tickles your tongue. You reach between your lips and pluck it from your mouth, letting it sit upon the center of your palm. Blood drips down your arm like a river, violent and sooth.

The daisy covers your entire hand, white petals tinged with pink reaching toward your fingers. The center, all yellow florets seeming to seek out warmth, are so bright and full and so big—these are too big, they could choke anyone, anyone, they are choking you.

And like them—god, just like them, just like these daisies that grow from your lungs and destroy you from inside out—you are heliotropic. Everywhere you go, you’re focused on the sun, looking for the sun, stretching toward the sun.

You need the sun.

So you crumble the daisy in your hand, fist tight, blood still easing from between your fingers. You back away from his door, then turn and break away to head back to your room in silence.

You’d rather die loving him than never getting to see the sun ever again.

(“Hey girl, it’s me. Just calling to let you know that Steve and I got called for a mission. It looks like an emergency, wheels up in ten and all that. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. To Steve, I mean. Just in case. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness.”)

—FAREWELLS—

It happens faster than you think it will. You swear you have weeks, or a month at least. You swear you have time.

Four days later, your knees buckle and slam into the wooden floor beneath you, stomach contorting and contracting, balloon finally bursting. Someone is shouting your name from the common room, something is knocked over, scrambling. You barely hear it over the sound of your own vomiting.

On your hands and knees, you stare down at the lump of flowers you couldn’t swallow back. They’re coated in a mixture of soil and blood and stomach acid, but the sweet perfume scent breaks through the rest and makes you retch again. It smells so sweet. So sickly sweet. Dead people and churches.

Did churches always smell so much like blood?

There’s a hand on your shoulder. It’s pulling your hair from your face. Someone is saying something—something—something you can’t make out over the blood rushing between your ears.

You’re dying. This is it.

You collapse upon the ground, rolling onto your side, arm thrown over your mouth as if that will stop the flowers from pouring out of your body. And when you blink, trying to see through the dizziness, it’s him again.

The god of the fucking sun, your sun, mouth moving frantically as he says things you can’t hear and the little gap in his teeth that makes you feel at home when he smiles at you and his eyes, oh, Sam Wilson has eyes that set you on fire and burn you alive and you’d be happy to die like this, you’re so happy you get to die like this, so thankful that the daisies chose you, so thankful you chose him.

You were right. Death is so beautiful like this.

“It might be too late.”

Helen Cho’s heels clack on the tile of the medbay’s room as she shoos the nurse out with a wave of her hands, shaking her head. He shoots to his feet, fingers already curled into fists, and he shoves them in the pockets of his jacket to hide them.

“Too late?” It’s impossible for him to keep his voice low. “How can it be too late? What even—What’s wrong with her?”

She frowns at Sam, folding her hands together in front of her.

“It’s… rare,” she says. “Some of us didn’t think it was real, to be frank with you.”

His brow furrows. “What is it?”

“A disease caused by unrequited love,” Helen says plainly, staring straight at him. “Typically, the patient finds themselves in what is regarded to be true love, but the feelings are not returned, so they build up. It’s theorized that the stress of that creates the problem.”

Sam swallows and it tastes like vomit. “Unrequited love?”

She ignores him, continuing, “The part that is normally so hard to believe is that flowers begin to grow inside the patient, the roots puncturing their lungs and creating masses that eventually will suffocate their host.”

It’s a bag of bricks to his stomach. A super soldier punch to the gut. A bomb blown up in his face. Sam doubles over, clutching his middle, trying to breathe again. He can’t breathe at all. The flowers. The flowers.

“It seems she was swallowing them in an attempt to save herself,” Helen explains. “It’s what kept her alive much longer than she should have been. But now, I don’t know. It may be too late to save her. If she’d just said something earlier, than the surgery might have been able to stop it, but—”

“Surgery?” Sam asks, still gasping for breath. “What surgery?”

“You can extract the roots,” she tells him, glancing at the sleeping woman in the sickbed. “It’s a difficult procedure but it would have saved her. But, from the very little research we have on it, removing the roots also removes the feelings entirely. The love that the patient has disappears. They aren’t able to ever feel anything for that person ever again.”

He falls back into the plastic chair, his limbs numb. Or, at least that’s what he wants to do. But Sam doesn’t. He steadies himself, crosses his arms over his chest, plants himself so firmly there in the hospital room that he doesn’t think an earthquake can move him, and looks at her.

She’s sleeping, but she doesn’t look at peace. Her eyes, lovely things, are sunken in and it makes him so mad. Her collarbones have shadows beneath them and he feels fury wracking his own bones. And how long has it been since he’s seen her smile?

“Do the surgery,” he demands.

“You know I can’t do that without her consent,” Helen says, sighing.

“Then I’ll wait until she wakes up and get her consent,” he seethes through a locked jaw.

Helen’s face doesn’t change. “She might not wake up.”

“She will.”

Sam doesn’t get it. He understands—in a way—but he doesn’t really get it. He knows why she wouldn’t want to get a surgery like that. But he loves—he loves just as fiercely as she does, and that’s why he understands. Why he knows.

So why did the flowers pick her? Why would they pick her and not him?

Helen glances down at her feet, says nothing, and turns to exit the room. He’s left there in the silence, with the crowing of the machine keeping her alive to punctuate all his thoughts. If there is one thing he hates in the world, it’s feeling helpless.

He lowers himself in the plastic seat, leans his head back against the wall, and closes his eyes.

“You’ll wake up,” he says to her, but he can’t look at her.

Or maybe he’ll wake up and it’ll all be a dream.

There’s a soft rapping of knuckles on the door, and it opens slowly and quietly, and Sam has to lock his fingers around the arms of his chair to keep from jumping up and sending a right hook right at Steve’s face.

“How’s she doing?” Steve has the audacity to ask, has the audacity to look worried, has the audacity to pull up another plastic seat next to Sam.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he mutters under his breath, spite burning his tongue.

Steve glares at him. “Yeah, that’s why I asked. What’s your problem?”

“My problem is you, Rogers.” Now, Sam can’t help but stand, towering over the super soldier. He immediately grabs Steve’s arm and hauls him out of his chair, through the door, and out into the hallway. Steve stumbles, a hand on the wall, and Sam’s nostrils flare.

“How could you do this to her?”

“Me?” Steve sounds genuinely taken aback, but Sam doesn’t buy it. “What are you talking about? Helen told me—”

“I thought you loved her, too!”

He really did. That’s why Steve brought her to the Tower, didn’t he? That’s why they go out for lunch every other week and why Sam never gets a chance to take her out himself. Why he always makes sure to say goodbye to her before a mission, like he doesn’t want to leave her behind. He really thought Steve loved her too. If he had thought for one second that Steve didn’t love her...

“What?” Steve’s jaw slackens. “Not like that! She doesn’t—She’s not in love with me, Sam!”

He pants, unable to catch the breath that’s leaving him like a slow leak.

“Then who the hell is she in love with?”

Steve stares at him, a look that Sam can’t recognize, can’t name, in his eyes. Steve stares at him and smooths his hand down his beard, shaking his head.

“She’s in love with you,” he says, and Sam chokes.

Because all the pretty things in his world lead back to her and man, if she loved him, it would all be so perfect that he would never want to leave it. He would never want to say goodbye. He’d ask god and anyone else who would listen to grant him a deathless life so he could look at her forever, with no end in sight, because he would. He would. Sam would love her forever.

“No,” he says, a dry chuckle escaping his lips. “That can’t be true.”

“It’s true,” Steve says.

“That’s impossible.” He backs up, against the wall, holding his head in his hands and staring at the floor. “It’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Steve repeats, staring past Sam and through the window of the medbay’s room to look at her, lying so still in her bed. “I know it is.”

“Steve, I’m in love with her,” Sam confesses, an ache in his chest. “It can’t be me. I’m in love with her. I’m so fucking in love with her.”

A heavy hand clasps his shoulder, and when Sam looks up, his breathing unsteady, Steve has a look of regret smeared all over his face.

“But does she know that?”

And, for the first time in years, Sam cries.

(“It’s me. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”)

—SINCERITY—

Sam Wilson thinks she’s starlight.

When she first arrives she’s a collection of stars and their ashes, explosions and deaths, supernovas and black holes and earthbound meteorites.

What he means by that is she’s covered in bruises but she’s so beautiful, and he wants to gather her in his arms and tell her it’s going to be okay.

Steve introduces her, and Sam tries to bite his tongue, but all his words pour out of him anyway as she holds out a hand to him and he takes it, soft and trembling, and he knows she’s special somehow. She’s special.

“You’re the prettiest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” he says, and he means it, but she ducks her head and tries to hide the little smile on her face.

Sam Wilson thinks the world of you. But even when the bruises fade, you’re still left with all the land and the water and the galaxies hidden in your eyes when he catches your gaze, and he looks at you and he swears that you’re reaching into his chest and taking his heart in your small hands and squeezing him dry. You have realms inside of you, he’s sure, all the worlds and all their wonders. But you—you look at Steve like that sometimes, and then Sam is just grateful that you even let him breathe in your general atmosphere.

He can fly, sure, but he certainly isn’t an astronaut, so this is about the closest he can get to you.

(“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. This number is not available. At the tone, please record your message.”)

—TRUE LOVE—

The first thing you see is the ceiling, hazy and sleep-filtered, but it looks just like the ceiling in that bathroom, back in Danny’s apartment, back when you thought the pain of love was bone crushing, before you knew the pain of love was slow suffocation.

It makes you stutter back to life and that sends you into a coughing fit. You can still taste them—the daisies. They taste like the rawness of sunlight.

Hand pressed against your chest, your eyes dart around the room, trying to catch your bearings. There’s an IV in your arm, the bed railings are plastic, Sam is sitting in the corner, the lights are dimmed.

Sam Wilson is sitting in the corner.

You gasp, looking at him, and he’s staring right back at you, a familiar book in his hands.

Sam Wilson is sitting beside your bed, holding The Flowers of Evil, and the look on his face is far from happy to see you. It’s not anger. And it’s not sadness. It just… is. And Sam is never “just” anything.

Even if he thinks that sometimes, like the times when he calls you and says, “It’s just me,” as if he isn’t something special, so important you can’t live without him in your life.

Well, you can’t live with him, either.

After a solid minute, Sam looks down at the book between his dark hands, and he begins to sift through the pages. He stops sometimes, lingers on the sheets of dried daisies that have been pressed, their color leaking onto the text only slightly. But then he moves forward, searching for something. You don’t know what.

“How long have you been here?” you ask, throat sore when you speak.

“How long have you been in love with me?”

Your teeth gnash together, bite into your bottom lip, worry a sore there as he doesn’t look at you. He just keeps flipping through the book as if he didn’t just thrust a dagger straight through your heart, as if it isn’t beating so fast and hard like it’s trying to stay alive. You feel like you can’t breathe and you don’t know if it’s the flowers crawling out of your lungs and trying to get to him or if it’s the fact that he knows.

You can’t answer him.

Sam stops on a page, his finger trailing over the script, and then he begins to read.

“And yet

to wine, to opium even, I prefer

the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;

and in the wasteland of desire

your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.”

“Les Fleurs du Mal,” he says, shutting the book with a thump and striking his palm with it. “Baudelaire sure had a lot to say, didn’t he?”

Your mouth is suddenly so dry. There’s a pink pitcher of water next to the bed, just like a hospital would have, and you reach weakly for it. Sam grabs it immediately, pouring you a cup, and passing it gently to you. You gulp what you can down through the straw, hardly breathing.

When you finally feel like you aren’t going to cough your lungs up into your hands again, Sam takes the cup back from you, and embarrassment is a cold shiver down your spine.

He sits back down beside you, looking straight at you. “Do you want to get the surgery?”

Your lips part to speak, but he interrupts.

“Be honest.”

Chewing your lip, you take a deep breath. “No. And I never planned on it, either.” From the corner of your eye, you see his jaw tighten.

“Why not?”

“Because what is a life without the fucking sun, Sam?” The words are spat from your mouth. “A life spent not loving you—not knowing you, not feeling you anymore—it wasn’t worth it. Because I love you, Samuel Wilson. I have loved you since the day I met you and you told me—told me I was pretty for some goddamn reason. And I’ve loved you every day since. I love everything about you and there is not a single iteration of life that I would want to live if it meant not loving you.”

This time, nothing tastes like blood. It’s all just daisies, like they’re populating your mouth, changing the way your tongue works, turning to paste in your teeth. It’s so strong that it hurts. Like you’re eating paper valentines and crying too many tears as you say goodbye to a body in a casket.

But it’s beautiful and lovely and gorgeous because you swear that, somewhere beneath it, you can taste what you think love might taste like.

Sam doesn’t speak and it hurts, but it tosses your book down on the side table and reaches into his pocket and it still hurts. He pulls out his phone. You swallow down the rising earth in your chest.

He pulls out his phone—no, it’s your phone. He turns the screen toward you and punches in your password. You furrow your brows. When did he learn your password? But it doesn’t matter, really, because he just swipes to your call log and pulls up your voicemails. And then he begins to play them.

“Hey there darlin’, it’s just me. I couldn’t find you anywhere—where you at? I thought we could go pick some up and I’ll hang ‘em up. You need me and I’ll be there, ‘kay honey? I, uh, I wanted to ask this girl, but uh, I ended up waiting too long and I’m a little late so… I’ll see you there, honey. I wanted to catch you before we gotta go, in case you wanted to say goodbye. I need to tell you something. Even if it will hurt, even if it will destroy—destroy what we have, I don’t know. I’ll catch you later, darlin’. Have fun, girl. Save a dance for me, baby. Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetness. But I need to tell you, baby. I need to.”

The sobs fall from the broken seal of your lips, loud and crashing, like a waterfall. Your hand, shaking and weak, comes up to try to cover your mouth, but Sam lunges forward and catches your wrist in gentle fingers.

He’s looking at you like you’re everything—and you know, you know now that you are—to him.

“You’ve been saying that this whole time?” you ask, a laugh bubbling up from your lungs. No flowers retch up your throat.

Sam smiles, lips pulling back to reveal that gap in his front teeth.

“You haven’t been listening, baby girl. I’ve been tryin’ to tell you I love you for months.”

He rests his forehead upon yours, and as close as he is, all you can smell now is the spice of his cologne. Nothing smells floral.

“I never would have thought,” you whisper. “I was sure—so sure—that you didn’t love me. I thought because of the flowers, I thought that meant for sure that you didn’t love me. I mean, why would you? Why would you ever love someone like me?”

“Honey,” he says, so softly, “you’re starlight.”

Tears flood your cheeks and Sam cups your face in his large hands, wiping them away with gentle thumbs.

Sam Wilson is sunlight. You never considered that you could be starlight.

“Why wouldn’t I love you, darlin’? You’re so good, so gorgeous, so perfect.” He laughs and it makes you laugh too, but it comes out like a sob. Your heart feels lighter. “But you’ve never considered yourself worthy of love before, have you?”

“I’m sorry,” you cry. “I’m so sorry, Sam.”

He hushes you, soothes you, smooths his palms over the planes of your face and over your hair,

“You don’t have to be sorry, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.” He presses a warm kiss to your forehead and the memory of every single time he’s kissed your forehead like this flashes through your mind, an electric current, and you wonder how you never saw it before now.

“I love you,” you say, and this time, your lungs don’t feel as though they will burst from the pressure, the roots, the vines twined around them. You don’t feel choked by petals. You don’t taste blood in the back of your mouth.

“I know,” he says, “and if you let me, I will spend the rest of my days with you convincing you that you are worthy of love, honey. Because I’m in love with you. I’m so in love with you.”

When he presses his lips to yours, he doesn’t taste like flowers. Not like the daisies that wrote your death sentence. He tastes like golden pools of sunlight, warm and wanting. This is your heliotropism. You are a magnet for him, Sam Wilson, god of the fucking sun.

And maybe he’s phototropic, always drawn to you, moving toward your starlight.

(“Hey, it’s me. Sorry I missed your call! I’m on my way home now, and guess what? I have a surprise for you. It’s a bit ironic, but I think you’ll like it. What do you think of the name Daisy for a baby girl?”)

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x plus sized reader #plus sized reader #sam wilson angst #sam wilson fanfiction #hanahaki au #sam wilson fluff #thanks for supporting me!#divine masterlist #the flowers of evil

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hobbitsnapes · 3 years

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YOU GUYS ARE DATING

Corpse x MGK!sister reader

(Found this image on Pinterest so all credit goes to artist, if you know who it is please comment below so I can credit them)

A/N: this was requested by @heyitssab

Tree is tall of sex in this, but it’s more in a joking matter, plus corpse has stated he doesn’t mind as long as you are not a minor or send or tag him. I’m literally 2 years younger than him, and have no intentions of ever tagging him or sending him any of my work XD

Summary: how many idiots does it take to tell the brother and friend they’re dating? Apparently takes 2 very forgetful people, who kept their relationship secret without knowing it.

It had just been by chance, a small chance that he had been scrolling through his tags. liking and reposting art, when he saw a tag from someone he followed. He wrecked his brain for when he had followed her, coming up empty. She was cute, no denying the beauty she had as she laughed in the video. It was a clip from a stream that he didn’t know she had, as he couldn’t even remember her name, wearing his merch as it fit her snug. It fit her perfectly in fact, the large hood covering her face, hiding the flush to her face from her rather large chuckles that left her body. He couldn’t help but like the photo, and he couldn’t help but to press message either.

It was first only small likes to posts, an Occasional message, and a view on their livestreams, but that all changed when he spoke of the song he was working on with her older brother.

It all started that night, when both lay in their beds as they talked, laughed, and felt their hearts flutter each time they heard one another speak.

Her phone rang violently in her bag, nearly making her drop the to go bag all over the ground as she walked. “Hello?” She asked, as she held both bags with her hands as her shoulder gripped the phone as if it’d fall down a cliff. “Hey bug!” He exclaimed, making her chuckle as she heard the booming sound of his voice. She had always detested the nickname, as he gave it to her as kids due to her horrendous fear of the creatures. But, it brought more joy to her, as it reminded her of their youth. Having been adults for years, it was fun to hear such a childish name that’s stuck.

“Hey mopey.” She chuckled, as that was the name she gave him when he was in his emo phase that he never outgrew.

Both talked as she walked towards the elevator, mainly about how his day had gone as she silently listened.

She had always been this way, always the shyer of the two, the one to listen to others first before she said a word. He had teased her for it most of their childhood and teen life, but he had grown to love it, as he could let loose or rant to her about anything, and he knew she’d be there just to listen to him.

“So what’re you doing right now?” He asked, as she got into the elevator. “Just grabbed some dinner a few minutes before you called and nearly made me shit.” A smile painted on her face at his boisterous laughter.

“Are you at home?” He asked, as he heard the sound of the elevator beeping in the background. “No, I’m spending the night with my boyfriend.”

She had mentioned about a month prior that she was seeing someone, the joy it brought him to hear the excitement and joy in her tone as she gushed about their first date.

If this was 7 or 8 years prior, he would be bombarding her with questions about the man, who he was, where he lived, where he could meet him to find his intentions with his baby sister. But, in the last few years, he found himself feeling calmer whenever she’d mentioned her love life. He knew she was smart, and would never date a man who treated her poorly. The few breakups she had, they always ended amicably, her head still high as she told him. So, he never asked her any questions about the man, as he could tell from the few times she mentioned him, he could feel the love this man had for her, and Vice versa.

The strong barreling of her phone alerted them awake, both groaning out as she reached for her phone without lifting her head from his shoulder. “Hello?” She mumbled, voice slurred as the saliva was thick in her mouth, barely awake as she fought to listen in on who dares to wake them up.

“Hey!” He exclaimed, making her equally exhausted lover groan. She shifted off of him, laying on her back as he turned away from her, as to hopefully shut his eyes and fall back asleep. She was used to her brother's large voice, as it hardly phased her after growing up with him. “Colson, why are you calling me this ungodly hour?” “Oh come on, it’s not that early.” “Col its-“ She pulled her phone from her ear, eyes shutting violently as the bright light blinded her “5 o’clock in the morning. So again, I’m going to ask you, why did you call me at the asscrack of dawn?” “You don’t remember?” He asked, making her irritation grow. “No, that’s why I’m asking.” She says, as she rubbed her sleep crusted eyes. “You were coming up today to hang out with casie, remember?” Her hand stopped rubbing her face, as she felt her heart stop momentarily. “Wait, you mean today? I thought I was coming Friday?” “No, both of you settled on today, remember I told you that’s perfect because I have a day off?” She felt her heart pain as she heard the sadness in his tone, knowing he’s expecting her to bail. “Yeah sorry, I thought you meant Friday so I mixed it up, let me get ready and I’ll be out the door okay? Love you” she said, as she hung up the line.

Before she could even move, she felt his arm wrap around her body. A tired groan leaving his lips. “Nooo stayyyy.” He groaned, pulling her body to his. She smiled as she looked down at him, wrapping her arm on his chest and the other behind his neck. “I wish I could live, but I can’t.” Planting a soft kiss against his lips. “Stay in bed for a few more hours, please?” Her heart pulled at his tone, hearing just how tired he was. “I can’t, casies wanted me to come up for weeks now. And it takes a good 3 hours to get there. I wanna spend as much time as I can with them before it gets dark so I can get back safely.” He groaned at this, wrapping his arms around her. “Yeah but it’s only 5, it wouldn’t be safe to drive since we went to bed like, 2 hours ago.” “Yeah, and whos fault was that mister?” She teased, “hmm, sorry but I just couldn’t keep my hands to myself after not seeing you for a few days.” He mused, pulling her body closer to his, planting his lips against hers. A small hum left her lips as he pulled her thigh over his, grabbing the flesh harshly as their lips cascaded together. “Mm, no no no, you’re not gonna convince me to stay here just to go another round.” She said, as she got off from his warm body, throwing his large hoodie over her bare body. “Oh come on babe, are you sure about that?” He said, making her turn around to him. A small gasp left her lips as her eyes took in his milky white complexion. His honey brown eyes looking back at her with a small smile etched onto his face. His hair a tousled mess that resembled a bird's nest, some pieces falling onto his face. “Honey, I’ve been wanting to see my family for weeks now, I see you almost everyday and practically live here. I’ll be back tomorrow so I can grab more clothes from my place okay?” She placed a kiss to his lips, both holding one another in their arms. “I don’t know why you don’t just say fuck that place and just move in.” He mumbled, making her chuckle and heart warm. “Don't you think it’s a little soon though? I mean we’ve only been together a few months love.” “Yeah, but you’ve practically lived here since we got together, you literally just go there to get more clothes that you end up leaving here.” She looked into his eyes as she thought about his words. “Hm, I’ll think about it today okay?” She mused, planting a kiss to his lips. A soft okay leaving him as she got up.

“And babe, remember if you live here, we can have all the sex we want and not have to worry about driving to get one another.” He exclaimed, laughing at the loud honey she screamed from the bathroom.

She couldn’t help but laugh out as she watched, as her niece tried her hardest to braid her fathers grown out hair. It was near impossible not to, as pieces would fall out, resulting in her pulling them harsher, nearly pulling his eyelids back due to the tension from his temples. “Okay okay you’re gonna fuckin scalp me.” He chuckled , as all three bursted out in large laughter.

“So how’s school going this year?” She asked her, as she delicately painted her nails. Both of the girls had found themselves on the floor in front of the nice coffee table, as colson sat and chatted with them. “It’s going really well.” “Oh yeah? Make any new friends?” She teased. “I mean, kinda.” She couldn’t help but hear the wavering in her tone, spotting the faint blush dusting her skin. “Ohh, so there’s a someone eh?” She teased to her, making the preteen hide her face as to conceal the flush. “His names Garrett, and we both take social studies together. He always sits next to me at lunch, and we’ll draw on my notebook.” She gushed, making her smile. “Soo, do you think he likes you?” “I mean, that’s what everyone keeps saying.” “Yeah well don’t worry about it to much cas, you’re not dating anyone for many more years. You’re still a kid.” Her das said, making the young girls face fall.

Y/N knew he was only saying this to protect her, as he said the same thing to her growing up. “Hey, don’t be bummed out about it. He is right, you both are only 12 and should focus on school. But don’t worry, he’ll come around. He was just like that with me up until my current boyfriend.” She whispered, making the young girl chuckle.

“Speaking of which, how are you guys doing?” He asked, as she hadn’t mentioned hun to her in a while. He didn’t think it’d hurt to ask. “Great actually, we’re thinking of moving in together actually.” “That’s great! I’m really happy that y’all met.” “Yeah, I am too.” She hummed, a flush dusting her cheeks.

Both men laughed as they chatted on the phone, talking about anything that would come to mind. What was once only a collaboration for a song, turned into an amazing friendship that caused both of them to call at late hours just to shoot the shit.

A yawn left his lips, as he listened to colson ramble on about another song he was making. “Woah, you tired man?” Colson asked, shocked to hear the sound. “Yeah sorry, was up most of the night last night.” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “Were you feeling alright?” He asked, worry laced in his tone. He knew all about his friends illnesses, even once being on the other end of the phone during a bad spell one day.” “Oh yeah yeah yeah, was just, up with the misses last night.” He chuckled, a flush blooming on his cheeks. “Ohhh yeah? And how was it?” This shocked him, nearly feeling his heart stop. Like, does he usually know about his sisters sex life? He didn’t think much of it, as he knew just how close both were. “It was absolutely fucking amazing. Like I thought we’d be done for the night, fully tapped out but after like 5 minutes she’d be right back on me for another round.” He chuckled, his flush even worse than before. “Ayyyeee good for you corpse, glad to hear that puss is bussin.” He laughed at this, throwing his head back. “Yeah, it’s bussin bussin.”

Both men talk as they read from their phones, eyes wide in absolute awe of the love they received from the song. They had just dropped it a few days prior, not expecting the cry of joy from both fan bases.

He didn’t even look up from it when she walked in, until she bent down to plant a kiss to his forehead. “Sorry I had completely forgot about the tea I made you an hour ago, but I put it back on the stove to heat it up so if it’s twisting funky just tell me okay?” Before he could even thank her, both their heads whipped towards the loudness from the other line. “Y/N? Is that you? What in the hell are you doing there with corpse!” He didn’t sound angry, more shocked than anything, both of them looking at the phone in confusion. “I, I love here? Remember I told you like a month ago I was moving in with him?” “WHAT!” Both jumped at the loud scream. “Wait so you guys are dating!?” Both we’re even more perplexed, until it dawned on both of them. Their eyes wide as they turned their heads to one another slowly. “Wait you didn’t tell him?” “No? He’s one of your best friends so I thought you did!” “He’s your brother! So I thought you did!” Both whisper, until all three lay silent. That was until, the large cry of laughter that leaves the two, leaving colson even more confused. He wasn’t mad, not at all actually. More shocked and confused than anything. Until he started thinking, it does make sense, all the times they spoke about one another without him knowing, all the times they mentioned-“OH GOD!” He yelled, gagging violently, making them stop their laughing fit. “What's wrong? Why are you yelling?” She asks “like a month ago corpse was talking about how he was tired cause he was up all night having sex AND I HAD NO IDEA HE WAS TALKING ABOUT YOU! OH GOD WAS THAT WHY YOU WERE LIMPING THAT DAY WITH CAS AND I!” Both laugh even harder, as they listen to his ever growing gags.

“So yeah,. That’s literally how we had no idea we were keeping the relationship secret from her brother.” He laughed, as he red the comments and listened to his friends' laughter. She sat beside him, head laying on his shoulder as he told the story. She couldn’t help but to look back up into his eyes, as he glanced down at her, planting a soft kiss to her lips. “Keep it pg guys.” Colson said from the other line, making them chuckle.

#corpse husband imagine #corpse #corpse husband fanfic #corpse x reader #corpse imagine #corpse fic #corpse x you #corpse husband x reader #corpse husband

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sitp-recs · 3 years

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Among Ancient Pines by @graymatters

Artwork by @cambiodipolvere and @onlytheheartknows

Harry/Draco (2021, Mature, 74k)

Every day, Draco Malfoy tries. With every fiber of his being he tries. But he doesn’t much think about what he’s trying for. A fic about challenging assumptions, discovering self-worth, the silver lining in failing to meet expectations, and finding friendship, love, and purpose in a small Alaskan town that’s steeped in magic.

“Rule number one”—Draco lifts a forefinger in the air to begin his count—“no feelings.” He speaks the words intentionally, willing them into truth, hoping for a Time-Turner to appear amidst the clutter on Harry’s table.

My first rec outside birthday gifts caught me completely off guard. I’m gonna preface this by saying that I trust @sweet-s0rr0w’s taste with all my heart, and even knowing her rec couldn’t be anything other than perfect I’m still shook by how much I adored this fic. High chances of being my favorite BB together with Home Truths by @skeptiquex, and they are definitely among my favorite 2021 reads. Ancient Pines reminded me a lot of one of my all-time fave fics, A Sword Laid Aside by korlaena - not in terms of characterization or plot-wise (although hermit Harry sharing his refuge with Draco is totally my jam!). No, the similarities are more related to tone and intent. Both stories feel properly adult, mature and contemplative yet light and tender in a way that feels almost poetic.

This kind of writing always gives me chills and makes me feel like basking in a warm bath, it’s so hard not to mourn the experience once it’s over. Here’s to another fic I wish I could read for the first time over and over! Ancient Pines has a perfect mix of so many elements I personally love: Healer Draco, hermit Harry, wand lore, friends with benefits gone (remarkably) wrong, low key emotional angst, found family, comfort food, Draco & Ginny friendship, a sexy amount of sneaky escapades with many fingers going into belt loops, and much more. Harry and Draco’s dynamics are simply fantastic, from the delightful banter to the passionate lovemaking. I’m captivated by this chill, earnest, observant and tender Harry, his good-natured ways edged just a lil bit with the kind of defiant stubbornness he saves only for Draco.

And this Draco is just the perfect match for him! Smart and capable, warm yet overthinking every little step and grasping for control by setting empty rules he’s bound to break. It’s such a lovely thing to watch them come together amidst the wild and evocative landscape of Alaska, with easy familiarity despite having an unspoken past looming over their heads. It’s even lovelier to watch Draco find his self-worth and identity along the way, coming to terms with what he wants and daring to take a leap plunge of faith. What a touching showcase of character development!

Beyond the gorgeous characterization, this fic also has delightful OCs (Meg & Fee own my heart!) and sets a perfect pace mixing delicious banter, detailed wand magic and gentle romance. And it’s so gentle, and fun, and sweet! Their dynamics feel very organic and the way “Let’s have fun” becomes “What can I do?” reflect how much these characters grow to learn and care for each other. Lastly, I wanna give a massive shoutout to the talented cambiodipolvere and onlytheheartknows who captured the fic’s essence and gorgeous aesthetics with stunning art pieces! Their work got me even more immersed in this universe and put a big smile on my face. If you’re looking for a soft and resonant comfort read, search no more: this journey is your next read!

Read on AO3

#drarry fic rec #healer draco #wandmaker Harry #harrydracobang 2021 #fave

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everythingharrypotterblog · 3 years

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charmed [5]: ‘cycle’ (remus lupin x reader)

SMUT. professor! remus x professor!y/n. can be read as a one-shot, or as part 5 of the charmed series :) pls go show part 4 some love, and the rest of the chapters if u liked this! <3

brief summary: full moon approaching= horny as fuck remus. he can’t keep his eyes/hands off y/n, and after a whole day of being needy between classes, they ... ;) dom!remus, oral fem!receiving, fingering, size kink, ye

nsfw gifs for inspo: x x

a/n: i got rejected from my top choice university program today so if im gonna be unhappy, might as well make u guys happy and release parts 5 and 7

series summary: set in the prisoner of azkaban, including its major plot points. remus and y/n get hired by dumbledore last minute to teach at hogwarts, defense against the dark arts and charms respectively. not wanting the students to know they are married, they navigate the challenging year through hidden glances, hand holds underneath the table and loving moments in their offices. even with all their efforts to conceal their relationship, their chemistry does not go unnoticed by the student population of hogwarts, who grow fond of the pair as they offer them some of the best classes they’ve had in a while. their relationship as newlyweds is strengthened as teaching the next generation of wizards unlocks a sea of memories of their love story. for the second time in his life, remus holds hogwarts responsible for some of his happiest memories. he’s given the chance to create them with the love of his life, y/n, who has taught and continues to teach him that every part of him is lovable, remaining forever under her charm.

series masterlist here

join taglist here

Remus’ life was lived in cycles, various phases of the moon commandeering partially how he felt.

His sex drive was always pretty high; how could he not feel desire- when he had Y/N around him in his life. They had a great sex life, and Remus was definitely one to get ‘love boners’, where he would see Y/N do something not remotely suggestive but would get the desire to fuck out of sheer adoration..

When the full moon came close, however… it was on a whole other level. His body carried tension and almost an incurable itch on the days preceding his transformation. His senses flared like a wolf’s, like hearing, touch and vision. It was his sense of smell, however, that enhanced the most. For about 2-5 days leading to the full moon, his smell became much sharper. If Y/N had recently showered, her fresh scent would overwhelm his nostrils, or if she got sweaty too. The second she got aroused, Remus would be able to pick it up, and the urge to bury his face in between her legs would wash over him.

So, he 300% got way hornier during this period of time. Paired up with his senses on overdrive, all he could think about during those few days was sex with Y/N, the tiniest things she did would get him instantly hard. He’d be turned on all the time.

As the month of September came to a close, both Y/N could definitely sense her husband’s even-higher-than-normal yearning. Remus’ persona in public never revealed how much of a beast he could be in the bedroom, always calm, respectful, prudent. He treated Y/N with the upmost care, and once they got to Hogwarts, with the upmost professionalism. That quickly faltered in the last couple of days.

The second students were out of her last class, he had her pushed up against the wall, the door of the classroom safely locked. Y/N even had to cancel one Charms practice session, because Remus wasn’t able to keep his hands off her: pulling her close to him and rubbing her back while he buried his nose in the perfume of her hair. When they graded or read together in the evenings, he would bend her over the desk, then take her again in the shower that night. Every morning, Y/N would wake up in the best way possible, feeling Remus’ tight hold behind her and his already hard cock rutting up against the flesh of her butt.

This morning, however, the couple wasn’t able to squeeze in a nice wake-up shag. They had overslept, and Y/N who started at 9am while Remus at 10, had to to get to class. She hurried off, getting dressed and down for a quick breakfast, leaving Remus waking up alone, humping the sheets slightly.

His frustrations lasted all day, and definitely were not aided when he saw that Y/N was wearing his favourite pair of pants of hers at lunchtime. While the way they looked at each other always somewhat hinted at their romance, Remus’ gaze was especially obvious, like he was mentally undressing her everywhere they went.

He was presently in between classes, sitting at a table in the staff room and trailing his wand over the lines of a student’s essay he was reading. He lifted his head when he heard the door creak open, and Y/N walked in happily, carrying a stack of papers in her hands. His thread was almost thrown back as he caught a whiff of her, just pure her, mixed with a hint of… arousal? She was wet, Remus thought lewdly.

Spotting Remus, Y/N gave him a big smile, then turned towards a little desk that had some of her stuff on it. Remus gave her a cheeky wink before his eyes followed her, unabashedly fixed on how those pants fit her so nicely. Y/N bent down to store the papers into her bag, and Remus quickly had to look away, forcing his gaze on the window before he would get hard.

“Hi, my love.” He smiled gently as she approached him, turning his chair and pulling her onto his lap.

“Rem!” Y/N whispered, jerking her head towards Professor Sprout.

She was the only other teacher there, but to Remus’ greatest delight, she seemed to have snoozed off in her armchair.

“She’s asleep.” Remus whispered back, hands running everywhere on Y/N’s body as she settled herself comfortably in his lap. “Besides, I missed you.”

“Aw, pumpkin-“ Y/N giggled, accepting Remus’ kiss as he pressed his lips on hers. “I, missed, you, too” She murmured in between kisses.

Remus’ hands were getting antsy, as one went to go squeeze Y/N’s breasts and the other caressed over her butt, smoothing over the thin fabric of her dress pants. The kiss deepened as they both began breathing heavier.

“Don’t,” Y/N breathed in, breaking apart from Remus’ soft face. “Don’t you have class in like-“ She glanced at the clock. “5 minutes?!”

Remus peered over her head and groaned, shaking his tousled head. “And you do too darling, right?”

“Yeah, it’s my last one of the day.” Y/N frowned.

Remus’ gaze softened, nuzzling Y/N’s nose with the tip of his own, in a cute little Eskimo kiss- type action.

“I really love these pants, you know, I’m wondering if you wore these on purpose” He grinned, the hand on her butt petting the material softly.

“Maybe, I did….” Y/N smiled back, their faces centimeters away from each other’s.

Remus, ears full of Y/N’s voice, nose full of Y/N’s natural homey scent, didn’t register the door opening again and they both turned with a jolt, when they heard Professor McGonagall clear her throat.

Y/N jumped out of Remus’ lap, Remus smoothing his hands that were all over her body, over his robes.

“Hi, Professor McGonagall- I was just- we were just getting ready for our next l-lesson.” Y/N stammered, face growing hot in embarrassment.

“Yes, class, here- I’ll walk you to your class, darling.” Remus said, bowing his head and following Y/N out of the staff room.

“Mhmm.” Professor McGonagall hummed, peering at the two through her thin rectangle glasses. She didn’t bother reminding them they could call her ‘Minerva’, but as they shuffled out the door, her thin lips curled up in amusement. “Oh, Pomona, I’m sure you are very lucky to be dead asleep right now.” She whispered, to the Herbology teacher whose eyes were sealed shut.

In the hallway, Y/N and Remus burst out laughing once they got a safe distance away.

“I am never going to emotionally recover from that.” Remus choked in between gasps for breath.

“Please, I’m never going to look her in the eye ever again.” Y/N howled, wiping a tear with her wrist. “I mean, at least we were just sitting… and not actually doing.. anything.”

They walked along a couple stairways, their body language having adjusted to the busy Castle.

“Thanks for walking me, you didn’t have to.” Y/N said, once they reached the Charms classroom. She stood back to the door, hands behind her on the doorknob.

Remus simply smiled courteously, eyes drifting down her. Then, quickly, he peered around them and into the classroom. Seeing it was empty, he reached behind Y/N, turned the doorknob and swirled her inside, pressing her up against the door.

“Oh, Rem-“ Y/N squeaked in surprise, but her voice faded into a soft moan as Remus kissed her, her arms going up to wrap around his neck.

“Sorry, my love, I just can’t get enough of you.” Remus chuckled when they finally pulled apart.

“Hmm.” Y/N licked her lips. Feeling Remus casing her in against the door like this, his big build towering over her, made her knees all weak. “Okay, you know the best part about these pants?” She inquired.

“Hmm? Tell me, sweetheart.” Remus mused, eyelids growing heavy as he stared into her face.

She rose on her tippy toes to meet the height of Remus’ ears, “The material is so thin-”

She spun around, facing the door and pressed her backside against Remus’ front, feeling him through his trousers.

Gasping as Remus’ large hands went up to squeeze both her breasts, further pushing her against the door as he pressed himself against her smaller body, she said, “-I have to wear a thong.”

Remus’ hands on her froze, his eyes growing dark. A low growl was ebbing up his throat but before he could respond, Y/N snaked out of his hold.

“Okay, bye honey- have a good class!” Y/N chirped, grinning widely as she opened the door to let a group of students in.

Remus composed himself in a fraction of a second, a hand raking through his hazel locks in attempt to comb them over.

“Hi, Professor Lupin!” Some students said, happy to see him, to which he answered with a polite and kind “Hello, hello!”, and “Hello, Dean!”.

Once Y/N’s class was over, she hurried up to her living quarters. After taking a hot shower, she climbed onto the bed, in nothing but a thong and one of Remus’ big sleeping shirts. She lied down comfortably, fingers toying with the collar as she waited for her husband. He had one other class after hers and should be finished soon.

Accurately enough, Remus’ figure appeared in the fireplace a few minutes later. His footsteps approached the bedroom and as he entered, his belt was already clinking as he was unfastening it with one hand.

“Oh, baby.” He hummed appreciatively as he took in the sight of Y/N, splayed across their bed, thighs balmy and exposed. “Is that my shirt?”

Y/N nodded, appreciating how Remus’ locks of hair had fallen on his forehead, as if he was constantly running his fingers through them- which he did, in attempt to concentrate when he was giving his last lessons of the day.

Gripping the hem, Y/N lifted the shirt off, exposing her naked chest. Remus made a guttural sound as he lunged forward, going to squeeze, lick and suck over her breasts. His hands wandered south, grazing the wet spot on the cotton stripe that covered Y/N’s mound.

“And whose pussy is this, hmm?” Remus snarled slightly, canines shining as his lips curled into an eager smirk.

Y/N licked her lips as she decided not to answer, her eyes had a glint to them when she stared back challengingly at her husband.

Remus raised an eyebrow, but kept an unfazed demeanour. He stepped back from the bed, taking a stand at the edge of it.

“Okay, baby girl, I see how you’re being. Turn around for me.”

Y/N looked up at him excitedly before slowly turning on the bed, onto her stomach.

Remus let out a small appreciative growl at the sight of Y/N’s ass covered only by a thin thong, right in front of him ready for him to ravage.

“Should’ve started with an easier question, kitten- who does this ass belong to?” Remus simpered.

He bent forward to squeeze both cheeks in his large hands, then went on to graze his teeth softly against the flesh of her ass. He could smell her arousal fully now, the scent of her wetness entering his nostrils and clouding his vision.

When Y/N merely arched her lower back to stick our her bum more prominently, wiggling it, Remus cursed. He roughly palmed the flesh before he lifted his hand and delivered a loud swat to it.

Y/N gripped the sheets in her hands as she yelped out of pleasure.

“You like that, don’t you, you wanted a good spanking from daddy, huh?” Remus hummed, rubbing over the spot soothingly.

“Yes.” Y/N breathed out shakily. “Please.”

Remus kneaded the flesh in his hands and reveled in the way it would bounce after he spanked it a few more times.

“Oh darling,” he cooed, bending down to leave a slow trail of kisses up Y/N’s back. “Your little bum looks so cute marked up in pink by my hands.”

The skin had pinked, and a considerable area too, considering how large Remus’ hands were.

“Remus, I’m- I’m so wet for you.” Y/N cried, lifting her lower body weight onto her knees so Remus could see her pussy in the air. Glistening and dripping in arousal.

The sight sent adrenaline down Remus’ groin, his cock now painfully hard and straining against his trousers. He could in a flash, shed his lower layers and pound into Y/N’s cunt as his urges wished him to, but he had to get a taste first.

“Really?” He said as he kneeled down on the side of the bed, now eye-level with Y/N’s core. He peeled back her thong, throwing it further on the bed.

“Yes, oh God, please.”

Remus peered over Y/N’s legs to see her face, scrunched up in anticipation. His hands trailed over the side of her thighs, sending visible shivers down her spine.

“Now, will you be a good girl and tell me… who this pretty ass and pussy belong to?” He said in a low purr, voice husky.

Y/N’s pussy clenched as she felt his face so close to where she needed him to be, his hands cementing themselves around her legs.

“Yours, Remmy, I’m all yours, now please-“ she begged, tears prickling at her eyes because of how much she ached for his touch.

Remus’ hands softly grazed down her back and pressed harshly once they got to the lower part where the curve of her ass began, and pulled her cunt straight into his face.

“Merlin, you smell so fucking sweet.” He swooned, inhaling deeply before quite literally diving into her cunt, his warm tongue stretching to lick against her clit.

Y/N’s eyes rolled back, her head pressing harder into the pillow. “Fuck…” She choked out. Her hips gyrated against Remus’ face, but his firm hold locked her in place as he devoured her.

They both moaned, Remus’ tongue running up her slit a couple times to lap up all the slickness and fully taste it. He gave her clit a quick kiss before sucking on it, taking it in between his lips.

“Fuck, r-right there.” Y/N breathed out, finally feeling an ounce of her desire fulfilled.

Remus licked sloppily at her clit, drawing wet circles with his tongue as his entire face was engulfed in her, her wetness dripping and coating his chin and nose. He sighed contently, closing his eyes as he ate her out, his own cock plumping at the feeling of her hips and legs trembling.

It was like meditation, the wolf inside him finally somewhat being appeased. He lapped at her cunt like it was the last thing he’d ever do, tongue running through the soft folds that were sopping and slick from the mix of her arousal and his spit.

“Oh, Rem, oh-“ Y/N moaned, face scrunched in pleasure. The coil in her abdomen wound tighter, she was getting closer and she pushed her hips back against Remus’ mouth. He groaned into her cunt, his hands squeezing her fleshy hips harder, desperately stuffing his face into her. He loved it.

He maintained his rhythm, focusing on suckling and flicking his tongue on her clit until she came with a cry, hips shaking out of his hold. He flattened his tongue to run it up her labia, and ended by planting a tender kiss on her sensitive clit before pulling away, slightly more sated than before.

“Delicious.” Remus panted, standing up and watching Y/N languidly turn over onto her back once again. He wiped his mouth and the tip of his nose clean with the back of his hand, Y/N watching with her face hot.

Y/N scooted to sit at the edge of the bed, ogling him. He towered over her as he stayed standing, looking down at her through heavy hungry eyelids, covered by his brown hair that was getting slightly messier.

“Wanna taste you.” Y/N smiled, reaching behind Remus’ kneecaps to bring him closer.

Remus chuckled darkly, his long arm needing to barely reach to stroke Y/N’s jaw.

“You look so cute from up here, dove, makes me want to play with you and see you cum, all over again.” He said, voice low.

Y/N bit her lip, not breaking eye contact with her husband.

“So gorgeous.” He groaned as Y/N took his thumb between her lips, suckling the pad of the finger. “You have no idea how much I’ve been thinking.. of what I want to do to you, how much I want to take that body of yours.”

“Then take me.” Y/N exhaled, mouth letting go of his thumb and smiling devilishly.

Remus’ eyes, if possible, turned darker in desire and he bent down, kissing Y/N passionately on the lips as his hands travelled down her naked torso.

“Hmm, you’re so small, kitten,” Remus hummed, eyes following his hand that went to cup in between her legs. “Look how small your little pussy is in my hand.”

His fingers curled to feel how wet it was, Y/N spreading her thighs apart for him to access easier. He used his middle and ring finger to lather up some of her slickness, then dragged them up to her clit and started soft circles on it. Y/N whimpered, legs closing from how sensitive her bud was from her previous orgasm.

“Now, now pet.” Remus tutted, pulling away.

He licked the tips of his fingers clean, then shrugged off his woolly cardigan, hanging it on the back of a nearby chair. The full moon approaching always got his body temperature hotter than usual, so he skipped wearing a cloak today, and was left in his white dress shirt and tie. He slowly rolled up his sleeves, exposing his forearms. Y/N couldn’t keep her eyes off his hands as he did so. Long, mature fingers with metal rings adorning the base of each.

“Keep your legs nice and spread f’me, alright, as I stuff you with my fingers.”

Bending forward again, he leaned one arm on the bed beside Y/N as his other hand found her clit again. The thick pads of his fingers played with her clit, rubbing the spot as Y/N bit her lip, body firing up for another orgasm.

“So cute, button.” He mused, nuzzling the top of Y/N’s head. “Look at that, your clit feels so little under my fingers, don’t you think? And your cunt, ah-“

He dipped a finger inside her, sliding right in and quickly added another one. Slowly petting the soft spongy walls of Y/N’s pussy, Y/N mewled, rutting her hips for more.

“So tight, so full just of my fingers. Tell me darling, do you like my fingers?”

“Mhhm.” Y/N nodded as Remus sped up. “Love your fingers, your hands, they’re so b-big.” She choked out, head hanging back as he fingered her.

“You like that? You fucking love how I can get you off with just m’fingers, yeah? Lord, this pussy’s so tight how will my cock even fit hmm?” Remus crooned, watching Y/N adoringly as he was knuckles deep inside her, his rings feeling cold upon her entrance.

Y/N opened her eyes, meeting Remus’ soft, scar-decorated face and turned her head to kiss him. Remus suckled on her spit-slicked lips, maintaining his fingers and bent his hand for the bone of his palm to press against her clit. Y/N gasped into the kiss, lips gaped apart as she whimpered into Remus’ mouth. Remus smiled, loving how flustered she was as she struggled to kiss him back, soaking in all her little cries and noises she made.

His fingers inside her were going so fast, relentlessly hitting her g-spot over and over that his hard palm was grinding against her clit incessantly. Faster than the first time, she came, squeezing onto his forearm.

Fingers riding out her high, they slowed and pulled out, drenched in her wetness. Y/N collapsed onto her back, chest heaving.

“Oh, baby you are so beautiful.” Remus simpered, climbing on the bed and leaning over her to kiss her everywhere; her shoulders, neck, cheeks. “You think you got another one in you, bunny? Think you can let Moony bury his cock inside you?”

“Yes, give it to me please.” Y/N grinned widely, licking her lips and pulled Remus down by his tie, locking lips with him once more. “Need you inside me.”

“Oh, puppy. I am going to ruin you.” Remus said, this time in such a low murmur that had he not been an inch close to Y/N’s face, her ears wouldn’t have registered the tone.

Y/N sat up, helping her husband rid himself of his clothes. His bare chest exposed a few thin scars, which Y/N quickly smoothed her hands and lips over, routinely giving love to them, as she knew it was the part Remus couldn’t stand of his body.

Remus freed his hard-on, which was blushed an angry shade of dark pink. The bulbous head had been leaking of precum for a while now, and he exhaled a couple ragged breaths when he stroked himself, hand twisting around his tip. Y/N had leaned over to their bedside table to open a condom, and she replaced his hand with hers, pumping his long member before sliding it on. Remus already felt himself throb, and he knew that soon he’d be even more as Y/N’s pussy felt 100 times better than her hand.

“How do you want me?” Y/N breathed, backing up to the head of the bed as Remus went on his knees.

This was more of a rhetorical question, really, as it has been like this for years, that at every moon cycle end, their favourite was for Remus to take Y/N from behind. Y/N turned onto her elbows and knees, bending forward to prop her ass up.

“That’s it, good girl.” Remus licked his lips, lining himself up and pushed his cock slowly into Y/N’s warmth.

He let out a loud hiss, face contorted in pleasure as he sank fully into her, his long, hard member stretching Y/N out to the fullest, filling her to the brim. “Merlin.” He said through gritted teeth, eyes dropping to where he disappeared into Y/N’s behind. “You always manage to stay so tight for me, darling- fuck, your pussy’s just squeezing m’cock so right, isn’t it?”

Y/N merely moaned, head dropping forward as she balanced her upper weight on her elbows, overwhelmed by feeling every single vein of Remus’ cock sliding in and out of her slowly. She clenched hard around him, causing his hips to tremor as Remus’ senses, including touch, were amplified tenfold.

He ceased momentarily, his cock just resting heavy inside Y/N’s cunt, his head deep at her g-spot. Y/N mewled, arching her back and twerked her hips, fucking herself back onto his cock. Remus growled at the sight, spanked her once, then his hands dived to grab the curve of her waist as he snapped, hips pounding into her now mercilessly.

“Oh God, fuck!” Y/N cried out with her head thrown back, as her elbows gave out from underneath her and her face sank forward into a heap of pillows. Her ass still up in the air, flesh slightly pink from Remus’ spanks delivered to it- it was a wonder how he didn’t cum from the sight of that alone as he fucked her from behind.

Remus kept up his quick rhythm, hips thrusting into her ruthlessly. They were both close, and Remus fucked into Y/N without an ounce or self-restraint left. He grunted loudly as she fell forward and her inner walls clenching down onto his member. His cock slipped in and out of her deliciously, as she had gotten so wet for him, sinful sounds echoing the room.

He bent forward, chest pressing against her back, their skin sweaty.

“‘S that feel good, darling?” Remus said, lips ghosting over Y/N’s ear. She shuddered, his breath sending shivers up her neck as she felt him so close. His voice wasn’t his usual chesty, tenor honey-like. His words were uttered in a guttural one, his voice deeper, lower, sounding from the back of his throat. “You’re taking me so well- your pussy feels like heaven, sweetheart.”

Y/N’s ears registered the praise as music, living for it. He adjusted his hips slightly to accommodate the new angle, thrusting to make sure he was hitting all the spots in Y/N he knew she liked.

“Mphhhm, please baby,” Y/N moaned, voice slightly muffled into the pillow. She turned her head to the side to rest her cheek on it instead. “Please Remus, oh-“ her voice whimpered, a little more clearly now.

Remus’ large hands had been gripping onto the flesh of Y/N’s hips roughly, tightly. He moved one up to her breasts, grabbing it and massaging it. His breath was hot on her back. He was nearing his orgasm too, his breathing loud and shaggy. Heaving grunts echoed off the walls of the rooms, and Y/N arched her back to feel his chest rise up and down against it.

“Good girl, good fucking girl- taking my cock so well. Shit.”

Remus let out a growl as he felt his cock be swallowed up in her cunt, her ribbed walls enveloping it so nicely as he ploughed into her.

“You’re close aren’t you, dove?” He murmured into her neck with the same low voice, placing wet kisses onto it. Her hair was out of the way onto the other side, and he tasted the slight stickiness of how sweaty their night’s activities had gotten her.

“Yes, yes, ye-es” Y/N chanted in a strangled voice, her words getting split at her throat from Remus’ vigorous pounding.

“Can tell from how tightly you’re squeezing me- shit, not going to last long either inside you like this. C’mon baby, c’mon. Cum for me.”

It was all too much. Y/N shaked as she felt Remus pump into her a few more crucial times. He felt so thick in her walls, his girth filling her up like no other. Moaning, her hips grinded back into Remus as she started to cum. She felt his warm hand reach down her belly and down to between her thighs and with the added pressure from the circles he rubbed on her clit, she came with a shudder. Her body shook as her breath caught in her throat, a string of profanities leaving her lips. Y/N’s sounds of pleasure filled Remus’ ears, driving him further into ecstasy.

“Good girl.” Remus purred, hips jerking forward frantically.

“Remus, fill me up-“ Y/N moaned, knowing Remus loved hearing his name fall off her tongue like that. She propped herself back onto her elbow, reaching one hand behind her to hold the back of Remus’ neck.

Remus pressed the side of his face into Y/N’s neck, her hand keeping him close to her. He growled into her ear, the low sound vibrating from his throat enough to make Y/N’s eyes roll back. Driving his cock into her, desperately chasing his high, he rutted his cock into her walls. His entire body strained as all his muscles worked to relieve himself, needily fucking out his animalistic urges. He came with a gasp, his hips jerked harshly as he shot ropes and ropes of cum into the condom.

Panting, he hunched forward as his cock kept twitching.

His whole muscular body trembled as he squeezed his eyes shut in the pleasure of his long-needed release. His hand was grasped onto Y/N’s chest and she loved the feeling, tilting her hips forward to match the movements of Remus’ orgasm.

Wheezing slightly, Remus finally pulled out of her slowly, Y/N whimpering slightly as her pussy clenched around nothing. He threw the used condom and collapsed onto his back, chest still heaving. Y/N followed suit beside him, onto her stomach, body limp. The afterwaves of her orgasm still sent pleasure through her body and she knew she’d feel too sore to even straighten her legs.

“My love.” Remus turned on his side.

“I can’t fucking move.” Y/N chuckled, voice muffled by the pillow.

Remus hummed, eyes raking over her used body and sat up, massaging over her shoulders then down her back. His hands reached her hips, where he caressed extra soothingly and slowly closed them together. He bent forward, planting a kiss on Y/N’s cheek. She giggled as his locks of hair tickled her eyelid.

Languidly turning over, Y/N sighed in content.

Remus reached his hand, and pulled a strand of her hair out of her face, tucking it behind his ear. He felt warmth lower, as his body began to awaken for another round.

“We’re not getting much sleep tonight, huh?” Y/N giggled peering down at her husband.

It was a blessing that the Castle automatically out a Silencing charm on teachers’ living quarters, because anyone neighbouring them would have stayed up, hearing sinful, wet slapping sounds of skin all night.

part 6 and part 7 OUT NOW!!

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